Team USA vs. team Canada hockey

February 22nd, 2010 View Comments

Obviously everyone in Canada is flipping out about this right now. Apparently something ludicrous like 50% of all Canadians watched this hockey game. It may as well have been our Super Bowl.  And we lost. And everyone was stunned. One of the people I was watching the game with mentioned after the first period “I thought we’d be up 3-0 by now”.What I don’t get is why is everyone so surprised? Does Canada have a better roster than the Americans?  Yeah, obviously. Do the San Jose sharks have a better roster than the Edmonton Oilers.  Yes. But no one ever says “It’s absolutely stunning that the oilers beat the sharks”. Even on ice Canada was obviously the more talented squad. They dominated in time on attack, and embarrassingly outshot the Americans.  But Miller made Brodeur look like a rookie who didn’t understand the game of hockey and the Americans capitalized on their opportunities.  That’s it.  The fact of the matter is in one game elimination tournaments variance plays a huge role and the best team doesn’t always win.

So Canada, yeah, our team is stacked, but don’t count on anything.

Free software or the dawn of the small software firm?

February 21st, 2010 View Comments

About a month ago I was chatting with a friend of mine about web-based software.  I was talking about basecamp, which I really like but was unsure if I could justify paying for as a starving Masters student.  My friend said “….  Wait, you are thinking about *paying* for a web app?!?”  The concept completely stunned him, paying for something on the internet when everything he used, facebook, google docs and gmail were all free seemed ludicrous.  Sometime more recently another of my friends mentioned in passing to me “I would never pay for software.”

Although linux never really took off as a mainstream operating system, popular web platforms and applications like wordpress, nginx and rails seem to be making a strong case that free software may be the way of the future on the internet.  Maybe soon we will never pay for things that people with college degrees who could easily have been highly paid engineers spent years working on.  I have only one caveat, and that is What The Hell!!?!

I was recently reading an article on “The developer as a starving artist“. This article claims that as tools for development make development faster, simpler and cheaper, developers will be churning out great projects for free for fun. There will still be money in software but it will be in providing these “for fun” applications, in the same way people make money using apache to sell web hosting. The excellent developers will make money while most will be like artists “scraping by”.

The issue with this is that to be a *good* developer you actually have to be really smart. Really smart people go to college and take degrees that are hard to get into and pay them money, they don’t decide to work for free. If we stop paying developers then the same really smart people currently becoming developers will abandon software development for other lucrative professions that require being very smart.  This will make software crappy and good software will once again be in greater demand.  (aka able to charge.)

What about my thoughts on the future of the industry? As software development becomes easier and cheaper smaller teams of devs can build more extensive applications faster. What this means is that something like ebay, which was written by and employs many developers, can be replicated and improved upon by a dedicated group of 2-4 developers in under a year. Amazon took massive amounts of money to develop, now I can build an online store in under a month by myself. the key being to do this well, you still need a group of *good* developers. I think more startups will start to challenge big complacent companies, and we will begin to see more competition across product spaces. For a developer to make 180 000$ per year, a pretty dang good salary, they need to make an app that only 1000 people are willing to pay 15$ per month for! Once upon a time starting a serious software company was a large capital and time investment, now it’s more like opening a McDonalds. Given these economics and the speed of creating good applications it almost doesn’t make sense to go work a full time job unless a developer *needs* a stable income because they have children or something.

Developers go forth and prove me right. Make good apps that people will pay for and let the free software enthusiasts be damned. Good software is worth money and always will be.

Maths!!

February 17th, 2010 View Comments

Here’s a little problem for y’all, how do I decide if the following equation has a solution?

y1 < a1×1 + a2×2 + … + anxn < y2

or rather more generally Ax < y where A is a mxn matrix, x is a vector of size n and y is a vector of size m.  x is constrained to be all integers.

where all unknowns x are constrained to being integers but all y and a may be any real number.

Been pondering this on and off for a bit now and I finally found a solution and am in the middle of implementing it.  Answer to come.  ;-)

Who develops using Safari?

February 17th, 2010 View Comments

All my macy web developmenty friends can never seem to get over the fact that I do all of my initial development and testing of site in firefox.  ”It’s so clunky compared to safari”, “It’s so slow” etc. etc.  And I have tries safari.  I have tried using it many many many times.  I would use it.  It feels nicer and slicker like they mention, but am I the only one or is the safari debugger bugtastic?  It is actually absolutely stunning to me that it ever made it through QA.  I find about 50% of the time when I put a breakpoint into my JS in Safari I get the following:Safari happily breaks, wags it’s tail and asks for a pat on the head, but it completely refuses to show me my code!  Where is the code paused?  I have no idea, somewhere in this blank screen.

So then there’s the webkit nightlies.  People swear by them up and down and promise they will do all the fancy things firebug let you do like edit css inline.  So on a few occasions I brave the nightlies.  The problem is they always work even worse than my vanilla Safari. Sometimes they don’t even show the JS files as existing.  The last time I tried webkit the debugger did the following mysterious thing basically making them totally unusable.I can’t read that!!!  That’s two files in one window…  It seems like you would have to *try* to make something that bad happen.

So for all the safari developers out there.  Am I missing something??

Top 3 signs you’re a jerk highway driver.

February 16th, 2010 View Comments

1) You drive the whole way in the lefthand lane. The lefthand lane is actually known as a “passing lane”. This is not because they ran out of names for lanes that did not involve the word passing, it’s actually a description of what the intended use of the lane is. If you were unaware of this fact you may in fact be illiterately stupid. If this is the case try sounding the word out P-A-S-S-I-N-G. Now consider what you were doing in the lane the entire time.

Corollary 1a) People keep passing you on the right.  Yeah, those people are probably jerks as well, or at least some of them.  The fact of the matter is that you are clearly not paying attention to what is going on around you.  Is that big pickup zooming up behind you at a mind-blowing 4 kilometers an hour over the speed limit.  Maybe you should move over and *let them pass*.  Novel concept.

Corollary 1b) You keep passing people on the right.  Yeah, I get it.  Apparently you are the only one aware of the fact that the speed limit is 63% too low.  It’s clear that when this highway was designed no one whatsoever gave any thought to what a safe driving speed should actually be and the speed limit was totally arbitrary.  It’s a good thing you’ve come along to enlighten us all.

2) You leave your high beams on all the time in traffic.  …  Ok, seriously.  There is a big long line of cars in front of you. A long snake of red lights you can follow that will show you where all the turns are.  If you can’t see that line of cars without your high beams you are too blind ti be driving.  Which coincidentally is what the person in front of you is going to be any time now if you don’t start behaving like a respectable human being.

3) You drive at 70 km/hr on the 110 km/hr road because it is dark out and there is a little bit of snow on the road. Yeah, I know, you feel safe at 70 km/hr.  You feel all nice warm and cozy, like maybe you won’t go careening off the highway.  This is true. You know when else you wouldn’t go careening off the highway? Stopped.  Please don’t tell me you think it is a good idea to sit stopped in the middle of a highway in sub-optimal driving conditions??  It’s also not safe to go unreasonably slow.

God and Science

January 18th, 2010 View Comments


Eye Of God??

The "Eye of God" as photographed by the Hubble space telescope.

I was recently an innocent bystander to a rather impassioned argument by a certain U of A microbiology undergrad as to why god does not exist.  Actually, to be more clear her argument was that as scientists the only sensible position to have on the existence of a deity is atheism.  I personally am not an extremely religious person and have not set foot into a church in over 6 years not, but the more I thought about this viewpoint the more it irritated me.  The premise of the argument was that as the existence of god was the most challenging of “the existence of god” vs. “the non-existence of god” to accept, the burden of proof falls upon the theist camp.

This notion is nonsense. The burden of proof falls on everyone. As scientists we have no right to call anyone wrong without being able to prove ourselves correct, and calling someone wrong without proof limits the possibilities of human imagination and as such the scientific process.  We now commonly accept many things that within the frame of reference of people at some point would have seemed ludicrous.  For example as one point the concept that the earth was not flat was nonsense. It contradicted everything our sense told us. The concept that time goes slower as we get faster??? Nonsense!!  That energy can only exist in multiples of distinct quanta??  Yeah….  That doesn’t make sense. How about the fact that the entire universe originated from a volume margins of magnitude smaller than the tip of my pinky finger? Laughable really. By calling views that don’t seem to correspond to our frame of reference wrong we inhibit ourselves from discovering truths.

So to all scientists out there, including the arguer in question, I urge you all to choose your own path when choosing whether or not to be religious. If the thought that in this universe, of which we have possibly barely scratched the surface of understanding, the thought of a being greater than ourselves having guided the evolution of this world and taking part in our day to day lives seems too ludicrous to accept to you than feel free to be atheists. If the thought that there is no way that having pre-marital sex will not send you to burn forever in the fires of hell seems silly than by all mean beat your bible fervently. Just do not force upon others the views that you espouse.  …  Unless of course you can prove god exists/does not exist.  In that case feel free to write me, I’m dying to hear from you.

Thoughts on Positive Nightlife

December 22nd, 2009 View Comments

I’ve for the last several years worked on events team for a campaign promoting positive nightlife in Calgary and Edmonton. Working on this events team has caused me to spend some time reflecting what a good nightlife scene and attitude can offer a city.

The obvious thing people always say is that bars economically benefit a city via providing jobs and profitable businesses. …  Yawn…  Yeah, that’s true, but seriously it’s unexciting and I think in this respect the contribution of nightlife to a city is marginal.  Many of the employees are students and would otherwise just get some other job like Starbucks and seriously, a lot of the employees who are not students should probably consider moving on with their lives anyway. I have no evidence for this but I would be surprised if the amount of wealth generation by nightclubs and bars in general was that great. (Feel free to call me out on this. I am actually quite curious.)

Nightlife contributes to cities in another way which I actually consider to be more important. It makes a city “cool”. Consider being in a city like San Diego. The city is not significantly more populated than Edmonton or Calgary.  Yes the population density is higher than Edmonton or Calgary, but it’s not nearly on the order of Metropolises like New York or London and it’s actually roughly the same as Regina. So what makes San Diego (one of my favourite citys) stand out when you are there. Yes, there is the fact that the weather is awesome. There is the fact you are close to the ocean. Seattle has both of those but does not come off as nearly as attractive of a city. San Diego makes you feel cool. When you go to a bar the bar is cool. The people around you seem cool. You feel kind of like a rock star. This makes a city both more attractive as a tourist destination (See Las Vegas) and as somewhere to live.

Next comes another way nightlife *can* contribute to a city which is does not in Alberta due to what I consider to be an attitude problem we have in this province.  When people go to bars in Alberta the primary goal for a large portion of the bar going population is to get wasted and for a large portion of the bar going population is to hook up. What this means is that the bar really isn’t a positive social atmosphere. When I go to talk to women about nightlife issues they always respond in a “Must evaluate this guy hitting on me to see if he’s worthwhile” way and guys are defensive because if I’m not gay then I am officially another guy hanging with them thereby reducing their chances of having sex. (Not that being gay would be any better…  Then I’d be “hitting on them” which they would probably also not like.)  What this does is reduces people’s ability to meet people they have no sexual interest in but who may interest them in other ways in bars.

Meeting people with common interests is the foundation of building vibrant communities in a city and it is communities within a city that make it successful. Take for example the bay area. Companies like Twitter can become successful because the technology community there not only provides support for new companies, but also an initial user base for new products. As an example of how nightlife can be successful two of my friends met at the Black Dog in Edmonton and they now collaborate on several projects including a company one of them is starting.  This however is rare. Guys out there, when was the last time you met a guy at a bar you ever talked to again? Also for those looking to have a one night stands decreasing the sexual nature of interactions makes it easier to meet people.

So in summary I think with a change in nightlife attitude nightlife can be a more positive influence on our cities.  And I gotta run.

Horrible ad campaign

November 29th, 2009 View Comments

Every year the U of A seems to have some kind anti-drinking campaign. They often are based around some kind of questionable social norming. AKA. “The average number of drinks a student has on a night out is 4.6.” or something. Usually the number presented is so laughable that you know there is something fishy about the statistics.

This year though the campaign is the worst. There are several posters involving the outcome of the evening as you drink more. And in every case they involve worse and worse outcomes as you drink more until you reach the “worst” outcome, which is always something ridiculous, but can also often be construes as the best possible outcome.

Poor advertising

Poor advertising

Here at the most drinks the outcome is “walk of shame”.  This is college!  For many college students the best possible outcome for the night is walk of shame.  Basically the message this poster sends is if you are too drunk and having a shitty night drink more and something good will happen.  Not that I actually believe these posters really ever accomplish their goals, but still.  This is horrible.

Evolution rates of male vs. female Fashion.

November 27th, 2009 View Comments

Something you may or may not have all noticed of late is that the new cool thing for girls to wear this year is tights. (Leggings??? I’m not really sure…) There are girls running around everywhere in knee high boots, leggings and a tee shirt. Wearing this around two years ago would have looked ridiculous and totally out of place. Then 3 years ago girls were wearing around those pregnancy shirts which would have looked ridiculous two years before and…. Well you get it.

For men however there are no such similar rapid paradigm shifts in what we wear. One year big lapels are in, the next year small. One year big ties are in the next year small. Nothing game changing. Why is it that women’s fashion changes so much faster and more dramatically than men’s?

A while ago I read a study about the effects of clothing on male and female perception of the opposite sex. What it boiled down to was that how attractive men found women was primarily correlated to the woman they were looking at regardless of what she was wearing. How attractive women found men was strongly correlated to what the men were wearing and how they were groomed. Men can tell if a woman is good looking even if she is disheveled and wearing sweats and can tell they don’t find a woman attractive even when she is dressed to the nines. A below average looking man can, however, look very attractive by wearing properly fitting nice clothes and doing their hair. This puts moderately attractive women at a greater reproductive disadvantage with respect to their more attractive peers than moderately attractive men.

When a rapid paradigm shift in fashion occurs for a short period of time men are exposed to clothes on women they have not experienced in a long time or ever and are thus unable to evaluate how attractive a woman wearing the new clothes are. Women who are fairly attractive might then be evaluated by a man as being extremely attractive thereby closing the gap caused by men’s ability to generally to evaluate a woman’s attractiveness irrespective of what she is wearing. Because of this for all but the most attractive women it is reproductively favourable to frequently cause rapid fashion changes in order to break down the borders between them and the most attractive women. For men this need does not exist as we can already increase our attractiveness without having to break through social stigma of totally new clothes.

…
Just a theory, but I think it’s because of the way men and women react to how each other are dressed.

Accessibility of Science

November 8th, 2009 View Comments

I have in the past complained about transparency in science in light of the whole Scott Reuben disaster which I seemed to be the only person in the entire world who got really mad about. This is about something different, the accessibility of science to the public.

It seems to me that over the last 50 years scientists have done an excellent job of alienating themselves. Just over half of a century ago people like Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr were celebrities. Thomas Edison was reshaping the face of the world. Galileo was so controversial and interesting in his time that we *still* talk about his life. People put fish on their cars with Darwin’s name in them. What scientists alive now so stir the imaginations of the public?

Stephen Hawking perhaps. David Suzuki?? People aren’t as captivated by science as they once were. In my opinion there are two primary reasons for this.

1) In an age of access to access to information, access to scientific information is still lacking. Status in academia is entirely based on publishing in reputable journals and reputable journals always charge to read the papers that are published.

2) Works that are published are often incredibly boring. I’m not sure when someone mandated that scientific writing needs to be dry. Obviously some disciplines like control theory are not very interesting and not much can be done but, seriously, if you did something worthwhile then you should at *least* be able to write an interesting abstract.

Given that I believe these are the problems what can be done? First we need to open up science. With many disciplines opening up via social media and sharing information more openly science needs to follow suit. PLOSone is a good start. Lets keep it up. I’m not sue what else needs to be done. Imma ponder this for a while.

Suggestions??

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