Ready for Rails

I am ready for Rails!

Update: I have now read and recommend Rails for Java Developers. The authors take you through the Rails stack and at each step compare Rails's tools with best-of-breed Java tools. For example, when the authors talk about ActiveRecord they compare it to Hibernate. Fortunately, you only need to have a reading understanding of Hibernate, Structs, and Spring for the book to be valuable.

Not much technical talk here for a while. I have been thinking of writing "Avoiding The Long Winter Sleep" for sometime. This is an article about Hibernate and about frameworks and about natural fit. Clearly, I am still trying to find a focus: It will happen just don't know when.

Enthusiasm for technical change & challenges

When you are accustomed to technical and process change its occurrence again is taken as a matter of course. A steady response to change is appreciated when you are hired. A steady response to change when looking for work is seen as being unenthusiastic. Damed if you do and damed if you don't. As always, be contextual.

Wolk's Reading Comics

I just finished Wolk's Reading Comics and I highly recommend it. The first half of the book describes comics in terms of the medium, the readers, the authors, the subjects (superheros vs everything else!), and the visual styles. The last half of the book contains reviews of works, and in reflection on the first half of the book, Wolk does a great job of drawing one into the aesthetics and tactics of comics. A very enjoyable read especially in conjunction with field trips to a good comics store like Incredible Pulp in Narragansett.

I am grateful for their confidence in me

I have decided to focus on contract work for the foreseeable future. After four significant rejections and three by startups I think it is time to let Winter arrive and Fall leave and watch it from my home office desk. I am happy to accept contract work for the rest of the year. It is work that I know I can do and, more importantly, it is work others trust me to do well. I am grateful for their confidence in me.

A good night was had by all

Reading Wendell Berry, listening to James Taylor, drinking sapphire gin martinis, kid's doing homework all by an open fire is a wonderful evening mix. A time of honest conversation and truth telling. My kids went to bed happy and calm. So did I. A good night was had by all.

3roofs.com and Google Apps

This past week I used Google Apps to create a web space for my family. We desperately needed an online calendar and everyone told me that Google's is the best of breed. Using Google Apps for the calendar, instead of Google Calendar, also gave the family a great web-based email and rich document editing tools. The only thing missing is web site editing tools but for most families a blog would be sufficient and this can be done easily with blogger.

The only thing you need to get started is a domain name and, ideally, the ability to create sub-domain names. If you are local and need help doing the same call me.

Customers & BNI

I attended a BNI meeting this morning as a guest of Charlie Westcott. BNI is a business networking franchise with many chapters across the country. Each chapter has one member per business area -- bookkeeping, accounting, landscaping, construction, architecture, etc -- and the primary purpose of the meetings is generating referrals but there is clearly a comradery and other support happening. If you run a business with regional customers this is a great group. If your customers are national or international perhaps the business support aspects of the organization would be useful but perhaps not useful enough to warrant the fees. I had a good time.

Effective and low cost mouse trap

Great idea for a low cost and effective mouse trap. Having extracted two mice from the studio garbage bin this week I can attest that they can't get out. Actually, it wasn't two mice, it was the same mouse. The first time he escaped my hand and returned to the garbage can. The second time he also escaped my hand but did not return to the garbage can. The take-away here is not to let me hold mice.

Origami and project completion

I was talking with Jeffrey Hyland this weekend about Basecamp and it got me thinking again about visualizing project progress. Checking off milestones does not inspire me. Milestones are emotionally flat. Projects have heft and we grapple with them. My first thought was folding a box from a sheet of cardboard: As the project progresses the box has more and more shape until it is a solid object when the project is done. Then it struck me that we should pick an piece of origami with the same number of folds as the project has milestones. As the milestones are completed the next fold is made. When the project is complete so is the origami piece. Team members would have the completed piece on their desks as a reminder of the project. The project's kick start is picking the origami piece and folding it.

Dragon Gliders

Henry, Owen, and I were a little lost for something to do and so we decided to make some wire models. Owen was more interested in using the wire along with a metal rod and a battery to create a magnet which he succeeded at. I don't have a picture, unfortunately. I tried thinking about how to create wire dragons and so got out the Dragonology book. What caught my eye was a glider and so Henry and I made the "dragon gliders" in the photographs. This project requires only wire, twigs, paper, glue, tape, scissors, pruning sheers, a tree, and about 45 minutes of time. (Mom supplied the wire. It is great being married to an artist because for almost any craft project it is very likely she has the materials.)

We walked alone in together time

David Acher's blog had a link to this amazing and scary image editing algorithm. The final sequence of the video might be title "We walked alone in together time."

Furoshiki

"Ms Yuriko Koike, Minister of the Environment, has created the "Mottainai Furoshiki" as a symbol of Japanese culture to reduce waste. Furoshiki is a Japanese traditional wrapping cloth which is used repeatedly in a stylish way. (The utilization of this "Mottainai Furoshiki" will contribute to reducing household waste from plastic bags.) The Minister presented the "Mottainai Furoshiki" at the Senior Officials Meeting on the 3R Initiative held in Tokyo, Japan on March 6-8, 2006" (source)

I just don't expect anything like this to come from Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior or Samuel W. Bodman, Secretary of Energy. I can't even remember a time when I have heard either of their names in the news. Given the turmoil in US politics right now, perhaps this is good news.

Interaction through detailed printed pages

The Summagraphics SummaSketch II Graphic tablet came today. I have a vague idea for a board game augmented by software with the only interaction being through detailed printed pages. Since I know next to nothing about board game design I am starting with the software and hardware. Hopefully, I will soon learn more about broad game design and embedded systems.
Update: I have no idea where the tablet has disappeared too. Sigh.

From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need.

Henry & Owen have been helping me look for work. Their suggestions are sincerely given and show how equivalent all work is for children. The two suggestions I like most are waiter at Blue Bird (a local not-so-greasy greasy-spoon) and cashier at Belmont (our favorite local market).

I was a teenager in England during the 1970s and so saw the tail-end of Britain's efforts at socialism. The Labour government and the unions were at war with each other and the people of Britain suffered. The government held firm on wages (sometimes threatening de-nationalization) and the unions hit back with strikes and the hated "sympathy" strikes. So, while my experiences of socialism were not positive, I never blamed the movement but instead the poor execution of it by the new powerful elite, former blue collar works, occupying both government and unions. So, Henry's & Owen's suggestions reminded me of Marx's words "From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need." Too bad it didn't work out.

Will Code for Money...

I am no longer at Tazz Networks and so am looking for new work. If you know of opportunities please forward the information to andrewgilmartin at yahoo.com. If you want to know more about my skills please see my resume.

Wikipedia needs MAPA

I have been thinking about Wikipedia a bit more than usual recently. Even at "the pond" where Chris and I go with the kids to swim and relax with friends there have been Wikipedia discussions. Thank goodness that I actually pay attention to Geoffrey Bilder's trust del.icio.us links and so I had something to contribute. On the drive home yesterday I was thinking again about Wikipedia and wikis in general and it occurred to me that they need MAPA [1][2].

MAPA is a system for mapping web sites. The mapped pages are hierarchically displayed using orthographic projection and presented using progressive disclosure. That is, MAPA does not try to show everything but instead shows mapped pages around a focal mapped page and you refocus the map by selecting any other focal mapped page. The orthographic projection's two and half dimensions reduce obscuring the map when further annotating or adorning the presentation of the map and mapped pages. This is the visual side of MAPA.

What was equally important to MAPA's success as a map was that it discovered the content's natural hierarchy using David Durand's "organizer". Where the discovery was not quite right, hints could be given to the organizer to re-arrange the hierarchy. What was truly magical was that often only a handful of hints were necessary to map sites as big as ibm.com and javasoft.com (aka java.sun.com). And this is where I think MAPA could really help the Wikipedia. Even if you don't believe knowledge can be strictly organized hierarchically, having some hierarchy would greatly aid anyone orienting themselves within the Wikipedia content after having just jumped there from a Google search result.

[1] "MAPA: a system for inducing and visualizing hierarchy in websites"
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.84.5777&rep=rep1&type=pdf
[2] "Applications of Isometric Projection for Visualizing Web Sites" http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/all_pdfs/idj_10_3.pdf

Doh!

Tazz field trip today! We are off to see the Simpsons Movie this afternoon.



Update: Wait to watch it on TV (its natural environment).

Understanding a Visual

Kirsten Robinson, at Dynamic Diagrams, mentioned how the Calliope Hummingbird visual took time to understand. The understandability of a visual is something we grapple with all the time. It is a subset of the challenge of making a tool that's use is obvious to the user -- or at least to their children. Kirsten knows what she is talking about and so her comment is more about this visual crossing the line between effort needed to learn to use and density of information presented. I think she is right.

The reason I was drawn to it was that the bird's cycles are continuous and so the circle expresses this better than a time-line. It is also hemispheric neutral in that time-lines start in January and finish in December and so for Southern birds their breeding season, for example, might cross the December and January year boundary and so, for those birds you would not see a continuous line but a line in two segments

          Jan Feb Mar Apr ... Oct Nov Dec
nesting   -------                 -------

It is also similar to the situation awareness visuals I have seen [1] and very much like.

Learning how to read this visual is not difficult and so a short audio training might be used. For example, this NPR story [2] is about the movie High Noon's title song and how its elements were repeated in the movie's score. Towards the end of the story there is a short segment of the score featured with overlaid commentary. It is a stunningly informative information presentation. At least to this musical klutz.

[1] "Visual Correlation for Situational Awareness" http://www.sci.utah.edu/publications/yarden05/VisAware.pdf

[2] "High Noon"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12155282

Presence & Tagging

I want to add centralized tagging to the centralized buddy list of an instant message server. Perhaps personal tagging would be useful but let's start by helping everyone. By tagging a buddy I mean to place them in a group, a team, a project, a location, a department, a title, an interest, etc. My office tags might be

Andrew Gilmartin:

Principle Engineer, Engineering Team, Providence, RI, USA, Narragansett Project, AlphaDog Project, BetaBand Project, Stewie Project, Java Specialty, Concurrency Specialty, User Interface Specialty, Data Model Specialty, Interface Specialty, Gardening Interest, Cooking Interest, Parenting Interest, Board Game Interest, Automata Interest, etc...

My instant message client user interface would then allow me to view staff by any set of tags. Either a small faceted search or a two-level hierarchy. Selecting an account name would start or join a conversation. Selecting a tag would start or join a conference.