Geek stuff – Page 56 – a sibilant intake of breath

Upgrade terrors

When you really rely on a piece of software, it is always frightening to see that there is an upgrade available. That sets you to worrying about the day when your version will no longer be supported, when it may even stop working altogether.

You’ve spent so long learning the peculiarities of the software, you naturally worry about how hard it will be to learn the new version, and whether you will still be capable when using it. If they change something that is a core job function of yours, you can be suddenly unable to do your job.

And yet, you’re a nerd and you believe in the possibility of never-ending improvement. You are seduced by the new version, where they promise it will be easier to do all the jobs you have to, and you will look like more of a professional when using it (camera companies promise the same thing for lenses).

And so, everyone is forced along the upgrade path. Ordinary users probably hate every step of the march, because they don’t buy into the seduction of the new (and yet everyone working in an office with an old version of Windows is happy to complain about it) and they still have to deal with the headaches of upgrading. Many geeks will be content with any change since their primary need – novelty – is automatically being served, even when they are cursing the strange new interface. The uber-geeks who actually run everything will work to keep everyone sane: maintaining a lifeline for all the old legacy systems that people absolutely rely on, while also making the investments necessary to service the software and hardware needs of the future.

Greenhouse gas ’emissions’ or ‘pollution’

The phrase ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ or ‘carbon emissions’ doesn’t cary much emotional weight. It sounds like some nerdy, probably unimportant thing.

In reality, our emissions will determine how much the planet warms, which will have a huge effect on humanity. While it’s true that the Earth is better off with some CO2 than it would be with none at all, it is also true that all the additional greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere now are harmful. As climate scientist Gavin A. Schmidt argues: “If you ask a scientist how much more CO2 do you think we should add to the atmosphere, the answer is going to be none. All the rest is economics.”

Given all of that, I think it makes more sense to use the phrases ‘greenhouse gas pollution’ or ‘carbon pollution’. It accurately reflects the harmful role these emissions play, and it ties them to ideas like the ‘polluter pays principle‘.

Pondering smartphones III

I realize that one of the bigger sustainability problems of our age is all the waste generated by planned obselescence and the need to have the next big thing every couple of years. At the same time, it seems plausible that for whatever my trade is, a functional smartphone is increasingly a necessary tool.

As such, the increasing number of bugs and problems with my Nokia E71 (purchased in summer 2009) are driving me to think about new options. The phone no longer receives text messages while on, but rather in one big clump when rebooted. The battery now cannot even handle an evening out, even when it has been charging all day at work, and yet replacing it would cost a fair bit of what a new phone would. The web browsers (both Nokia’s and Opera Mobile) are inadequate for many everyday tasks. The machine won’t stay connected to my email server, even when it has constant access to the cell network, and it doesn’t tell you when the connection goes down. Also, it has been abruptly and randomly crashing.

The smartphone market changes fast. When I looked at it previously (once and again), I concluded that a Nokia phone aimed at the business market was the best match for my needs. Foremost among those are a good keyboard and integration with Google. It’s great that the Nokia seamlessly syncs up my contacts and calendar with GMail and Google Calendar, though it seems ironic that it uses Microsoft’s ‘Mail for Exchange’ app to do so. Other important features are decent battery life, GPS, access to useful apps like Google Maps, and good build quality. I don’t care at all about media player or camera capabilities, as I have better machines to do those things and I don’t have a problem carrying them with me.

What would people recommend? One of the BlackBerries? An Android phone? Much as I appreciate the familiar layout of Nokia’s operating systems, I don’t think I will be giving them another go. This will probably be my first ever cell phone not made by the Finnish giant.

I won’t be getting it very soon, however. Things are still a bit up in the air with the job search, and some of the lower-paying opportunities might not be smartphone compatible. Once I have some certainty, however, I will be back on the pocket computer market.

Fun, and also educational

Here’s a question that I think a lot of Ottawa-area Anglophones would appreciate an answer to:

Are there any good French television shows or films available via Netflix streaming?

For one reason or another, a few of us could benefit from some revision and practice.

I think most people watch at least some television as a guilty pleasure (HBO doesn’t count as television, does it?). Maybe we could just do that in French and kill two birds with one stone – get in one’s vegging time, and maintain French language skills.

Sharpie liquid pencil

I am the sort of person who is always keen to try novel writing apparatus. For instance, I have become an appreciator of Sharpie pens in the last few months, though I think the blue, red, and green inks are a bit thin-looking when dry (especially compared with the hard-to-find Pilot G2 colours).

It was therefore with a certain level of excitement that I purchased one of Sharpie’s new ‘liquid pencils’. Unfortunately, the machine is a complete disappointment. Basically, the thing writes like a really bad pen. It applies inconsistent amounts of ink when slightly different levels of pressure are applied, and a lot of pressure needs to be applied at all times – decidedly not a pleasure to use. Furthermore, the results it produces are rather ugly. They look like the work of a very cheap ballpoint pen.

All told, I would say that people who are looking for a convenient way to produce erasable text should stick with mechanical pencils. They are nicer to use, produce much finer lines, and produce output that is nicer on the eye (even for someone with handwriting as appalling as mine).

P.S. As a bonus for those living in Ottawa: you can now buy Pelikan’s highly-regarded student fountain pen at the Wallack’s art supply store on Bank Street. From what I have read, the pen incorporates a relatively high quality writing and ink delivery mechanism into a simple and fairly inexpensive body. Usefully, it also has a guide dot to assist those of us who aren’t all that familiar with fountain pen use, but appreciate the smooth and effortless way such pens allow you to write.

Two linguistic surprises

I try to stay pretty on top, when it comes to pedantic debates. They come up in trivia, and in editorial battles. I have read The Economist Style Guide (which gives one good cover). As such, I was surprised to discover that I had been partially wrong on two for as long as I can remember:

‘Octopodes’, the most pedantic pluralization of ‘octopus’ isn’t pronounced oct-oh-pohde. It is pronounced oct-aw-pow-deez, like a character in a Greek play.
The proper abbreviation for the imperial weight unit ‘pounds’ is always ‘lb’ and never ‘lbs’.

I may be the only one who didn’t know about these (the misconceptions people maintain vary). How many other people are surprised by one or the other? Running into such a reminder of why it is a good idea to have people point out my mistakes.

Be careful with free WordPress themes

A public advisory to fellow bloggers: many free WordPress themes available online contain dodgy links or even malicious code.

Here is some information on how to find safe ones.

I use the (non-free) Thesis theme, but would prefer if other people stopped adopting it. There are too many sites that look just like mine already…

Spending your cognitive surplus

One book I have been meaning to read is Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

Apparently, Shirky argues that rising affluence in society has left people with leisure time that has often been misused on fundamentally unproductive tasks like watching television. Now, we have better opportunities to use our down time for something more meaningful, such as contributing to public understanding and discussion on important issues. New forms of collaboration, particularly the internet, make it easier than ever to coordinate with like-minded people around the world.

How do readers of this site spend their cognitive surpluses?

The Best American Essays 2010

For those without a great deal of time to spend reading GQ and The Atlantic Monthly, an anthology like this one prepared by Christopher Hitchens is probably a good idea. It covers a range of topics – from the political to the scientific to the literary.

As I mentioned before, I found John Gamel’s piece on eye disease especially compelling. Steven Pinker also has an interesting piece on personal genomics, which involves a fair bit of discussion on the genetic influence on personality (something I am meaning to write about at greater length soon). I hope I live to see the day when my entire genome can be sequenced for $1,000 or so.

Perhaps the most educational essay is Frederick Starr’s “Rediscovering Central Asia,” which relates some of the cultural and scientific history of the region that now includes Afghanistan and former Soviet Republics like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Starr argues that Westerners have been wrong since September 11th, 2001 to see the place as doomed to be a backwater forever, and just a source of dangerous fanatics:

Donning a bush jacket and filming at dawn and dusk, [Dan Rather] presented the region as inaccessible, backward, exotic, marginal and threatening – in short, the end of the world…

Even though the Central Asia of Rather’s depiction was and is an evocative image, it carries some bothersome implications. On the one hand, it conjures up a place where the best the United States and the world community can hope for is to limit the damage arising from it. That means destroying whatever threatens us and then getting out. The problem is that the thinking behind such an approach can then become self-fulfilling: a place we judged to be hopeless becomes truly so, and even more threatening than before.

If anything, I think many in the west overestimated the potential for transformation in Afghan society following September 11th. At least, they severely underestimated how much time and effort it would take to put the country on any kind of durable liberal footing.

Increasingly, it does look as though the wisest course after September 11th might have been to capture or kill as many members of Al Qaeda as possible, without overthrowing the central government and making an under-resourced effort to establish a state that respects human rights or democratic principles. Now, it seems plausible that all that will arise from that effort will be a relatively brief and bloody pause in Taliban control, in the space between the dramatic arrival and more subdued departure of NATO armies.

Jordan Peterson on psychology

As a lecturer, the University of Toronto’s Jordan Peterson is quite something. Yesterday, Tristan showed me videos of a couple of his lectures. One of them – The Necessity of Virtue – is available online.

One thing I found striking about the talks (which are mostly about psychology and ethics) is just how much we know about the brain, and how much we can reduce seemingly complex human behaviours and experiences to be predictable operation of certain brain structures. I had not previously realized the full importance of the hypothalamus. In one particularly grim example, Peterson explains that a cat stripped of almost all of its brain, but left with a spinal cord and a hypothalamus, will still behave much like an ordinary cat, except that it will be unusually likely to explore and unable to mate (if male).

What humanity is learning about the brain (which seems to produce the mind) seems likely to have considerable importance both for understanding the world in important ways and for deciding how to act in it. I will be adding Peterson’s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief to my reading list, and may even be able to finagle a way to audit one of his courses if I do move to Toronto.