Who is Ken Jennings?

A couple weeks ago, I went to my first ever book signing.  Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame) has a new book out ("Maphead") and he was in town to read a bit of the book and then be available for signing of said book.

My friend Kathryn agreed to accompany me to this nerdapalooza and it was kind of fun to hear part of his book and then participate in a bit of a geography trivia contest.  He threw out Smarties to whoever yelled out the correct answer first and then after a while had some of the top Smartie gatherers come up for a one-on-one-on-one faceoff with the winner getting a free book.  I got 3 packages of Smarties and was probably on par with whoever the last one he asked to come up was, but I can afford to buy a book, so not a huge loss, I guess. :) And when I finally got to the front of the book signing line, he did mention that I had done pretty well and maybe he should have had me come up.

Anyway, I am not the proud owner of a (yet unread) signed copy of Maphead by Ken Jennings.

It feels like he's looking right at me!

with Ken

Old Book, New Book #25: Mythical Man-Month -> Catching Fire

I read most of "The Mythical Man-Month" during my flights to and from Hawaii, and then took my time getting around to finishing it after I got home from the trip. Despite most of the book being written in 1975 (this was the 20th anniversary edition that also included essays from 1986 and 1995), it definitely had some insightful principles for managing large software development projects.

The book's namesake premise is that the idea that the amount of work to be done in a software project can be measured simply in "Man-Months", i.e. the amount of work that one man does in a month. And that a project that can be done by 5 men (or women) in 10 months (50 Man-Months) could be done equally by 10 men (or...who are we kidding, like you could find 10 woman software developers) in 5 months. Not so! says the author. Adding more people to a software project requires extra work to split the work up between developers, and more work to keep more people in communication regarding the project. This problem is exacerbated when trying to add more people to a project that has fallen behind schedule. The author states a theory that "Adding more people to a late project makes it even later."

This might be the first book I've ever read on the topic of software engineering that wasn't a textbook I was reading for a class (and actually this book was actually recommended as supplemental reading for a class I took). I found a couple of the author's thoughts on what makes a programmer a programmer to be interesting. Early on he says one of the challenges of software development is the requirement of perfection. Compilers don't intuit things. Corner cases have to be addressed. In computer programming, the devil truly is in the details and a successful program has to be built all the way in order to be robust and reliable. So programmers tend to be people who are perfectionists and who can deal with that requirement for perfection and completeness.

In a later section, he speaks of asking programmers "Where is next November?" and goes on to say that most programmers are very spatial thinkers and they generally have spatial interpretations of time. That certainly struck a chord with me, given my own mental maps of numbers of calendars.

Anyway, it was an interesting read and gave me some things to think about in my own work in the large-scale complex software development environment there.

Having finished off a book of nerdy essays, I've moved back to lighter fare, borrowing "Catching Fire", the 2nd book in the Hunger Games series from a friend. I enjoyed the first one and it was a quick read, so I'm hoping for more of the same in the 2nd installment.

The Big Digital acquires a new HQ

And by Big Digital, I mean the blog, not me. And by new HQ, I mean a new desktop PC to replace my current home machine.

After a long time of thinking about it and watching deals come and go, last night I finally decided to purchase a new computer. I've had my current desktop for just over 5 years and it's served me well, but I was starting to run low on hard drive space, and coveting the fancy new widescreen monitors that I was starting to see frequently. So I figured I might as well just spend a little extra and get a brand new machine. It's a Dell (XPS 7100), because I've had very few problems with the other Dells I've had (2 desktops and a laptop, oh and my work laptop), and I'm still not feeling like I want to be a Mac. Maybe if I wanted to edit graphics and pay twice as much. Oh, and because I wanted to be able to right-click things. :) However, even this new Dell will bring with it some new ground. It's coming with Windows 7. After a solid 10 years with XP, I'm not even sure how excited I am about a new OS. In all the news about it, I've yet to figure out why I needed to upgrade my OS. Guess we'll see. Hopefully the learning curve isn't too steep and it's not too hard to find compatible software.

In any case, I also thought it was interesting when I realized that I've had my old computer since right around the time I started this blog. Probably got it just before. Which means I've had that computer, and this blog, for quite a while.

Also, this morning, for a few minutes, I drove behind a car with New Mexico license plates, but which had an "801" sticker in the back window. I thought it was funny that someone who wasn't even from around here, wanted to represent for the 801. I tried to picture with my phone, but its zoom functionality is pretty limited.

Why having a blog is kind of cool sometimes

Because sometimes you write something that results in your birthday being the #1 Google result when people search for "great things in history" (But without the quotes).

Some Things Never Change

One of my favorite Computer Science professors would bring his laptop to class and actually write code during lectures, which I found to be immensely helpful just to see how the process worked down to that level of detail. (If you aren't a programmer, don't quit reading yet, I promise this isn't just about CS stuff.) One time after compiling some code successfully (basically, the syntax of his code was all correct and he was able to turn it into an actual program that could be run) he said, "No matter how long I've been a programmer, it still always feels good to see your code compile with 0 errors". So true.

Anyway, I bring up that story because I got a date last night for our upcoming stake dance this Friday. And no matter how long I've been single, getting a date still feels pretty awkward. And it still feels good when a girl says yes.

And yes, I've written about this before, so there's another testament that some things really never change. :)

Word Nerd!

Over Christmas break we had fun calling my sister "Bird Nerd" because of her new-found love for bird-watching and her new job as a biology TA for a professor who teaches a Gen Ed Biology course that, rather than teach about Biology, only teaches about birds, and requires students to go out and try to find as many local species of birds as they can.

Why do I bring this up? Just for fun, mostly, but also as an introduction to a story about my own nerdiness. When I was a kid, I had cereal most mornings for breakfast. And while I ate my cereal, I used to entertain myself by counting the number of times that certain letters appeared in the text on the box. Usually I would just do the vowels, but occasionally I'd also branch out and count some of the more prevalent consonants. Some sides of the box obviously were more word-rich environments. The front usually doesn't (didn't? I hardly ever eat cereal any more) have a lot of writing, and when it does it's usually large font, low word count. The side with the nutrition information was always a good source of words, in both the count of essential vitamins and minerals (niacin, potassium, etc.) as well as in the list of ingredients (enriched wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc.)

Obviously the vowels were generally more common than the consonants, although 's' sometimes could be close to the big boys. Of the vowels, 'e' was by far the most common. Because I'm sure you were dying to know. Anyone else spend their breakfast hours counting vowels on their cereal boxes? No? Anyone?

Only 9 Years? I thought Google invented the Internet

Today is Google's 9th birthday. Personally, I guess I've only been Googling things for about 6 years, but it really seems like Google is a mile marker for the Internet. Meaning the advent of Google seems to have happened along with the Internet starting to look a lot better. Fewer frames, more good design.

Anyway, who could have guessed that 9 years later Google would be providing me with free email and blogging and RSS feed reading, along with permanently living in a search box in my browser window. Now if only they could get a few more modules on iGoogle, I might be able to ditch Yahoo! completely.