Software Scramble

Ever played scramble? In case you haven't... it's a different way to play golf as a "team". Everyone tees off and then you go from the best ball, and repeat the process. It's a lot more fun for people (like me) who aren't that good, because as a group you always make good progress toward the hole. It also keeps the people playing the hole behind you from giving you the deriding "can we play through?" because you're taking too long.

Okay, it's time to let you know a dirty little secret of my industry (that would be computer software). You're probably already aware of this; but software, in general, really sucks. If you disagree, you might just in denial. Because computer nerds are smart, right? They do stuff the rest of us couldn't even dream about doing. They're all virtuosos, or else they wouldn't be professional programmers, right? Unfortunately, you're up in the night.

The software industry is composed of perhaps slightly above-average folks who think they're all way above average, largely because they're put on this pedestal. The programming skill pecking order in most teams of programmers is well-established. This team is probably managed by average or slightly-below average business folks that don't want to know what goes into the software or how it works, they just want it released and making money.

What does this all have to do with golf? Well, if I were managing 18 golfers... the easiest way to record a quick game of golf would be to put all of them out on the course and have them play one hole of golf, come back, add up the scores, and call it done. Some of the better golfers would have high scores, less capable player's scores would be lower (we'd fire them of course, and hire new, unknown golfers to see if they were any better). This is the unenlightened way in which the software industry is currently being managed.

The more enlightened "agile" software development techniques are beginning to gain a foothold, but the "farm out the work to the individual workers" approach is alive and well in the tradition of profiting from offshore sweatshop labor. It's less "messy" to manage... less communication required, more structured oversight, less effort. What if you had more than 1 golf course to play, or less golfers... how would you manage it? (Maybe hire cheaper golfers? BTW, I work for free). Pieces of software developed in such isolation often don't work together very well, ironically mirroring the fact that the developers didn't either.

One of the most pleasurable aspects of Scramble is that good golfers get to show off a little and less experienced golfers get to learn while everyone benefits. It would be hard for any of the group of golfers to beat the collective score. This is what we need... software with quality that exceeds what any single engineer can produce, rather than staring at error messages when we execute code written by "the weakest link".

The next time you're pounding your keyboard and expletives issue forth the praises of some programmer that put that error in there, just remember nobody gets blamed for having a bad day or a bad hit when you play Scramble.

Insist upon software developed with agile methods, for your own sanity.

Technology: Keep it Together

Admit it. You computer desk looks like this. Wires everywhere, CD and DVD media spread about... some valuable, some not. And the USB devices. You have cameras, and mp3 players, and drives, and "peripherals"... dongles, chargers, adapters, converters, docks, modules, components, batteries, cradles... aaahahahhahhhh! And then there's the software. "What happened the license key?" is among the most pitiful of a computer user's cries (second only to "I didn't have a baaaaaaackuuuuup!")

Three words shall be your guide to the technology age: "Keep it together". Literally and figuratively. It sounds overly simplistic for the complex age we live in, but it's your only hope for survival in the future. As a software developer, I sometimes use affinity diagrams to help us group functionality or user behaviors. This is where you group like things together and assign them a category. Sometimes there are sub-groups within these groups. Do this with your techno-stuff. Seriously. You'll thank me later.

A very real example of why you want to do this is the story behind the original video recordings of the NASA moon landing. In this case, some ultra-smart NASA engineers developed a very specialized high-tech video camera and recording system (which quickly became obsolete). They used it to broadcast live to the world this historic moment, and then quickly forgot about it in their rush to get on with the space exploration business. Because the tape recordings and the machine which could read them weren't kept together, the world is relegated to watch short clips of very grainy footage of a world-changing event, witnessed live by and estimated a half a billion people.

Finally, as this example illustrates, the "keep it together" rule becomes increasingly important as time passes. Generations of computers change. Hardware changes, operating system changes, digital media changes can all render your technology unusable. You can keep migrating your important information to new media, but at some point programs and hardware which used to work just fine stop working. Be sure to include generations of working technology as you make your groups of stuff, if you intend on keeping it around.

Someday, I'm hoping to dig down into my basement and find my old Apple II+ and fire it up. And when I do, I'll find all the manuals, cables, and floppy (yes, truly "floppy") disks all in the same box. Then I'll fire it up, marvel at the green screen of the monitor ///, take a picture and sell it on eBay for thousands of bucks.

By the way... if all this fails, and you are unable to track down some very crucial piece of technology always remember to check under your seat.

Saved by the Sun

For a while now, I've wanted to blog about the solar electric system I use to power my garden implements (mower, string trimmer, etc.) but I'll leave the details of that for another day. Today, however, the Sun started my car. Well, not personally, of course... You see, the Sun's a very busy fellow, what with all the fusion, and the sunspots, and the massive flares of plasma... there's a lot to be done.

Last night, my son was digging around in my car looking for Master Chief's head. Who is Master Chief, and why is his head in my car? Well, suffice to say that yesterday I bought the Halo 3 Legendary Edition videogame. I'd love to go into those details as well, but I'll leave it for... you guessed it... another day. So, as my son was digging around looking for this most cool of objects... he managed to turn on every interior light in the car, and leave them on.

Cars these days are smart, they dim the interior lights when not in use, and turn them off if left on for long periods. (I guess that's one of the handy things to which engineers have been applying themselves rather than making cars more fuel-efficient.) But I've got one of those old-fashioned stoopid cars without such nifty features, and my battery was quite dead.

Fortunately, the device I use to power my lawn implements can also jump-start a car; something it did with great efficacy this morning. Even more excellent is the fact that I thew this device into my car, so that should it fail to start at work, I don't have to go begging strangers to, er... jump me. I suppose if you can't afford to drive a car which runs on the power of the sun (yet), at least starting your car with solar power is some kind of a beginning to that end. Ironically, when I got to work this morning, a co-worker sent me an article describing a new generation of cheaper, more efficient solar panels.

Thanks for the boost, Mr. Sun!

P.S.: Oh, and I forgive you your temperamental flare-ups and occasional spotty blemish.

Inimitable Virtuosity

Bah nah bah nah bah baaaaahhhh na bah nah... (repeat). That's the intro to the Rush song "Limelight", performed by the inimitable virtuoso Alex Lifeson. My heartfelt yet somehow inept attempts to faithfully reproduce this simple refrain are battling two great vocabulary words:

in·im·i·ta·ble /ɪˈnɪmɪtəbəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation(i-nim-i-tuh-buhl)

1. incapable of being imitated or copied; surpassing imitation; matchless.

and

vir·tu·os·i·ty (vûr'chōō-ŏs'ĭ-tē)

1. The technical skill, fluency, or style exhibited by a virtuoso or a composition.
2. An appreciation for or interest in fine objects of art.

As it turns out, even rock music is about more than just reproducing the notes on a distorted electric guitar. Subtleties in the transitions between notes, sustains, and phrasing are everything. I must have played this intro 100 times or more over the weekend, yet it still sounds pretty much like total crap. My timing is slightly off, I'm accidentally picking strings I should leave muted and my left-hand fingering is far from "clean" on the transitions.

In my second post to this blog (where I entitled it "Jeff's Disparate Stuff") I mentioned I'm a "hack of all trades, master of none". That's why I'm so in awe of such inimitable virtuosos. Myself, I live by the credo: "If you can't do something well, at least learn to enjoy doing it poorly". Banahblahblahblahnaahhblahhabnahhblahhhhh! That rocked!

Incredible-y Violent

Is it just my imagination, or does Team Fortress 2 have a lot of the look-and-feel of a certain very popular superhero flick developed by Pixar? I was playing the beta version this weekend (over a 56k modem, no less!) and noticed that the cartoon-like appearance really did help ease any guilt about the massive bloodletting I was inflicting.

Besides allowing us a sneak peak at this game, another nice thing the folks at Valve have done with The Orange Box is allow those of us who are paying and the Half-Life 2 tax by continuing episodes One and Two to "gift" the parts of the Orange Box we don't need to other users.

This is marketing genius, really. I feel good, because I get to play 3 new games and give a gift. The recipient feels good because he gets two new games for free. And, Valve feels good because they've just had someone pay to market their product by word-of-mouth to other potential games. Brilliant! It's a win-win all around!

And the timing... well, tomorrow is the big day for the much-anticipated Halo 3 release... impeccable! Steal some thunder! The taunting antics alone are worth the price of Team Fortress 2, but the precedent-setting graphics and orange box value seal the deal, really. I suppose playing over a 56k modem is just a bonus they threw in for Luddites like me.

Rails to Trails

Besides being the name of a great organization that preserves railroad right-of-ways for bike paths, this phrase is apt to describe my recent experiences with lightweight web development frameworks for the Ruby programming language. The bike trail blog entry will have to wait for another day.

I'm doing some tools software developers at my work will be using these days, and I've been trying various web application frameworks to see which meets my needs the best.

I started with Ruby on Rails (that would be the "rails" part). I'm pretty familiar with that tool already, having hosted UtahFEAT.org using it for a couple of years now. It does a great job of making ORM (object-relational mapping) easy, so that you can use object-oriented programming methods on data in a relational database. And it does it very well IF you are able to control the schema and follow certain very stringent conventions. For this project, that was not really an option, and I wanted something more simple anyway.

I then packed up my things and went Camping. Camping is a "microframework", smaller and more lightweight than Rails (which is fairly lightweight already... compared to Java's J2EE, for example). Camping springs from the mind of the venerable and hilariously idiosyncratic Why the Lucky Stiff. It's built around ActiveRecord (the ORM discussed earlier, from Rails) and (by default) SQLite. Not a bad microframework, a nice alternative to Rails. I didn't want ORM, and I did want *.rhtml files (like .jsp's in Java). In the end, I found Camping nice, but not a great fit for what I wanted. Plus it was, well... idiosyncratic.

What's left then? Blaze my own trail, I suppose. I thought I had hit a brick wall until I experimented more with WeBRICK and the erb library... waka, waka. If you're used to Java servlets and .jsp pages in J2EE, this is probably the least-shocking and simplest way to make a web application in Ruby. You can write an MVC (model-view-controller) application on what I'm calling "TRails" ("Trivial" Rails?) in just a few lines of code, with or without a database.

Of course, while I was figuring this all out and banging my head over Linux database package dependencies, my co-worker implemented it very simply with .jsp's. Ay, caramba! To quote a RUSH song (for the second day in a row): "the point of a journey is not to arrive", but to enjoy the "long and winding road" (okay, that's the Beatles).

Autism: The Musical

Yep, that's the title. Might not sound too appealing, but I have a new-found respect for the folks who make HBO documentaries. Somehow, they managed to squeeze most of the archetypal challenges and feelings parents of children with autism have into a couple of hours.

Of these, "What will my child do when I'm gone?" is perhaps the most poignant . "Will anyone ever care about him/her?" is a close second... followed by "Does he/she have a chance at a 'normal" life? A 'happy' life? A 'productive' life?"

These ponderous questions play out against the backdrop of "The Miracle Project", where a very ambitious gal attempts to create a musical written and performed by kids with autism. I liken the difficulty of this task to performing the works of Shakespeare using only stray cats from the neighborhood. And, indeed, there are many trials, meltdowns, fits, confrontations, and an occasional drop of the "f-bomb". New friends are found and old companions lost in the course of events.

For those familiar with these emotions, it will evoke tears, squirming in your seat, belly laughs, and (at least in our screening) the occasional vocal outburst. I'm fairly certain that even for the uninitiated, it would be both educational and entertaining, and probably a lot less painful.

It turns out that one of the things our family discovered was taken to the next level in this film. There is an undeniable link between actors and autism. Actors are unafraid to play out the most outrageous behavior for our entertainment or enlightenment.

All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage

Let's be an appreciative audience.

Bright Idea Lacks Lumens

Compact Fluorescent (CF) light bulbs are a great way to save a lot of electricity. You can produce about the same amount of light with 1/4 or less energy, and they last longer, too.

They're not without drawbacks, however. As the parent of a child with a developmental disability, I'm not exactly stoked about the fact that the tubes in CV bulbs contain mostly toxic mercury vapor, which should be disposed of properly. Also, the small, cheap "ballasts" (electrical coils) which bump up the voltage frequently go bad... I've had a few of mine overheat and burn out. Finally, they don't always fit nicely where regular bulbs fit, they can take a second or two to start up, and they can't be dimmed, they're strictly on/off.

Now Light Emitting Diodes (LED's), on the other hand seem to be the perfect light source. Cool, producing almost no heat. The energy savings over even the most efficient CF lights is significant (they consume only a few watts, usually 1-5). They last a really, really long time... like almost indefinitely... without "burning out". They can be dimmed, and are physically very small. The only down side I could see (until recently) was that they are harder to find, and more expensive to buy than other light bulbs. So, about a year ago, I ordered a variety of LED "bulbs" (which, in most cases are an array of standard, small LED's connected to a "rectifier" circuit that converts your 120 volt house current to a small DC voltage to drive the light elements.) More than half of them are dead, and I'm currently only using a couple of the remaining bulbs. In short, they had issues:

ISSUE #1 (electronics): For some reason, various of these early models of LED bulbs contained extremely cheap electronics. This was especially the case for bulbs which looked like the picture above. I paid around $5.00-$10.00 for each bulb, and most of them died within a week. I'm pretty sure the LED's didn't "burn out" (all the LED's went out at once) but rather, the rectifier electronics (transistors, capacitors, etc.) went bad.

ISSUE #2 (brightness): The bulbs I purchased consumed between 1-5 watts, of course, the bigger the bulb, the more they cost. The 1 watt bulbs (like the one above) produce a quantity of light that is unacceptable for any application except perhaps a desk lamp or night light. I use one of these in my hallway, and leave it on all night... but it barely provides enough light to prevent stumbling over yourself on the way to the bathroom. Something closer to 5 watts produces light levels more in line with a standard bulb.

ISSUE #3 (color): Standard "white" LED's usually have a bluish tint, which lends an extremely "cool" quality to the light they produce. Somewhat more expensive LED's change the frequency of the light to a more "warm" shade, more like a standard light bulb, and produce a much more pleasing "natural" looking light, in my opinion.

ISSUE #4 (focus): Most light bulbs are designed to diffuse and radiate light in all directions, in basically a 360-degree sphere surrounding the bulb (minus the small part you screw into a receptacle). Because LEDs emit light from a surface, the best they can do is create a 180-degree hemisphere of light. Depending on the orientation of your light fixture, this means that a bulb with a single, large LED designed to emit light from the "top" of the bulb will shoot up and the ceiling, down at the floor, or sideways at a wall, where it will create a bright spot and not diffuse very well to light an entire room. Some LED bulbs (unlike the one above) solve this by orienting smaller LED's in all directions, so you have to consider the fixture when buying LED bulbs.

ISSUE #5(availability): I have yet to see LED bulbs appear in my local drug store or grocery store, but I eagerly anticipate that day will come. For now, we're relegated to searching online amongst the automobile "bling" lights, hobby project LEDs and other blinky-blinky lights to find something that will screw into a standard light socket. Because of their odd variety and scarcity, expect to pay top dollar (plus shipping!) until the market becomes more comoditized.


My conclusion: We're not quite there yet with the LED light bulb. I should mention I'm very pleased with the few LED lights I have that I could find that are working, bright enough and diffuse enough, and have a pleasing color. They were just a small percentage of those I started with. Learn from my mistakes... but by all means, venture out to the cutting edge of efficient lighting and try a couple.

The Apologists of Cool

It's hard to be cool being from Utah. We've got that rep... you know the one... weird, cultish religious zealots with many wives that have suffered the effects of many years of in-breeding. A rep that's not helped by things like television dramas about and the current very real public trial of weird, cultish religious zealots with many wives who have suffered the effects of many years of in-breeding.

Case in point: I ordered a multi-effect electric guitar pedal I've been really enjoying. Comparing features online, the DigiTech RP80 seemed to have about the best bang for the buck in this department. It turns out the online music store I ordered from and the company which designed the pedal are both in Utah. Emblazoned upon the front of the box it came in was the apologist claim, "Designed by serious guitarists hiding in the rock-and-roll underground of Salt Lake City".

Isn't a major metropolis of over a million people entitled to it's own rock-n-roll music? I'll bet you didn't know Brandon Flowers (of the Killers, a decidedly cool band) grew up in Nephi, Utah... and he also has ties to the LDS community in Las Vegas, Nevada (as do I). The fact is, there are some seriously good musicians here, not just Donnie and Marie.

And that's not all... when I was in High School in the 80's, we were on the cusp of what was the soon-to-be cool sport of snowboarding. My classmates would hike up backcountry slopes because they weren't allowed on ski resort hills (yet). For some reason, the sport I played a part in pioneering (tubbing) never quite caught on, though.

In large part because of the global concerns of the LDS church here, Utah has a multicultural awareness and influence that belies its landlocked geography. The fact that many of our residents speak diverse languages was a key factor in the hosing of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics (besides having the "Greatest Snow on Earth").

The University of Utah (my alma mater) was one of the first nodes on the internet. I was there when the first internet worm took down nearly every computer the network (that will never happen again -- how cool is that!) Today, all that is cool on the internet comes from Google... and Google is led by Eric Schmidt, who cut his CEO chops at Novell (in Utah). If you're more of a couch potato than a web surfer, you can thank Philo T. Farnsworth, a Utahn, for the (sometimes cool) television you watch every night.

If you've ever seen the stars show up at the Sundance Film Festival, it's obvious that cool people aren't visiting Cannes exclusively these days. When the wild child gals have had too much protracted-adolescece fun in L.A., they come here to dry out, sober up, and remember what life is all about. For extreme and outdoor sports, places like Moab are a mecca of the coolest in risk-taking behavior. Shameless plug: When you're there, stay with Tim at the Sleep In, and tell 'em Jeff sent ya!

I'm done apologizing for being a little different. I think different is cool, and this is a cool place to be.

0.3%

According to a show on the Science Channel I was watching this weekend, 0.3% is about how much of gasoline's chemical potential energy goes into moving your (or a passenger's) body in the typical automobile. The remainder, of course, is lost to pushing air, moving a few tons of metal, friction and heat in the engine, tires, a/c, etc.

I found myself the victim of an obligatory science experiment this morning. Pam noticed one of the tires on our Dodge Durango was low... Must be a slow leak, I reasoned. Being a bicycle enthusiast,I have a couple of standard bicycle pumps around, but I've never invested in an air compressor. Recently, the tire on my Honda Civic Hybrid was low, and I topped it off with the bike pump... it took a while... but it worked.

So, I gave it a shot with the SUV. Oye.. my achin' back! It turns out if takes a lot of spirited effort to inflate an SUV tire with your standard bicycle pump. The following table summarizes my efforts to inflate various vehicle tires I own:

Vehicle	Weight	Tire PSI	Pump Strokes
Road bike	15-20 lbs.	120	2-5
Mountain Bike	20-30 lbs.	65	10-12
1Kw Electric Scooter	85 lbs.	35	15-20
Passenger Car	2749lbs.	32	~200
SUV	4568 lbs.	31	~600

From the table above, 2/600 pump strokes = 0.3%! Similarly, I've heard calculations of casual human power on a bike being around 1/3 horsepower. Your typical small compact car has just over 100 HP. That's about 0.3%!

Gasoline-powered automobiles have been cruising down the road for about 100 years now. The original Model-T got about 25 MPG. The average car today gets about 25 MPG. You'd think with all the technical advances we've made in the last 100 years, the efficiency of our autos would have improved more dramatically, but I think I finally understand the problem.

You see, with a few notable exceptions, automotive engineers must have been confused... and thought they could only improve by 0.3% instead of 99.7%, so they just gave up. Simple mistake, really... I suppose we could just take matters into our own hands and make our lives 99.7% easier by riding bicycles.

Change is in the Air

Last night, my friend Zhon and I were looking for a place to do some work on a presentation he and Kay were preparing for. Unexpectedly, we ended up working at my local grocery store bistro department, because they had free WiFi access. This got me thinking about infrastructure.

Infrastructure is expensive. We in the U.S. frequently forget this. I lived in the Dominican Republic for a couple of years from 1988-1990. In one apartment, we had been waiting for a regular analog phone line for over a year, when our next-door neighbor (who had a phone) told us to give it up. Their local switch was "maxed out", and the struggling-not-to-be-third-world utility company couldn't add any more... so we had to wait until someone got rid of theirs, which... because it took a long time to get a new one... wasn't going to happen. (Because people kept the phone line going when they moved houses, knowing it would be impossible to get a new one).

Similarly, in my current home, I am unable to get high-speed DSL service for a slightly different reason (the local telephone company switch... and the distance to it). This has led me to pursue other options. And thankfully, there are other options. Okay... here's a quick quiz. Which signal transmission is cheaper: Copper wire, optical fibre, or ether? No, not "either".... "ether". Ether is nothing. Literally... nothing. And nothing is free (my momma tol' me so). You can't beat using nothing for free to get the job done.

These days, the advent of cell phones has dramatically reduced the cost of creating infrastructure (although the prices charged by wireless companies don't necessarily reflect that fact). The use of cell phones is exploding in developing countries... here in the US portable phones and gadgets (I'm thinking iPhone here) offer data and voice services with increasing speed, variety and ease-of-use. There's even a wireless solution to my "I can't get DSL" problem now. (7 Mbps over the air! Wahoo!)

If you follow the tech news, you'll be aware that the rights to use the 700 MHz frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum are about to be auctioned off by the FCC to the highest bidder, and that regardless of who wins, "open access" rules apply: Meaning, anyone is supposed to be able to connect their device (regardless of vendor) to the network. Google and some other unusual tech players are in the running to own this spectrum. What does it mean?

I think it means things are about to change. I think in a few years you won't think about who your phone company is, or your long distance company, or your cable company, or your ISP. Take a moment to dream about buying any mobile phone you want, getting any video channel lineup you want, and choosing any combination of providers of services on "the net"... and then slap yourself back to reality, because we're not there yet, pal.

Drew's Alien Bodyguard

'Nuf said...

Spam, spam, spam...

Is it possible to have too many rude gestures in a play? I didn't think it possible. But then again, the Pythons are famous for exceeding our comedic expectations. Spamalot did not disappoint. Just a warning: Homosexual french Jews take note... you may be offended! Seriously, kudos to Jen (my sister) for hooking me up with a ticket.

The task before them was formidable: Create a broadway musical into which the storyline and one-liners memorized by a generation of geeky moviegoers (that would include me) must be woven.

If you go, expect every theatrical trick to be thrown at you... flying on wires, pyrotechnics, puppetry, projection, audience participation... the list goes on and on. The non sequitur surprises are frequent, and the music is artfully hysterical. I think I might have to see it again. I'm fairly certain I missed some of the high-density humor. It's a tribute worthy of a... er... king!

(Not So) Rad Rails

I hate to be disparaging about any product or technology... But, dang it! Why can't someone make a decent Ruby on Rails Integrated Development Environment (IDE)?

I love rails... I really like the "convention over configuration" and ruthless ethos of simplicity that surround the community. Pack light, move fast... be lazy (do only what you have to, and do it quickly so you can get on with life). My favorite agile software development "continuous integration" tool (CruiseControl.rb) is written on the Rails framework. The non-profit website I'm webmaster for (UtahFEAT.org) is on Rails. The scaffolding CRUD generators get you up and running quickly.

I recently tried the RadRails IDE, thinking that it would be the "bees knees"... but honestly, not being an Eclipse fan or user... I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't tell it had any Ruby support at all. I've even used the RDT plugin (which was okay) to greater effect. All I could see was what looked like a JavaScript IDE. The FreeRIDE IDE isn't too bad, either... but has no specific Rails support.

What the world needs now... is a Rails IDE that knows rhtml, knows the Ruby libraries, knows how to generate scaffolding. But most of all, can I please just get up and running quickly with a new project that I can build and deploy in approximately the same amount of time it takes me to do it with the command line, gvim, and FTP?

Perhaps to a greater degree than all web development tools to date, Rails is about speeding up development. Doesn't it deserve an IDE that remains true to this goal? {end rant}

Crunchy goodness

My sons and I have a great time playing Guitar Hero II. My hat's off to the designers of the game. As they get better, I'm starting to think it really does improve their hand-eye coordination and rhythm. And, they're getting a "rock music appreciation class" for free.

I left the Foreigner/Styx/Def Leppard concert on Friday... with a great emptiness... an emptiness which can only be filled by something more solid to replace my strictly "air guitar". I did something really spontaneous (for me) on Saturday... walked into a couple of music stores, and found my first love all over again. Her name is Les. (And she's Pam approved!)

To your right is a portrait of Les... the Epiphone Les Paul Special II, to be exact. She's a bit hefty, with a distinctly pear-shaped figure, but pretty. My first electric guitar.

I took a couple of years of acoustic guitar lessons before I was old enough to understand much about music. Later on, at college, I took a classical guitar class which I enjoyed immensely. So why have I waited this long to go electric? I like rock. I like metal. I like weird sounds. I must have one.

My first revelations on the electric guitar world are:
1. Power chords... simple, yet effective!
2. Distortion... covering multitude of faux pas!
3. Hammer-ons and Pull-offs... made possible thru amplification.
4. Feedback... not necessarily a bad thing!
5. To play strong... you have to be gentle (but look violent!)

Perhaps Drew's reaction summed it up best... "Grummmmmm..... That sounds great... now what do I have to do to really play it?"

Ode to Just Enough Gadgetry

Recently, you may have heard... Apple revised it's iPod line with some very nice improvements... the iPod touch, with WiFi, multi-touch screen interface, and i-Phone good looks... the new video-capable "nanos" (which causes an involuntary salivation action for my oldest son) and more hard drive space for the "classic" iPod.

And for the low-cost shuffle? New colors. That's it. WHAT? No new gizmos, power, or gee-whiz functionality? I recently purchased a refurbished suffle (for $50!) in my favorite non-color (silver) to listen while I do yard work, ride my bike, etc. With the latest announcement, I noted a conspicuous absence of the sting I usually associate with accelerated obsolescence and price-dropping of my purchases... but I doubt the poor shmucks who purchased a $600+ iPhone can say the same.

Kudos, Apple... you've managed to cater to and profit from both those who live to be on the technological bleeding edge and others who recognize the cruel mistress of technology can only leave us destitute and heartbroken.

Realistically, though... what could they have done to the shuffle, I mean really... Made it smaller? (you'd lose it, and you couldn't press the buttons!) Made the battery last longer? (It's already 12 hours of lithium-polymer listening pleasure.) Put more features in the user interface (It doesn't really have one.) Maybe added more memory? (Do you need to listen to... or keep track of... more than 250 of your favorite songs at a time?) Perhaps more durable? (It's a friggin' metal binder clip!) I don't think so. It's remarkably close to a perfect portable music player. As a computer engineer, I marvel at this accomplishment. The headphone jack triples as a recharger and USB data interface, for goodness sakes!

It's a lot easier to perfect something that's simple to begin with and does one thing very well. It may be less novel, interesting, or attractive... but DANG... the shuffle is a really good at serving up musical pleasure on the go.

The Naming of The Blog

"Hack of all trades, master of none." That pretty well sums me up. And since I plan on blogging many disparate topics... agile software development, travel, solar energy, simplicity, autism, the ruby programming language, the Spanish language, gadgets, mountain biking, the Caribbean, electric cars, yadda, yadda, yadda... I can't implicate the whole of the Grover family... I think I'm going to have to re-christen this blog.

The word "disparate" is actually one of my favorites in English and Spanish. It's a false cognate the double meaning of which I find has great applicability to this blog. Crazy and disjointed :)

The Grover Family Blog

Welcome to the Grover Family Blog... I'm Jeff Grover, and I'll be your host on the web site. Mostly, because I do all the technical stuff for the family.

If you want to know more about me, you could check out my LinkedIn profile, where I keep resume-type stuff. I'm also the webmaster for the UtahFEAT website.

So, the plan is to put some interesting stuff here from my work and home life... that's the plan. Of course, that was also the plan when I launched my first website back in the late 1980's... which I am only now getting around to updating. I can only hope the ease of blogging instead of uploading HTML will help me be a more frequent contributor to the inter-web thingy. I'm defining "frequent" here as more often than once every decade or two.