Roman Sends

MyMidwest MIT Hacks Article

2009-05-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

So a while back, some hackers from MIT borrowed the cannon from Caltech's Fleming House. The inflight magazine for Midwest Airlines just published an article about hacks at MIT, and used one of my pictures of the cannon. While it's not the New York Times, it's still pretty cool in my book.

NSIS and MSI installers failing

2009-04-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while since I've said anything; work's been busy.

One fun part of the canary process for this release was noticing partway through that our install rate started sucking. Some background: we use NSIS to build our main installer, which has its ups and downs. One of the performance enhancements of this release involved installing our managed assemblies into the Global Assembly Cache. However, Microsoft doesn't allow redistributing gacutil and we'd heard that rewriting gacutil using the .Net interface was time-consuming due to all the random corner-case error handling. NSIS doesn't have any sort of native support for installing to the GAC, either. We instead put together an MSI containing the assemblies to be GACd (and also installed into our Program Files folder, without including all the assemblies twice), built using WiX (which was really easy to slot into our build scripts). We then include that MSI in our NSIS installer, and call msiexec on it. Seems pretty straightforward, and since our installer already requires running as an admin, like there shouldn't be any trouble. Oh how wrong I was. While every machine in the office was able to successfully install, when we put it out in the field, it turned out we were losing 10% of our installs to the MSI failing to install. Not good.

Did some sleuthing, and fixed a few of the common errors (race conditions involving multiple MSIs being installed at once, and a few other smaller things), and got the failure rate down to 8%. Still not good. After much perusing of Google search results and MSDN, we worked around it. MSIs can install files located in external cabs, and WiX provides a convenient option to generate that cab. We now include both the MSI and the cab, and NSIS calls expand on the cab to put the assemblies into our Program Files folder while the MSI deals with putting them into the GAC. If the MSI fails, we won't startup as fast, but we'll still run at least.

End result is that the installer stays small by not including assemblies multiple times, if the MSI service is working on a machine, we'll get a startup speedup from GACing/NGENing the assemblies, and our install rate went back to normal.

lots of books

2008-09-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

I've been taking advantage of my commute on BART to read a whole bunch of books, and the sad thing is I can't remember at this point which specific books I've read. Small Giants and Crossing the Chasm were both excellent with regards to startups. Fate is the Hunter is a pilot's autobiography that I found really good (although I've always been interested in anything related to flight). Where are the Customer's Yachts? and A Random Walk Down Wall Street are both classic investing texts. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Bootstrapping Your Business were both mediocre.

Modern day DLL hell

2008-09-30T21:04:00.001-07:00

It's been a while, so I figure I'll put some random technical information on the web. At work, I just used ildasm and ilasm to take apart a Microsoft interop dll (Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll to be specific), change a reference to another DLL to use a hash of a privately signed copy, and then reassembled the DLL signing it with our private key. Short term, this allows us to workaround some fun with Visual Studio when it copies DLLs to the output directory and there are multiple DLL references with the same filename, but different strong names. Less concretely, this should help work around some issues that we see from time to time where users have messed up Office PIA installations.

Warren Buffett and the Software Industry

2008-07-17T20:46:00.001-07:00

While looking into some bugs today, I was reminded of a quote by Warren Buffett: "When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

When you're building software on top of a platform of buggy software, no matter how perfect your software is, the underlying bugs will still remain and the reputation of your software will suffer for them.

Freedom and Neurobiology

2008-02-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

Freedom and Neurobiology is the paper form of a couple sets of lectures by John Searle. The first half of the book explores the interesting subject of whether it is actually possible to have free will given what we know about the determinism of the chemical and biological processes going on the brain. The second half goes into governmental power and how it came to exist. While interesting subjects, the book unfortunately reads like a lecture and can be a bit repetitive at times. Like a lot of other philosophers, Searle also raises more questions than he answers.

Beautiful Code and Stardust

2008-01-27T15:02:00.001-08:00

Beautiful Code is kind of like Founders at Work, except about programming instead of starting companies. This book, edited by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, is a little hit or miss. Some of the essays are quite engaging and interesting, while others are dull and not particularly informative. Overall, it was a worthwhile read, and while it's not a book of patterns to be strictly applied while coding, there were definitely lessons that I'll remember as I work on future projects.

Stardust was a lot of fun to watch. It was sappy, and funny, and thoroughly entertaining. It's based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, which I haven't read, so I can't gauge how true to the book the movie is. I've really enjoyed what little of Gaiman's work I've read (and Mirrormask too), so I really need to sit down and read more of his novels.

Imagining MIT and Peopleware

2008-01-09T19:44:00.001-08:00

As an alum, I found Imagining MIT to be a very interesting book. It starts out with a short history of the MIT campus in Cambridge, the origins of the Infinite Corridor, and the evolution of the campus through the war years and the cold war. Then it got to the part that affected me as a recent alum, who had seen the newer buildings getting built: the Zesiger center, Simmons, Stata, the Brain and Cog building, and the proposed Media Lab expansion. Each chapter provided insight into some of the reasoning behind each building, including not just the architectural design, but university and local politics, funding hurdles, and special site considerations. I have to admit, I still consider Simmons and Stata to be somewhat eyesores, but I understand more what the architects were trying to do, and what their constraints where. This still doesn't stop me from disagreeing with some of their decisions though. The book reinforced my appreciation for the Z-center and the Brain and Cog building, and opened my eyes to the design of some bits of campus that I walked through regularly but did not particularly think much about.

Peopleware is an awesome book that should be required reading for anyone that wants to or is managing or leading knowledge workers. From physical space selection, to project timelines, and especially to getting a team to mesh together, this book has so much goodness in it that I barely know where to start. It's a short book, so instead of trying to recap it, I'll just say: read it.

Sweeney Todd, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

2007-12-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen any theatrical productions of Sweeney Todd, so I don't have anything to compare the movie against. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Johnny Depp was fantastic, as was the rest of the cast. All in all, a very good time.

John Bogle's Little Book of Common Sense Investing is probably not aimed at a reader like me. Pretty much, the book boils down to "buy low-expense index funds" and stop throwing money away. Unfortunately, that point is well-made in the first few pages, but the book continues on for another couple hundred. I have enormous respect for Bogle, but I'm already part of the index-fund choir. For those who aren't, this or Daniel Solin's book (but not both) would be a good read.

Atul Gawande article and Whose Freedom?

2007-12-08T01:08:00.001-08:00

Atul Gawande has a new article in the New Yorker about using checklists to save lives which is just really amazing.

Also finished reading George Lakoff's Whose Freedom?, another liberal linguistic exploration of how the conservative movement has subjugated popular terminology, in this case freedom and liberty. It's a good book, defining freedom as having uncontested parts and contested shades of grey, and how liberals can defend and advance their definition of freedom. After reading Talking Right though, this felt a little redundant.

The Intelligent Investor

2007-11-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

The Intelligent Investor, written and revised over the years by Ben Graham, with commentary by Jason Zweig is an excellent book for investors, not speculators. Graham's advice is mostly timeless, and where necessary, Zweig updates the reader with what has changed. Graham's writing is a bit dry, but indepth and instructive. Zweig's notes on each chapter are a good read.

With the whole subprime mess going on now, and Zweig's references to the tech crash, it was interesting to read Graham's notes about the previous financial industry craziness he had witnessed. The actual product being hyped changes, but the greed that drives people stays constant.

New Gmail + Reader

2007-11-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

Back in October '06, I merged together a couple greasemonkey scripts to embed Google Reader better with Gmail. The recent launch of new Gmail javascript broke the script, and I finally found time to update it. The location is the same.

Let My People Go Surfing

2007-10-15T22:08:00.001-07:00

Let My People Go Surfing is Yvon Chouinard's combination auto-biography and call to action. Chouinard's managed to accomplish a lot and the biographical part of the book is a good read on its own. After that he goes into the various philosophies regarding Patagonia's products and corporate operations. While some bits are not generally applicable, the design philosophy in particular is useful to anyone trying to make a high quality product. The thirty pages on product design alone make this book worthwhile.

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life

2007-10-11T22:29:00.001-07:00

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life is a book that tries to teach people how to make better decisions. David Henderson and Charles Hooper provide a few interesting anecdotes, but overall, the book falls flat. Basically, their advice comes down to: evaluate the value of each possible choice when making a decision, and then choose the path of highest value. They tell a bunch of stories, some of questionable relevance, and for each one lay out a decision tree, make up some probabilities and values, and say what people should have done.

Updating gnucash on an intel mac os x machine

2007-09-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

Since the original instructions for installing gnucash 2.0 on intel macs appears to be down at the moment, the steps I took to update to a new version were:
sudo fink -y selfupdate
sudo fink -y update-all
download gnucash tarball from gnucash.org
untar
cd into directory
export CFLAGS="-L/sw/lib -I/sw/include"
export CPPFLAGS="-L/sw/lib -I/sw/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L/sw/lib"
export PATH=$PATH:/sw/share/guile/1.6/scripts/binoverride/
./configure --with-g-wrap-prefix=/sw --enable-compile-warnings
make
sudo make install

The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read

2007-08-17T07:54:00.001-07:00

Daniel Solin's The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read is a beginner's guide to becoming a Boglehead. The main point is be an investor in the entire global market, not a trader that tries to beat the market. Yes, some people beat the market, but the number of people who do so for sustained periods of time are very rare. There are some folks that get lucky for a couple years, but trying to figure out those lucky people is a fool's errand. In addition to that random possibility of losing money due to a bad manager, active trading has higher expenses, both in transaction costs and for mutual funds, in overhead. An actively managed mutual fund that has an expense ratio of over 1% has to perform at least 1% better than its matching index fund before an investor will receive higher returns, and the historical record of actively managed mutual funds shows that the vast majority of them actually perform worse than a relevant index fund.

You Don't Love Me Yet

2007-07-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

You Don't Love Me Yet is a novel written by Jonathan Lethem about a dysfunctional set of relationships revolving around the members of a band trying to make their mark. There's even a kangaroo thrown in for good measure, alongside the breakups, hookups, recriminations, flameouts, and arguments. I'm just not even sure what to say about this book; it's not my type of fiction, and the last 30 pages just seemed to drag on a bit.

Values-Driven Business

2007-07-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

Values-Driven Business is a little book written by Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick about how to run a for-profit business without sacrificing compassion for people and communities for the pursuit of profits. The book doesn't go into any detail on standard business management techniques, or how to actually generate a profit (although it does offer the unsupported correlation that given two equal businesses, the values-driven one would be more successful than the non-values driven one). The name of the book is a bit of a misnomer, since it seems like most businesses have some set of values, albeit values that don't play nicely with those of the authors. For managers that want to lessen their companies' negative environmental impact, or boost morale, there are some useful checklists and case studies. Those checklists boil down to treat people fairly, ask for and listen to their input, and look for green suppliers and processes to minimize waste.

Smart & Gets Things Done

2007-07-12T08:46:00.001-07:00

Joel Spolsky's latest book, Smart and Gets Things Done is a short little book that reprises a bunch of his web essays. It quickly goes through why hiring good developers is a good idea, how to locate them, deal with them, woo them, and screen them out from the masses of mediocre developers. It's a good read, although short on details at times, but with plenty of pointers to more information (it made me order Peopleware, for instance), and required reading for anyone trying to grow a software company (and probably any company composed of knowledge workers).

The Sand Cafe

2007-07-10T20:59:00.001-07:00

Neil MacFarquhar wrote The Sand Cafe after the first gulf war, but this inside look at the life of a foreign correspondent in the Middle East sounds like it could have easily been set in the second conflict as well, judging by the current complaints from journalists. The novel quite clearly shows the culture divide between the U.S. and the Middle East, in a way that is both funny and sad. I could have done with less of the romantic angle of the novel, though, as the bits about the clash of cultures and the journalistic process were more than interesting enough to fill a book.

Building Leaders the West Point Way

2007-07-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Building Leaders the West Point Way, written by former Commandant of Cadets at West Point Joseph Franklin (also an alumni of MIT) is a short interesting book for potential leaders. While strongly based on his military experience, the lessons definitely apply to the business world, even though not many business-people have to deal with small unit tactics. The gist of the book can be found simply in the chapter titles though: duty, honor, faith, courage, perseverance, confidence, approachability, adaptability, compassion, and vision. Those ten qualities are mostly self-explanatory, and I doubt I'll read the book again.

The Starfish and the Spider

2007-06-26T22:28:00.001-07:00

Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom's The Starfish and the Spider is about the differences between centralized and decentralized organizations, and posits that decentralized organizations have a huge advantage over monoloithic ones. While my bias is certainly towards believing that starfish (decentralized) groups have many advantages over spiders (centralized), I don't think that leaderless organizations have an "unstoppable power" as the book's cover claims. The book doesn't go on to back up that claim, either. I was left with the distinct impression that this is a business school white-paper that's not really all that useful to leaders in the real world. After getting about halfway through, I was rolling my eyes at some of the statements that were made, and the chapters got fairly repetitive about how awesome starfish are.

SiCKO

2007-06-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing SiCKO, Michael Moore's new film (I hesitate to call it a documentary) that was mostly about the health insurance industry/universal health care, a little about corruption in the government, a little about Canada, a little about the war in Iraq and on terror, and with a cameo for Flint, Michigan. It was an interesting movie to watch, although I still felt it necessary to take it with a grain of salt. The part where he takes the first responders to Cuba and says that they got the same treatment as any Cuban national seems a bit stretched. It still challenged some of my assumptions about universal healthcare in Canada and England, and also made me want to look into whether Hillary Clinton is independent of the health care industry. Well worth watching, and on a subject that doesn't seem to have gotten much coverage since Hillary was the first lady.

Founders at Work

2007-06-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

I finally finished reading Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work and I know that I'll be re-reading (and then re-re-reading) some of those interviews in the near future. Wow. There's almost too much information for me to process about starting up a technology (or most any) company, including stories of what went wrong and right, how to do things better, what matters and what doesn't, and all sorts of other good stuff. There's nothing beyond the interviews, but those are enough (except the interview with the CEO of Lycos...all that one told me is don't hire that guy as a manager). Flexability and persistence seemed to be the two major themes, with passion and having a good co-founder close behind.

What a Party

2007-06-10T21:20:00.001-07:00

Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the DNC, has a new book out, What a Party, that's an unabashedly completely biased look at the Democratic party and Bill and Hillary Clinton. It's a history of his time in the party, why he thinks Democrats are better than Republicans, and why he thinks Hillary should be the next President of the United States (he's also Hillary's campaign chairman). For all that though, it was an interesting and fun read.

Overclocked

2007-05-22T21:16:00.001-07:00

Overclocked is Cory Doctorow's newest book of short science fiction stories. To call them science fiction might not be quite right; they're more like warnings of what we might be setting the stage for if we make the wrong decisions right now. The stories are entertaining and sobering and not particularly subtle.

Better

2007-05-06T20:37:00.001-07:00

Atul Gawande's Better is a collection of essays on a variety of medical subjects, with lessons that are most definitely applicable to the rest of us. The book is well written, and although I have not read any of his New Yorker essays, I imagine the tone is quite similar. I will most certainly be re-reading various chapters from the book in the future.

Spiderman 3

2007-05-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

Having seen Spiderman 3 now, I don't feel the need to ever watch it again. I kind of wish I could get my 2.5 hours back, too. The movie just dragged a lot in places, the dialogue was disappointing, and it was way too sappy. All in all, not enjoyable.

On the other hand, the trailers for The Bourne Ultimatum and the new Harry Potter movie looked pretty cool.

The Russia Hand, The Last Colony

2007-04-30T18:19:00.001-07:00

I was in the middle of reading Strobe Talbott's The Russia Hand when Boris Yelstin died. Talbott was the Deputy Secretary of State for President Clinton and head of the State Department's office dealing with Russia and most of the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. It was an informative read about international diplomacy and the importance of the personal relationship between Clinton and Yelstin. Talbott didn't entirely whitewash the mistakes that were made or the difficulties caused by the personalities involved in the process.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi is a fun scifi read. I didn't get parts of it because I haven't read the previous two books in the series. There were some plot holes and questions left unanswered, but it was still an enjoyable, light read.

Black Book

2007-04-22T17:20:00.001-07:00

I saw Black Book a week ago; it's a story of a Jewish woman in the Dutch resistance in World War II. It was well worth watching, and I highly recommend it. It is much better than most of the crap that Hollywood is putting out right now.

We didn't quite know where the movie theater was when we were driving over to Palo Alto to see it, so I called 1-800-GOOG-411 and was also impressed with the voice recognition and relevancy of the results. The system got that I was looking for movie theaters in Palo Alto on the first try, and then CineArts was the second listing. I got the address texted to my cell phone, and then got connected to the theater's recorded line.

Why I don't read Forbes.com anymore...

2007-04-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

I can't stand Forbes.com's welcome screen that you have to click through. So much so that I've pretty much stopped reading any articles on there, and if I see someone linking to a Forbes article I won't even bother clicking on the link. It's not worth my time when no one else is that annoying...

House of Meetings

2007-04-10T19:26:00.001-07:00

Martin Amis' House of Meetings is a novel that I normally wouldn't read, and I'm not sure I ever fully got into it as I read it. Mostly because I have trouble relating to prisoners in the gulag. An interesting read, but I doubt I'll ever read it again.

Company

2007-04-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

Company is Max Barry's amusing look at the antics of corporate life. He draws absurd stories from various sources, including his own time at HP, and pulls them together around Stephen Jones' new career at Zephyr Holdings. I'm not sure I would agree with the back-cover-quotes gushing about how hilarious the book was. It was definitely funny, but the second half felt like it was dragging a bit. The movie rights have apparently already been sold, and a screenplay is in progress. I think it could turn into a passable movie, although it might also just end up as a two-hour long Office, or a slightly modified version of Office Space (both of which are fantastic pieces of entertainment, but it would be a shame to simply regurgitate either of them).

The J Curve

2007-03-08T07:35:00.000-08:00

I finished off The J Curve, by Ian Bremmer, a few days ago. Bremmer provides a whirlwind tour of the economic, social, and political environment of a number of different countries and how those affect the openness and stability of each country. It's obvious that Bremmer knows the subject matter quite well, and it's interesting to read the book just for the condensed insights into the structure of different counrties. The idea that there is a continuous J-curve relationship between openness and stability seems plausible enough, but I wonder if too much openness can then cause stability to go back down. The number of direct democracies across the world does not suggest to me that stability keeps on rising.

Guanxi

2007-02-19T18:06:00.001-08:00

Guanxi, by Robert Buderi and Gregory Huang (both late of MIT's Technology Review) is a third-party view of the founding of Microsoft Research China and its effect on Microsoft's business in China. The book describes the people/personalities involved, the reasoning behind various decisions, and some of the cultural background relevant to succeeding in the country. The basic gist of it is: cooperate with the Chinese government and you'll get access to a huge market and lots of talent. Don't cooperate, and you'll get ignored and your competitors will get preferential treatment.

This tiny blurb reflects only my personal opinion.

Dreaming in Code

2007-02-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code and as a software engineer, all I have to say is wow, did this hit home. It was a very accurate description of what can happen on a software project, even with talented programmers. There was also quite a bit of discussion about why we do what we do. If you want to manage a software project, read this book.

Up Front, Invisible Engines

2007-01-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

Up Front is Bill Maudlin's look at drawing his comics about infantrymen in World War II. It is humorous, enlightening, and well worth reading.

Invisible Engines, by David Evans, Andrei Hagiu, and Richard Schmalensee, is a look at two-sided markets with regards to software platforms. The book does a fine job of examining the video game console, cell phone, and operating system markets, but after that it seemed to trail off. I got rather quickly that all of those markets have two different sets of consumers and the text quickly became belabored. The question I was left with is: once I have identified a two-sided market, how do I take advantage of that, either as an existing contender or as a new player?

Children of Men

2007-01-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

I saw Children of Men last week. I didn't really know what to expect going into it, beyond "supposed to be good, about the world when women stop having babies." It turned out to be much darker and grittier than I expected, but excellent. Clive Owen was fantastic, and I enjoyed watching Julianne Moore and Chiwetel Ejiofor (yea, from Serenity!) in every scene they were in. Without spoiling the ending, I almost expected the movie to fade-to-black about a minute before it really ended.

The Laws of Simplicity

2006-12-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

John Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity is an interesting read, if somewhat hard to take seriously at a few points. The main takeaway of "Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful" is well worth listening to.

Prisoner

2006-12-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

Spotted in captivity at work.

iWoz

2006-11-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

Steve Wozniak's autobiography -- cowritten with Gina Smith -- iWoz is his attempt to set history straight on how he became an engineer, invented personal computing, founded Apple, didn't-quite-leave-Apple, and tried to inspire others to become engineers and do something good for the world. I didn't find it all that inspiring and I probably won't bother reading it again.

Google Reader + Fark, take two

2006-11-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

I've updated my GreaseMonkey script that skips Fark's comment threads to be slightly less of a hack and also to go directly to the vote results thread for Photoshop posts.

The Way to Win

2006-11-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

Mark Halperin and John Harris put together The Way to Win, their guide to the strategies necessary to win the White House in 2008. The book focuses on the setbacks and successes of the presidential campaigns of Bush 43 run by Karl Rove and Clinton 42 while drawing in lessons from the losses of Bush 41, Gore, and Kerry. The three most important strategies are to be organized, proactive, and responsive. Rove took advantage of advances in information technology to communicate faster and more directly with colleagues in the campaign and with voters and volunteers in the rest of the country. He also planned far in advance of issues, and prepared to deal with potential opposition effectively. Halperin and Harris then apply these lessons to analyze Hillary Clinton's 2008 prospects and offer suggestions about issues that Senator Clinton will have to watch out for. Already though, Clinton appears to be following the three tenets. The main downside of the book is that the analysis can be overshadowed by the authors constant complaining about what they label and repeatedly refer to as the "Freak Show", the "new media" of talk radio, bloggers, and other extremist sources. The complaints get old quickly and don't really add much to the book.

Google Reader + Fark

2006-11-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

I got annoyed tonight at reading Fark in Google Reader. When I see an article I'm interested in, I have to click on the link in Reader to open up the comments page in Fark and then click on the image to get to the linked story. So I hacked something together in Greasemonkey (and hack is the key word there) that takes me straight to the story (although going through Fark's redirection server so they still have an idea how many people are clicking on the stories...ok, I was lazy and didn't feel like figuring out how to get the actual story URL from somewhere on Fark). I put it up at web.mit.edu/rradez/www/software/greader-skip-landing.user.js.
The filename and description reflects the fact that I'm probably going to get annoyed by another feed that does this type of landing page thing and redirect that too.

Borat

2006-11-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

Went and saw Borat last night with a bunch of folks from work. Overall, I'd say it was worth the ten bucks to see it once, but I'm not gonna bother spending money to see it again. It was mixed; there were some really hilarious parts, a few parts that were sobering doses of reality, and then some really, really, really disturbing parts that I'm trying to block from my mind. None of the trailers before the movie looked amazingly good either.

The Perfect Thing

2006-10-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

Steven Levy's latest book, The Perfect Thing, is an unabashed iPod lovefest. He finds the feature he loves the most in an iPod, random shuffling of songs, and applies it to all sorts of changes in people's daily lives due to the Internet. Along the way, he delivers a concise history of its development and precursors, and touches on how iPods make their owners happier. For what it's worth, the most interesting part of the book was the fact that it has four permutations that vary from copy to copy.

Gmail + Reader

2006-10-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

So I really like Mihai's Greasemonkey script to add a Google Reader link to Gmail, and I also like his Gmail saved searches script, so I merged the two to provide a list of feeds in a box like the list of labels (similar to this script that does the same for Bloglines and Gmail, although I didn't find this script until after I mashed Mihai's together). Any bugs are my fault, but the original code is Mihai's.

Update 2007-11-25: modified the script to work with the new gmail code, see current blog post.

Soul in the Computer

2006-10-23T21:50:00.000-07:00

I just finished Barbara Waugh's Soul in the Computer which can also be downloaded from HP's University Relations site is a recollection of a career spent using a for-profit corporation to try and accomplish good deeds. She relates many anecdotes about small changes that can have big effects, and draws out lessons from those events that are applicable to many day-to-day attempts to change the status quo. While the book is focused on how to make the world a better place from inside the system (whichever system one might be inside), reading it is a good idea for anyone who wants to make changes in a large organization.

Fragile Things, Talking Right, In China's Shadow

2006-10-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

I recently received copies of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, Geoffrey Nunberg's Talking Right, and Reed Hundt's In China's Shadow.

Fragile Things is an excellent collection of short stories, and not having read Gaiman before, I was impressed by his ability to draw me into the stories in a small number of words. The stories (and poems) were quite entertaining, and I definitely need to read some of his earlier work (I was also very impressed by the movie MirrorMask, which he co-wrote).

Talking Right is an airing of the issues that the Democratic party faces with regards to language. The "Right" has managed to claim ownership over certain terms over the past thirty years, and uses those terms to shape the way that the general electorate interprets messages from both sides. Nunberg details a variety of ways that liberals fail to understand language, tactics that conservatives have used to modify the emotional definitions of words, and how liberals can respond. Of course, before liberals can try to show people what they stand for, they need to figure out what they do actually stand for.

In China's Shadow raises the issue of Chinese entrepreneurship and how America needs to respond by becoming substantially more entrepreneural. Hundt lays out the problem: China has a huge population and that population is starting lots of businesses while America is not starting as many businesses as it did at the height the 90s. To encourage people to take the risk of going out on their own, Hundt details a variety of measures the government should take, most of which struck me as heading in the direction that Europe has taken in terms of socializing healthcare, education, retirement, etc. In between his constant criticism of the Bush administration, he makes a number of good points regarding the static nature of big businesses and how government should not be used to protect the status quo.

Hundt also refers frequently to Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" and Nunberg mentions it as well, and it sounds like an interesting idea that I should read more about.