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Saturday, October 25th, 2008
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9:33 pm - Back from Vegas!
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I got back Thursday, on a very early morning flight, and so I've been kicking it at home since, and will head back to work Monday. It was a fun trip, Vegas, but I'm going to hijack this post, and talk a bit about my last trip, to Seattle.
For one, PAX was pretty awesome, and what was most interesting was the subtle things experienced that have larger impacts than initially thought.
For one, one day, as we were leaving the main conference hall, they were playing some ads for Brawndo, which were quite humourous. I distinctly remember the riding a pony with chainsaws bit, as well as the "using fists for everyday tasks". Thus, like good advertising, it captured the attention, but I then promptly ignored the rest.
One very cool thing, though, was that it was made by "Omni Consumer Products", which was just a classy reference to make, since this was a video game conference, and it was a nice in joke, as techies are likely to recall Robocop.
Well, that was it as far as I could tell, weeks go by, and there's the "powerthirst" video that I end up stumbling upon, which instantly reminded me of that Brawndo ad. Hmm, that's odd, I thought, nearly identical styles, was it just a coincidence? Actually, no. But, once again, that realization wasn't made, and I promptly ignored it for more important things.
Today, I end up watching the movie Idiocracy, which seems relevant, what with my recent consumerist vacation and a certain political focus these days, and there it is, Brawndo! Where did that come from? After the film, wikipedia is your friend, and I can thus map out the timeline of where fiction and reality forked and merged, so the world is again in order, but those were a curious few minutes.
I enjoy a bit of surrealism, in the same way I was a huge fan of the "Three Laws" - i, Robot trailer, and the spot on "Regenerate" - Resident Evil.
This all ties back to Las Vegas, because it is very much a facade, but a very entertaining one which we can comfortably take at its face value, and because of that, it has more value perhaps then the originals it is a fun fair mirror image of. There's a lot that's very impressive about the city, clearly there are lots of details sweated in the creation, and maintenance, of this particular mirage in the desert, and reality pokes in in only the most subtle and inobtrusive of ways.
Thus, these things share the possession of one aspect of myself, my respect, because they are interwoven, meticulous, and composed with a wry sense of humour, full of details which may be overlooked, but still appreciated as a whole, a bit of a fractal.
Checking out, V.
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| Friday, October 17th, 2008
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12:32 pm - Off to Vegas!
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So, right off the bat, it's been some time since I've done a bit of traveling, and pretty much since January, I've for one reason or another not been taking any vacation. That's changing, as today, I'm off to Vegas.
Las Vegas really was a spur of the moment choice, since I only worked out that it was pretty much "now or never" if I wanted a block of time off before the new year, and any sort of sun vacations would have meant a much longer flight.
I think I enjoy both the spontaneous planning of travel, and deal hunting, so it really has been a good lead up to this. I'm traveling for about a week, with flights there and back on different airlines and beginning and ending in different cities, but with the result that my flights are less than $250 all in.
Vegas is pretty cheap to stay in*, but I think I would be bored just wandering in town, so I've also got a rental car, and am planning to visit the grand canyon!
I think the atmosphere and expectation of traveling to the US is quite different, versus Europe. In some ways closer, in some ways farther. Things are immediately more familiar, but I being a detail focused individual, am more perturbed by small changes, since I have a reference, versus that which is entirely new. So in all, it should be quite a trip!
*Cheap, let it be known, is a relative thing. We all know Vegas is focused on gambling, which in many ways subsidizes its existence. Look for more on that discussion, upon my return.
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| Monday, July 28th, 2008
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10:15 pm - A bit surprising, if decipherable...
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I've spent the last hour listening to the same piece of music, comparing some headphones and tweaking the EQ, and have a few conclusions to share.
Giulio Caccini - Ave Maria is divine.
My four year old computer, based around an Athlon XP on a NF7-S MB, which has Soundstorm, is really an excellent platform for music coming from a PC, in terms of noise and overall fidelity. In every other way it has been supplanted by other machines, but in this, it is unique and holds it's own.
Sennheiser PC 131 headphones, though cheap, sound excellent with classical music and flat EQ. Excellent, full mid range, good balance otherwise, though some slight distortion at the high end, depending on how it sits on my head, a bit of buzz on the soaring vocals.
My AKG K81DJs, which are closed and fit an altogether different niche, sound pretty decent, but there is a definite lack of "immediacy" with the same piece, owing to a thinner mid range. Still very good, but poorer than the PC 131s.
Tweaking the EQ with the AKGs though does bring back some of that depth, and the MB handles it nicely with no crazy CPU utilization or artifacts. They're as good as the Senns, which is high praise since the senns are open. I can hear pops, and some waver which I attribute to the audio file.
However, I still miss my Grados, just SR-60's, but they were something else, though grossly impractical for what I needed at the time, as they were impacted terribly by ambient sounds and were rather large.
current mood:  contemplative
current music: Yes
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| Sunday, July 27th, 2008
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9:47 pm - Why Art Matters
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Or WHAM!
Despite my relative silence of late, that is not to say that I have given up being opinionated about things, more that I have been dealing with looming project deadlines, crunch work, supporting work, and now, new project work. If I haven't emphasized enough yet, there's been a lot of work, and not nearly enough days off. But instead, I will focus a bit about HCI, or UI, or one of several other acronyms.
If it has not been clear before, I work as a software developer. I've moonlighted in some other things, and would rate my allegiances with other disciplines highly as well, but I do rather enjoy the crafting of a piece of software, and give some consideration to, "is this a good way of doing this", and also, "would someone actually want to use this".
And when I think of that, I can put aside the deadlines and "requirements" and well intentioned suggestions, and focus a bit on, this is actually something that takes some doing.
What I mean by this is, there's many different schools of thought or approaches to development, and, on some level, it is not a science and never will be. In fact, I would venture that good software is art, though I mean this in a sense that is not entirely complimentary.
More accurately, practically, software is Design, a series of choices which leads to a functional bit of something, able to be pumped out en masse, but at its heart affords functionality and embodies a certain aesthetic. Do you have doubts about this? Then consider the compiler. At its core, it translates what is typed out by a person into the whole of the system. However, so much is ignored by the compiler: comments, indentation, on some level, even things like objects, function calls, and other language niceties. Thus, what is just as important is that human view of the source code, that embodiment of the understanding the programmer has over the real system.
It is these choices, that the programmer gives to themselves, or each other, which is Art. Art, because it serves no useful purpose to the perspective of the machine, just window dressing, taking up valuable space, but contributing nothing. Except to the person, giving that spark of knowledge, that glimmer of cleverness and purpose.
I'm not a great programmer, I've known this for sometime, but I am not accepting when something "just works", as there's something rather wrong about that, though it may meet the same need just as well. To me, it is vital that code be stylistically correct, and when I really think about it, there is no good technical justification as for why. There is a real cost for maintaining better code, an investment for API, commenting, enforcing good practice, that advances the craft, but is not a tangible payout.
So, at the end, I see that it falls back to Design, or even Art for my justification. That elevation of the common, the creation of something minimal, functional, or alternatively flowing, purposeful, communicative, gives a sense of satisfaction in great excess of having something that just gets the job done. It is the Art aspects of programming and software development that have opened the doors to greater capabilities on our field, and yet it is always the first thing to be cast off when things become harsh, and that's rather unfortunate.
There is this ever present trade off between the completeness and delivery, but I think that until programming is seen as more than assembly line work, there will be an absence of producing truly great software. And there is no reason why Business should not have great software.
current mood:  sleepy
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| Sunday, June 1st, 2008
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9:50 pm - A bit of self indulgence...
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I generally avoid delving into the minutia of my life in posts such as these, or if I really feel the need to rant, I might create a restricted post, as one has to self-censor somewhat in the age we live in. Thus, I do not directly allude to my name, place of employ, and other such trivialities of personal history, but I still inject a modicum of personality and direction in what I post. I mean, if you had ever met me, even fleetingly, you could probably detect the tone and associate the words with the person. And really, how many people use "modicum" in a sentence, who aren't time travelers from the 1800's?
And what with such joys as RSS syndication, facebook could be used to associate this post to a name, and what's to say that my notes are not configured as public reading on that site, or even to say that such profile security is enforcible. So in truth at the end of things, I would be accountable for what I say in this and other online communication.
And so I'll dive into a safe, but recently more notable difference between my current work, and a previous one. Namely, e-mail. There's a certain love-hate relationship with it, in that it is essential, but what with the pressures of push e-mail and the need for connectedness, it can be overwhelming. Plus, who really considers the art of writing a letter? For all my harping, I would say I could improve my ability to get to the point, and using ambiguity to my benefit.
But what I would draw attention to is that at my current workplace, e-mail is more used in the way that IM was used at a previous employer, which is to say, as a means of communicating a few brief sentences in an impromptu fashion. No one seems to expect, demand, or otherwise require much of their e-mails. Longer discussions are almost entirely the province of conference calls and face meetings now. In contrast, before work e-mails could have genuinely actionable material, say on the order of days of work, and meetings were rare affairs, even somewhat frowned upon, as the cost of having a half dozen people setting aside their jobs to sit in a room and talk for an hour was deemed too high.
In both instances, I was filling a similar role, a somewhat junior software developer, both are tech focused businesses, and both have essentially the same infrastructure in place. Thus, the difference come down to culture, which I find fascinating.
In truth, there are genuine tangible and intangible costs of meetings, thus for one company, e-mail stratified, into brief messages fitting within the subject, with a "NT" appended to inform you that it was unnecessary to even open the e-mail, all the way up to multiple threads of communication spanning perhaps three levels of seniority to coordinate a phase of development. Where I am now, with the focus on customer experience, documentation becomes a suffuse and secondary driver in comparison to polling for the desired outcome, with the more personal interaction of voice becoming key.
Once again, it is expectation which drives the use of technology, and proof that technology does not in isolation solve problems beyond the trivial and self-fulfilling. What is the right technology to foster communication on a multi-person project? That's a (mis)leading question.
This past week, I created an instance of Redmine(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redmine) in our team's environment, to try and manage one of my projects. It's rather new to me, having used it in a non-administrative capacity for a few weeks, but it reminds me of bugzilla(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugzilla) in that it affords a certain community presence that I was trying to encourage, to draw in the other participants. (I'm deliberately avoiding the use of "engage", it's one of those words we tend to throw around a lot, and thus has it's own customized meaning which would be foreign to one not in this particular example of corporate culture, and one is ever mindful of the different languages we adopt).
I'd say there is mixed success, as I do find it ultimately is assisting with my own organization on the project, on the other hand it hasn't met with the enthusiasm I had hoped for, thus some of the work I would have naturally seen as falling to others is in fact performed by me. But such change takes time, it's one of those things that, to someone new, may not be clearly better or worse than what is in place now before the fact. But, thinking back to me human factors class, it's something that to me can draw on generalizations and past successes, and be examined with common principles. Or more succinctly, it's the proof of the pudding, being in the eating.
So I could go on, but I think this is the limit of an already optimistic view of where the limits of interest are in the minutia of the work I do and hope to do, so let's leave it at that for now. I could be persuaded to espouse more on the topic by probing and incisive commentary, but I rather doubt such will be forthcoming. So, I guess it's a good thing, that I can draw on such considerations for my work, maybe this is one of those identifying characteristics of a career. At any rate, it's been a busy week, with another one just one the horizon.
Next time, on the "explorations of the under-discussed commonplaces", a treatise on the value of candor contrasted with facile chatter in the workplace.
current mood: thoughtful
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| Monday, May 12th, 2008
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8:19 pm - Small celebrations of good design....
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It's been a long time since I've posted something new. As some may know, I am gainfully employed, thus much of my creative energies is spent in the pursuit of knowledge, creation, and doing sudoku puzzles on my bus ride home, rather than being an idle student.
But as I came home on Monday, made dinner, and took some time to finally crack open one of the Blu-Rays that came with my PS3, I noticed something quite small, but no doubt significant, and I felt it worthy of mention. For you see, the labels which seal the box, such as "security device enclosed", etc, well, once you break it open, it is possible to completely and cleanly lift off the label, so it leaves no residue on the case. That's good design. In a world of digital distribution, it's the little touches that aid and justify my affinity for the physical.
As such, I may try to regularly make postings on these small bits of good design, which would otherwise go overlooked (because they're small), but which nevertheless can make our lives somewhat easier and more orderly. I just thought I'd share.
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| Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
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10:32 pm - I know I meant to post photos with my next post....
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I like spouting off about technology and science, and I have to resist the urge to get on my little soap box and go on about, well, everything.
However, this http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=124660?tid=edmunds.il.home.photopanel..2.*
reminds me of a little witticism when electricity and electric light bulbs were first conceived: "soon, only the rich will be able to afford candles" (this is definitely a paraphrase, I'm too tired/lazy to properly locate and attribute the quote).
And I think, (wishfully), some day soon, we'll think, "only the rich will be able to afford gas guzzling cars". I'm of the opinion that technology is neutral, it gives and it takes away, but I think this will happen. There will come a time when it's cheaper to buy and run some multi-fuel dual mode/plug-in hybrid, and it will stop being the "alternative", but just the way things are.
(As for the specific car, I do find it quite sharp looking, but it wouldn't be my first choice).
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| Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
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8:57 pm - More on ID, role of media in science reporting...
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I'm a science heavy guy, and anyone who really knows me (or spends too much time on my facebook page) knows my stance on the debate about what constitutes science. I would put forward that this article can be taken either way, whether you think op-ed can be safely ignored or should be held to account, but the raging debate in the comment section brought out some great arguments in the defense of why science isn't just "opinion" and is deserving of critical evaluation, even if stated as "opinion".
And thanks to the magic of Wikipedia, I can now precisely state that my arguments regarding "hypotheses" and "theories" and their diverging usage in fact are actually subtle examples of Equivocation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation), when the defense of ID as a "theory" is made.
The original article is here: http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/01/08/an-editorial-war-on-science I often find ars has some of the best forum debate, in terms of intelligence and cogence of argument.
(Oh, and I know I'm behind on that final post of Europe photos, I'm sure no one else is still looking for those, and I missed my own end of year deadline. I would eventually post them though.)
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| Saturday, December 1st, 2007
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8:34 pm - Bucking the trend...
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Clearly, I like to use common words in an uncommon way, and even more so, uncommon words exceedingly precisely. I had a little bit of a debate with one of the other technicians at work, about my pronunciation of the word, "Router". Apparently, when I was referring to the internet gateway type device, I was pronouncing it such that it rhymes with "root", rather than what (he thought) was correct, such that it would rhyme with "out". I seem to recall that properly, it would be pronounced one way for the IP device, and another way for the machine used for finishing joints of wood.
For the life of me, I couldn't remember which was "right" for which, and while I can decipher the IPA pronunciation on wikitionary, the formatting of the article makes it hard to determine if the distinction is only properly applied only in UK english (as I most often take calls with customers from the US).
This raises a number of important questions:
-Is there actually a proper way to say the word router, and am I the language police?
-Am I such a loudmouth that other agents can hear me when I'm on the phone?
-Why would I think this would be a suitable post to break over a month's worth of livejournal silence?
-Where are the remaining Europe photos, comprised of Switzerland and much of France?
-Do I not have something better to do with my time?
-What does this have to do with my subject of the post?
All modestly valid questions. My initial response is that my feet are getting quite toasty, in that I'm resting them on the radiator near my window. More to the point, I do tend to take a fair number of calls, and have actually not felt the need to impose my thoughts on grammar, and have even been known to substitute "zee" to ease communication.
I've been quite fairly engaged with work this past month, in a good way, in that I'm busy and the day tends to go by nicely, it is technically not strenuous, but still demands a fair amount of creativity and personal development, and I'm getting along fairly well with my colleagues. Things I would say I would well spend more time on would be getting the little ends in the apartment taken care of, and devoting a bit more time to trying to actually learn to read and write my ancestral language, my current personal project.
I'm finding I have more things and resources than I can well take advantage of presently, thus am constantly faced with the reality that I could be doing more, but end up doing rather less. And after some deliberation, I decided to do a little bit more, by writing this post (I know, not reaching that high). I'm rather behind in being in touch with friends and staying on top of their online ramblings, or being available on IM. A newly purchased headset is as yet not taken for a spin, but I'm still trying to get my network running at full speed. Was that metaphorical or literal? Another valid question.
I am grateful that my current employ will release me from my contractual obligations a bit early, so that I may start a more permanent role in a timely fashion. Furthermore, I'll actually be freed prior to Christmas, so will actually have some time to relax and spend with family. For the first time in some years, I actually plan to have meaningful and wrapped presents for members of my family, I must say, it's awfully easy to get away with not having these when you are simultaneously the youngest and also a student. That will be my excuse no longer, I feel the burdens of my advanced years, and as much as possible will use them to shape my destiny. I tend to have a flair for the dramatic and the verbose, I miss writing more thoroughly, and tend to apply an archaic and elephantine style most inappropriately to technical communication.
I also miss reading, but that will be something I rectify soon, and perhaps a new post (before the New Year) will detail that pursuit. The last book I properly read was The Road, and that was months ago, need something else to set a less bleak tone. I'm looking for advice here, in that regard.
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| Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
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8:06 pm - Europe: Stuttgart...
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I wonder if there are many other cities with such and evocative name. What with work now, I'm not finding as much leisure online time, but I won't give up on the photo posting. I actually was somewhat indifferent to the town, as it lacks the charm of Berlin or the techie appeal of Munich, but just looking at the Mercedes museum photos brings back memories. Here we go:
Modern museum...
Art in a square (says something to aesthetic, and a good contrast to my next post)
Tv tower
...2
Dealer
It was like that when I got here
Classy
Modern
Alien
a bit grainy, but a number of classic MB
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Angled, and with leather pads to rest your arms against while you look out.
"Form follows Function"
Cooler in person.
What, no V?
This whole thing was so cool
drool
and a hearty meal to round out the day.
After Stuttgart, it was back to Paris, which had a LOT of photos, and I might need to break that down into two posts. The next bit was mostly criss-crossing about France, with a detour to Geneva.
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| Friday, October 19th, 2007
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12:08 pm - Europe photos: Hungary & Austria
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The more mid twentieth century appellation might be "Austria-Hungary", but that is the order I saw them in, traveling straight across Austria without stopping, to Budapest, before backtracking to Salzburg. I wonder if anyone really cares about these photos, but I'm committed to getting this all posted, so at least I have something to point to, though at this point I'm basically TWO months behind in my photos. Tsk tsk.
Without further ado (and likely without too many comments, I can't mentally cross reference the photos with the posts anymore):
Church in Buda
Sort of outer wall, still in Buda
...2
...3
View across the river to Pest
Statuary...
...2
...3
Another view across the river...
Fountain
Opera House
Government Building
...2
Waiting for the curtain to rise at the Opera House
chandelier and painting
Park in Salzburg
...square
...fountain
...yeah, obvious, no?
Fortress/citadel (there's a distinction I can't recall)
view from citadel
view of citadel
I believe that's actually an oven...
Modern/Ancient battle
Austrian Countryside
...2
random bits of charming stuff
... I don't know now...
actually, this part is in Germany (on border between Bavaria & Austria)
rusty iron actually
these are cows (a NA surprise)
where Silent Night was first performed (on Classical Guitar, FYI)
river leading back to Salzburg
So that concludes the photo highlights, with any luck, I'll get the rest up before I head off on another adventure. Otherwise, the job hunt continues out here.
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| Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
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9:58 am - Parallelism...
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Unfortunately, I'm way behind on my trip photo posting. However, I'm taking this post to fill out some of the other stated goal, which is to share some of the interesting tech related things I've come across and colour commentary about the state of tech, teaching, and other assorted ramblings that add lightness and are an intellectual outlet different from my working pursuits.
Thus, I happily came across a series of Google lectures, originally referenced in an arstechnica post, about designing for parallel systems. The top level link is http://code.google.com/edu/content/parallel.html and I'm on lecture 1 (hey, the post was only up yesterday!) here http://code.google.com/edu/content/submissions/mapreduce-minilecture/listing.html, and I'm really liking it.
I'm a big fan of Comp. Arch and thinking about the "big ideas" of computing, and it's clear that parallelism is the way to squeeze out further gains in computer processing ability, that there are limits to cleverness in using parallelism to speed up what appears to be single-threaded computation to a programmer (Tomasulo's algorithm, anyone), and thus, unless different programming models are adopted, you start to approach a limit of computing performance.
Many "big" problems already understand and address this, however, having recently gone through the factory stamped engineering education, it's also clear that we are equipped primarily with the more conventional, single thread, stream of sequential instructions "programmers model", partly because it's historically significant (and necessary), and partly because it's manageable. A little dabbling of semaphores and multiple (independent) threads in Comp. Eng. and OS, and that's it. However, from that BlueGene/L doing weather simulations to the PS3 that I covet, to the duo core laptop I'm typing this on, it's clear the force is with multiple processors being the way to engineer the systems of right now and the near future.
So how do you address that? Of course, there's a limit to how much can be expected of a university education, and this is why companies care so much about a person's extra-curricular interested and try to sponsor change, but to me, maybe companies should be a bit more willing to take a chance on generalists, rather than over-specializing. Excuse the in joke, but it's a tradeoff between dedicated, specialized hardware (which may stay idle), and a sea of similar cores which you can always count on for spare cycles.
Next post will be more pictures, I promise.
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| Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
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11:04 am - Europe Photos 2: Paris, Berlin, Munich
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Yeah, I'm once again over a month late with photos. I've started doing some web development, so it's taking me time getting up to speed with that, and getting a functional linux development environment is also proving to be a chore, especially when doing so within a VM.
So here are some more of the european highlights!
I never new the Eiffel tower was brown...
The line to take the stairs up to the second level
I'm sure there's a story behind this...
Security.
Most pictures make it look more black...
Walking along the Seine
Lots of monumental stuff.
..yup, lots. I guess it goes with the history
The Louvre was actually closed this day.
Beach along the Seine
Notre Dame.
...inside.
The former site of the Bastille (now, a busy traffic circle)
Legoland in Berlin
Strikes me as symbolic
Glass Tent
View of Reichstag
Brandenburg Gate
One of many museums
Another museum facade
The surface artwork spreads around, out of frame
Art and Text
Babylonian Gates (there's alot at the ancient Civ. museum...)
Crusty roll, mustard, and bratwurst
Inside a B**r Hall
Deutsches Museum, Casting and Molding
Yes, that's an engine block, and yes, it looks like styrofoam
Good old IBM
"Sack mit 150.000 Transis
It is what it says.
BMW HQ 1
BMW HQ 2
Moving on through fields of windmills.
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| Monday, September 17th, 2007
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8:49 pm - Completely unsupported statements of the absolute truth... #003
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| Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
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4:24 pm - Completely unsupported statements of the absolute truth... #002
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Going out to buy a mouse would be more difficult than trying to install linux from an iso using a free but commercial virtual machine which doesn't officially support linux, and doesn't seem to like the onboard trackpoint in the guest OS.
Thank you, V.
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| Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
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7:36 pm - Completely unsupported statements of the absolute truth... #001
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| Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
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12:31 pm - London Pics...
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So here I am getting re-acquainted with Canada, hunting for phones and other miscellaneous moving related things, so in many ways it's like going back to school, except for that whole school part. The Europe trip feels like it's been done for ages, but in fact, it's barely been two weeks: a lot of stuff has happened in between. But, I'm still way behind in my pics, so without further ado, here was my second week in London:
The Globe Theatre
View across the Millenium Bridge to the Tate modern gallery
View along the Thames, with London and Tower bridges in the background
Textual and Language exhibit at the Tate (Learn to Read), which I discovered later I wasn't supposed to photograph...
Trafalgar Square...
...another north view
Monument
View from the north bank (Tate in back)
"Cities" exhibit at the tate, the plywood sculptures map population density
A building.
Canterbury
a square in Canterbury
Inside the church/cathedral (I should know the difference)
Just a house AFAIK
Not any old house
Part of one of the town's gates
Near Camden Market, along the canal
another view of the locks, which are manual
National Gallery
A bit of water near the entry way
Taking a break
More facade of the NG
Waiting to get on the Eurostar
So that was my few days in the UK (basically, just London and Canterbury for the day). I spent a good bunch of this time sorting out travel and deciding on what I'd see, so not that many pictures in all. I settled on traversing the Channel Tunnel and heading out from Paris, so I'll probably start with those photos in the next little bit.
In the mean time, (online) I'm getting caught up in tech news and thinking about all the things I need to take care of with moving and job hunting (getting phone/internet, filling out the Monster profile, updating addresses, that sort of thing). That'll keep me occupied, but I do fully plan to get all the photos up soon. Later, V.
current mood: Focused
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| Sunday, August 26th, 2007
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12:03 pm - Travel reflections...
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So I'm having a relaxed Sunday morning online. I booked my flight this morning, on the Air Canada website, for a flight Tuesday afternoon to Vancouver. The cheapest flight for these next few days was $250 pre tax, which is fine, but when I was looking last night, there was no availability at that price on the 27th, and for those on the 28th, everything between 9am and 10pm was more pricey. When I checked this morning, though, I saw a magic $250 fare at a rather good time, leaving at 5:00pm (though simultaneously flights after about 7:30am now were also more pricey). Was this just an anomaly, like a group canceled and thus the load management software opened up some cheaper seats? Or perhaps it was a less full flight, so they opened up the cheapest rate last minute to fill it up. I am almost tempted to think that tracking cookies might have noticed my frequent visits to their site, and thus offered a favourable fare to seal the deal. While that might sound borderline paranoid, it's not beyond the real of possibility, when you think of the complexity that goes into the software that prices tickets to maximize airline profits. Online sights try to target consumers with specific promotions and goods displayed, so I can't see why this isn't possible. I was having an interesting discussion two nights ago about the complexity of computer systems and how "simple" problems are solved using huge amounts of computing power. Ever increasingly, computing power pushes the limits of what's possible, but importantly, there are still important problems not yet tenable for brute force computation, so it's often hard to distinguish between these sorts of problems. All and all, I'm glad to have a flight that runs grand total $315, and that I don't need to get up at 5:00am to make.
Certainly, I've been doing a lot of travel in the past few months, making connections, and thinking about how things could be changed or improved. Early on, I was thinking about what happens when the underground becomes congested, and the similarities to network routing algorithms. I also had my beefs with the French train booking system, and it contrasts most strongly with the German system. For one, you can book reservations (required for fast trains) at the automated counters in Germany, which is great, it saved me an average of 10-15 minutes waiting in line for an agent elsewhere. Also, a nice feature is that trains have brochures outlining the stops and times in station and at departure, as well as connection times. And vitally, trains very precisely met these schedules, my not experiencing a ten minute delay ever, and generally the schedule was accurate to within TWO minutes. But this was vital, as some connections were within FOUR minutes of the arriving train! It takes a lot of on the ground knowledge and conservative timing to be able to make a large system run so smoothly. Overall, other european trains were quite timely, but not quite with such precision.
Anyhow, I cam across an article on CBC, referring to how new security checks have impacted flight scheduling. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/consumers/travel-changing-planes.html)
In an engineering parlance, these types of delays add a relatively fixed amount of delay (which is easy to compensate for) but critically effects the skew, or variation in arrival times, which is really what's killing effective transfers. The advice on the page is addressing that a reasonable worst case variability needs to be considered when planning connections, which can guarantee that you make it there, but can transform a relatively short trip into a much longer one. This is really a consequence of the "hub and spoke" system of managing flights, which works well for minimizing the number of point to point flights (good for airlines, and cheaper for us), but with more skew in arrival times, increases the chances of missing a connection. Succinctly, if you "need" 25 minutes for a connection, but there's a 20 minute variability in the arriving flights time, and another 15-20 minutes for security, plus an earlier cutoff of 20 minutes, you suddenly need an hour and 20 minutes. Making multiple connections thus multiplies these potential delay factors, which effects every downstream connection (you miss your first connection, all others are automatically missed if they were tight).
And this is the sort of optimization an individual faces, which pales compared to how airlines themselves manage their fleet and flights. To really address this, EACH of these factors which contribute to the connection time needs to be optimized, to have any net improvements in total travel time. The simple solution, build in more time between connections, is one airlines aren't too keen on, as they need to minimize the time flights spend on the ground, to remain competitive. The other option, make more standardized and intrusive security, would increase the average time for the procedures, but likely reduce the variability. Thus, it's better to have a one hour transfer with, say, 75% success, than a half hour transfer with only 50% (numbers highly fictional, and mathematically flawed, but I'm trying to illustrate a point.
At the heart of the issue, individuals are a lot more individual than we'd like to think (ie, that are accounted for in these traffic models), thus, one person missing an international flight but with a checked bag that needs to be taken off introduces a half hour delay for hundreds of other people, potentially causing missed connections. One person who has a load of contraband in their carry-on can hold up everyone in the security line an extra 5 minutes. However, trying to account for something like this in the airline's traffic management, and still maintain a reasonable amount of efficiency, (note I'm carefully avoiding defining what I mean by "efficiency", but trust that it's close to the intuitive description of it), is a very pressing problem.
Anyhow, I've prattled on about this for quite a bit, without prescribing any solutions for the problems outlined. I'll be very glib, but I'd suggest that travelers will have to shoulder more of the burden of expediting their way through what they can, and more tolerant of what they can't. That means not trying to smuggle your over-sized deodorant onto the plane, leaving extra time for connections, and reconsidering short haul flights. I'd say this is one of those, "there's no easy answer" problems.
I'm tempted to write a little review of the things I'd brought on my trip, as to whether they did what they were supposed to and ended up being useful, but that won't be until after I post Europe photos. Alright, I'm off to actually get something done, later, V.
current mood:  calm
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| Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
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11:01 pm - Quick Post, I'm exhausted...
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So I'm back in Montreal, after catching a train to Toronto this morning, and driving back. Basically, really long day, but I got talked out of driving cross country (what good is moving a car there, if it's a pile of scrap at the end?). Thus, I'm moving my stuff to TO in the interim, and I'll personally stay until the weekend to get everything wrapped up here. More updates on my last day in Europe, the return journey, and of course, Europe photos, down the road. Good night, V.
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| Saturday, August 18th, 2007
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12:11 pm - Updates, plans down the road, shopping list...
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Yeah, real enlightening subject, huh? But it's about accurate.
I spent my "off" day in Bordeaux wandering around, eating, and saw the Simpsons movie. At the end, I couldn't find a reasonable car rental or other day trip, but it wasn't bad, as I had a GREAT entrecote (steak and fries), and caught the movie at last, albeit in French. What was interesting is that the "bonus" material at the end of the film was french-ified also, including a hymn-like rendition of "Spider Cochon" (Spider Pig, in french, no less) and a parody involving the french national anthem and some references to cheese. I'll have to catch the english version at some point.
So I left Bordeaux early on the 15th, and transited through Paris to go to Geneva. They're not kidding when they say it's international, and pricey. Particularly because the swiss franc and canadian dollar are pretty close, you really notice it (one canadian buys a bit over 1.10 swiss francs).
Basically, everything was pretty much more pricey than everywhere else I've been, with only two exceptions (which I'll come to in a bit). For example, a meal at McDonalds is a good 12 francs. Ouch. Also, when you go to an ATM (which I had to, all the "good" exchange places were closed when I arrived), they dispense 100 franc notes. Yow. It's a pricey, but also obviously wealthy town. For example, most of the rental cars were Audi A4's. And there are lots of things on offer, that you don't see often/ever elsewhere. For example, they like their knives/cutlery, and I was surprised to see a whole bunch of Kyocera ceramic bladed kitchen knives among them. Basically, they're made of really hard ceramics and stay sharp a lot more, but cost in the hundreds each, so they're uncommon elsewhere. Basically, lots of stuff like that, it was pricey.
Mostly, I just did some sightseeing around town, making a trip out to CERN (unfortunately, couldn't actually go on the proper tour, no reservation), plus to the UN buildings, and Red Cross museum.
So, two things that were less than average in terms of prices were (unsurprisingly): swiss army knives, and watches. Plus, my hostel had a further 15% off list on the Victorinox knives, so I got two: one simple locking knife which I'll probably gift to my dad (I think I lost his old one a few years ago), and a nice translucent blue cybertool 34 for myself (I've coveted one for a couple of years now, and I've a friend who has one) Basically, the cybertool ends up being about $20 less than what I'd have paid back home, which is nice. There are a lot of high end watches, but I didn't want to get one for myself, as my automatic from nine years ago is still ticking along nicely, and plus I couldn't really impulsively spend a couple hundred/thousand on a watch, seeing as I'm presently unemployed. I was thinking of getting one as a gift, and spent some time looking, but at the end didn't see a "cheaper" one that I was sure would be liked, and the nice omega I saw was rather dearer. Still, I figure I'll probably be back in Europe at some point in the future, maybe with work related travel, maybe just on vacation, so there'll be future opportunities for large luxury good purchases.
After Geneva, and with much deliberation, I decided to spend my last few days in Paris, with a side trip to Epernay tomorrow. I was thinking of going to somewhere in Burgundy(Lyon,Dijon) or down on the mediterranean, but I didn't want to be rushed making it back to Paris for my train to London, plus it would be easier to get around with a car, so I'll just save it for later. I went to the Louvre again yesterday (and thus made back the value of my membership), and had a good long visit. I mostly just relaxed today, got some laundry done, and walked around a bit near here. Maybe I'll head out for another jaunt after I'm done with this.
I'm meeting up with my sister briefly in London, so I can probably drop off my London SIM card with her, before high tailing it back to North America. It looks like I'll be fairly busy, as I've got some errands to run, then a trip to Toronto to pick up the family car, clear out some of my stuff in Montreal, and drive it to Vancouver. Basically, it seems like a fairly solid 4-5 days of driving at 8-10 hours a day, which will be new for me, but then again, I've made the Toronto-Montreal trip (at 5 hours) lots of times without a sweat, so we'll see how it goes.
I figure some things I'll have to do or maybe buy are:
-A GPS (I know I don't need one, but it might make the trip easier, especially if I'm looking for a motel at night)
-Give the car a good once over, and make sure I've got some spare parts/tools
-Mobile phone, just so I'm reachable for that week before I get my old one back in Vancouver: probably just get a cheap PAYG immediately when I arrive, too bad there are no seven-elevens's in Montreal.
-Possibly find someone I know who wants to tag along for the trip
-Burn CD's for the trip (that, or listen to CBC radio, which is what happened last time)
-Get copy of DVD of convocation ceremony
-pick up/sort mail
The main thing at this point is I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing next, whether it's find work in Montreal/Vancouver/Toronto/elsewhere in Canada, really actively look for places/opportunities abroad, travel more, or what. For example, do I stay in Van, head back to MTL, or go off to TO, assuming I even stay in the country after the beginning of September? Really, I don't have any particular ties located in just one spot, so a lot of (maybe too much?) freedom. Decisions, decisions. I feel that right now, the travel has been good, it's really let me have some time to clear my head, so I could actually settle down and work solidly, which is likely the case if I did find work at home. Anyhow, I'll be looking down different avenues, and that will take shape in the coming days.
So this certainly isn't the last chapter of my travelogues here, but they are winding down, at least this iteration. I expect I'll either make less frequent updates relating to daily affairs, or conversely, actively report on internet goings on, and possibly introducing original content, say as a series of columns on the digital lifestyle. I know there's shedloads of similar stuff out there already on the interweb, but I think I can bring enough originality and most importantly, readability, to actually have something of value. So basically, if I have any readership at all, maybe they'll continue to find a reason to stop by once in a while. It's my hope that I've brought a taste of my travels to you here, and that it's been a little bit entertaining and possibly inspired travels of your own.
Until Later, V.
current mood: hopeful
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