At first glance this sounds pretty crazy. Or like a scam. But… Giles is a pretty sharp guy. I’ve been following his blog for a few weeks, and its been interesting. I also watched his preview video, and decided I’d take the bait.

In the video he discusses a lot ways to improve one’s standing in the community. Its kinda funny, a lot of the things he suggests are things I have been trying to incorporate into my usual routine. Some are really obvious, others are new (at least to me).

A lot of “self help” products tend to follow this pattern: Make an outrageous claim to get people’s attention, then offer “common sense” steps to achieving the original claim. A lot of times the price one pays to learn these “secrets” seems to be far out of proportion to the actual value. At $39, would Giles’ video be the same thing?

Giles is  bit of a troll with some of his postings. Would buying this video be the ultimate act of “feeding the troll”? If you read his post, there’s a definete pattern to his writing. He’s clearly got a message that he’s trying to deliver (or whet one’s appetite to get them to purchase the video), but he also likes to ruffle some feathers along the way. For a blog post that hints at the importance of boosting one’s position in a community (this is geared towards programmers), its important to make sure that the message doesn’t get lost in the drama of the presentation.

Does the signal rise above the noise? 37signals are masters of this type of message delivery. They talk the talk, and they walk the walk. They are masters of telling you what they are going to do, and then doing it.

Giles’ presentation covers a lot of ground, and like I said earlier, some of it was familiar. Other topics were new (or shown in a new light) at least for me. But I have to admit, how he stitched these ideas together was pretty interesting. The combining of these common sense ideas and focusing them in one direction can really pay off.

The main ideas are being a better blogger (marketing), contributing to open source code (relationships/skills/karma), and making presentations (communicating). Improving any of these skills would probably benefit most people. Giles’ assertion is that improving all three leads to powerful results, as they did in his case. Can this be replicated by other people? There’s only one way to find out.

So what is Giles? I’m leaning more towards genius. His approach is a little odd because of the troll-vibe, but I think his fundamentals are pretty sound. Good ideas + solid implementation = success. It is a formula that’s been proven correct over and over.

If nothing else, he’s a genius for making the video. There’s enough people out there that are curious enough to pony up the cash. So while we are trying to figure out how to get a leg up, he’s already 5 steps ahead.

I looked closer at the selection and noticed something odd: Among all of the RPG books there, most were dedicated to game worlds based around magic (duh), werewolves, monsters, dragons, and other Tolkien type stories. There was one based on the future, but even that one had mutants which are the equivalent of monsters.

Personally, I’m a fan of the post apocalyptic genre. For some reason I find the idea of starting over, or at least having to adjust rapidly in the aftermath of a disaster, to be really intriguing. Its a very accessible topic, after all it is based on the world of today, and there’s no shortage of scenarios that can be drawn from that.

Yet for some reason, there few RPG’s (and to an extent comics/graphic novels also) that tap into this rich vein of material. I’m really puzzled by this, reality TV (shows like Survivor, etc.) shows that the general population is interested in the idea, yet this isn’t reflected in a lot of other aspects of our entertainment. Fallout was quite popular, but that was almost 10 years ago. Lost and Jericho are popular, but few other shows seem to be following their example.

Is there such a disconnect between the D&D community and the rest of pop culture? Or is the idea of a post apocalyptic world just too scary, and in the post 9/11 and post Katrina world, too close to home? Or am I just shopping in the wrong stores?

I should have known better.

They charged me 3 times. *sigh* I thought in the future things were supposed to be getting easier. That will teach me to try and be all slick with my payment options. Now I get to play the fun game of “how many people do I need to convince that this is a mistake”.

After looking at that for a while I tried googling for some other examples and found this really awesome Lisp in Python implementation.

Every so often I’ll think to myself “Wow, how hard can it be to make a language?” Then I’ll remember that it can be pretty damn hard (actually I remember my Programming Languages Concepts class, then I get the shakes thinking about all of the edge cases and other complications that you have to keep track of). Seeing something like these links is really educational for me, I get to see how two similar languages have been implemented (and thanks to the comments on programming.reddit.com) and how they could have been done differently.

I’ve been feeling like whining about how all of these cool programs and games are getting released by everybody these days, and I haven’t been able to get squat done. But every time I started to think about it, I kept remembering that I have a small pile of unfinished projects that could use some attention. Some need a little bit, others need a lot.

I’m a big fan of the “pick something small, get it working, and use that as inspiration to move onto something bigger” philosophy. I use that technique all the time at work to try and get around logjams (be they mental, or load based). For the most part its pretty effective, the feeling of accomplishment builds quickly as small tasks disappear off the old to-do list.

So I decided to apply this to a python project I’ve been twiddling with for over a year. I ran one of the tests for it, and saw an error. I spent about a half hour or so playing around fixing the error and in the process managed to improve the code flow, pretty print my output messages, and uncover a potential problem before it had a chance to bite me. And you know what? It feels good to have gotten that done. A few more sessions like this one and I might actually finish this project up before the end of the year…

As a side thought on this topic: It is really important to use tools that allow you to have a maximum amount of productivity. In a situation where you are time constrained (i.e. a deadline is looming, you only have an hour to play, etc.) every second counts. If you are fighting you IDE, you are not solving your core problems. I thought about using TextMate to try and work with my python code last night, but I kept running into situations where using Eclipse was easier. So despite the “niceness” of TextMate, I had to abandon it for this project and keep on using Eclipse (and the wonderful PyDev plugin). Less twidiling, more working.

But this is nothing new. Emacs vs. vi, Whopper vs. The big Mac, Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, Kirk vs. Picard. There have been many holy wars before, and there will be many more. And like most of them, this is one is over something seemingly small and insignificant.

For some people these apps are the best thing since sliced bread. Myself, I don’t really get the appeal of the application. If I want “full screen” editing, I usually just maximize the window, but I’m simple like that. To each his own I suppose, no one is forcing you to use the app.

But one thing I do get is the cool free publicity that these apps are getting! WriteRoom is the leading full screen editor for the Mac, and with Mark’s blog post making the front page of Reddit, I imagine that it is getting a lot new traffic which translates into new sales. At $24.95 a pop, even a dozen extra sales will mean a few extra hundred dollars for the developer.

That’s not too shabby. Hopefully this little flare up will result in the developer (Hog Bay Software) winning a few new customers. Mac Developers can use all the free attention they can get…

I don’t really know what I was expecting, probably a hard time as that’s what I usually get at stores when I try to get something fixed, but this visit was as smooth as silk. I had to wait a little bit past my appointment time, there was a ton of people in there and a couple of the problems looked bad, but once I was called up I was done in less than 10 minutes!

I explained to the “genius” (sorry, I didn’t catch his name) what was going on, and what I had tried to fix it. He booted up the Mac, confirmed the problem and then brought out a new battery. He plugged it in, booted the Mac and then it showed there was a battery and it was charging. I was so happy (I was afraid it was the logic board) and when I asked what was the problem with the battery, I was told that the chip in the battery was probably dead.

The best part about the whole experience was that the battery was covered under the warranty, so there was no money out of my pocket! Woo-Hoo!

As a side note, after the iPhone announcement the other day I heard that Apple would be providing the customer support for the phone, not Cingular. Customer support is a major undertaking, and I was really wondering how Apple would handle this. Granted, phone support is different from one-on-one support, but everyone I saw at the Apple store today was really nice. Granted most of the customers were nice also, but a few seemed on edge (since their equipment was going to have to go into the shop to get fixed). But no one was steamed or looking unhappy with how they were being treated. Contrast that with most cell phone stores, and you’ll see a big difference. Hopefully Apple will be able to maintain that level of customer satisfaction and service when the iPhone rolls out…

Overall it seems like a good approach to aggregate this data together to get the “big picture” of where one’s website stands in the web. I’ve tried this but I’ve noticed that Technorati doesn’t seem to report the numbers I expect it would.

For example: I got a link to my blog from Hip Egg a few weeks ago, and this link has not been reported on Technorati. I know this blog is small potatoes in the grand scope of the universe, but it strikes me as odd that my more recent updates are featured in my “favorites” (as is Hip Egg’s posts), yet the link from him hasn’t shown up.

My working assumption is that Technorati has some kind of filter where lower popularity sites aren’t “updated” as often as the bigger sites. Either that or the link database is broken. But links for other sites seem to be working, although I’m not watching them as closely as I watch my own stats.

At any rate I wonder how many other blogs (or sites in general) are suffering from this problem. Metrics for websites are difficult to agree on, so a site or sites where a reputation can be established and measured becomes more and more important. Aggregating data from multiple sites is a good start, but if there are too many “issues” with how a site is ranked, then the data becomes suspect and it becomes harder to get a clear picture of what’s going on.

However, I must admit that my heart sank when I read the details of the second movie. To the rumored director (Martin Wood) and writer (Brad Wright) of this movie I saw this: Please, no more time travel.

Time travel is one of the most abused plot devices in Science Fiction today. While at first it seemed like an interesting way to introduce “what-if” scenarios into a story, the over use of it has led to complications that eventually degrade the quality of the series that it is used in.

For example: Star Trek has used time travel many, many times over the various movies and series. More times than not, it has been used to “fix” a problem that has been introduced such as bringing back popular characters, or some other contrived situation (i.e. the writers of Star Trek: Voyager using time travel to help the crew get home in the series finale).

The use of time travel became such a crutch that the writers/producers of Star Trek: Enterprise  wound up introducing time travel (and time shifting bad guys) in the series premier of the show. As soon as I heard the words (and I paraphrase) “they come not from where, but from when” I shut off my TV. I tried to watch a few more episodes, but the venom of “time travel” had already circulated into the very lifeblood of the show rendering it uninteresting and unwatchable to me. Why would I want to invest my time and interest into something that could very well change next week based on the whims of what the writers want bring back or fix?

Some people claim that using time travel in Sci-Fi is a mark of sophistication and it shows that the writers and the audience are “smart” because they are able to follow the intricate web that is spun. For some shows (Dr. Who) I would agree that this is true, but for most shows, movies, stories, games, etc. I will simply call “bullshit” and say that it is the equivalent of the writers/producers reserving the right to revise thier works (George Lucas, I’m looking at you).

Stargate (both SG-1 and Atlantis) have walked a fine line when it comes to time travel. Wormholes are a manipulation of the very fabric of time-space so it is conceivable that time travel of some type could happen as was seen in episodes like “1969″, “2010″ and “2001″. Other episodes such as “Before I Sleep” and “Moebius” were stretching and straining their credibility with their particular usage of time travel (i.e. “we need a ZPM, hey let’s travel back in time and steal one from an enemy we killed a long time ago!”).

The amazing talents that have come together to bring Stargate to life are better than this. The writers, the directors, the actors, the props and special effects departments, and everyone else involved have created so many episodes of both show that are head and shoulders better than the typical TV fare. Especially in the Sci-Fi realm. It would be a shame to tarnish that proud tradition at the end of one of TV’s most enduring shows. From the beginning, Stargate has been about exploration of new worlds, much like the original Star Trek. Please don’t let it end the same way that Star Trek has.
Though I am confident the Stargate universe will not come to halt if a movie centered on time travelling is created and released, I think things would be better if it never happened in the first place. Obviously if time travel were possible this letter would be a moot point.

In all seriousness, please reconsider any plans that are on the table for the use of time travel. There are so many other avenues in the Stargate universe that can be explored that would leave the fans feeling much more fulfilled (and possibly leading to future spin-off opportunities). A few examples would be: Contact with the Nox, a story about a mission that goes horribly wrong, or a story that focuses on the war for a planet other than Earth (such as “Lost City” focused on Aybdos).

In closing, Stargate is an engaging, delightful show of the highest caliber. Please, don’t bring any more time travel into it. There is a reason that butterflies are kept under glass, some things are perfect the way they are and just shouldn’t by touched.

Traffic waves are what happens when there is a slow down for some reason in the flow of traffic. The cause could be an accident, a glare from the sun that blinds people, or just about anything that causes traffic to slow down. As people slow down, the drivers behind them also have to slow down. As the first drivers pass the “distraction” that caused them to slow down, they begin to speed up. But this speed up does not get propagated to the other drivers right away, so the drivers further back in the pack are still going slow (and thus causing the drivers behind them to slow down). The result is a “standing wave” where the cars slow down. As long as there are more cars heading to wave, the wave will persist (assuming the original distraction is gone), once the rate of cars coming towards the wave slows, the wave breaks down and disappears.

Anyways… The article has an interesting idea of using Police patrol cars to help break up the wave by having them in the traffic (several miles before the slowdown) driving at a “slower” speed than the normal traffic flow. Because people are not likely to drive fast past a cop, this effectively slows the rate of cars flowing into the wave, which helps to break it up. Its a really interesting idea, and I think it could really work.

One thing that I’m not so sure about is the authors assertion that he could affect the same thing by driving at a steady rate (i.e. avoiding stop-and-go and trying to keep a good buffer distance between himself and the car in front of him). His idea is that once he does this it encourages the drivers behind him to do the same thing. I’m not sure I agree with this, I see a lot of impatient drivers on a daily basis. Maybe its just here in Atlanta, but if there’s a half a car length in front of you, and your lane is moving, someone is going to try and get in there.

Having said that, I do like the spirit of the idea and I’m going to try it out next week as I drive in traffic. Who knows, maybe a few other people will read that article and try the same thing. Anything that keeps the traffic moving is a good thing in my book.