Great post, video, and comment discussion regarding Ed Catmull’s graduate research film which involves one of the earliest (if not the first) 3D rendered computer animation. Catmull would go on to form Pixar in the following decade. Many of the concepts and technologies used in this short film are used today in infrastructure to digitize roadways, buildings, bridges, etc. into point clouds. (via Kottke)
I read this post on Improvements in the Windows Explorer earlier today with quite a bit of excitement. There’s a lot to learn in here about the thought process that goes behind the Ribbon UI which was developed at Microsoft and is finally reaching the Explorer window. I, personally, welcome the changes and think it is great that they are exposing so many power features but with the ability to make the interface as minimal as needed for someone who won’t use them. As someone who’s getting into more UX design, particularly when it comes to Ribbon UI applications, this sort of stuff is invaluable.
Gruber mentioned it in an aside piece, pointing out that Apple and Microsoft are really diverging in terms of UI design1. This is certainly true when comparing the (still in Alpha) Windows 8 Explorer window with the UI changes in OSX Lion. While it is fair to argue that Microsoft’s UI is busy, I think Apple has gone a bit too far in the other direction. My largest gripe is that all the color has been removed from most icons, making it a bit harder to differentiate one gray square from another. The ribbon can be minimized in any Ribbon UI program—resulting in what are functionally just graphical menus. There is a tool (oddly, with a gray gear icon) in the Finder which is “Perform tasks with the selected item(s)” which generally accomplishes the same task. Of course, it is just a menu and limited to practical menus sizes (no different than a right-click contextual menu at all).
Context menu in the OS X Lion Finder, or, as I like to call it: the puddle of gray blocks
The Windows 7 Explorer dialog is similarly simple, with a menu-ish toolbar providing some context-sensitive tools along the top. This interface looks a bit like Internet Explorer 8, but that is still different enough to most Windows programs that I think many users just never got used to the controls. In IE, the main purpose is browsing. Hiding settings, etc. aren’t needed most of the time and I’d wager many users don’t even know about them. However, I think anyone using a file manager is often looking to do more than just browse those files.
The relatively stripped down Explorer interface in Windows 7
Windows 8—assuming that many of these features don’t get stripped out or watered down by some larger committee (as has happened to Windows releases in the past; thus Vista)—seems to try to cater to both casual users by way of the collapsable Ribbon and even the Metro UI (which will prevent many users from even seeing the Explorer window) as well as to power users who think that reducing the number of clicks to show hidden items from five down to two is awesome. Trying to have it both ways may very well not work, as is too often the case.
But, right or wrong, the Finder in OSX Lion is still going to be nearly as lousy after Windows 8 as it was when OS X first launched2. At least the Windows team is willing to listen to criticism and make some drastic changes.
I’ve been a fan of fantasy pretty much my entire life. No matter how much I got a certain amount of enjoyment of the scantily clad women warriors from artists like Frazetta or Larry Elmore, much of the—uh, armor?— that some women wore didn’t seem like it would be of much help in a sword fight. Or keep them from freezing to death in a cool breeze. Or even just stay on them, for that matter.
Someone has created a handy Tumblr blog so we can all enjoy knowing that there are plenty of sensible women in the make-believe worlds of fantasy. Enjoy some of the great art at Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor.
I may even make some self-rescuing princess art for my daughter from some of these.
I often hear from others and even find myself saying "I’d pay more for a version of product X if it were made in the U.S." According to this Forbes piece by Steve Denning, most companies couldn’t manufacture or even design a lot products here, even if they wanted to. The facilities and know-how all got shipped overseas along with the jobs and money.
One example that struck me:
The lithium battery for GM’s [GM] Chevy Volt is being manufactured in South Korea. Making it in the U.S. wasn’t feasible: rechargeable battery manufacturing left the US long ago.
Some efforts are being made to resurrect rechargeable battery manufacture in the U.S., such as the GE-backed [GE] A123Systems, but it’s difficult to go it alone when much of the expertise is now in Asia.
Interesting, given that my neighbor here in Franklin, TN—Nissan—will be manufacturing the batteries for the Leaf in near-by Symrna, TN (one of their larger plants in N.A.) by next year. I think it is far too early to make any claims as to the viability of one choice over the other, as both cars just hit the market and production lines have probably yet to even hit any sort of regularity. However, that seems to be a glaring hole in the argument that batteries, at least, cannot be made in the states.
Or, on the other hand, it may soon serve to prove that point. Only time will tell. I, for one, am rooting on Nissan to make it work.
I’m an Apple fan and as much as I’d like to write something on Steve Jobs’ retirement, the Internet is pretty much already filled to the brim with ruminations on the topic. If you do choose to read a piece on this, I suggest MG Seigler’s piece at TechCrunch. It summarizes why Jobs’ leaving is broader than just a tech news piece and delves into what is next for Apple.
I will summarize why this matters to me: Apple was formed a few months before I was born and Jobs retired on my 35th birthday. I have grown up with Apple in a very real sense. From playing "Oregon Trail" on an Apple ][ to carrying a device ripped from a science fiction novel as my phone, these devices have really mattered to me. The attention to detail in them and the amount of vision it took to get them in my hands has always been phenomenal. The fact that so many others are taking note of this change in leadership means that they meant a lot to all of us, regardless of what computer of phone we use. It was always so much more than just that.
It took me several tries to get interested in Lev Grossman’s novel, The Magicians: A Novel
It was simply a pitch-perfect, modern take on the classic fantasy stories I grew up with (namely, the Chronicles of Narnia). And I couldn’t wait to read more about the world(s) Grossman wrote about.
Well, within a month or so of my listening to The Magicians on audiobook, I read about the planned sequel; so good news for me. I got that novel the day after the hardback hit bookshelves and finished it just last night.
I read the print version this time, as I knew I wouldn’t have the patience for an audiobook this time around. This may seem like an odd idea if you’re not familiar with audiobooks (or if you read a bit slower than they tend to be read at), but I’m a relatively quick reader. Given the speedy pace of the first novel, I figured (correctly) that I could devour this novel in about a week.
Another odd thing I’ve discovered about listening to a book on audio and then reading sequels (prequels, etc., too) in print is that you tend to keep those character’s voices in your head. Both The Magicians and The Magician King are read by Mark Bramhall whose voice and inflections capture the snarky attitudes of the characters perfectly. I seriously cannot praise his narration of the first book enough. And though his pace is considerably faster than the last audiobook I finished, I knew I just wouldn’t have the patience for it this time.
I recently watched portions of a Comicon panel on the subject of Epic Fantasy
with some of my favorites: George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Kevin J. Anderson, and others. As they don’t seem to have a firm concept of what Epic Fantasy is, other than possibly the books are large, I’m going to co-opt the term to describe The Magician King. Worlds are saved, heroes take long journeys, dragons are dealt with, buckles are swashed (or whatever), and probably countless other fantasy tropes are disposed of. Of course, Grossman handles these all with his lateral approach that made The Magicians so wonderful.
Coming in at exactly 400 pages (in hardback, anyway), the scale of the book is closer to its Narnia lineage (and possibly, The Hobbit) than The Lord of the Rings, and that’s fine. Grossman often relies on pop culture (some more obscure than others) to shortcut long descriptions of this or that medieval-ish fantasy thing. A dragon? Well, it looks like a D&D dragon; what more is there to say about that? The characters are the reason to read this story, anyway (though Grossman does a fine job at making sword fights and other Swords & Sorcery bits plenty fun).
I was so glad that this novel focused on the story of Julia. The Magicians makes it clear that she goes through a lot during the time Quentin is at Brakebills, but explains essentially nothing of it. It makes for a compelling story and here and follows in the Narnian tradition of subsequent novels telling stories about less-prominent or tangential characters in the preceding tale.
I tweeted last night that I couldn’t wait to read more stories in this universe, but to be honest I’m okay if this is it. I have no doubt that more tales could be made. I mean, it isn’t if Grossman hasn’t created an entire universe in which to expand this. However, if it means watering down the stories or simply retelling what amounts to the same adventures, I’ll gladly pass. I will, at least, be reading whatever he writes next, though.
I finished the audiobook of The Windup Girl
The story follows the intersection of a half-dozen-or-so key characters who have all found themselves in the Bangkok. While each character has a great deal of depth, it is really the city and—through the limited lens we’re allowed—the world that Bacigalupi describes that are the star.
Often, the story told in a novel falls into one of two categories: an epic tale starting from small events leading to world-changing epochs and their aftermath or (and this is case with The Windup Girl) we are given but a narrow window into a greater world. Bacigalupi gives hints at the various events that brought about the lives we are presented in this story though very little is given as to where those lives go afterwards. We are just presented with a glimpse on the crossroads of these characters. While I found myself wanting more of their stories, I want to know more about the rest of the world even more so. I want to know about the inner workings of AgriGen. I want to know just what went down in Finland. And I want to know if life in Japan is as luxurious as it sounds when compared to the rest of the world in The Windup Girl.
The audiobook is performed by the excellent Jonathan Davis. The first audiobook performance I listened to of his was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, one that remains a high mark of narration in my mind. His wide range of accents and voices truly feels like a cast of performers. Unfortunately, unlike Snow Crash, the pace felt too slow in The Windup Girl. Davis’ pauses and cadences went beyond dramatic and bordered on tedious at various points. The book isn’t a particularly long novel but yet the performed at such a slow pace, the audiobook was terribly long. For reference, Snow Crash is 480 pages and the Davis-performed audiobook just over 17 hours where as The Windup Girl is 361 pages and the audiobook by the same performer is 19 and a half hours long1. Though I’m a fan of Davis’ work and look forward to listing to more of his reading, this particular performance drug on more than I cared for.
Slow pace aside, the audiobook is good and the story is great. I highly recommend it and truly hope that Bacigalupi takes us back to this world again very soon.
pageisn’t a standardized metric, but I can’t account for that increase in length other than very slow performance.↵
Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs
testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation this past Wednesday. The entire written testimony is worth reading. I can guarantee you that it contains the most heart-warming story of plumbing repair you’ll read all day.
I completely agree with everything he says. Even in a bleak economy with high unemployment rates, our country faces a shortage of skilled laborers (which actually started long before the economy tanked and certainly didn’t help prevent it). Rowe:
In general, we’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.
In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.
We really need to re-orient our notion of success away from how much we have, how much we make, or how little we have to work for it. The subtext to the question So, what do you do?
should be what do you do to help society?
. Labor isn’t something to be ashamed of as a society nor is something we should considered relegated to those less worthy. The people who construct and repair our homes, our places of work, and our infrastructure the interface between life and civilization. It’s about time we started taking a lot more pride — as a society or country — in the class of professions that make it happen.
Perhaps this all sounds a bit hypocritical coming from a college educated guy and that’s fair enough. However, I do what I do because I love it. I’ve always been fascinated by building things and how things simply go together. So, as a product of my environment, I became an engineer and now a writer (about engineering software). But I still value every moment that I get to use my hands and some tools to make or fix something. As Rowe describes, those are some of the best memories I have and I know that I learn a lot when doing those projects. I also have learned to have a great deal of respect for those who do it for a living.
An analogy of where we — as a society — seem to value trade labor: the phrase chef to the stars
seems like a reasonable (if not pretentious) thing to put on one’s business card or web site. However, electrician to the stars
seems like a joke punchline (or possibly a new reality series on TLC, which I’d argue is the same thing). But, honestly, what is the difference between the two professions in terms of body of knowledge or skill sets? Both require years of experience, apprenticeships, and even formal training to master. But the idea of our kids becoming a chef seems to have more appeal than an electrician because, why, exactly? We’ve just somehow decided it’s not as worth and that needs to change.
After his last term as governor of Tennessee, the I Miss Ned Ray
bumper stickers were a fairly common site around the state1. He was certainly a popular governor during his two terms in office.
Today, former Gov. McWherter passed away in Nashville at the age of 80. He was a great leader and he will — again — be sorely missed by most Tennesseans who remember him fondly.
I had the fortune to meet then Gov. McWherter during his second term in office on a Political Science class trip to the state’s capital. We (the class and our teacher, also the school’s football & soccer coach) had walked into his empty office. I recall a smell of cigar about his desk and that my friend spotted his half-eaten sandwich. We were just being shooed out by the teacher — who no doubt thought he’d gotten away with something by getting us uninvited into to the governor’s office2 — when the Governor walked back into the room. He was an imposing man to most people, but to a 125 pound high school sophomore, he seemed as formidable as most of the state’s mountains. However, he was gracious and friendly and took a few minutes to speak with us. It was lost on me at the time that he was in the process of expanding the states education system by pushing for landmark improvements to the state’s education system and management.
During the course of that class and as a result of meeting him, I grew more interested in his politics and came to respect him as wonderful governor and politician. I can trace much of the political values I hold dear to growing up during his time as governor (I was just ten when he was first elected).
Today is World Backup Day. Now, before you start looking over your shoulder or throwing the car in reverse, keep in mind this means backing up your data.
As in hard drives.
The fact that most people probably don’t really think about data when they hear the phrase back up
doesn’t really bode well for such an awareness campaign. However, as more of our daily lives — even the non-geeks out there — become more digital than physical, it is important for all of us to think about this. How many photos of your vacations, videos of your kids, purchases of music and film, purchased software with download-only delivery, or important documents that are no where else but stored in a series of ones and zeros on a hard disk? I know that in our household, it is pretty much everything of any importance for almost the past decade.
As a result of all that digital content, we have an enormous amount of storage in our house. Among our three main computers — my iMac desktop, Angela’s laptop, and my work laptop — we have nearly 2.25 terabytes of storage1. That number alone is the sort of thing that would have sounded like pure science fiction a couple of decades ago. Today, it’s really not that much at all2.
What’s more, while today’s computers and their hard drives are fairly robust, these things do fail. Even when that happens, it isn’t the end of the world. Data can be recovered but it is far from cheap. In a world of Free
, the price for data recovery is still dramatically high. It is much cheaper, much simpler, and less stressful to know that you have backups in place and that the data is just a couple of click away instead of waiting for something to happen and crossing your fingers.
The golden rule is that anything digital worth keeping should have three copies:
This provides physical separation of your backups and while this was the sort of luxury that only large companies could afford years ago, it is simple and (relatively) cheap today with the dramatic drop in price of large hard drives and high-speed internet connections.
We use a set of hard disks that I either purchases for this purpose or put together from old equipment for our local backups. We use a hodge-podge of software to manage these backups:
That covers our local backups, but it is extremely important to also keep a remote backup in case of physical disaster or theft. For that, we use
In terms of cost, our entire local storage system could be purchased for about $250 (going rate is around $100/ terabyte for external storage). Carbonite is $55 per year per machine, though it’s cheaper for longer periods and you can use some coupons to get a month or two for free. So, for roughly $500, it is possible to provide an extremely robust backup for our home computers (if your work doesn’t pay to back up your work computer, they should) for nearly the entire expected life of those machines. It’s far from cheap but the peace of mind and ease of use is really worth it.
Ask anyone who has lost even a fraction of their digital photo albums or music collection and I’m sure they’ll agree.
So, snap to it and do yourself a big favor.
Fringe,it is far from catastrophic.↵
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