Divine Discontent

Although I'm not normally big on link dumps, I may as well do one here. No comment is offered, except that which is implicit in the offering of these things in conjunction.

Tylen Cowen on interestingness and happiness. A fine example of Marginal Revolution; put it in your feed reader. Economics and happiness is a fascinating topic of research, and Tyler's postings are nicely provocative (in the best way, provoking thought). Having read the blog for many years, I am sorely tempted by his book but what holds me back is the question of how much, as a regular reader of the blog, would be genuinely new to me. Probably a lot, but it's hard to be certain.

Cal Newport posts again, as always on the theme of developing an exceptional life. From his point of view, I've probably followed most of his recommendations: the difference is that I've never really understood my place in the world, and living in a tiny part of the world it has never been easy to understand whether it's a matter of being an outlier in a small sample population or ... well, the impact of large numbers generally.

This morning on Radio New Zealand was a rare interview with a Waikato University researcher on gifted children and high-achieving adults on the Nine To Noon magazine programme; the current presenter Kathryn Ryan does a good job; although normally a poor science interviewer (if only because she's inevitably compared to the excellent broadcaster Kim Hill), she does a fine job here by just giving the interviewer the right kind of leads and just letting him speak to them. Get the MP3.

Ageism

A short while ago I dropped a line to the always thoughtful Rad to let him know of my changed circumstances since he might be interested in talking about some tech things, and he sent me back this interesting link on the ageist culture in technology companies.

There are a fair number of comments posted, showing near-unanimous agreement that a) this particular phenomenon is very real (and I don't doubt it for a moment), and that b) the suggestion that we more seasoned folk should enter management or sales-type roles is both insulting and impractical (which is certainly how I find it).

Like a number of those commenters, I'm now in my mid-40's and as I'm supposed to be writing a CV or resume or some such thing (having never had to bother before) I've found myself puzzled by the problem of explaining all the things I've done over the past 30 years in terms a modern employer might understand, given that most of them are either going to go well over their heads, or be thought of as obsolete (which is of course utter nonsense - having written a TCP/IP stack and the OS it lived in isn't diminished by the fact that the 68000 processor it targeted is now a museum piece, since the understanding and insight that comes from having that experience never goes away).

This is one of the big differences between merely having read of something and having done it: a potted summary, even a reasonably deep one, can really only cover the topmost layer of engineering decisions that go into any substantial piece of technology. However, when you're creating an entire large ecosystem from scratch without relying on others, there are a myriad small details that you have to get right, many of which are actually related to deep engineering problems you'll encounter again and again.

The same thing also applies in spades to the "snap-together" programming culture which is utterly dominant today. Modern developers appear to simply be uninterested in learning the inner workings of the artifacts they are throwing together, and are equally unconcerned that the results of their labour are huge, slow, and inflexible.

There are a lot of articles I intend to write on the beauty of the small - an engineering virtue on many levels from the practical to the aesthetic - but one of the best things about there being no mysteries is that you can fix anything. In the computer systems I use, there is simply nothing that I couldn't write for myself; I've done text editors, compilers, interpreters, GUI widgets, OS kernels, all from the ground up. Not all of them were as pretty as you see today, mind you, being constrained by the hardware at the time and by the fact modern commercial systems have been polished to a fine sheen by the labour of thousands, but in functional terms there are no important secrets at any level of the software stack.

That understanding confers some real power, because as a consequence you are never constrained at all to colour within the lines. If you have a problem, it's possible to take things apart and fix them. It's one thing to make a hard-headed economic decision to build or buy, another entirely to be unable to build software to get from A to B unless someone has already done it before.

Martin Gardner

The blame for me becoming an insufferable nuisance to the teachers at Glenfield College in 1980 can't be laid entirely at the feet of the Texas Instruments corporation. The setup for that was laid down rather earlier, thanks to the writing of one of the world's great educators: Martin Gardner, who was to mathematics what the great Sir David Attenborough is to naturalists.

When my parents divorced in 1976 I chose to live with my father, who continued to work, thus leaving me a lot of time alone. A great deal of that free time was spent with a pile of back issues of Scientific American which he had subscribed to in the mid-60s when he was a young man - before the unplanned arrival of myself thoroughly derailed his life in 1967.

Scientific American was a great magazine for a 10-year-old boy; articles written by eminent scientists, but carefully targeting a reading age of (I'd guess) about 14 it did a fantastic job of explaining science clearly, but without sacrificing too much to make it truly "popular" in the oversimplified way that is more common nowadays (with, say, the Discovery Channel).

And as great as every issue was, the very best part of all lurked at the back (just before "The Amateur Scientist" column), in the form of the "Mathematical Games" column in which Martin Gardner regularly served up an essay devoted to recreational - but still quite serious - aspects of mathematics.

From him I learned about counting on your fingers in Binary - spending hours counting up to 1023 and back down - and how the so-called "Russian Peasant" multiplication worked, which was a curiosity for decimal but was exactly how computer arithmetic worked. Or studying the Towers of Hanoi puzzle, the solution to which can again be understood based on the properties of numbers when represented as binary.

Of course those were the more serious articles but Martin Gardner's columns also included plenty of things which were nothing but sheer fun, and probably the greatest of these was Flexagons, from simple flats to the wonderful solid Tetrahexaflexagons. Just as I was getting fascinated by these a truly wonderful book was published, which my Father spent a horrendous amount of money to buy for me: M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles, because flexagons and the magnificent tiled drawings of Maurits Escher go together perfectly.

With that kind of early start, it's hard not to become math-obsessed, and since there weren't computers around to be used back in the late 70's I was absolutely primed to become completely fascinated by them when one finally came within reach. And indeed, that's probably why jumping into writing assembly language appeared to come so easily, because I'd years before then absorbed most of the fundamental prerequisites.

These days perhaps it would be harder to get hooked on maths quite the same way, with so many distractions around - not just mobile telephones and the internet were yet to appear, but back then there was precious little worth watching on New Zealand's two television channels either (although to be fair we did get to see some superb BBC programming, from the classic Horizon documentaries to James Burke's incredible Connections TV series.

Today, all that raw information (and much more) is out there and in principle readily available, but it's mostly drowned out by a cacophony of ephemera. I can only hope that youngsters today are getting steered at this kind of material, and can draw from it a sense of the richness of the world and the power of science, and thus choose to embark on a career in science or engineering out of real passion.

I Am A Free Man

Because it's just so damn cool (and yes I have the DVD set and it's as good as I remember from my youth), in celebration of my status today as an independent:

The Prisoner original theme by none other than Ron Grainer, who famously composed the haunting Doctor Who Theme music performed by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The video linked above is from an obscure (excellent, but long out of print) set of remixes of classic British TV shows that was called "Powerthemes 90".

Unemployment doesn't look cheap

Aside from expenses like the aforementioned vacation we'd scheduled, there are many other little things that I'd come to take for granted and I now have to think about. Clothing, for instance; I've basically never worn shoes, a consequence of growing up in what was at the time a rural area, and a habit which I'd been able to continue into adult life by virtue of being something of a prodigy and working for people who happily accepted such a minor eccentricity in trade for my ability to make them money.

My standards of deportment have declined further since Symantec closed it's Auckland development facility early last year, and since then I've been working at home. I think I have one pair of jeans that doesn't have large holes, and maybe two very old shirts with collars, but nothing in the way of formalwear or anything else suitable for, say, interviewing.

Thoughtfully, my home PC (used pretty much only for gaming) decided to have its power supply expire the day before we were notified of our layoff, and since it was just a collection of mismatched parts some of which were very old, it really needs replacing. And a laptop would be kinda crucial too, preferably one that I can actually do at least some development on without it melting. A decent phone too would be nice - at least something I can tether for back-up internet access when the DSL goes down, as it regularly does here, so probably a Nokia with the most basic plan I can get.

By the way, anyone who reads this from somewhere like the U.S. may not be aware that almost any piece of technology here in New Zealand, from a TV to a phone, normally costs between two and three times what it does in the U.S. on a PPP-adjusted basis. PPP adjustment also doesn't speak to affordability differences based on median incomes. Telecommunications are ruinously expensive here too, although at least on that point cruise ships are even more extortionate than we Kiwis are used to.

Perhaps the only device that doesn't come with that kind of price premium is one I had mostly forgotten about, until the e-mail arrived yesterday to tell me it's on the way here - since we were going on the cruise and it was just announced, I decided to splurge on a Kindle, just the basic model. Amazingly enough, to get one costs the same as anyone else in the world pays, modulo a reasonable USD$20 for shipping.

Of course, even though this version is actually sold as supported in NZ, buying things for it is not quite seamless; Kindle editions of books are caught up in territorial rights and so it remains to be seen what, other than Project Gutenburg freeware, I can actually get for it. Even so I'm still looking forward to the device; unlike the iPhone, it's a kind of device that I'd at least like to think about developing for, even if just for fun.

Unfortunately the 6" Kindle isn't really suited for the kind of thing I might like to get back into if I do have time to enrich my mind a little before having to prostitute myself to naked commerce once again. Textbooks on things like metric spaces or the Zeta Function, or one of my favourites from an earlier edition I read some 15 years ago, Forecasting: Methods and Applications, don't just tend to be eyewateringly expensive - none of that kind of thing even has a Kindle edition, and even if it did they'd really only work on the larger DX form factor.

On the Road Again

As I'm about to become a free man again after many years of employment with Symantec, one of the great benefits is to return to being a normal Internet citizen and not to have to suppress all self-expression lest I invite the wrath of my corporate masters. While most employees don't have to self-censor to quite the degree I did, as the individual most associated with such a well-known brand name (and being quite proud of it), it's hard to be open about what you're doing without running afoul of one of the vast numbers of things Forbidden By Company Policy on Pain of Instant Dismissal.

Not that I have much desire to talk about my time there; after all the recent years of struggle and stress I'm quite happy to draw a veil over that for now. Instead, I'm savouring the ability to just be a normal human being again, or at least as close to human normality as I can manage.

The other thing I have to consider now having been laid off is what employment to seek. I'm not considering that particularly deeply yet, though: one of the things my significant other had planned for November was that the two of us would go on a cruise. Having been the sort of person who never takes all his allocated vacation time, I was a little unsure when she proposed it but the idea had been growing on me.

Since we'd scheduled this months ago, and it's all paid for and non-refundable, quite how to fit starting new employment around the trip will be an interesting exercise. Browsing around job sites shows that as you'd expect there appear to be very few companies in New Zealand who are doing things that require the kind of ability I have, and fewer still where the work could provide the kind of challenge I desire, so that will probably mean either going back to some kind of start-up venture or applying to a firm based (or at least with offices) in Australia.

As I'd been contemplating that, an interesting link appeared in my feed reader this morning: an article from Cal Newport's Study Hacks blog (which is always interesting, and whose philosophy of developing excellence fits well with how I've been striving to attain mastery in my chosen field for the past 30 years) mentioned this:

In other words, when you go through life thinking “if I can make it through this, things will be better later,” you eventually forget what “better” means.

Given where I'm at now coming out of years of stressful, grinding slog, maybe that's something I should be thinking about. I've never got the "life" part of "work/life balance" particularly well sorted out, so I should probably start thinking about that for once.