One of the nice things about blogs is that you can remark on books you are reading without having to even pretend it's anything like a real review. So you can pick out odd little points of interest, and make completely petty digs, as the accident will.
Recently, I've been reading Austerity Britain 1945-1951 by David Kynaston. It got an excellent review in Atlantic Monthly. The book is the first part of a social history of Britain which will eventually cover 1945-1979. Although it does make reference to Big History, most of it draws on personal accounts such as diaries and memoirs and the records made by Mass Observation. Quite a few of the sources are from biographies of well-known people, and their names are simply dropped into the narrative without explaining who they are. It's just assumed that you know enough to British culture to understand. My favourite example of this is in a section talking about the role of high street banks around 1950, which contains this remark:
George Mainwaring, that pillar-of-the-community bank manager at Walmington-on-Sea by now approaching retirement, would no doubt have nodded sagely.
The thing which is wonderful about this is that it doesn't explain who George Mainwaring it. Almost anyone of my age, plus or minus 20 or more years, instantly know that he is a fictional character from a sitcom, Dad's Army. It was made in the 1960s and 70s, but set during the second world war, and Captain Mainwaring was stuffy and opinionated bank manager. So this remark reinforces the tone of the quotation that preceded it because you've seen that program so many time that you can instantly picture him expressing his opinions. Without this explanation, the reader will probably skip this sentence and move on, no harm done. If Kynaston had stopped to explain, his book would have been a leaden mess, and probably twice as long as it is.
When I was checking this, I noticed a wonderfully gnomic line a paragraph later, in which some aphorisms from a stockbroker are quoted as illustrations of his gentlemanly code: "shoes have laces", "motor cars are black", "jelly is not officer food". Funny, I always though it was. Well, not the green jelly, but other kinds.
Scarlett Thomas's novel The End Of Mr. Y is my other current read. It's a book which is almost good, but spoilt by too many long lumps of philosophical explanations, usually in the form of little lectures from one character to another. Well, most of the main characters are supposed to be PhD student or academics, so I suppose it's not all that unrealistic. These discourses are interesting, but there's only so many of them you can hope to get away with in a novel, and N for this novel is greater than so. It's as if the book wants to bend your mind, but can't quite decide in which direction. If the author is anything like the protagonist, then she's a fan of Derrida, and though I have never read any Derrida, language log has given me all the fuel I need to have an irrational contempt for his thought. And, I'm sorry, but the only legitimate reaction to a sentence like Monday morning, and the sky is the colour of sad weddings is a long and loud farty noise.
An update. When I wrote this I hadn't quite finished The End Of Mr Y. Now I have, and (without giving away the ending), I think the author should be ashamed of herself. She uses a twist which belongs to 1950s pulp sf stories, as was hokey even then.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Love On Four Paws
This week Ellen and I withdrew from Love on 4 Paws, an organization we've been volunteering with for the last 15 months. We were taking our dog, Dylan, to hospitals to do animal assisted therapy, which mostly means visiting patients to cheer them up and give them a brief break from the tedium and stress of being in hospital. The organization is run with careful and constructive discipline by a woman called Suni and her team leaders and coaches. Before you start, the dog passes a "canine good citizen" test and is checked out to see how he reacts in various situations, such as having a lot of people milling round making noise. For the handlers, there's a lot more training in the hospital procedures and the legal requirements.
The first hospital you visit is Shriner's hospital for children (all the locations are in LA). Shriner's is a relatively easy environment to work in, but even so the first few visits were hard work: as well as looking after the dog and setting him up to interact with the patients, there are many hospital protocols to follow. Mostly they are to do with hygiene, such as washing your hands on entering a room, but there are others too. For example, you usually take a picture of the patient with the dog using a Polaroid camera. Occasionally, one picture doesn't come out well, and so you take another, and then you have to remember to hand them all to the patient, or destroy the extra ones, as taking the picture away would break the HIPAA confidentiality rules.
The big step comes when you move to Children's Hospital of LA. Whereas Shriner's is mostly orthopaedic and clinic patients, CHLA has many patients who are very sick with cancer or other serious illnesses. As well as making it a more highly charged environment emotionally, it means the protocols you have to follow are much stricter: no entering certain rooms where a patient is in isolation, wash hands on entry, wipe patient's hands, put an extra sheet on the bed before the dog gets up, wipe patient's hands afterwards, fold up the sheet from the corners inwards... At the end of the first few visits, we were totally wrung out. I also kept making mistakes such as leaving my bag of supplies behind in one patient's room after the visit, then having to try to figure out which room I had last visited to go back and get it. Over time, it got easier, though. In the middle of 2008, we also started visiting St John's, a hospital for adults. The visits are of a different sort there: you tend to spend longer with each patient and see fewer of them. Sometimes in CHLA, the visit is really just a quick snuggle with the dog, a picture, and move on.
With all the training that we as handlers do, there is no training for the dog. Over time, Dylan worked out what he was supposed to do, and for a while seemed to consider it his job. But in the last few weeks, he was getting more and more reluctant to do the visits and at the end was scarcely engaging with the patients. We had said from the start that if we thought he didn't want to do the visiting, we would stop. He seemed to telling us that he didn't want to be there any more, and after a visit to St John's last weekend, we made the decision to stop visiting and leave the organization.
I feel sad about this. It's easy to think that your work matters or that by giving to a charity or participating in a campaigning group that you are changing the world. It's a different thing when you have this direct personal involvement. I saw situations where having a visit from the dog got through to someone who was in distress and pain, and provided them with a moment of respite or happiness. When that happens for a child, it also often helps the parent, a moment of normality in a turbulent time. The medical staff sometimes benefit from a minute or two with dog as well. Even the man who runs the valet parking at one of the hospitals was always happy to see Dylan.
Dylan is quite a shy dog. When he decided he is your friend, he loves you wholeheartedly, but it takes a long time to get there. Other dogs I saw had a temperament that was better suited. Think of your archetypal golden retriever who loves everyone, for example. Calmness is another quality that works well, and that is something that Dylan has once the shyness is out of the way. I saw many skillful handlers too, who have some magic that creates just the right interaction between the dog and the patient.
I'll miss the friends I made in LO4P, and I'll remember the way that at CHLA we all ended by gathering in a ward that had a sun-trap glass roof, resting for a moment after the work we'd done, before setting off on the "dog parade", all the dogs and handlers leaving the ward together.
The first hospital you visit is Shriner's hospital for children (all the locations are in LA). Shriner's is a relatively easy environment to work in, but even so the first few visits were hard work: as well as looking after the dog and setting him up to interact with the patients, there are many hospital protocols to follow. Mostly they are to do with hygiene, such as washing your hands on entering a room, but there are others too. For example, you usually take a picture of the patient with the dog using a Polaroid camera. Occasionally, one picture doesn't come out well, and so you take another, and then you have to remember to hand them all to the patient, or destroy the extra ones, as taking the picture away would break the HIPAA confidentiality rules.
The big step comes when you move to Children's Hospital of LA. Whereas Shriner's is mostly orthopaedic and clinic patients, CHLA has many patients who are very sick with cancer or other serious illnesses. As well as making it a more highly charged environment emotionally, it means the protocols you have to follow are much stricter: no entering certain rooms where a patient is in isolation, wash hands on entry, wipe patient's hands, put an extra sheet on the bed before the dog gets up, wipe patient's hands afterwards, fold up the sheet from the corners inwards... At the end of the first few visits, we were totally wrung out. I also kept making mistakes such as leaving my bag of supplies behind in one patient's room after the visit, then having to try to figure out which room I had last visited to go back and get it. Over time, it got easier, though. In the middle of 2008, we also started visiting St John's, a hospital for adults. The visits are of a different sort there: you tend to spend longer with each patient and see fewer of them. Sometimes in CHLA, the visit is really just a quick snuggle with the dog, a picture, and move on.
With all the training that we as handlers do, there is no training for the dog. Over time, Dylan worked out what he was supposed to do, and for a while seemed to consider it his job. But in the last few weeks, he was getting more and more reluctant to do the visits and at the end was scarcely engaging with the patients. We had said from the start that if we thought he didn't want to do the visiting, we would stop. He seemed to telling us that he didn't want to be there any more, and after a visit to St John's last weekend, we made the decision to stop visiting and leave the organization.
I feel sad about this. It's easy to think that your work matters or that by giving to a charity or participating in a campaigning group that you are changing the world. It's a different thing when you have this direct personal involvement. I saw situations where having a visit from the dog got through to someone who was in distress and pain, and provided them with a moment of respite or happiness. When that happens for a child, it also often helps the parent, a moment of normality in a turbulent time. The medical staff sometimes benefit from a minute or two with dog as well. Even the man who runs the valet parking at one of the hospitals was always happy to see Dylan.
Dylan is quite a shy dog. When he decided he is your friend, he loves you wholeheartedly, but it takes a long time to get there. Other dogs I saw had a temperament that was better suited. Think of your archetypal golden retriever who loves everyone, for example. Calmness is another quality that works well, and that is something that Dylan has once the shyness is out of the way. I saw many skillful handlers too, who have some magic that creates just the right interaction between the dog and the patient.
I'll miss the friends I made in LO4P, and I'll remember the way that at CHLA we all ended by gathering in a ward that had a sun-trap glass roof, resting for a moment after the work we'd done, before setting off on the "dog parade", all the dogs and handlers leaving the ward together.
Friday, January 23, 2009
More exciting than I would like
Well, we just had a magnitude 3.4 earthquake centered only about half a mile away. It's not the biggest earthquake since we've been living here - there was a 5.2 a bit further away last year - but because it was so close, it felt much more intense. There was probably 10 seconds or rough shaking, compared to 3 or 4 seconds of rolling in the 5.2, just long enough to be scary, especially for the dog.
My first instinct in an earthquake is not to get outside or check for damage. Oh no: it's to go the USGS web site to see where it was and how powerful. And I'm not alone, as several people on the neighborhood mailing list and on local blogs have already posted links to the report: http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/ci10373093.htm.
My first instinct in an earthquake is not to get outside or check for damage. Oh no: it's to go the USGS web site to see where it was and how powerful. And I'm not alone, as several people on the neighborhood mailing list and on local blogs have already posted links to the report: http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/ci10373093.htm.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Yodallings
I have an idea for a blog post which I don't have the skill to execute. So I'll write the bare bones of it here, and then it'll be almost as if I wrote it without actually having to do the work.
Flann O'Brien, when writing as Myles na gCopaleen, published some pieces in the Irish Times which appear to be in Irish, but if read phonetically turn out to be in heavily accented English. For example, one short piece starts
Naturally, I would also have needed to think about word order, especially for Yoda. Japanese is a head-final language, which means it generally puts the word with the most oomph at the end of each clause, so for example in a sentence the verb comes last. Thus for "I like drinking beer" you might say something like "watashi wa nomimoni wa biru ga suki desu", which reads roughly as with regards to me, in the matter of drink, beer, likeable is. (With apologies for any errors in this: it's more than 10 years since I studied Japanese.) Then everyone could talk like this, except for Yoda, who would use English word order. Because in the English version of Star Wars, backwards speaks does he.
Alas, I could never take this beyond the germ of an idea. But it does trigger off one other thought. There is a discussion of Yoda's syntax in an old language log posting, in which various word orders for Yoda's speech are discussed, and it is also pointed out that occasionally he follows ordinary English word order. The question that troubles me is that given that he can follow English word order, why doesn't he do so all the time? He has had (we assume) several hundred years of exposure to the the language, which is surely enough to smooth out his idio-grammatical quirks and get him to native speaker competence. Speaks funny, then why does he? I believe there can only be one answer: that Chomsky was right all along. The innate language component of Yoda's brain is such that he intrinsically cannot get the words in the right order, no matter how much he studies and attends the Berlitz school for Jedi. The universal grammar of Yoda sapiens just won't allow it.
Flann O'Brien, when writing as Myles na gCopaleen, published some pieces in the Irish Times which appear to be in Irish, but if read phonetically turn out to be in heavily accented English. For example, one short piece starts
Aigh nó a mean thú ios só léasaigh dat thí slíps in this clós, bhears a bíord, and dos not smóc bíocós obh de trobal obh straigeing a meaits.which reads as
I know a man who is so lazy that he sleeps in his clothes, wears a beard, and does not smoke because of the trouble of striking a match.I wanted to put this together with the idea that Japanese uses different orthographies for different things: hiragana for native words spelled phonetically, katakana for imported words spelled phonetically, kanji, which is pictographic, for most content-bearing words, and occasionally romaji, the Latin alphabet you are reading now. So then I might write a little Star Wars parody, in which the country bumpkin hero (るくさかいをくる) speaks hiragana, and the villain (ダルトベイダ), who is clearly foreign, speaks katakana. Yoda would of course speak Kanji, and, just possibly, Wookies and those little teddy bears would use romaji.
Naturally, I would also have needed to think about word order, especially for Yoda. Japanese is a head-final language, which means it generally puts the word with the most oomph at the end of each clause, so for example in a sentence the verb comes last. Thus for "I like drinking beer" you might say something like "watashi wa nomimoni wa biru ga suki desu", which reads roughly as with regards to me, in the matter of drink, beer, likeable is. (With apologies for any errors in this: it's more than 10 years since I studied Japanese.) Then everyone could talk like this, except for Yoda, who would use English word order. Because in the English version of Star Wars, backwards speaks does he.
Alas, I could never take this beyond the germ of an idea. But it does trigger off one other thought. There is a discussion of Yoda's syntax in an old language log posting, in which various word orders for Yoda's speech are discussed, and it is also pointed out that occasionally he follows ordinary English word order. The question that troubles me is that given that he can follow English word order, why doesn't he do so all the time? He has had (we assume) several hundred years of exposure to the the language, which is surely enough to smooth out his idio-grammatical quirks and get him to native speaker competence. Speaks funny, then why does he? I believe there can only be one answer: that Chomsky was right all along. The innate language component of Yoda's brain is such that he intrinsically cannot get the words in the right order, no matter how much he studies and attends the Berlitz school for Jedi. The universal grammar of Yoda sapiens just won't allow it.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Riddles in the light
I've had some fun over the last year with online riddle games. A couple of years back, I played Qwyzzle after reading about it in Alison Scott's Live Journal. It is an example of the "URL-changing" style of riddles, in which you get a web page which contains a puzzle to solve, and then change part of the URL based on the solution to advance to the next puzzle. As far as I can tell, Qwyzzle is now off-line, though there are many others like it.
Late in 2007, a metafilter posting directed me to a list of room escape games. These are usually built with Flash, and typically have a scenario where you have to escape from a locked room by finding and combining objects and solving brain teasers. Most of them are of poor quality, partly in the game mechanics (pixel-hunting, for example), but more particularly because the puzzles are often rather arbitrary or just daft, and they didn't really hold my interest for long. (With one exception: the submachine series by Mateusz Skutnik).
The same list also included The Roomz. Superficially, this looks like other room escape games, but is really closer to the Qwyzzle genre. It consists of a number of levels, each with a password that gets you to the next one. Some of the early levels are a bit like point-and-click games, but most of them involve breaking codes and solving logic puzzles, sometimes with a bit of lateral thinking thrown in. I don't want to reveal any details, but to give an outline of one "room", you start by seeing some pictures and a string of letters. Working out who and what the pictures refer to gives you a lead in to what kind of code it is and the keyword to break it, and this gets you to the password. This is an early puzzle and is a fairly simple one. By the end (room 45), you are solving multi-layered puzzles, in which you need to crack codes, solve cryptic clues, assemble information from the web (or your own head, if it already contains what you need to know), and make a few inspired guesses. It took me about four or five months to get through the whole of The Roomz, with probably a month or more on the last room alone. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I solved the last puzzle while at work, in a particularly tedious meeting.
The Roomz was a good experience, both for the puzzles themselves, and also because it has a supportive and helpful forum for getting you past points where you just can't see what to do next. After I finished it, I cast around for something new to play. Clever Waste Of Time is one that many people speak highly of, but I didn't like that to solve some of the puzzles you end up installing extra software, and also that the forum has a rather hostile feel to it. Eventually, I came across The Labyrinth (and Labyrinth II) at puzzlefiles. In presentation style, it is very different to The Roomz: each puzzle is simply a web page with low-fidelity graphics and a text field to enter the solution. However, the puzzles have the same multi-layered nature, with codes and numerical and word games, and in many cases the need to make an intuitive leap once you've done the initial stage. It also has a forum which, like The Roomz, has people willing to be helpful and constructive. With some of the harder puzzles, I needed to get a gentle hint, then less gentle nudge, and sometimes thundering great shove to figure out what was going on. I finished the two labyrinths after about 7 months, with some longish breaks at various stages.
I found both The Roomz and the two Labyrinths engaging in the same way that a good cryptic crossword in the British style is. They mix conventions (e.g. "blind" often indicates there is some Braille in the puzzle just as broken signals an anagram in a crossword), a set of solving techniques which you might recognize when you see them or might require you to work out something new, and some leap in the dark guesswork. And there is same a-ha feeling when a particularly difficult puzzle resolves. Of the two, The Roomz has richer interaction, though the puzzles are a bit easier and occasionally become formulaic. The Labyrinths have harder and more disciplined puzzles, with a less interesting visual style. I've not yet found a new game to move on to, though some of the puzzles at puzzletome look promising.
(BTW: The Roomz only works with IE. I've had some weirdness in retrying it after recent Flash updates, though not enough to make it unplayable.)
Late in 2007, a metafilter posting directed me to a list of room escape games. These are usually built with Flash, and typically have a scenario where you have to escape from a locked room by finding and combining objects and solving brain teasers. Most of them are of poor quality, partly in the game mechanics (pixel-hunting, for example), but more particularly because the puzzles are often rather arbitrary or just daft, and they didn't really hold my interest for long. (With one exception: the submachine series by Mateusz Skutnik).
The same list also included The Roomz. Superficially, this looks like other room escape games, but is really closer to the Qwyzzle genre. It consists of a number of levels, each with a password that gets you to the next one. Some of the early levels are a bit like point-and-click games, but most of them involve breaking codes and solving logic puzzles, sometimes with a bit of lateral thinking thrown in. I don't want to reveal any details, but to give an outline of one "room", you start by seeing some pictures and a string of letters. Working out who and what the pictures refer to gives you a lead in to what kind of code it is and the keyword to break it, and this gets you to the password. This is an early puzzle and is a fairly simple one. By the end (room 45), you are solving multi-layered puzzles, in which you need to crack codes, solve cryptic clues, assemble information from the web (or your own head, if it already contains what you need to know), and make a few inspired guesses. It took me about four or five months to get through the whole of The Roomz, with probably a month or more on the last room alone. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I solved the last puzzle while at work, in a particularly tedious meeting.
The Roomz was a good experience, both for the puzzles themselves, and also because it has a supportive and helpful forum for getting you past points where you just can't see what to do next. After I finished it, I cast around for something new to play. Clever Waste Of Time is one that many people speak highly of, but I didn't like that to solve some of the puzzles you end up installing extra software, and also that the forum has a rather hostile feel to it. Eventually, I came across The Labyrinth (and Labyrinth II) at puzzlefiles. In presentation style, it is very different to The Roomz: each puzzle is simply a web page with low-fidelity graphics and a text field to enter the solution. However, the puzzles have the same multi-layered nature, with codes and numerical and word games, and in many cases the need to make an intuitive leap once you've done the initial stage. It also has a forum which, like The Roomz, has people willing to be helpful and constructive. With some of the harder puzzles, I needed to get a gentle hint, then less gentle nudge, and sometimes thundering great shove to figure out what was going on. I finished the two labyrinths after about 7 months, with some longish breaks at various stages.
I found both The Roomz and the two Labyrinths engaging in the same way that a good cryptic crossword in the British style is. They mix conventions (e.g. "blind" often indicates there is some Braille in the puzzle just as broken signals an anagram in a crossword), a set of solving techniques which you might recognize when you see them or might require you to work out something new, and some leap in the dark guesswork. And there is same a-ha feeling when a particularly difficult puzzle resolves. Of the two, The Roomz has richer interaction, though the puzzles are a bit easier and occasionally become formulaic. The Labyrinths have harder and more disciplined puzzles, with a less interesting visual style. I've not yet found a new game to move on to, though some of the puzzles at puzzletome look promising.
(BTW: The Roomz only works with IE. I've had some weirdness in retrying it after recent Flash updates, though not enough to make it unplayable.)
Friday, July 28, 2006
More reasons why the iPod is crap
Following my recent post about Apple's economy with the truth concerning the iPod battery life, I wanted to add a couple more reasons why I think the iPod is crap, or at least not as good as Apple would like you to think.
First, I've had the experience just after turning it on or after shuffling songs that the controls become unresponsive for 20-30 seconds. It's OK if this is happening because the iPod needs to do some computation. It's not OK that there is no indication of a delay in the user interface. Apple included the hourglass in what they stole from Xerox for the Mac UI: why couldn't they do it for the iPod?
Secondly, suppose you have the iPod set up to shuffle by album. You are half way through an album when the battery runs low and so you connect it up. When you next turn it on, it has reshuffled the playlist and started you on a new album. This is true even if no new music was downloaded, and even if you have manual synchronization set up.
Oh, and another thing. The capacitative touch control is all very well, but don't try using it too close to your Blackberry. The radio signal from the Blackberry presumably causes electrical discharge through your fingertips, and so the controls go mad. You have to think there are some Blackberry users amongst Apple's so-called design team who might have noticed this and considered a different sort of control. I wonder what happens if you use the iPod in a thunderstorm?
First, I've had the experience just after turning it on or after shuffling songs that the controls become unresponsive for 20-30 seconds. It's OK if this is happening because the iPod needs to do some computation. It's not OK that there is no indication of a delay in the user interface. Apple included the hourglass in what they stole from Xerox for the Mac UI: why couldn't they do it for the iPod?
Secondly, suppose you have the iPod set up to shuffle by album. You are half way through an album when the battery runs low and so you connect it up. When you next turn it on, it has reshuffled the playlist and started you on a new album. This is true even if no new music was downloaded, and even if you have manual synchronization set up.
Oh, and another thing. The capacitative touch control is all very well, but don't try using it too close to your Blackberry. The radio signal from the Blackberry presumably causes electrical discharge through your fingertips, and so the controls go mad. You have to think there are some Blackberry users amongst Apple's so-called design team who might have noticed this and considered a different sort of control. I wonder what happens if you use the iPod in a thunderstorm?
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Apple iPod Battery Life
Apple's figures for the battery life on a iPod are misleading, disingenuous, or at least economical with the truth. For a fifth generation, 30G iPod, they say 14 hours music playing time on a fully charged batter. If you think you are getting less than this, you can run a test using a methodology listed here. Basically, you set your iPod to play a single album on repeat, with the backlight and EQ turned off. Repeating the same album means there is little or no disk access, and turning off EQ reduces extra computation. If you get less than half the specified time, you can consider the battery faulty.
So another way of putting this is that the battery life is between 7 and 14 hours, provided you are using the iPod in completely unrealistic way. If you ever use the backlight, shuffle the playing order, or skip tracks, you get far less.
On the test, my iPod gave 11 hours and 10 minutes, about the in the middle of the range. In my typical use, with no EQ and the backlight timer set to 5 seconds, I get between 3 and 4 hours, which is barely acceptable.
Apple like to present themselves as a white knight: we are good for our users and morally better than the other guys. Well, they've always been better at projecting an image than creating a reality. This is the company who forced the one-button mouse on us, or made out that a Mac was better because it had a case made of translucent blue plastic, and who are currently advertising themselves as better than Microsoft by means of sneering at them. I think I would rather they put their efforts into being more honest about themselves.
So another way of putting this is that the battery life is between 7 and 14 hours, provided you are using the iPod in completely unrealistic way. If you ever use the backlight, shuffle the playing order, or skip tracks, you get far less.
On the test, my iPod gave 11 hours and 10 minutes, about the in the middle of the range. In my typical use, with no EQ and the backlight timer set to 5 seconds, I get between 3 and 4 hours, which is barely acceptable.
Apple like to present themselves as a white knight: we are good for our users and morally better than the other guys. Well, they've always been better at projecting an image than creating a reality. This is the company who forced the one-button mouse on us, or made out that a Mac was better because it had a case made of translucent blue plastic, and who are currently advertising themselves as better than Microsoft by means of sneering at them. I think I would rather they put their efforts into being more honest about themselves.
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