The way I (sometimes) *wish* I worked

Matt Mullenweg, creator of the WordPress blogging platform, was recently featured in Inc. magazine's "The Way I Work" column... the compartmentalization he has set up between the different aspects of his work (and life) are pretty interesting. I'm not sure just anyone could achieve it, let alone command the freedom to even try half the things Mullenweg's done, but he has some insightful solutions.

Also -- one of the most interesting-looking websites I've seen in a long time. So many sites today are (rightly) all about the content, and re-use the same tired old formats as the wrapper. Mullenweg has put a really individual stamp on his envelope here!

A few things I gleaned from his post, paraphrased and/or recontextualized:

• Real-time micro-blogging "conversation" tools (like Google's Wave, and WordPress' P2) may be the future of collaboration. OK, Wave has a lot more features built into it, but the basic ideas are pretty similar.
  
• If you're crazy-busy and still want to be productive with the things you care about, offload the administrivia and get a personal assistant (or maybe two.)
  
• If you need a lot of sleep to be creative/productive, arrange things to acommodate it.
  
• One way to manage the cost of context-switching is to batch related tasks into larger time blocks (possibly a whole day.)

Fast Bikes

Riding home from work the other night, I tried to chase down someone I spotted a block ahead of me (not maliciously; it's useful to have a "rabbit" to get the heart rate up a bit!)

I wasn't making any progress, though.

Then I realized:

Electric bike.

Making Trees

I've been making trees this morning.

Some years ago, I bought an intriguing book: The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants, by Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer. I occasionally pick it up and read pieces, and always find it fascinating. The book does a great job describing the concept of L-systems, named for the second author, in which a few very simple rules can generate incredibly complex patterns. Studying how plants grow, the authors realized that the rules governing plant growth can be approximated with algorithms, producing very realistic-looking results.

I recently came across a piece of software that reminded me of the book, and led me back to re-examine it. Context Free Art allows you to write little recursive programs that output graphics, suitable for implementing some of the algorithms described in the book. (You can make all sorts of amazingly beautiful things with Context Free, plant-like things being but one example.)

Much to my delight, I found the Algorithmic Botany website on which the book is now available electronically!

There turn out to be several other programs that try to render L-systems and their kin. I found a few of them still lurking around on the web, but the Unix versions are old enough that getting them to compile on my Mac looks to be a chore and a half; I found a Java applet that is buggy, but works for the most part and I can still compile it. I'd most like to play with fractint -- I remember it fondly from the DOS days, and it turns out that someone put L-system interpretation into it -- but the last port to the Mac was for OS 9. I may have to revisit this, and see if I can get it to run under DOSBox... If so, I'll post the outcome here.

Fighting with FTP

Some things should just be easier than they are...

Anna has a bunch of GigaPan images she created, and wants to get them to the museum to be printed out giganto-size for the upcoming open house. Well, GigaPans are aptly named -- each one is 2-3GB in size! Putting 'em on a flash drive just isn't practical; only a couple will fit on a DVD; and I didn't have an extra USB hard drive ready to go.

No problem, I thought -- my nifty new network attached storage (NAS) has a FTP server built in to it! I can just fire that up, and we'll be off to the races. Yeah, right.

Step 1: turn on FTP server. This part *was* easy!

Step 2: check that it works. OK, slightly more complicated: the NAS sits on my local network, so the router has to be configured to direct incoming FTP requests to the NAS. Testing that it works means connecting to a remote server, then trying to connect back from there. No big deal, except it doesn't work -- until, after 30 min, it does. Grrr.

Step 3: put the gigapan files on the server. The files are on Anna's work laptop, which has wireless access -- yeah, it will take all night to transfer the files because I still only have 802.11b, but there's time. Oops, forgot we're dealing with a *windows* laptop here... it drops the connection after the 4th file. Doh! Yes, I should have plugged it in to the network, but all the ports on my switch are being used and this just seemed... easier.

Step 3a: find a HD to get the files off the laptop: Three of three that I have at home are formatted for Mac... only the third one has contents disposable enough to warrant re-formatting. But at least with the files copied off onto the HD, if this little FTP experiment fails utterly, there's a reasonable Plan B.

Step 3b: copy files from HD onto NAS: should be straightforward, but while doing this I notice that web browsers are having a hard time connecting to the FTP server. Much pondering and testing ensues... Using a browser (Firefox, Safari, Explorer) works fine on the internal network, but hangs ungracefully if the connection is from the outside. Regular 'ol FTP clients work fine, regardless. A clue is that Lynx (a text-only browser) works where the others fail.

Step 4: What is wrong with the browsers?!?! A digression, but it was a real stumper. Turns out all the failing browsers prefer "passive" FTP, which appears to be problematic in my particular configuration of routers and devices and FTP server. Explorer can be made to default to "active" FTP connections, but Firefox is just stuck unless a plug-in is installed. At least the problem is known/understood (if not readily fixable) so off to the next step...

Step 5: Write & test foolproof instructions for Windows command-line ftp. Annoying, but this just reinforces the superiority of the command line, as far as I'm concerned. I hope the folks on the other end are successful in retrieving the files!

This whole thing really should have taken 30min, tops... instead, I bet it took 6 hours -- 4 last night, and a couple more this morning -- before it was all done.

Yay, Me!

Woo hoo, I got the first, and right, answer to Cyclelicious' inaugural Tuesday Transit Quiz!

Bicycle Bumper Stickers

If bikes had bumpers on which to stick things, I would plaster mine with some of the following phrases, inspired by innumerable micro-moments I've experienced while commuting back and forth to work. The sub-title to this could be "Retorts to the (mostly unsaid) thoughts of car-drivers, as implied by their driving and/or emotive glares from behind the windshield."

1) "Thanks, but I *do* own a car; I choose to bike instead."
2) "I sure hope you weren't planning to apply for a job from me (yes, I'm hiring!)"
3) "Why no, I do not believe your [penis|breasts] appear larger when you [insert sophomoric car-driving action here]."
4) "Yes, thanks, I do like to think I own the road (at least the tiny piece I'm occupying, over here on the edge of it.)"
5) "I'm sorry, I didn't notice that your [Hummer|Porsche|BMW|PoS] is secretly an [emergency vehicle|tank|starship|jet fighter]."
6) "So exactly what part of my six blinking lights, bright yellow vest, and innumerable reflectors did you not see?"

Feel free to tack "you selfish pork-face" on the end of any of these!

Bicycle Culture Wars

Some interesting intersections of life and commentary lately:

- Last week, whilst on a ride with Randy and Mike, we stopped for coffee in Boulder Creek, charming little hamlet in the Santa Cruz mountains. A fellow stopped by and asked if we rode on the local 2-lane road (the only one that goes through Boulder Creek) and then launched into an unprompted diatribe about how cyclists didn't belong on the road, as they got in his way and slowed him down.

- Later in the week I came across this article discussing the issues of how bike riders are perceived by different layers of the social strata; the working hypothesis being that spandex-clad roadies are thought of by their antagonists as frivolous road-cluttering impediments to those who work for a living, who ditched bikes as a mode of transportation as soon as they could afford to do so... Although this doesn't account for the behavior of the selfish pork-faces driving expensive SUVs around here, the article frames the issues of class and cycling nicely, and is a good starting point for further thought and discussion.

- And finally, John Murphy just posted his own insights on why being an apologist for other cyclists' poor behavior is a futile disservice to the community, in that it legitimizes the opinion that riding a bike (well or poorly) is somehow an abnormal fringe activity.

But I really, really liked how Murph summed it all up:

My tactic with anti-bike people is to put them on the defensive with the absurd. "These cyclists get in the way of traffic". Answer? "Well, do you run them over?". "No". "Why not? They got in your way, get them out of your way - run them over". 75% of the time the angry cretin starts to shift and look very uncomfortable, this was not the fight they were trying to pick.

So, what to make of all this?

Well, I try my best to ride carefully and responsibly, and not do anything to tick off the car drivers... and while I continue to be distressed on an all-too-regular basis by drivers who seem out to get me, I've decided that I'm going to try harder not to react to them. It's the same logic as dealing with bullies: react, and it only reinforces their bad behavior. Give that driver the finger after they willfully cut you off, and they'll only feel legitimized in having done it; arguing with them at the stoplight about the vehicle code won't convert them.