George Sudarkoff

Body energy

I am not the first one to think of this obviously (Matrix movie was partly about that), but how about powering our electronic toys with the energy produced by our own bodies? It'll burn additional calories of course, but maybe we'll even solve the obesity problem along the way. Just don't talk on your phone for too long or you'll starve. Running out of juice will take on a whole new meaning. With all the miniaturization and the onset of the embeddable devices, surely some research should have been done in this area already.

Bad Grouping

Bad Grouping, originally uploaded by sudarkoff.

This is a good example of the bad grouping of page elements. Neither of the text blocks clearly "claims" the illustration. Vertical whitespace below the upper text block suggest that the illustration belongs to the block below it. But the header of the second text block separates it from the picture. It would have been much better to place the header above the image and the rest of the text below it.

100 Miles

Today I reached a 100 mile mark since the beginning of the year. This is roughly 30 miles per month or 8 miles per week - almost three times fewer than I planned. But it still feels good. I don't remember who said it: "I am not running to add days to my life, but to add life to my days." And this is exactly how it feels!

Wilderness survival

Want to spend a week in May at a survival camp near MT Shasta, CA? Drop me a line.

Whiny geeks

What motivates people to whine about deficiencies and flaws in products they never held in their hands and probably can't afford either?

Take the Apple's new MacBook Air for example. What do the omega geeks think will be the reason of its demise? Let's enumerate: (1) it has no FireWire port, (2) it has no DVD drive, (3) battery is not user-replaceable, (4) no ethernet port, (5) no ExpressCard slot and, my favorite, (6) it's too thin! The conclusion: "it looks good but isn't for the power user." Power user, I gather, is the one with the most power bricks in his backpack. So the geeks have spoken: MacBook Air is a failure because the random Joe Shmoe couldn't afford it and therefore had to come up with all those lame excuses to use in a conversation with his fellow losers. Allrighty then!

Now let's see what a person from the intended audience would think about all those deficiencies: (1) what's FireWire?, (2) I can watch, rip and burn DVD's on any of my other Macs, (3) never replaced a battery in my laptop and even if I ever need to, I'll ask that genius at the Apple store to do it for me, (4) with integrated 802.11n who needs ethernet?, (5) what's ExpressCard?, (6) when my colleagues see me enter the conference room with only a manila envelope in my hand and produce a stunning looking laptop from it they'll die of envy!

There is no Bug

[Angry rant alert!]

Author of the blog "Hyper Agile Thinking" (oy vey!) in his article "There is no Bug. It is not the Bug that Bends, it is Only Yourself" argues that:

Only when you realize that “there is no bug”, that the problem lies within, can you change your behavior (process) such that no bug is reported on the software that you deliver. I’m not saying that real software with zero bugs is an attainable goal, only that you consider a change of perspective in order to bend the spoon a bit.

...The problems lie within. Only when we acknowledge this and accept it can we hope to affect real change. Agile development is an excellent platform for seamlessly incorporating the required introspection and continual improvement.

Oh, there's no bug, you bet! But behind all those big words you are missing another important problem - there is no program and there is no process either. It is all an illusion (if you follow the original logic of "there's no spoon")! So, while I wholeheartedly agree that it is more accurate to treat bugs like something internal (and really, let's call them defects already?), it doesn't really change anything. Because bugs only "appear" when internal reality collides with external and there is nothing you can do about it. Agile or not, you still have to go outside and test your theories on the harsh real world. You know, by actually giving your shit to people and hoping nothing explodes.

And while I am at it, don't you think that "agile methodology" is an oxymoron?!

Pure idiocy

I was trying to install Adobe Illustrator on my MacBook Pro and got this error:

This is the support article I found on their website:

I couldn't believe by eyes! What kind of "solution" is that?! What the hell?! How do you design your software to not support case sensitive file system?!

Running weeks of Dec 9-15 and 16-22

Dec 9 - Dec 15

Runs: 2
Distance: 5.71 mi

Dec 16 - Dec 22

Runs: 2
Distance: 8.07 mi

I was on vacation for parts of both weeks. The last run was the first time when I used Forerunner 305 GPS watch and heart-rate monitor that my wife bought me for x-mass. The software that came with the device allows you to structure, schedule and upload workouts to Forerunner in advance. Then you just tell it to run today's workout and follow the instructions on the screen. Chest strap was quite comfortable - something I was worried about. Screen has just the right amount of information and is quite easy to read. All in all, I am very satisfied with this device! Oh, and the workout was perfect! The temperature was very nice - 50°F and I did a perfect 5 mile endurance run at about 80% of estimated Max HR.

Running week of Dec 2 - Dec 8

Runs: 4
Distance: 14.71 mi
Time: 2:43'00"
Pace: 11'04"/mi
Calories: 2.232
Avg Weight: 200 lb

It includes warm-ups and cool-downs, so the numbers are a bit misleading. I'll think on how to better present this (and possibly automate) later. You might recall that I used to have runner's log alongside this blog, but since I am hosting my blog on TypePad now, I will need to think of the alternative solution.

Webab

Webcal allows you to subscribe to other people's or public calendars. I wonder why there is no similar thing for address books (webaddr)? Or have I missed it? Imagine, if you could subscribe to your address book on some social networking website and never have to worry about phone numbers and email addresses being obsolete as long as your contacts keep their profiles current (and now they will have an incentive). Imagine, if you could update your own contact information in one place (perhaps, your local address book) and have it pushed to all your contacts automatically and unobtrusively. We already have all the bits and pieces in place, so the only task left is to repackage and popularize it.