probability, observer and speculating "existence"

Boy, am I going to get in trouble for a title like this entry's... but this is the kind of stuff that flows through my thoughts when I've been working too much and sleep deprivation denies my brain the energy to cling to my usual collection of standard worries...  and why not end 2010 with a bang!

I'm fascinated by the following aspects of life, according to a number of sources...

• All substance is composed of mostly nothingness. The ratio of particle to the space it occupies is staggeringly unbalanced.
• Quantum physics explains the smallest particles as waves of probability.
• For these things to exist, there must be an observer.

So my thoughts on this have come this far. If you play a game of traveling as an observer of your own life and you speed by the faces of people you've met or walked past, your children as they grew up, the silly arguments you've add, the places you've been to... all blurring as you pass them, what is it that you're really experiencing besides a collection of memories? And how could it be different if you have the ability to re-wind and start over again?

It seems that these are all probabilities that you observed and, in the process of observing, also participated in. It's no wonder why life seems more and more like a dream to me.

But, if you keep digging and thinking about all of this as probability, then life starts to feel less like something tangible and more like a continuous experiment of unconscious messing with probabilities. Combinations of probabilities. Combinations of observations. It's not really like there are a bunch of universes ("multiverses") out there (or in here). It's more like there are all these (floating equations representing) probabilities and you as the observer are making them real. Making them "feel" tangible. So rather than thinking of all of this as an infinite set of what's out there. It's more like everything is being generated as we observe.

All of this brings up the "soul" thing or "consciousness" as one of those fundamental "what is it" questions. Why? Because it's this observer thing that quantum physics says must exist for things to exist. It somehow implies that a soul has special ranking, almost as though it's outside the definition or occurrence of probability. An analogy might be the patterns you see of iron filings when under the influence of a small magnet. The patterns are the assemblages of probabilities. And the magnet is You, the consciousness. (That imagery feels pretty powerful... but it feels more like an influence or steering of probabilities and not just a passive observer roll. Is the observer by definition an actuator?)

I have no authority on this topic. I'm not a mathematician. But I do love how the many topics of physics opens (and throughly energizes) my mind. And as the explanations of things these days gets wilder and wilder, I don't think there's anything wrong with letting a bit of intuition and subconscious rumination have its day. The math helps to illuminate a conundrum. But as our math and its conundrums continue to stack up over time, our ability to go back to our imaginations for speculative interpretation becomes all the more critical to create a sense of things we can conceptually grasp.

As fantastical as the concept of "god" seems, it's actually nothing compared to what this life (you, me, existence) is really all about. My intuition is screaming that.

World Series Giants and me...

This is one of those little kid inside me takes over posts.

I was lucky enough and old enough to see the Beatles from their (U.S.) beginnings, but I consider myself even more fortunate to have seen Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Jimmy Davenport, Juan Marichal and Jack Sanford all through the 60's. Those Candlestick memories have dominated my thoughts the past few weeks and re-introduced my Dad in my day-to-day thoughts as well. I'm a pretty private person and don't intend to blog much about that, but I will say that I absolutely love my past as a young kid. I was pretty damn lucky.

The even better part of the whole Giants-Rangers-Phillies-Braves experience was hanging out with my New York daughter Amanda over the phone. She kicked things off by calling me from a downtown pub in Philadelphia the evening the Giants won that last game... wearing her Giants hat! Brave young woman and a TRUE Giants fan. Will Clark, Kevin Mitchell and Rod Beck were the guys during Amanda's early days. It was wonderful to feel so connected between PA, NY and ABQ! Thanks Amanda!

This is from the San Francisco Chronicle website @ http://www.sfgate.com :

The little things in vi that make folks watch and go "wow"

My guess is that I'll add more hints & tips to this posting, so be sure to bookmark it and revisit every now and then.

-- David 10Oct2010

I don't know if all of your colleagues will go "wow", but I know you'll be a lot more productive than you would with a standard Eclipse editor or MS Word.

Task: You want to enter command mode to try all of the commands in the rest of this page:

# press Esc key
<ESC>

Task: You want to find whole words spelled "the", excluding words like "them".

<ESC>
/\<the\>

Task: You have a text file of numbers representing some of your customer account ID numbers. You're creating an SQL query statement and you want to corral those numbers into an IN clause like "... where clientId in (333, 444, 555...). But the 10 numbers are listed, one by one, on ten lines. How do you get them collected into your IN claus?

First thing, you want to append commas after each number, with the exception of the 10th number.

# replace the endline of each line with a comma.
# to avoid putting a comma after the 10th number, specify the line range as 1 through 9.
:1,9s/$/,/g

Now it's time to bring everything onto a single line. Do this using "J" for join.

# Join the 10 lines onto a single line
<ESC>
:10J

You should see all 10 numbers on the same line now. Fill out the rest of your SQL query.

Task: You have a bunch of concatenated strings that each should occupy a single line. Each string is separated by the damn ^M characters that do nothing to create a visual line break.

<ESC>
:1,$s/<cntr-v>M/\\r/g

Task: You want to insert "</span>" between "Task" and ":", like I did when I decided to wrap a span tag around each Task word in this blog posting.

<ESC>
:1,$s/Task:/Task<\/span>:/g

Task: You want to jump to the 13th line in your text file.

<ESC>
:13

Task: Come back on occassion to see additional vi editor tasks here.

# At your browser's URL:
http://discretepassions.blogspot.com/2010/10/little-things-in-vi-that-may-folks.html

The miracle called "Khan Academy" -- Web-Ed the maximized way

It took me 5 minutes to realize I was witnessing a miracle. What grabbed me about Sal and his www.khanacademy.org?

• A charismatic, humorous voice.
• 1,800 12 to 15 minutes lectures - physics, math, business, chemistry, statistics and more.
• Explained at a pace and in a style that makes comprehension possible.
• Makes you feel like you can learn things you were never able to nail down back in college.
• And I sensed immediately that my 10 year old would relate to him, thanks to his trusting humor and kind voice.

So where does Khan Academy fit in? The answer: where doesn't it fit in?

• My daughter loves Migaland, a 2nd Life for kids. The agreement we have is that she must watch one Khan Academy math class before logging in to Migaland.
• This is the perfect supplemental homework pill for school teachers to give to their kids. Kids get distracted in class, kids have poor listening habits. Khan gives them a resource at home that 1) the kid can trust, 2) the teacher can trust and 3) the parents can trust.

So, why does this work? Why am I so convinced that this IS the greatest gift of the Internet?

• It's teaching using common sense... a person who has the gift is able to share that gift in a way that only the Internet can make possible.
• 15 minute lessons. How perfect is that? Life is fast. Afternoons are short. Evenings are just about impossible. But 15 minutes is a reasonable commitment with the option of doing another 15 minutes.
• 15 minutes is the perfect amount of time to except hyper focus. Yes, we do, can and should go longer than 15 minutes when we need to. But 15 minutes is also a way of limiting us from gorging, so that we can develop the long term memory of the lesson in a high quality, quickening manner.
• It's a huge opportunity for folks to diversify their knowledge. Go to the Khan Bank of Knowledge and check out "credit default swaps" or "La Place transforms." It's almost analogous to take a little pill and you have instant knowledge.
• It's been awhile since college for me. I've had a great career as a software developer and business executive. Khan is a gold mine of possibilities for me for "the next phase" of my life. It's all there.

Enough cheerleading for now. I don't know if Khan's courses will prevent Alzheimer's, but it sure will make life feel more unlimited than it already does. And for parents, it's a true answer to the on-going challenging of keep that kid learning...

Here comes Graphene... sharpen your pencils!

Reading about research and development around carbon-based, two dimensional, nano-worldly Graphene has been a lot of fun. If you're just ramping up as well, I thought I'd jot down some of my collected notes to help others on their way to good knowledge of Graphene.

First of all, Graphene is a one atom thick, 2-D slice of graphite, the "pure" stuff in your 2H pencil. It looks like a cross-section of a honey-comb with carbon atoms in a chicken wire-like pattern. Scribble on a piece of paper, take some scotch tape and left up your carbon-based jottings. Then desolve the tape with a solvent, like Benzene, and you're left with a few (or more) layers called Graphene.

Now, some tidbits or "reasons to care"...

1. Graphene is the strongest material known.
2. It's the thinnest membrane known, in the lab, to separate two bodies of liquids.
3. Pop a hole in a sheet of Graphene a few carbon atoms wide, you have a "nanopore". Drag a strand of DNA through it, you can figure out its sequencing (all that G, T, C A stuff). FAST.
4. Thanks to its incredible conductivity, it may eventually replace silicon as chip fodder. It's 100x more conductive than silica and isn't it nice it's not environmentally toxic as those other silica alternatives, like gallium arsenide?
5. As part of the quest to utilize Graphene as laid on substrates of silica, researchers are working heavily on getting the signal-to-noise ratio ramped up to maximize all that good conductivity.
6. Nanotubes are rolled up single layer sheets of Graphene.
7. Because of its high conductivity, Graphene makes great sensor devices, able to detect substances and get the word out quickly.
8. Graphene may represent a new class of capacitors, thanks to its conductivity and extremely large ratio of surface area to mass.

Lost the article I grabbed some of these details from. I'll post the link as soon as I find it. The bit about nanopores came from http://www.physorg.com/news203345672.html

Hope you found this helpful and now see Graphene as slightly less mystifying.

Server software architecture technology today... a "drive by" appraisal

A colleague at my company distributed a couple of links on MUD -- "A BIG BALL OF MUD is haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape and bailing wire, spaghetti code jungle." from A Big Ball of Mud.

I never liked chaining (object methods end-to-end, ad nausem) because it made me feel stupid... It always came off as the "cool" thing at the expense, to me, of clarity. It also felt like a side-effect of IDEs where you just keep getting a drop-down pick list of methods once you complete the previous method name. I know I'm ridiculously blue collar about using vi instead, but what I like about it (being the absence of an IDE) is that it forces you to become more knowledgeable about the object/class definitions you're referencing. You know at some point you're going to have to track down a bug and wouldn't it be nice if you've already explored that deeper code, often written by somebody else. It gives you the extra layer of perspective you need when bug-chasing...

Yes, architectures are beginning to feel commoditized. But I like that. It's like design patterns. When Microsoft came out with C# it pissed me off, big time, as a rip-off of my beloved Java. But then I realized that the favor MS did for all of us was to raise the conversation to the next level of design patterns where the implementation details became less important. My guess is that was not MS's intent, but I believe it was a favorable consequence.

Anther advantage (or consequence) of commoditization is that these architectures are beginning to feel canned and the tools that support them are like-wise starting to feel that way, as they continue to mimic each other... Grails-Rails... does it really matter other than some business considerations?

But I have become a believer in the programming-by-convention. Yes, it goes overboard when you realize so many methods have been automatically created (views, controllers, services, session variables, etc.). But at least there's a higher level of "local standardization" that anybody who dives into the project can expect. I used to like thinner, start-from-scratch architectures... but it's so incredibly silly to have to re-think how to track session, how to send email, how to configure security, how to do things you've done a few hundred times over the past 15 years.

How's that for a preach-y entry?

from a budding post-biologist... check your fears at the door

Well, I probably won't live long enough, but I still love to play in this sandbox...

I hope you've come across the book "The Coming Singularity" by Ray Kurzweil or have checked out his Singularity University. Kurzweil speculates on a not-so-distant moment in time when the growing rate of technological change transitions from its already step slope to vertical status, representing infinite change, and therefore defines a singularity (i.e., a single point when you look downwards).

A natural (sic) consequence of this event, or the time leading up to it, is (speculated) that we'll start replacing our squishier organic body components with more advanced functional equivalents. The motivation will come from the reality that computers will far exceed our brains in computing power in many ways, leaving us with a sink or swim scenario. Moving to this "post-biological" phase will be necessary in order to keep up with this next order of knowledge and simultaneously benefit from it.

So, as a spectator, the most fascinating part of this is how people might react to this pending reality. People will understandably picture Terminator robots. That's inevitable and unfortunate.

But it ain't going to be that way. Take a look at what's happening with nanotechnology. It's not about making tiny machines out of metal (that look like robots). It's about reformulating configurations of elements, for instance, carbon into bucky balls, nanotubes or ultra thin sheets called graphene that, by their physical characteristics, do amazing, highly focused functions such as sniffing out toxic elements in the air. Nanotechnology will be the foundation of better hearts, better brains, better motor skills, better senses...

So aside from just dealing with good old change, I don't really think there's as much to fear about the guttural reactions I'm seeing when the public is confronted with this amazing and, understandably, disconcerting topic.

After all, what's really happening here is that we're taking knowledge we acquire from a point in time ten to twenty years in our past and apply it to completely new projections twenty to thirty years in the future. Not a problem 100 years ago when the rate of change in a few decades was so small from the perspective of the average guy and gal. Big problem when the data you're just getting comfortable is out-data and just plain wrong. When the rate of change becomes more asymtopic, the knowledge we are just getting to be comfortable with, like cell phones and GPS, prepares us even less for the new stuff around the corner. It's basically that feeling you get at the Boardwalk when you're slowly approaching the apex of that first Roller-coaster peak and...

Check out the arguments at: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=390vckvrxu

Mrs. Michaels -- Teacher with True Passion

Back in the 60's, Mrs. Michaels was my 7th grade English teacher at Collins Jr. High in Cupertino. Why I love to write is because of her.

Monday through thursday we'd walk into class and find a handful of words on the blackboard. They were usually words few of us knew. After looking them up, we then had 10 minutes to write a one page story, position paper or what-have-you incorporating those blackboard words.

In a month or so, we all got pretty good at the routine. (I've neglected to mention that all of this had to be done in the first 15 minutes of the class.) As much as I started enjoying it, I got mostly B's and couldn't understand why. But then I saw a pattern... the more I took a stand or got philosophical in my one pager, the better the grade. The visible effort of "thinking" was rewarded on a regular basis.

Oh yeah... about fridays. On fridays we'd group up as teams of 5 to do competitive crossword puzzles. Dictionary, thesaurus in hand, we applied what was steadily growing in all of us. True excitement about the English language and how to harness it.

Thank you Mrs. Michaels. I wish you were here to help save the world.

Empathy, Twitter and World Peace -- imagine that...

I've always believed that communication... especially the kind where you can't turn back once you've become dependent on it, would be the end of the Soviet Union. To compete with the rest of the world, I figured they'd have to go somewhere as a nation where their governance would be like a fish out of water... and therefore they'd most likely implode.

The more communication I see the better I like it... you just need to be willing to take the bad with the good. The narcissism is pretty bad right now because we're really ailing as a race that is recognizing that we're on the brink of some potentially scary stuff. So at least we're getting chatty and my prayer (or daily mantra) is that a marvelous side effect will be this world-rounded group hug that people eventually don't want to let go of... the "empathetic embrace" mentioned in the video.

This video by Jeremy Rifkin points out that there's good evidence that empathy is the evolving part of our brain's core competency. There's an incredibly exciting upside to that...

Watch out for increased worker productivity...

As it reports on the continuing Wall Street recovery, CNBC often cites the upbeat economic indicator of "increased worker productivity." It implies goodness, but is it? Is it in fact a short-term and potentially business-killing condition? Here are some of my concerns.

Product design and implementation will suffer because there's less time to simply think. New requirements, new designs and defining effective practices require time to step back, perform continuous research and get the attention of those around you to establish the support (and good critical thinking) you need.

Fewer people wearing more hats means less than 100% responsibility. How can you be in two or three roles at once and really feel like you are covering your territory? And what happens during crunch time, such as a product release, when all your responsibilities become #1? If you were once a person who took pride in your productivity, you find you are becoming an excuse-maker, not out of incompetence, but from feeling just plain overwhelmed.

Critical cross-training becomes an after-thought. Who has time to train people? Who has time to be trained? As essential as it may be, you feel like you're just ensuring that folks won't meet the deadlines they're already facing. Congratulations, that extra hat you've been wearing looks like it's found a permanent home.

Burn out will occur at a faster rate. It doesn't matter how much you love your work. When you're just keeping the ship afloat, there's not much time for the things that previously fueled your passion, such as vision-making or healthy research of new strategies and technologies.

Finally, there is no substitute for intuition or simply sensing that something isn't quite right. A few months later, you're kicking yourself for not having researched that gut feeling when you had it. Then you ask yourself, "why?" and all you can come up with is, "I was too busy being productive."

Still Cloudy, But Steadily Getting More Clear...

I've been using the Cloud as hosted by Amazon EC2. Unexpected value? Yes... as a staging and test deployment platform. The value comes from the ability to take a more deliberate path that puts off hardware purchase plans. Being able to feel like you can really think out the deployment is quite a luxury.

Right now I'm enjoying thinking of using the cloud as a type of DMZ... at least until it's production time. But who knows if I'll want to just keep it in that role through production deployment?

I also like it for the potential of having standardized test platform images. These are pre-configured operating environments that you clone out based on the environment that you've set up and refined. Beats starting over every time you want to create a 2nd, 3rd or 4th testing environment. The only downside to images that I've come up with is this: You often want to assign new developers the task of setting up these environments from relative scratch so that they get an deeper impression of what goes in to setting up the server applications that they've been hired to build, expand and maintain. Without that experience, months and years go by before they really realize how the application they work with is choreographed with respect to support bash scripts, file system layout, including the use of NFS, and other supporting processing, such as a messaging server. There are also the critical configuration property files they read from.

So, what do I think of cloud computing right now? Very cool. It's taught me a lot about firewall configuration, in particular. It's made me feel empowered to try stuff without being dependent on IT. And it simply gives me another arrow in my quiver when contemplating test and, maybe, production deployments. Now... I've got to figure out the contrasting values of going with a hosted cloud versus an in-house VMWare-style cloud... hmmm...