House of the rising Moonglum

Just finished Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. It is actually a shockingly good book. I read this in an attempt to keep educating myself now that I have graduated. As work gets busier I can easily see myself falling into the trap of just doing what needs to be done and not looking to keep sharpening myself and learn new ideas and new tools. Especially at my current job. If that is you (and you do a lot of programming/design) then this is the book for you.

First off, it has a very good and easy to read style. This is not to common in technical programming books. Second it assumes that you already know how to program. I really appreciate that. So many books assume that you are an idiot and end up being 6000 pages because they have to teach you how to program and never get to the meat. And speaking of getting to the meat, in this book, at the end of every important section they wrap it all up into a single sentence. Having written a dissertation fairly recently I can attest to how hard this is. In the case of this book though, it really helps you understand what they are talking about.

Having said all of that, the book is short, only 260 pages, but is very dense. From the quick reference guide in the back they have 70 of those one sentence summaries (they call them tips) and I found myself really needing to sit down and think about how to apply them to my work. Fortunately they include a number of problems for you to work on as well.

It concludes with a huge bibliography which I am afraid that I may have to work through now.

All in all I found this to be an awesome book and exactly what I was looking for. I’m a little scared that other technical books will pale in comparison now though. This book has a heavy emphasis on design and management taking a page from both XP and patterns, but relying on neither. They tend to sniff at most complete set of rules as being too constraining, which I appreciate, but in the process become something of one themselves. If you are into programming read this book, if you need to learn how to program, don’t.

In an effort to not read news about the Tsunami (which just passed 80,000 dead) I was very excited to find that they are scaling back the Raptor program in light of the Iraq war. It always struck me as odd that wars didn’t count against the DoD’s already impressive budget. You would think that if we were having a war the DoD would be the first group that would have to tighten belts.

For those who don’t know the Raptor is the F-22, the new fighter designed to take on frontline air to air defense. The main reason I am in to the military at all is airplanes which I find just amazing from a technical perspective. My admiration of these aircraft however doesn’t allow me to ignore the fact that we simply don’t need front-line interceptors any more. Our newest models are from the 70’s and they have mostly been retrofitted as attack aircraft anyway.

In addition the cost of this aircraft has gone completely out of control. The total program is now estimated at about $72 billion which, while no stealth bomber, still comes out to $260 million per plane. That is just completely out of control. IIRC it also didn’t include the initial R&D contracts.

The plane I am much more interested in is the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35 which is built using many more modern manufacturing principles. Basically it is three planes (all attack variants) which use common parts. Some of the common parts (like the avionics and UI components) came from the work done for the F-22, but the big manufacturing parts are also common among the different variants, so hopefully the economies of scale will come into play. Unfortunately after one of the competitors won the design competition, the decided that all the major US manufacturers had to play a role, so the design got changed to allow that, and became more expensive. We will see how much it actually ends up costing.

Nowadays the munitions are more important than the aircraft anyway. My guess is that the next generation of aircraft will be pilotless.

The death toll continues to rise in this horrible disaster. The number is almost at 68,000 and is expected to continue to rise. Sri Lanka was destroyed with more than 23,000 people killed, and Indonesia lost more than 32,000.

Myanmar is still only reporting 90, though that could just be to hide the truth from the Burmese people. Maylasia only lost 60, but if you look at a map of the region, they seemed more protected than Burma. Waves do have strange interference patterns when passing by objects though, so they may have actually managed to escape with fewer dead.

This earthquake was so large that it moved the tectonic plates. They are thinking that the plates might have moved enough to actually block off the port of Banda Aceh in Sumatra. Hopefully that will not delay aid shipments.

Pray for them all.

Update: This is a horrific story to watch. In the five minutes that I was sitting here the headline changed from 68,000 killed to 71,000 killed.

I’m dreaming of a white…. day after Christmas.

So I’m sitting here in Rhode Island wondering if I will actually be getting back home tomorrow looking at the snow piling up outside. It has been a really nice holiday. We had “traditional” Polish dinner on Christmas eve after a nice _full_ church service. We had the cod (instead of carp) some sledgie, potatoes, and blintzes. Mmm. After that we had presents with my wife’s mom’s family. That was a nice organized event with one of us picking a name out of a hat and then getting them something. My wife had an interesting request that involved a lack of testicular strangulation. We got him a mouse instead of underwear.

Christmas was then stockings in jammies, breakfast and presents dressed up and then a really great Christmas dinner. Rib roast… mmmm. Not to mentions tons of dessert. And then finally today with her mom’s family, some more presents and food. We also watched Ocean’s 11 last night and 12 tonight and sliding all around the road going both there and back. But now we are warm at her parent’s place. It was a long but great weekend.

Now, if we can make it home tomorrow (they just shut down Green airport entirely), it’s back to the real world.

Cassini keeps on trucking to a Christmas landing on Titan. It took some comparison shots of the moon to show changing weather patterns, and is now ready to launch Hyugens, it’s little lander probe. They are planning to release it on Christmas Eve for a Christmas day landing. I have a feeling I am going to drive my inlaws nuts with constant trips to the basement to log on.

Well it looks like the Air Force had some trouble with their Delta heavy lifter, but they “got some good data”. Heh, they sound like that woman from Xenosaga. Of course it was still very impressive to watch launch. Three core boosters. Just wow.

I don’t think I blogged much about Palestine since the death of Arafat, but it looks like things have been going well since then. Today the Isralies turned over security for Bethlehem to the PA, and opened the roadblocks to that city in time for pilgrims.

Additionally, the first municipal elections in 28 years were held in many towns and villages (though the cities haven’t voted yet). Voter turnout is expected at about 90%. National elections should be coming up in January. I feel very hopeful for the Palestinians this year.

Even the Afghanis are making great progress with Karzai reaching out to the guy who came in second in the elections and reducing the number or warlords in power and disarming their personal armies.

Lots of nice peaceful Christmas news. Now if we could only have the same in Iraq, and not just more news of fighting in Fallujah while they are trying to let the people back in to their houses.

Hey All, I have had a bunch of stuff to blog about, but I have been travelling so much lately that I haven’t had any time to put it all in. I have 5 items waiting to go up, so hopefully the pace will pick up again soon.

In any case, Merry Christmas to everyone!

So I finally finished “Tour of Duty” a history of Kerry and Vietnam by Douglass Brinkley. It was a very interesting book, particularly because I didn’t know anything about Vietnam. Kerry really had much of the Vietnam experience, first going all gung ho, becoming more anti-war, and then finally joining the Vietnam Veterans against the war. This book gives a really good overview of much of the feeling that was going on in that time frame. Of course it does focus on John Kerry, but that is to be expected and he actually is a fairly interesting person to focus on.

The one thing I do wish is that they didn’t assume quite so much knowledge of the war. They have a good timeline to reference, but many events were assumed knowledge, especially in US internal politics. Nixon of course played an important role, but they left out how different parts of the presidency connected because it was assumed that the reader already knew, and plus, it didn’t conect directly to kerry’s experiences. They also focused a lot on his chiildhood, but really I wasn’t that interested in reading about how spoiled rich kids grow up. I think his experiences in college and Vietnam were much more important influences on who he became anyway.

One thing I found really interesting was to see who the people were who ended up being part of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. Mostly people who were assigned by Nixon to discredit him in the first place. It is amazing that people listened to them as much as they did. Also it was interesting to compare who was against him at the time, and who switched over to his side given time and distance. Many of his fellow officers (not his crewmates who (almost) all were for him) didn’t like his war opposition, but were willling to grant that he had earned that right.

In the end I found the book very informative, it taught me about much of the Vietnam experience, and much about the emotions that were around at the time. It is also interesting to learn just how horrible a president Nixon really was. I knew about watergate, but there are a bunch of other things he did that I didn’t even have the slightest idea about. Things like locking the veterans out of Arlington. Cutting funding to the VA hospitals. A good read, but now I need to read a real history of the Vietnam war.

Got a little behind on killing the spam. Sorry about that.

When you “take over” a place you can take the land but can you take the people? One of the interesting things about Alexander was that he assimilated the land that he took over. Once the locals accepted him, he could be thought to really control the place. Given the nature of the US and the modern world, I don’t think that will happen again any time in the near future. Counterpunch looks briefly at this problem. Invasions have succeeded in the past, but I really do wonder if they have ever succeeded when the motives were “pure”. That is to say, when the goal wasn’t either pilliage or territorial expansion. Since neither of those are really possible in the current state of affairs, I do wonder if any extended military action is doomed to failure?

(added: Small actions are sill valid, e.g. hunting down individuals c.f. “Killing Pablo” by Mark Bowden)

I just saw Alexander! It was great! I a really sucky and vastly too long sort of way. As Mike noted, it had the one ring, it had the oliphants, it had Aragorn. I think it may have been a long and confusing version of the lord of the rings. It really could have done with a little less voice over, but it was interesting to bring the story to life at least. What would bring a man to take over half the world and build cities everywhere and take as his first wife a woman from some odd corner of asia? Pretty cool thoughs in my opinion, though it was a bit on the long side.

On the plus side, oiled up beefcake!

Things I learned in this movie:

All the macedonian soldiers are ugly and by the end of the movie only have one eye. They ALL only have one eye.
Alexander took over the world to run away from an overbearing mother.
The Persians will help you hunt down and kill their old king if you take over.
The boys might be pretty, but you need those womenfolk for kids.
Bad maps can kill.
Don’t get drunk and kill your best generals when you don’t like their advice.
Alexander’s mother was a witch.
The guy who reminds you of val kilmer probably is.
The hindu kush leads to mordor.
Eyeliner was popular in ancient persia.
Phillip of Macedon had a camber of the Fayth beneath his castle.
Alexander didn’t listen to the Fayth.
Don’t deny your wife or you get bizzare visions.
(As opposed to masturbation turns you blind.)

Like a bird… on a wire…
like a drunk, in a midnight choir…
I have tried… in my way…
to be free.

It looks like the US is going to do some cleanup operations in Afghanistan for the winter. Where did they get 18,000 troops to use in an offensive there? And we still need more troops in Iraq. At least Afghanistan looks like it is coming together better. Too bad we never caught the people who were hiding there in the first place. *sigh*

By comparison to the Ukraine, our elections are pristine! The man in charge poisoning the opposition via the chief of security in the country! Even if Yushchenko wins the reelection on the 26th of December, I’m not sure I’d want the position if I were him. The people who will be in charge of the country’s security tried to kill him! I have a feeling they won’t step down too easily either.

They have a lot of breathless fluff, but the fact that they have a patient with a cybernetic brain implant that lets the quadriplegic control a computer and a hand it awe inspiring.

I don’t know if you’ve been watching, but the mars rovers have been going like crazy. IMO, Cassini entering saturn’s orbit kind of superseded the mars rovers, but they still return the most “human” images. Rocks and cliffs are things that we can really understand. For real fun check out the movies of the first 90 days (in 90 seconds) for both Spirit and Opportunity.

They are going on about 340 days and they were only “good” for 90. Pretty amazing. Now that is some good bang for your buck.

BTW, The Titan lander, Huygens, separates from Cassini on Christmas day.

So I was flying back from NYC last time and was sitting next to a very nice woman on the plane. It turned out she was a Republican. I noted that she must feel pretty alone in NYC. She agreed. So I went on to ask her why she voted for Bush. Apparently he makes her feel safer. Well I can’t argue with that, but I did point out that by starting the war on Iraq, troops were diverted from Afghanistan just in time to make the US rely on local forces for operation Anaconda possibly letting Osama escape. And now we have not enough troops in Iraq who don’t have the armor they need (even if they get a little help with the phrasing) and all Rumsfeld can do in response is answer his own rhetorical questions.

Not enough troops with not enough armor, oh yeah, that’s going to keep us safer. I’ve just been reading about the winter soldiers and dewey canyon III from the Vietnam War. I could see this press event being the first step in something like that. “You don’t go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have.” Oh yeah, that will help that morale. If you treat the soldiers as poorly as we have treated ours in this war, you will have problems. *sigh* At least we aren’t keeping them out of Arlington. Yet.

(Side note: reading about what Nixon was doing to the troops does make me realize it could be worse. He was a right bastard. I had no idea how much worst than Bush is he was. But still, if we want to get by with fewer troops, we need to treat them better so that they can perform better.)

Apparently “Massachusetts Liberals” have the best family values. How shocking. Not.

I had pared my online comic reading to only Schlock and Megatokyo recently. Sluggy dropped off the radar because I hate all that demon stuff. Mike however let me know that it looked like it was wrapping up, so I went back and read the past five months of Sluggy in one go. I have to say I loved it. The demons are just goofy, but the character development of Torg and the “good people” was just amazing. Also, flowing through the months and building up that relationship was great. And the payoff was today. IMO, one of the best moments in online comics ever. Happy, sad, depressing, confused, both characters completely understood, without a single line of dialog.