c7y

Why No One Comments on Google News

Look at the comment threads on Digg, for example, or Ars Technica, or Boing Boing. Why are there such long, boisterous comment threads? Because we know that the news we are reading there was driven by human beings, and when we respond, those human beings are paying attention, and want to be part of the conversation. But Google News is driven entirely by a computer algorithm. There is no explicit community. No one goes there to engage in community. Even if one can argue, as one can with web search, that the News algorithm is derived from community actions, it is not subservient to them, as is Digg's. In short, there are no stakeholders in the Google News community. It's not a place people go to be social.

Why am I at Meetup now? Because that cheesy old quote that people are the killer app of the internet is true.

Clouds

Clouds
Originally uploaded by wck

A peaceful view of NYC from 6000 feet for a quiet week.

scottish

I have to write this up, lest I slip & start thinking my family might be normal. For almost a week I've been sick- sore throat, headache, whatever. Last night I was curled up in a chair, buried under blankets with a small sheltie snuggled nearby. My dad lit a nice fire, turned on the Christmas tree lights, and turned up next to my chair with a bottle of Drambuie.

Drambuie is really really sweet liquor made from scotch and honey, and if you drink it straight up, it will quite literally take the lining off your throat, and your stomach, and probably strip off a few of your teeth. It's strong. Really, really, bite-your-head-off nasty stuff. My family is cuckoo & Scottish, so whenever one of us got sick as a kid, we were treated with a nice shot of it.

So here's my dad, with his guaranteed sore throat remedy, trying to heal me. When I declined to drink any (come on, I'd brushed my teeth already!) he launched into a "you won't get better until you drink it!" speech. On Christmas Eve. Yes... we think Drambuie is actual medicine around here.

Meanwhile, I've been stumped about how to back up all the text messages I have saved on my sim card in my phone for a few days, and it finally occured to me that I should just type them out or something. So here are a few that I've been carrying around on my phone over the last 5 years.

"Happy no longer working for Gooooooogle" -my sailor 6/15/07 (yes, he put all those "o"'s in there himself. and yes, that was my last day working there)

"She said yes!" - Brian 10/22/06 (after many text messages working up the courage to propose to his now wife)

"Heh i locked myself out of my apt" - my sailor 7/13/05 (might I note that he is an actual licensed locksmith?)

"Ticket 0000XXXXX - Impact 1 - HP6 Automated warm fuzzy" - amazon's ticketing system 7/13/05 (paging me for a not so small bug)

"Hi beautiful. Miss you" - my sailor 11/12/02 (awww. he's so sweet)

round ball of fuzz

round ball of fuzz
Originally uploaded by wck

I love this photo of Declan. He LOVES the sofa in the living room (when he can't reach the doggie bed I made him that's in the green room, behind closed doors). The living room has a huge ceiling with skylights, and the upstairs hall extends to a balcony that runs across it. Right underneath is this sofa. So... you can walk across the balcony, look down, and see a fuzzy sheltie napping. Awwwwww. He's sleeping on a fisherman's cable blanket that my grandma made for me to take to college.

We had a crazy christmas around here- just like always. Yesterday Kate & I made cookie press cookies (sandwiched with apricot and strawberry jam then dipped in chocolate!) and then panettone. Mmmmmm. This morning I made scones and then we had waffles and THEN most of the presents were opened (chaos!) and then french toast. Ana and Tom, as expected, liked the wrapping paper better than the gifts.

I'd finished a quilt for each kid, so the one picture I wanted to get was each one on the sofa with their quilts, but of course that didn't happen. Maybe next year.

christmas!

The trees are up!

boats

Poli Sci 221 at Wellesley taught me two things (at least that I remember). First, what the prisoner's dilemma game is, and secondly how your brain becomes rather hard wired to see the world through the lens of the culture and background you were raised in. We were talking, mostly, about international relations and yadda yadda heavy stuff. I was reminded of it today, though, for much lighter purposes. I was talking to a coworker about how Boy would like to get back out to sea as soon as possible and the coworker asked me why he would prefer to be on a ship. Seriously, I was stumped what to say. I grew up on boats, and my summer still revolves around the lake almost completely. So, well, it makes absolute sense to me that given a choice between being at sea for a few months at a time and being in a land office, you would take the sea job. Putting that "it's so much better" into actual words, though, was rather hard. And what really stopped me was that he asked- kind of the moment where your implicit worldview becomes visible.

the right tools

Have you ever tried to use Open Office's "data pilot" feature? It's supposed to be like Excel's pivot tables, but OH MY GOD. I wasted 2 hours on it today. Basically, we're a fast moving software shop and I want to keep tabs on our bug open and bug close rate. Traditionally, software test engineers generate little counts like this- an imaginary "bugs openedy by component" table.

Component Name	Two Days ago	Yesterday	Today
Product Component X	2	8	17
Product Component Y	2	3	4
Product Component Z	3	3	0

Looking at that table, I would see that component X has been getting more unstable, while Y and Z have been stable. So if we're going to launch, I need to make sure that more regression tests are run on X and it receives more attention.

You generate these tables by dumping a list of bug IDs by component and Open Date, then making a Pivot Table. Easy. Well... I couldn't make Open Office's "data pilot" give me counts like "8" or "3". It had 100s of columns, each with a date at the top and a "1" somewhere down in the row that corresponded to a component. That's not that useful! I want rolled up counts! And yeah, I was marking "count" on the bug IDs. Oh well... We made the table today in about 3 seconds after pulling the data in Excel.

I was a little bummed out that we'd need to be using Excel for this until I got on the train today. I even looked online to see if there were any online pivot table generator websites or open source tools. And checked AppleWorks (I was desperate).

Or rather until NJT made me sit around on a platform at Penn Station waiting to get on a train (they called our track number and then 5 minutes later a train pulled up). While I was sitting around down there something in the back of my mind started saying "hey... this reminds you of data you've dealt with before". Well, yes. This is why I adore perl, gorgeous little data munging language that it is.

1. read in data
2. split lines so you have $date, $component, $bug ID
3. create %data{$date}{$component}=$count
4. print out your perl generated pivot table
5. profit

I felt like someone all of a sudden handed exactly the right tool. Bliss. And I kind of feel bad for people who want their data pivot tabled who don't know perl (;

woot

Kick some __
Originally uploaded by slimeduckling

taken by lenny

Grand Sichuan St Marks

Damn that is a lot of food.
Originally uploaded by teknogeek

At amazon, we were addicted to 7 Stars Peppers (that review is even written by a former amazonian (; ). Now at Meetup, I'm working on spreading more Sichuan food love. This is Meetup eating lunch together from Grand Sichuan St Marks.

Bertrand's Island mural at Mt Arlington

The murals are an homage to the Bertrand Island Amusement Park, along Lake Hopatcong, which drew visitors to the area from the early 1900s to its closing in 1983.

Flanking the station’s entrance are two large bas-relief tile murals depicting carousel horses in teal blue, yellow and pink. A tunnel to the station is lined with hand-painted tile murals of photographs from the park’s heyday. In one from 1930, people ride on a spindly-looking Ferris wheel. Another shows visitors wading in Lake Hopatcong in 1907, when the area was known as “Little Coney Island.”

The park had about 20 rides, but one of the most treasured was the carousel, which was created by the designer Marcus Illions, said Marty Kane, president of the Lake Hopatcong Historical Museum.

- article in NYT

Wow! I used to ride that carousel when I was a tiny little kid, and one of my earliest memories is of riding it late in the evening on the weekend that my little sister was born. It was right on the lake shore, and we still sail past where it used to be. This new train station is about the same distance from my house as the train station I use now, so I might have to drive over to take some pictures some early morning.

Hello, poor neglected blog. Here's a picture of Declan to make up for recent quietness:



And a few other things

• we had a surprise snowstorm on monday in NJ which left us with several inches of snow
• I realized what a total nerd I am when I was asked during a demo the other day when epoch time started and I came up with "early 1970" on the spot (it's Jan 1, 1970 and god knows why I remembered the year so well)
• I realized what a further nerd I was when I could come up with the date of epoch time overflow, which will be UNIX y2k
• I need to write a few posts about early amazon christmases. Here's a tiny tidbit for now- when I first reported to the seattle Distribution Center, I was put on gift wrap because I was a girl. But I'm a klutz, so I got kicked out after 2 packages

mission: impossible, the cupcake version

Ana is turning two soon, and we're having a birthday party her with cupcakes. It would be nice if she could eat a cupcake at her birthday party, so I'm trying to find a good cupcake recipe for her that she can eat. Hence the challenge... she has celiac disease, and appears to also be allergic to corn, dairy, and eggs. I can find plenty of vegan cupcake recipes (which would cover the dairy & eggs part) but they use a lot of soy milk, which usually has gluten added to it, and regular flour. And there are plenty of gluten-free cupcake recipes... which use dairy or eggs.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World claims to have a few wheat-free vegan cupcake recipes. I'll probably be ordering it soon and giving it a whirl. Otherwise, it's going to be major kitchen experimentation time.

Verizon EVDO = 5 GB/month, now officially

Well, this certainly took long enough for Verizon to admit to.

Verizon forced to stop calling limited cell data plans "unlimited" - story on boing boing. EVDO is my only internet access, so I always keep in the back of my mind that I should be going to the library to use their wifi when I start doing a lot of downloading or uploading to flickr. I can't believe it took them this long to admit what most EVDO users have known for months.

October 21 NYC Breast Cancer walk in Central Park

I'm joining some coworkers to do the NYC Breast Cancer walk this month. Esther's mom had breast cancer when we were in college, and I've known a few other women who had it. If you'd like to make a donation to my team, here is the donation page, or you can find a walk near you.

lucy's ears

lucy's ears
Originally uploaded by wck

end of the summer fun... kids and rabbits playing in the vegetable garden. Kate and Ana have 2 rabbits, Lucy and Lenny, who are the softest, sweetest little snuggly things ever. Their dad decided that the thing to do on a sunny afternoon was to toss all 4 of them out into the vegetable garden. It has a fence all the way around it... good for keeping rabbits and kids inside.