The 'Right Way' to Start a Company...

The Stuff of Snowboarder Nightmares

Avalanche Skier POV Helmet Cam Burial & Rescue in Haines, Alaska from Chappy on Vimeo.

GT-10B in Depth

I have had some time to spend with my new toy now.  

So here are a few words on the subject:

All in all it makes me wonder why I waited so long.  This is a game-changer.  The overall impact this has on how I do things now is significant.

In terms of gizmoes all strung together and glued/screwed/taped/velcroed to a piece of plexi-glass/wood/padded-custom-case & then running into the amp...  I'm done - for quite a while I think.  It pretty much has every stomp-pedal that BOSS ever made for bass in there more or less.  You can use them in whatever order/combinations you like - and SAVE those combinations.  This allows a lot more creativity in a live situation in terms of getting your effects together between/during songs.

It is also Really Easy.  That is how it was sold to me & it does not disappoint.  Neither do I find it to be as condescending as it might be.  The EZ Tone thing for creating a sound borders on that - but how often would anyone use that after getting to know how to use the thing?

In terms of sound processor though -- niice -- I plugged it into my PowerBook via the USB cable & driver software & ran it simply through Garageband as the sound input and output - and plugged my headphones into the GT-10B for the session.  WOW.  It upgraded the experience tremendously.  I even banged out a new song the first night I sat down with it.  (Just imagine when I hook it up to some real editing software)

Add that last bit to the ability to back up/restore/mix&match all of the patches that you create via that USB cable to the computer - and now you have a professional situation where you can buy a replacement on the road & get on with the show with very little effort.

And of course - The Sound ...  It is really very nice.  It is also very easy to be cheezy - particularly with the pitch-shifter - so beware.  Hard as is it to imagine - I could see potentially just running through a PA system (with the appropriate monster subwoofers) because you can make the sound exactly what you want.

No they don't come out & say it - but there is clearly modelling of Ampeg, Orange, etc. in there.  It makes a difference.

Nothing Wastes Time Like "Crunch Time"

Why is it that in the middle of every major software development project that I have ever been a part of there is a point that is reached where management panics, throws out the original plan and starts shooting from the hip?

The one thing that no one ever seems to try to include in their schedules is Problems.  As developers we create them, find them and face them every day.  Most are little problems that can be worked out with some analysis, patience and research.  Some are serious mind-benders that require rotating people in and out of the effort to find the answer to them.  And some are like Inventing a Light Bulb.

What I mean by that is that Edison had to experiment over and over and over to find the right filament in order to make a commercially viable light bulb.  He measured his success in the effort by how many things he successfully disqualified from being the answer.

When software developers 'slip' a deadline - it is more often than not one that was forced on them artificially in the first place by backing into a date based on some delivery expectation that has little to do with the actual work itself.  Any work estimate is just that - an estimate - and does not include delays caused by "things that we don't know that we don't know".  By definition it can't be.  You can estimate time required to learn things that you are aware that you don't know - but the questions, implications and problems that come out of learning that is unknowable until you take that next step.

Therefore the pursuit itself it wrought with inherent disappointment if you are in a hurry to get your software done.  For this reason the only thing that makes sense it to develop everything iteratively.  One small step at a time.  It is good to have goals - but the results of an iteration should be modest and should never be overloaded to try to reach an artificial goal.

Metal Gear Music

I finally caved in and bought a Boss GT-10B yesterday. I have to say that it really does sound nice. I almost like it better through the headphones it sounds so nice. I am an old fan of multi-effects units, so I took to it right away. It is pretty amazing what you can do to your sound with one of these things.

I only started messing around with the loop feature last night but as a bass player it's very handy and relatively simple to use.

In actual news - the Dethklok album and new season is about to drop and the tour is underway.

Also Iggy Pop has a new album out called Preliminaries. It is New Orleans style jazz with him singing in french. That concept might scare you off - but from what I have heard it is pretty awesome actually.

A Work of Fiction

This is actually not one email - but a composite of several - so it's a bit like text-collage art :

"

Dears,

Looping all...

This is not good. Lets be very careful while implementing any functionality, specially when it is a big change. We must follow the QC properly.

We have a critical issue in environment in order to fix this we need to make web deployments urgently. can you please help us on this.

It is going up & down...

Can you help immediately...

Please do the needful.

Also we need to discuss on the folowing points:

I am not sure which query of SoAndSo report are you expecting from me?

Is it meant for SomeOtherSoAndSo?

Regards,

- SoAndSoWhoMustNotBeNamed

"

They call it H1N1 now...

Memetics

I have been told by someone that not only am I the only person that they know who has ever used the word "meme" but that I tend to use it in a sentence at least once a day.

Today I am going to run with that.

By way of definition I will call a meme a self-replicating unit of information stored in the brain.

Richard Dawkins put forth an idea that "Selfish Genes" use living bodies as vehicles and factories for self-replication.

If you want to be a goofy sci-fi nerd about it - think of it like the damned Midichlorians using us for raw material.

But if you want to look at it another way - you might say that it is more accurate to say that in fact we are far more condusive to be vehicles for memes. In fact, Dawkins put this idea forth himself since he is credited for coining the term.

There is an additional way to look at this however that he did not touch on. While you can apply the concept of selective pressure and evolution to ideas and meme also, there are things that memes are capable of that genes are not. Everyone knows that ideas spread from person to person. But there is another far more profound ability - Memes can jump species.

A person can watch animals hunt for food and can learn how to do the same thing. A chimp or a gorilla can be taught things like sign-language and the concept of zero. A dog can respond to voice commands. Wild dogs in Russia have learned to commute by train.

Memes also seem to have wars. It might be argued that all organized human warfare is in fact a product of memes. But what I mean by saying that memes have wars is that one can evolve that as a condition for it's existence is mutually exclusive of another. "Religious Wars" are a prime example of this type of memocide - where a set of ideas inherent in one set of individuals is forcibly purged by another set of individuals holding a different set of ideas.

How much more deeply are we enslaved by our own ideas than we are by our genetic makeup? The only real upside is that memes evolve several orders of magnitude faster than genes. You are 'free' to change your mind as you will. But will you? Can you? Do you ever go out of your way to 'change' your mind? Why are we all so inclined to "believe" rather than to "think"?

Is it because it is safer for us or for our memes?

Scala is pretty Groovy after all

It seems that Scala got a resounding review from the originator of Groovy, James Strachan.

I am a great fan of the concept of the Java Virtual Machine. I think that the ability to have multiple languages producing a common byte-code format produces some very powerful benefits. In essence you can have one project or multiple projects running in a common environment where code resources written in different languages can interact with each other and not be dependent on any one particular hardware infrastructure. In fact you could run your code on many different types of hardware and achieve clean interaction between them all.

That includes Java, Scala, Jython, JRuby, Clojure, Groovy, Rhino, Quercus, and many other programming languages.

That greatly simplifies the development process. Anything that makes complicated things simple without losing the power inherent in the complexity is OK in my book.

At the risk of ostracising myself on PerlMonks - I am of the opinion that perl 6 bet the farm on rolling their own virtual machine. While I know that historically speaking the JVM was not remotely open when the perl 6 effort began and what is more there was not much support for any language besides java on the JVM - but much has changed in the many years that perl 6 has languished in it's Duke-Nukem-Forever-style development cycle.

I would love to see someone implement perl on one of the open JVM platforms that exist in prove that it can be done and kept open. I would welcome it as a first step towards implementing it on the actual JVM - which is used in many many many production environments around the world.

I know that a large contingent of the perl community habitually throws stones at Java - but I belong to the subset of developers that are interested in perl and Java for the same reason - developing code with platform independence.

Shocking and Awful

There is quite a bit of noise about the release of the would-be summer blockbuster, G.I. Joe. But it's not the kind that we usually hear about. The story isn't about how good or bad the movie is. It isn't about the lines of people camping out to see it.

This story is about the marketing strategy of "thumbing your nose at sophisticates".

Apparently Paramount has spent $US150 Million advertising this movie to Middle America - completely bypassing "the coasts". Considering that the movie cost $US175 Million to make - that is a lot like doubling down when you're losing at the craps table.

They are hedging their bets by not allowing reviewers to see the movie in advance like most normal movies. However, over 1,000 servicemen and their families however got to see it last Friday. This might be based on the solitary bad review that the trailer received from a blogger, that triggered a bogus and wishful cease & desist order from Paramount's lawyers.

One Manhattan-centric voice, i.e. New York Magazine summed it up in 15 words on their Approval Matrix: "Lovers of hilariously mean movie reviews mourn as G.I. Joe will not screen for critics"

Most telling is the way that Sienna Miller, a star of the movie itself, has made multiple damning comments and even an accusation about the making of this summer "tentpole".

If you are planning on attending the Kid Rock/Lynyrd Skynyrd tour - you will get your ample dosage of G.I. Joe, whether you like it or not.

This is target-marketing at it's ugliest. But if you love country music or NASCAR, odds are you have never read a movie review and hate all things sophisticated, and so if I trash you at the end of this blog entry - you'll never even notice. It's a bit like trashing the Amish on-line - how would they ever know? But then again no one whom is Amish ever threatened anyone that I know. "I'm gunna kick yer ass" however is like a cowboy mantra, isn't it?

Still, I would suggest that you spend that $12 on another batch of Skoal instead of this waste of celluloid. It will last longer and might contribute favorably to the natural selection that you don't believe in anyway.