Reflections on a Homsechool Conference

I don’t have time for a full blog post this week, as I’ve just come back from a homeschooling conference (or “expo,” they prefer to call it).  Just walked in the door a couple hours ago and found one of our cats had managed to shut himself up in my room.  For three days.  With no food or water.  Or anywhere to go to the bathroom.  Other than, you know, my bed.

So I’m a bit busy and a lot exhausted, and quite looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a change (well, after further rigorous cleansing).  But, since it’s fresh in my mind, perhaps a few words on the conference may be in order.

We homeschool our kids more out of necessity than anything else.  When we lived on the East Coast, we sent our child to a Sudbury school, which worked really well for us.  On the East Coast (or at the very least in the Southeast), “homeschooling” meant your family were crazy religious fundamentalists.  This is primarily because the response of the Southern Baptist Conference to the integration of public schools was to strongly encourage homeschooling for their parishioners.  So, you know, there really is something to that perception.

So, on the East Coast (or, as I say, at least in the Southeast), if you’re a crazy fundamentalist, you homeschool, and, if you’re a crazy hippie (like us), you send your kids to weird private schools (Sudbury being just one option: Montessori, Waldorf, Progressive, Indigo, Reggio Emilia ... there’s no shortage of options).  But, when we moved to the West Coast, it just didn’t work that way.  It’s weird—you’d think that a nice liberal hippie state like California would be very open to weird alternative educational models.  But the truth is that the stringent state and school district requirements make it practically impossible to run such a school, particularly in the Los Angeles area.  Then again, we Californians couldn’t manage to legalize pot or gay marriage, so maybe it’s time to rethink that whole liberal hippie thing.

Point being, homeschooling out on the West Coast doesn’t (necessarily) mean lots of praying and basket-weaving for Jesus and that sort of thing.  Rather, it’s (typically) more of the crunchy granola barefoot children with annoyingly independent thinking and far too advanced vocabularies.  So that’s what you’re in for when you head to the California Homeschool Network Family Expo in Ontario (no, not Canada: San Bernadino County).

This is basically set up like any business or technical conference: there are sessions, with speakers, and a vendor hall full of people trying to sell you stuff.  Although it’s hard to say whether this is more aimed at the parents or the children ... for the most part, homeschoolers of this variety don’t distinguish.  Why shouldn’t the kid take an interest in his or her own education?  No one is going to be more impacted by the quality of said education, after all.  So people who present sessions, or hope to sell you educational aids, have to be prepared to deal with, shall we say, younger customers.  Which is probably good for everyone involved, all things considered.

Of course, a lot of what you get out of a conference is a social event.  I spoke a bit about this last year in relation to my trip to YAPC, which is a technical conference for Perl programmers (of which I am one).  In fact, one of the things I lamented at that time was not being to take my family, because I’m a lot less social without them.  So this sort of conference is the perfect antidote to that: I got to meet lots of people (and see lots of people I knew previously) and I was always with one or another of my family to sort of “lean on,” socially speaking.

So we did a heck of a lot more socializing than attending presentations.  In fact, the eldest and I only attended one, really—we started to go for a second, but then realized we’d seen it last year—although the whole family went to a another talk given by the same guy who did the session we did manage to attend: Jim Weiss.  The session was on using stories to teach, which I thought was quite excellent.  The other talk was just him telling some stories, which was sort of like a practical demonstration of what his session tried to show us.  He really is quite talented as a storyteller.  Made me a bit jealous, actually.

Outside of official sessions, we enjoyed the reptile zoo, and our favorite vendor booth, the wonderful folks from The Comic Shop, where we picked up yet another version of Fluxx and yet another Munchkin booster, as well as a copy of Munchkin Booty (i.e., the pirate version of Munchkin).  Oh, and the first deck of Pokémon cards for the smaller animal, which is a bit depressing, at least to my future wallet.  But lots of fun stuff at that booth.

But, again, mostly just socializing.  We got to chat with lots of other families in the same situation as us and compare notes.  We got to see plenty of folks that we only get to see once a year at this very event.  We got to play a few impromptu games of Fluxx with random kids that wandered up to us to see what was going on.  This was our third year, and we had a blast.  So, all in all, we had a great time and we’re glad we went.  And I reckon we’ll do it again next year.

The Newsroom: Hit, or Retread?

There are 3 people I always trust to create a good television series: Joss Whedon, Alan Ball, and Aaron Sorkin.  These are people known in the entertainment biz as “show runners”: they create the shows, they write many (but never all) of the episodes, they may direct here and there, they almost certainly produce a bit ... essentially, they’re the creative driving force of the series.  Basically, any time any of the three of these gentlemen put out a show, I’m going to want to give it a shot.  (Well, at least two of them: sorry, Joss, but until you learn to stop letting Fox pick up your shows, I’m in a wait-and-see mode for you.  Experience is a harsh teacher.)

What these three people have in common is something that other show runners share too (names that immediately spring to mind are JMS of Babylon 5, Jenji Kohan of Weeds, Kurt Sutter of Sons of Anarchy, and Murphy and Falchuk of American Horror Story— no, we will not be using the “G” word here), but these three guys are at the top of that heap.  Others have what they have, just not as much of it.  And what that is can be distilled into two big things: characters and dialogue.

It’s often been said that you need characters that your audience will care about.  This is not that hard, actually (although it’s shocking how often writers don’t bother, considering how relatively easy it is compared to, say, convincing a network producer to buy your pitch).  But it’s just a subset of what you really need: characters that are interesting.  You need characters that, be they heroes, villains, or just innocent bystanders, are unpredictable without being insane, outrageous without being alien, and sympathetic without being maudlin.  When they show up on the screen, people watching need to go “oooh, I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do next!”  Or hear what they’re going say next, which brings us neatly to the next point, which is ...

All three of these guys have been accused of writing “stylized” dialogue, which is just a fancy way to say what interviewers have been saying to all of them for years: real people don’t talk like that (the most recent example I’m aware of being Colbert to Sorkin).  And here’s something else they all have in common: none of them ever appear bothered by that observation.  As far as they’re concerned, it’s okay to have characters speaking dialogue that isn’t strictly realistic.  And it’s okay by me too.  After all, who else put flowery, stylized langugage into the mouths of their characters?  How about William Shakespeare?  Oh, sure, you say: that’s just Elizebethan English.  But do you seriously believe that anyone ever talked in iambic pentameter all day long? using all those evocative metaphors, many of which Shakespeare actually invented for the purpose?  No, of course not.  Shakespeare wasn’t so much pushing the envelope as blowing through it and coming out the other side on fire.

These guys don’t push it as far as Shakespeare, of course, but the point is that that these guys aren’t trying to have their characters talk like real people talk.  Rather, this is the way real people wish they talked.  This is the way real people fantasize that they talk, when applying their 20-20 hindsight.  The way they dream of talking, in the conversations in their heads.  It’s actually much cooler than the way real people talk.  And, because these guys are masters, it doesn’t seem jarring or draw attention to itself the way it would in the hands of a lesser writer.  It just flows, carrying the viewer along for the ride.

Most people know Aaron Sorkin as the West Wing guy.  Indeed, in the Colbert interview I reference above, it was the only other of his shows to be mentioned (although they mentioned a few of his movies).  But I never actually watched The West Wing.  I was introduced to Sorkin via Sports Night.

Now, you must understand: I don’t watch sports.  I hate sports, in fact.  When a friend of mine said, “you have to watch this show,” I said, “why would I watch this show? I hate sports.”  This led to the following bizarre exchange:

It’s not about sports.

What do you mean, it’s not about sports?  It’s got “sports” right there in the name.

It’s about a sports show.

I don’t watch sports shows either.  Why would I watch shows that tell me about sports?  I hate sports.

Well, it’s not really about sports shows either.  It’s a show about a show, and the show that it’s about just happens to be a sports show.  But it’s not about sports.

Uhhh ... yeah, right.  Whatever.

But I gave it a shot, and I got hooked.  I watched every episode I could, and I watched it all over again in repeats.  This was easy, because, like so many shows, its life was cut tragically short.  Sorkin wrapped it up as best he could in the time he had, but there’s no getting around the fact that, when you watch the entire run (much like watching Firefly, or Carnivàle), you can’t help but feel that the world missed out on something magical due to the amazing (and apparently infinite) stupidity of network executives.  Ah, well ... wouldn’t be the first time.  Nor the last, I suspect.

Just recently, I got the complete series of Sports Night on DVD and rewatched the entire thing, beginning to end.  It really is quite worthwhile, and I highly recommend it.  But the point is, it wasn’t 10 years of time for fading memories we’re talking about here, but rather less than two.  Easily fresh enough in my mind to cause a bit of déjà vu when I saw Aaron Sorkin’s new show, which premiered less than a month ago.

The Newsroom, in fact, is more than a little reminiscent of Sports Night.  It’s almost creepy in fact ... Will is Casey and Mackenzie is Dana, Jim is Jeremy and Maggie is Natalie, Charlie is Isaac.  Sloan may not be Dan yet, but that’s probably only because she hasn’t had enough airtime yet.  She’ll get there, I’m thinking.  Hell, even the “ancillary” characters (I hate to call them that because I’m sure at least some of them would find it insulting) line up to a certain extent: it’s hard not to see Neal, Kendra, and Gary as reincarnations of Kim, Eliot, and Chris, and, when you look at Don, don’t you get a little echo of Sally? even if he’s going after Natalie and not Casey?  No, wait: that should be Maggie and not Will.

It’s a very strong parallel, is my point.

Now, on the one hand, that’s okay.  I can sympathize with recycling characters that you feel like didn’t get to hit their full potential— I do it all the time in my own fiction.  And, hey: they were very cool characters the first time around, so it’s not like I’m sad to see them back or anything.  It’s just ... weird.  It’s a different show, about a different kind of show (and still one I don’t watch, as it happens), with different characters ... and yet it’s all the same.  It’s like going in to work one day and finding all your co-workers have been replaced by pod-people or something.  And then, when they don’t act exactly like their Sports Night avatars would (’cause, you know, they’re actually different characters), that jars you.  But when they do act exactly like that that’s weird too.  So I dunno.

The other issue I have with The Newsroom is that it has a much harder row to hoe than Sports Night did.  I imagine it’s a lot more like West Wing in this regard, although I wouldn’t know, since I still haven’t watched that (although I probably should).  See, Sports Night had the distinct advantage of being a comedy.  Oh, sure, it had its dramatic moments (as any good comedy will), but that doesn’t change the fact that, at its heart, it was a funny show that could surprise you by being touching and sweet and sometimes even suspenseful.  Newsroom, on the other hand, is the other way around.  It’s a serious drama, discussing weighty issues of the recent past and theoretically (hopefully) making you think ... and, every once in a while, they throw in something funny.  So far, I have to say it’s not working that well for me.  Somehow I find it easier to shift from a casual, amusing tone to a serious one, than to go from “whoa, that’s some deep shit” to “oh ho, she accidentally emailed the whole office.”  I have to believe this will get better (’cause I have faith in Sorkin’s ability to ride that line), but so far it’s a tough act to buy.  Maybe Sloan will be a good character for this (heaven knows Olivia Munn can be funny as hell, as she’s proven with her Daily Show work).  I’m in wait-and-see mode on this aspect as well.

But there’s no doubt that the three shows I’ve seen so far (episode #4 is on tonight) are pretty compelling stuff, proof that Sorkin has still got game.  Some may complain that his preaching about the loss of integrity in today’s news shows is heavy-handed, but I happen to agree with him, so maybe I’m prone to overlook that.  (It reminds me, actually, of the remarks George Clooney made in the special features of the Good Night, and Good Luck DVD.  Perhaps Clooney and Sorkin are drinking buddies or something.)  The characters are interesting, and the dialogue is hyper-real, and the show within the show is, so far, far more interesting than I would find any real-world example of a news show to be, I’m quite sure.  So far, I’m enjoying The Newsroom, despite a few niggling doubts.

So what’s the answer to the provocative question posed by the title of this week’s blog post?  Well, you may recall that I’m a big believer in paradox: the answer is both, of course.



Of course, if I wanted to prove I was a real Sports-Night-nerd, I would have phrased the title question as “Quo Vadis?”  I resisted the urge.

Perl blog post #8

Today’s post is another technical one, that deals with fear of change and how a particular development practice can help with that.  I’ve no doubt that, even if you’re not too technical yourself, you could get something out of it if you were willing to give it a shot.  Or, just refer back up to the masthead if you prefer.

A Mistaken Hue

A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.

This is one of the earliest quotes I can remember being inspired by.  Like many quotes, its attribution is uncertain; when I first came across it, in a calendar I bought at the college bookstore my freshman year, it was ascribed to that perennial wit, Anoymous.  Then I found out that it was said by someone really famous (undoubtedly either Voltaire or Mark Twain), and then that it was uttered by Willaim Shedd (whoever that is).  Now that I check again, Wikiquote tells me it’s a quote from John Augustus Shedd, from his classic tome Salt from My Attic.  Which is apparently a book so obscure that some people question its very existence.

But no matter.  The quote is a good one, regardless of who said it.  It’s simple, direct, and evocative.  I immediately interpreted it to be a reference to matters of the heart, but of course I was young and stupid then (and, as it happens, in love with someone who didn’t return my affections).  So of course I would see the romantic side of this quote.

And yet ... this quote can be interpreted so much more broadly.  It can be a metaphor for the folly of playing it safe, in life in general.  Perhaps you’ve seen some variation on this old chestnut:

If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes.  I would relax.  I would be sillier than I have been this trip.  I know of very few things that I would take seriously.  I would be less hygienic.  I would go more places.  I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.  I would eat more ice cream and less bran.

I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles.

You see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments.  But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them—a lot more.  I never go anywhere without a thermometer, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.  If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.
:
:
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall.  I would play hooky more.  I would shoot more paper wads at my teachers.  I would have more dogs.  I would keep later hours.  I’d have more sweethearts.

I would fish more.  I would go to more circuses.  I would go to more dances.  I would ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I would be carefree as long as I could, or at least until I got some care—instead of having my cares in advance.

As it turns out, this was not written by the mythical 85-year-old “Nadine Stair,” nor is it an English translation of a Spanish poem by Jorge Luis Borges.  It’s actually a piece from the Reader’s Digest (which makes sense, given the tenor), written by a 64-year-old named Don Herold.  Again, though, it’s irrelevant who wrote it: does it ring true?  Does it say something worth listening to?  I think perhaps it does.  I think it tells us to take the ship out of the harbor.

Here’s another, different version.  When I get a movie on DVD, I often watch the “special features,” which my eldest used to call the “great theaters” (when he was much younger, of course).  Watching the Great Theaters on a DVD is one of my habits that most of my family could care less about; generally they all get up and leave the room while I check out all the behind-the-scenes info on the making of the cinematic magic.  Often I do this whether I particularly liked the movie or not; sometimes I even find the making-of bits (or the bloopers, or the deconstructions of the stunts and special effects) more entertaining than the movie itself.

But I digress.  The point is, when I first watched Bend it Like Beckham (which I actually did enjoy), I watched the Great Theaters.  All of them.  The movie is about a British girl of Indian heritage, and her father is played by Anupam Kher, who’s a rather famous Bollywood actor.  Throughout the Great Theaters, he kept saying this quote over and over again, using slightly different words, because he felt it summed up the spirit of the movie so well.  I’m sure he was quoting someone else, but I’ll give him the credit, since he’s the one who burned it into my brain.  Here’s my favorite of the several different ways he phrased it:

If you try, you risk failure.  If you don’t, you ensure it.

I rather like this, because it takes the original quote and steps it up a notch.  Now it’s not just a missed opportunity you’re stuck with if you don’t risk taking the ship out of the harbor.  You’re actually failing by failing to move.  You’ve not only gained nothing, you’ve lost everything.  You think you’re staying out of the game by refusing to play, but you’re not: you’re forfeiting.

Anupam Kher gives us the short version.  If you’d like it spelled out a bit more clearly for you, how about we listen to Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992:

The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching our goals.  The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.  It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled.  It is a calamity not to dream.  It is not a disaster not to capture your ideal.  It is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.  It is not a disgrace to reach for the stars and fail.  It is a disgrace not to try.  Failure is no sin.  Low aim is a sin.

Hooks was a Baptist minister and a lawyer, so I tend to trust the man when he talks about sin.

I often say that I am a romantic, despite the fact that I’m a cynic (a dichotomy to which I should really devote its own blog post).  This is one of the expressions of that outlook.  I will continue to write my novel even though I’m far too old to become a famous writer (although of course Stieg Larsson is always an inspiration—hopefully I won’t need to die first, as Larsson did).  I will continue to demand a work environment where I can relax and have fun even though it’s “unrealistic” to expect a business to be run that way (never mind that I myself ran a business exactly that way for 12 years).  I will continue to encourage my children to follow their own dreams, even if those dreams are completely ineffectual ways to earn a living.  Because, as Robert Browning tells us:

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?

Nothing to Say ... Again

Once again, I find myself in the curious position of having nothing really to say.

Last time this happened, I wrote nearly a thousand words on having nothing to say.  Needless to say, I didn’t lose the opportunity to point out the inherent paradox therein.  I also took a moment to look back and see how many useless blog posts I’ve put out.  You’re not getting a thousand words out of me today, but I can do the retrospective thing, I suppose.

Let’s see ... 113 posts, 29 of which are interstitial.  Of course, 7 of those interstitial are pointers to my Perl blog posts, and those are real posts, just not here.  I’m counting them anyway.  So that’s ... 91 (yep, still went to another window for my computer to do the math for me).  Which is coming up on 2 years’ worth of weekly posts.  (And, since there are so many posts like this one, where I just flake out and don’t post anything, we actually passed two years’ worth of calendar time about 3 months ago).  Now, 31 of them are my fictional ramblings, and you may or may not want to count those (if you didn’t want to, that’d be 60 (and no, that time I did the math in my head (but only ’cause I knew it would end in zero))).  But, any way you slice it, it’s a fair number of words.

But, today, I have no words.  Or none worth spewing, anyway.  Too much other stuff on my mind.  Next week (or the week after at the latest), I hope to get back to the fictional rambling: I recently had an actual good idea on that front, and I’m anxious to write myself up to it before I lose the general shape of it.  But this week, I’m just going to chill and try to catch up on a few things on my todo list.  I’m sure you won’t mind.

War for Father's Day

It’s another Heroscape battle report blog post; you may have read the one about my younger son’s first game.  This will be another one, and will probably make about as much sense if you don’t know anything about the game.  But, then again, maybe you’ll get the general gist.

For Father’s Day, I got a bunch of Heroscape stuff, as usual.  Of course, being that Heroscape has been discontinued, what I’m getting these days isn’t so much actual Heroscape stuff, but more non-Heroscape stuff that I can still use for Heroscape.  Also I got some cool handmade Heroscape custom terrain from one of the cool online stores that offers such things.  (For more info on what a “custom” is, see my previous blog post on that topic; note that some of those custom units I talk about will show up down below.)

Here’s the map we built:

Notice the weird mushrooms peppered throughout, and the giant volcano in the middle: that’s the new custom terrain I got.

Now, of course, there isn’t much good in getting a bunch of stuff for your favorite game if you can’t play it, right?  So I talked both my sons into playing with me.  We set up a nifty map using some of the new terrain, picked out armies, and agreed to play a two-against-one game: my younger son and I vs. my older son.

First, let’s look at the armies:

The Marro Horde (elder son), at 940 points:

• the Marro Hive
• Tul-Bak-Ra
• Su-Bak-Na
• Me-Burq-Sa
• the Marro Warriors
• Marro Drones
• Marrden Nagrubs
• Havech Eradicators

The Elemental Resistance (younger son), at 440 points:

• Kurrok the Elementalist
• Fire Elementals x3
• Water Elementals x3
• Earth Elementals x3
• Air Elemental x1

The Undead Contingency (me), at 410 points:

• Nicholas Esenwein
• Preyblood Thralls x3
• Deathstrike Thralls x3
• ??? Thralls x3^*

Since it was two against one, we had to give the solo player an edge on points.  But, with two people beating on you for every turn you take, plus you having to split your attention between two opponents, 90 extra points wasn’t nearly enough.  As a result, I agreed to give #1 son his choice of two “magic items,” and he chose to give the Holy Symbol of Pelor to Tul-Bak-Ra, and a Belt of Giant Strength to Su-Bak-Na.

In the end, this still wasn’t enough, though.  Having two people attack you for every one time you attack back is just too hard to come back from.  He either needed a much more defensible position (e.g., I could have given him a castle to hang out in), or an extra turn each round, or some flexibility in turn management, or something.  Ah, well, lesson learned.

The elemental army is a fairly powerful one, as evidenced by the fact that my six-year-old can play it effectively: this time around, the elementalist took 2 wounds and he lost only two elementals (one water and the air).  Fire elementals in particular are vicious as hell: they have a 7-in-20 chance of burning anyone they stand next to, plus a 4-dice attack.  Sure, they can accidentally burn their friends, too, but that’s easy enough to avoid if you watch where you move, and there’s no joy quite like planting a merrily burning little fire dude right in the middle of the enemey’s forces.

I was playing an army composed entirely of units that my group has developed, post-official-demise (again, see my post on that topic).  In this case, it’s our new vampire, Nicholas Esenwein, and his zombie-like thralls.  I’ve never played these guys before, but I’d heard they’re a fun army.  Nicholas can fly around, draining your enemy’s squad figures, which not only heals him if he’s wounded, but creates a new thrall in the process (with a few limitations).  That just leaves your opponent’s heroes, and the two thralls we’ve released so far take care of those nicely: deathstrike thralls can sacrifice themselves to get one big attack, and preybloods get extra attack dice for attacking wounded people.  And, hey, if your thralls get squished—or you have to kamikaze a deathstrike or two—it’s no big deal, ’cause Nicholas can just make more.  It truly was a lot of fun.  (I was also looking to test out a new flavor of thrall that’s still in development, but I never got around to bringing those guys into the fray.)

My other son went with the Marro.  The Marro are Heroscape’s resident alien race, and their faction is one of the game’s best developed.  It was a powerful army, and they did their best, but they were just overwhelmed.  Tul-Bak-Ra has a teleportation power that let him leap across the board to put those first two wounds on the elementalist, but then after two rounds of concentrated fire from water elementals, he was two-thirds dead and had to beat a hasty retreat.  His power to teleport in reinforcements was negated by proper placement: by surrounding him, the elementals denied him any empty spaces for reinforcements to land on (and, since Kurrok was hiding out at the edge of the board, behind a bush, this was easy to do).  He bounced over to my side and put 3 wounds on Nicholas before a deathstrike thrall took him out.  Su-Bak-Na, the bone dragon, never got a chance to use his Belt of Giant Strength before he was earth slammed a couple times and finally polished off by the air elemental, who engenders defense penalties in flying figures.  Me-Burq-Sa, affectionately known as “Pony-boy,” took two wounds from a deathstrike/preyblood combo, and only succeeded in hitting his Paralyzing Stare roll once.  After taking out a few thralls (who eventually just came back anyway), he was finally shot down by a water elemental.  The Hive, which can bring some Marro back from the dead by rebirthing them, never managed to do so a single time before it was earth slammed and water bombed to death.  The drones only hit their roll to move 9 figures instead of 3 once, at the beginning of the game when it wasn’t as effective, and after that they just got decimated by a combination of Nicholas and fire elementals.  The cyborg Marro suffered a similar fate.  The Marro Warriors (which we call just “the clones,” due to their water cloning power) took out the only two elemental casualties of the game, but lost half their numbers in return.  Finally, with only 2 cyborgs, 2 clones, 2 or 3 drones, and the full set of 6 nagrubs left, facing nearly the entire elemental army and nearly the entire thrall army, the Marro conceded the game.  Both the two dead elementals and the two dead thralls could have easily come back into the game, while on the Marro side only the two dead clones had a shot at reincarnation.  There weren’t enough drones to swarm effectively, and the nagrubs are low-cost, low-power figures, mostly only good for their power to heal Su-Bak-Na, who was already dead.  (One interesting thing I never noticed before: you can put an order marker on the Hive, use Hive Mind to activate the nagrubs, and then use Life Bonding to take a turn with Su-Bak-Na.  This may be the only case in Heroscape where you get a double bonding.)  So I think he made the right call: if he hadn’t taken out Kurrok or Nicholas by that point, he was pretty well screwed.  Plus it was getting late.

So that was how we spent Father’s Day: in an all-out battle royale to the death, where the undead teamed up with elementals to defeat aliens.  Moderately insane, but, then, that’s Heroscape for you.

__________

* I can’t reveal the nature of these Thralls, as they haven’t been released yet.  As it turns out, they never got to engage the enemy anyway.

A Wave in Passing

Not going to post anything much today.  I’ve been working on the Heroscape project I first mentioned some months ago.  You may recall back then that I mentioned we were working on “Wave 14” ... well, now we have the first of four weeks’ release of Wave 15.  I’ve got 3 more weeks of that to do, but the first one is always the bitchy one.  Should be much smoother sailing from here on out.

In other news, my company was sold ... if you had noticed (which it is barely possible to have done, if you’ve been reading these blogs very carefully, although, why would you?) that I was technically an eBay employee, you can expunge that bit of triviata from your brain, ’cause I’m not any more.  I would tell you about all the hideous papework I had to sign, and all the legalese I had to agree to, but there’s actually a clause in there that says that I can’t talk about it.  In fact, merely telling you that I can’t tell you probably puts me in some state of breach, technically speaking ... whoa, I think my head just exploded.

So, getting used to new corporate overlords, working on hobby collaboration projects, still doing some open source software here and there, readjusting to life with a newborn ... busy times.  Far too busy to write something that I’m just going to tell you not to read anyway.  Perhaps next week will be a little easier to deal with.  Let us all cross our collective fingers.

A Fable

Once upon a time there was a baby tiger.  He lived in a jungle with his Mama Tiger and his Papa Tiger.  He was, for the most part, a good tiger, although he did have a tendency to be rather engergetic.  By which I mean, he was always going somewhere.

One night, after dinner, the baby tiger said to Mama Tiger, “Mother, may I be excused?”  The baby tiger was ever so polite.

“Yes, baby tiger, you may be excused,” replied Mama.  “Where are you going now?”

The baby tiger thought for a moment.  “I’m going to France.”

Mama Tiger smiled.  “Well, just be home before bedtime.”  (The baby tiger did not have to be home before dark, because tigers have excellent night vision.)

So the baby tiger set off.  And he walked and he walked.

Presently, he came upon a baby wolf.  “Hello,” said the baby tiger.

“Hello,” said the baby wolf.

“I’m going to France,” said the baby tiger.

“Sounds like a plan,” replied the baby wolf.  And they walked and they walked.

Presently, they came upon a baby dragon.  “Hello,” said the baby tiger.

“Hello,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“We’re going to France,” said the baby tiger.

“You can come if you want to,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“Very well then,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.  And they walked and they walked, with the baby dragon fluttering along behind them.

Presently they came upon a large horse, standing in a field.  The horse snorted a bit and looked down at them.  He blinked his long lashes.

“If it would not be too much trouble, good Mr. Horse,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “could you tell us, if you know, have we reached France yet?”

“Nay,” said the horse.

“Ah.  Well, then, thank you so much.”  The horse shook his head.  So they walked on.

“Horses are very helpful creatures,” confided the baby tiger to the baby wolf.

“Indeed,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon a great horned owl, sitting on a branch.  The owl chuffed a bit and looked down at them.  He ruffled his fluffy feathers.

“If I may be so bold as to inquire, good Sir Owl,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “have you heard of a such a thing as France?”

“Who?” asked the owl.

“Well, it’s not so much a ‘who’ as it is a ‘where,’” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.  The owl showed them the back of his head.  So they walked on.

“The owl did not seem to be geographically inclined,” said the baby tiger to the baby wolf.

“Hunh,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon a pigeon, preening on a statue.  The pigeon gurgled a bit and looked down at them.  He bobbed his plump breast.

“If it would not be a great imposition, good Citizen Pigeon,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “we are endeavoring to find our way to France ...”

“Coo’,” said the pigeon.

“Well, yes, I suppose it is, as you say, ‘cool,’” said the baby tiger, ever so politely, “but I was more wondering if you might be able to point us in the proper direction.”  The pigeon tilted his head.  So they walked on.

“We must be close,” said the baby tiger to the baby wolf.  “We seem to have gotten as far as East London, at any rate.”

“Coo’,” said the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

Presently, they came upon the Eiffel Tower, arcing over the Champ de Mars.  The tower rattled a bit and looked down at them.  It flashed its metal sides.

“By jove, we seem to have arrived.  Surely this must be France,” said the baby tiger, ever so politely.

“Could be Vegas,” shrugged the baby wolf.

The baby dragon just giggled.

“She sure is happy,” the baby tiger observed.

“Sunny disposition,” agreed the baby wolf.

The baby dragon shot out a great gout of flame which melted the Eiffel Tower into a puddle of iron lattice.  The baby tiger and the baby wolf had to back up to keep their paws from getting irony.  The metal fumes burned their eyes a bit.  The baby dragon giggled again and burped up a few plumes of acrid smoke.

“It’s getting dark,” said the baby wolf.

“Tigers have excellent night vision,” said the baby tiger.

“As do wolves,” pointed out the baby wolf.

They looked at the baby dragon.

She giggled and snorted fire, lighting up the dusky air.

“Good point,” said the baby tiger.

“Indeed,” said the baby wolf.

“Shall we off?” asked the baby tiger, ever so politely.

“Yes, let’s,” replied the baby wolf.

So they walked and they walked, with the baby dragon fluttering along behind them, occasionally giggling and snorting fire against the falling darkness.

And the baby dragon got home before bedtime, and she giggled at them happily as Mama Dragon and Papa Dragon waved goodbye.  And the baby wolf got home before bedtime, and he howled happily as Mama Wolf and Papa Wolf waved goodbye.  And the baby tiger got home just before bedtime, and Papa Tiger kissed his head, and Mama Tiger asked him where he’d gone that fine evening.

“Why, to France, of course,” answered the baby tiger, ever so politely.  “Thank you ever so much for asking.”  And then the baby tiger curled up, and went to sleep.

fin

[Yeah, I don’t what the hell I was going for there either.  But it sounded cool, so I just ran with it.  Maybe your kids will like it too.]

Perl blog post #7

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to everyone.  I’m doing another tech blog this week, although it isn’t quite done yet.  It’ll be up soon and then I’ll come back here and edit this post to have a link to it.  Probably in such a way that you thought the link was there all along.  It’ll be like magic.  Wooo.

Tabula Rasa Filled

As a parent, you get to watch a lot of kid’s television.  Some of it is educational, some just mindless entertainment, some downright bizarre, some a combination of two or more of the above.  (For instance, in the downright bizarre but still educational department, it’s hard to beat Yo Gabba Gabba, at least for sheer bizarrerie.  Then again, my parents probably felt the same about H.R. Pufnstuf, and that seemed perfectly normal to me.)  You’re sort of forced to watch these things, whether you like it or not, and you eventually start critiquing them as if they were high art.  SpongeBob SquarePants is funny, but ultimately pablum; The Upside Down Show was a brilliant bit of engaging, educational fun that deserved more than its one measly season; The Wonder Pets may have a few funny moments every now and again, but that doesn’t stop you from wanting to drive hot pokers through your eardrums; The Wiggles need to be shot; Adventure Time takes a while to grow on you, but is really quite enjoyable; Steve from Blue’s Clues may have driven you crazy, but you didn’t know how good you had it until Joe came along, and the whole thing just jumped the shark when Blue started to talk.  And so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.  It mostly just all swirls together in a twisted melange of primary colors and giant numbers and casually tossed out Spanish phrases and animated animals, until you can’t keep them all straight in your head any more.  I’ve had 13 years of it now: trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

And then, every once in a while, you find a real gem.  Something that’s not only entertaining for your kids, but also for you.  You treasure those, because they’re so rare.  From my own childhood, The Muppet Show is the classic example.  I loved it, my parents loved it, and I loved it all over again when I got the DVDs from Netflix to introduce it to my own kids, who also loved it.

For my kids, at least for right now, it’s Phineas and Ferb.

It’s a bit hard to describe Phineas and Ferb if you never seen it.  You know how sometimes you watch something and you think it’s really dumb but then you watch it again, and again, and eventually you realize it’s brilliant?  (Think about the first time you saw Beavis and Butt-Head, or even Monty Python.)  Well, this is not like that.  This is more like when you watch something and you go, “well, that was sorta cute,” and then you watch it again and you go, “actually, that was pretty funny,” and then you watch it again, and you go “damn, this is really good!”  Part of that is the running gags, of which P&F have dozens, and part of it is that there’s so much going on that it takes you a few viewings just to get past the giddiness of it all.  In fact, Wikipedia tells us that the show’s creators (who had worked together previously on Rocko’s Modern Life) pitched the idea, off an on, for 16 years before they could get anyone to buy it, because it was “too complex.”

I told this to my eldest.  He drew his eyebrows together and frowned at me.  “I don’t get it,” he said.  He didn’t bother pointing at his 6-year-old brother, who obviously was having no problems following the episode we were watching at the time, but he might as well have.  The point was obvious: he couldn’t understand why people would think this show was complicated.

I tried to explain.  “Well, just imagine the pitch meetings,” I said.  “It would have to go something like this:”

Okay, so there’s these two kids, right?  They’re stepbrothers—one American, and one British—and they’re both really brilliant, and the British one hardly ever speaks, but then when he does say something, it’s really profound—he’s got a whole Silent Bob thing going on.  Okay, and they have this sister, and they ... wait, it’s summer, okay?  And, to keep from getting bored, they’re always building stuff.  But, they’re really brilliant, like I said, so they’re building stuff like time machines and warp drives and that sort of thing, and their sister is constantly trying to “bust” them: you know, get them in trouble with their mom (who is actually Ferb’s stepmother, but that doesn’t matter so much).  Okay, except Candace—that’s the sister’s name—can never actually bust them, because their inventions always disappear at the last minute.  Which mostly has to do with their pet platypus, who is really a secret agent ...

I mean, you can see how a children’s televison executive’s head would be spinning by this point, right?  And we didn’t even get to the boy that Candace is always trying to impress, or the mad scientist who is the nemesis of the secret agent platypus, or any of the various friends and neighbors who are always stopping over ...

My eldest still looked dubious though.  “I guess ...” he said, perhaps still not quite getting it.

Because, you see, here is the real point I wanted to make: kids are not stupid.

Now, I’ve written before that I believe that kids are people, and, really, this is just a specific example of that general principle.  Because, you know, some people are stupid, and some people are smart.  Kids are no different: some of them are stupid, and some of them are smart.  To go even further, most people are smart sometimes and stupid other times, and most kids are the same way.  Honestly, when it comes to some things (“getting” Phineas and Ferb, for example) I think you’ll find that most kids are going to be even smarter than us non-kids.

I’ll give you another example.  I’ve talked about one of my favorite hobbies: Heroscape.  And I’ve also talked about introducing my younger son to the game; remember, now, he was a month and a half shy of being 6 years old when I wrote that.  Finally, you may recall that I wrote a little bit about being a part of a community which creates “custom” units for Heroscape.  Now, officially, Heroscape is “for ages 8 and up,” and this is often tossed around when we design new custom units.  When coming up with a power for a new unit, people will often point out that it needs to be “simple enough for an 8 year old to understand.”  The problem, though, is that many people seem to have a very low opinion of the level of complexity that the average 8 year old can comprehend.  And meanwhile I’m sitting here thinking that I’ve now taught this game to several kids even younger than 8, using the “master” rules because the “basic” rules were too simple-stupid, and I know what the “average 8 year old” can understand.  And it’s a lot more than most people seem to give them credit for.

And, as long as I’m on a quoting-myself jag, I may as well throw one more out there: in my rant on ageism, I pointed out that the one thing that’s true of “adults” making decisions for “children” that isn’t true of (say) men making decisions for women^* is that all such adults were once children.  Which makes this attitude even more baffling.  Do all these adults have such low self-esteem that they remember themselves as being stupid when younger?  Or do they imagine that they were brilliant children and it’s just everyone else who was a moron at that age?  What is it about getting older—and especially about having children of our own—that seems to tend to make us completely forget our childhood experiences?

In my “kids are people” post, I noted in passing that your kids come to you “knowing literally nothing.”  This is the tabula rasa concept that you’ve probably heard of before, and it’s really true.  I never imagined how true it was before my first kid was born.  Even as infants, they should know some things, right?  Nope: nothing.  As the ultimate expression of this, you have to teach them how to breastfeed.

Think about that.

Without this, they’re going to starve to death.  And you have to teach it to them.  Now, they do have some instincts, of course.  If anything hits the top of their palate, they’re immediately going to start sucking.  But this is no more actual “knowledge” than the fact that you will blink if someone snaps their fingers in front of your eyes: it’s just a primitive reaction to stimulus.  And, most importantly, it isn’t sufficient.  Necessary, but not sufficient.  If your kid wants to breastfeed, to actually receive sustenance from his or her mother, “knowing” to suck when something is stuck in his or her mouth is only the beginning.  The big thing is knowing how to “latch on,” which takes a while for both mother and child to get right.  They have to learn that, and you have to teach them.

So, yes, kids come to us as a blank slate, and we have to fill them up.  But that’s a far cry from them being stupid.  And by the time you’re 8 (or even 5), which is old enough to start playing Heroscape or start watching Phineas and Ferb, you have accumulated a staggering amount of knowledge, and (most likely) applied an amazing amount of intelligence to it.  We forget that, I think ... because things like walking and talking and using the toilet instead of our underwear are so utterly ingrained in our mental facilities, I think we forget what accomplishments learning those things were.  You had to be pretty bright to pick up all that stuff ... remember?  Bright enough to understand that Obsidian Guards standing in molten lava can hit enemies 3 spaces away, or that it’s funny that Ferb ends up helping Vanessa get the perfect ingredient for another of Doofenshmirtz’s evil machines, which will inevitably be used against his own pet platypus, even if the exact concept of irony is still a bit over your head.

But even if you don’t really remember how totally smart you were back then, you should still check out Phineas and Ferb.  Will you enjoy it, regardless of how old you are?  Yes.  Yes, you will.

* I can’t help but note what I wrote about men and women in this context: “When men make decisions about women (at least in modern times), they at least allow the women to say something about it (usually).”  In light of some recent events, it appears in retrospect that I was amusingly naive.

Hollywood Pairs

Long ago I developed a theory of why Hollywood movies seem to come out in pairs.  I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.  The canonical example is generally Armageddon and Deep Impact, but I first noticed it when Volcano followed hard on the heels of Dante’s Peak (or vice versa; I forget).  Since then, it’s happened again and again: Antz and A Bug’s Life, Mission to Mars and Red Planet, Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, Madagascar and The Wild, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, The Descent and The Cave ... I could go on.

Sometimes they think they’re going to fool us by waiting a while before they release the second one.  Zoom was a full year after Sky High, but we still know it’s the same movie, right?  Or sometimes you forget there was a pair, because only one of the movies achieved any popularity.  I mean, after you saw The Matrix, you can easily be forgiven for forgetting about The Thirteenth Floor.  And The Sixth Sense really overshadowed Stir of Echoes, even though the latter movie is just as good (and maybe even a bit better, upon repeat viewing).  Or, to dip into the cheesy horror flick realm, remember Orphan?  Okay, now remember Case 39?  No, of course you don’t.  But there it is: same movie, different actors.

And it just keeps on happening ... tell me you haven’t, when watching a commercial for Wrath of the Titans, said to yourself: “wait a minute ... didn’t we just have Clash of the Titans?  Or wondered if we really do need two simultaneous movies about Snow White, even if one is serious and the other not? 

So I was sitting down the other night, watching Super and going “wait, how is this different from Kick-Ass again?” (although, to be fair, Super has a goofy, gory revelry that surpasses even Kick-Ass, although I still think Kick-Ass wins it in the end), and I was reminded (for the 87 thousandth time) of my theory.  It goes like this:

Have you seen The Player?  In this movie, which is about Hollywood elite types, and done by the amazingly awesome Robert Altman, we see what I deeply suspect is a very true-to-life depiction of how movies get made, mostly happening in the background of the primary plot.  (This movie, by the way is very good; if you haven’t seen it yet, go out and rent it.)  I suspect this because, by all accounts, Altman is just the sort of subversive director to do such a thing as reveal the duct tape and icky bodily fluids behind the curatin, and also it would perfectly suit the vibe of the movie if it were all true.  Thus I imagine that all the mini pitch meetings that Altman portrays really happened ... yes, even the one where someone says “it’s sort of Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate.”  And, in all these pitch meetings, the pitchee passes.  Can you visualize it?  “So, let me get this straight: an active volcano just suddenly appears in the middle of a major metropolitan area?  That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”  (It helps if you can picture Tim Robbins’ studio executive character saying it.)  “Go peddle that crap somewhere else.”

Which of course they do, right?  I mean, you’re a scriptwriter in Hollywood: pitching is what you do.  One guy says “no,” you just find another guy.  Ask enough guys, and someone is bound to say “yes” ... right?

Now flash back to the original guy who said “no.”  “Wait, someone picked up that story?  Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought ... what do they know that I don’t know?  No way I’m getting fired for missing the boat on this one!  Find me another writer to write a volcano story: pronto!”  And, poof: we have Volcano and Dante’s Peak.  Or whatever and whatever.

I have no clue if I’m right or not.  Although here is a blog post by someone who says they’re a real scriptwriter and it sounds remarkably like how I always envisioned it.  (Also he remembered a few pairs I forgot about ... Infamous and Capote: nice one.)

So maybe I’m onto something.  Or maybe not.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that The Howling and An American Werewolf in London came out the same year.  Maybe two completely different people thought up the concept of movies about CGI talking penguins.  Or maybe it’s a giant Hollywood conspiracy.  Here‘s a list of pairs going back to the 1930’s and two films about Abraham Lincoln.

So obviously I’m not the first person to notice this.  TV Tropes (of course) has a name for this: “dueling movies.”  (Careful when visiting TV Tropes: wiki walks can consume large portions of your life.)  It offers even more great examples, like Treasure Planet and Titan A.E., or The Book of Eli and The Road.  Uncharacteristically, though, it offers no theories on why the phenomenon exists.

The thing I like about my theory is that it goes beyond just saying “Hollywood is so unoriginal,” which is itself a rather unoriginal statement.  No doubt true, granted, but surely we can do better than that.  Besides, if you think about it, it takes quite a while to develop, sell, produce, and market a movie.  If it was just a matter of studios copying each other, there would be a lot more time between the halves of the pairs.  Plus, it’s not like a movie like Sky High was so awesomely successful that it made a piece of dreck like Zoom inevitable.

So my theory still sounds appealing, at least to me, and I was even able to dig up some circumstantial support for it.  You gotta dig it, right?  It’s sort of like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman ...

Night Life

So, I was reading this blog post the other day, and it was full of mostly good advice, but then I hit this statement:

Do the most important thing first in the morning, ...

And I thought: spoken like a true morning person.

If I tried to do my most important task of the day in the morning, every day would start disastrously.  Assuming I could manage to even remember what the most important task was.  Which, most likely, I couldn’t.

Because I’m a night person.

Now, for many many years, I’ve had a theory that the difference between a night person and a morning person is the ability to roll over and go back to sleep.  I think we all wake up at various and sundry ungodly hours of the morning.  It’s just that some of us have the good sense to look blearily at the alarm clock and say “fuck that shit!” and drift right back off.  Well, I say “good sense” with tongue planted firmly in cheek; the truth is, I’m lucky enough to have the physical ability to do that.  I’ve known people who simply cannot.  Once their eyes open for the first time in the morning, they’re done for.  May as well go ahead and get up, because there’s no way they’re going back to sleep.

I tend to sleep late.  Consequently, I stay up late.  My friends who are morning people all get up early.  By the time midnight rolls around, they’re exhausted.  And I’m just getting started.  So, there you have it: instant explanation of morning people vs night people, based on simple physiology.

Of course, we don’t have to trust my pet theories.  We have a whole Internet to consult.  Sure, I could point you at loads and loads of articles and blog posts.  I could tell you that your morning or night tendencies are called your “chronotype,” that it generally changes as you age (you’re most nocturnal during your teen years, and most diurnal starting somewhere in your 60’s), that some scientists say that instead of two types (morning people and night people), there are three: “larks” (from their habit of annoying chirpiness in the mornings), owls (obvious), and hummingbirds (somewhere in the middle / a little of each, from the practice of flitting from one end of the garden to the other).  I could tell you that, being a night person, I’m supposedly smarter, more creative, and that both my mood and my physical strength increase throughout the day ... and that I’m supposedly less reliable, less punctual, less proactive and therefore less likely to succeed in business, more emotionally unstable, and more prone to addictions.  At least compared to you morning people.

But screw all that (although most of that stuff is true, in my experience).  All it really means is that I’ve spent quite a bit of my life working out how to avoid having to be at work early in the mornings.  And, mostly, I’ve succeeded.

You see, us night people are hard to wake up early, and, even once we do wake up, we’re groggy, grumpy, and pretty well useless.  I’ve had to be at work early before, of course—I haven’t led a charmed life or anything—and I can tell you pretty much exactly how it goes.  I spend the first few hours concentrating on being physically present, staying awake, and responding in a more or less coherent fashion.  That literally consumes all my brainpower.  Then I eat lunch, then I fall asleep at my desk.  I generally wake up just in time to start wrapping up for the day.  When I have to be at work early, I basically accomplish nothing, except theoretically satisfying mid-level micromanagers who think that a body in a chair is the epitome of employee achievement.

This is not my fault, as near as I can tell.  It’s just the way I’m wired.

Of course, those articles will tell you that your chronotype, like so many aspects of your personhood when it comes to questions of nature or nurture, is a bit of both.  You have genetic tendency towards one or the other, as you may have a genetic tendency towards alcholism—but the latter doesn’t mean you’re doomed to become an alcholic, and the former doesn’t mean you’re stuck being awake at 4am (one way or the other).  But your genetic tendency toward alcoholism may very well be so strong that you’d better not ever start drinking, and your chronotype may be so firmly set that you’ll only ever have limited success changing it.  I know I certainly have.

I don’t think you “larks” (or even you “hummingbirds,” if such things truly exist) have any concept what it’s like to be an “owl.”  I get the impression that you think we’re just lazy.  We should just drag our sorry asses out of bed a little earlier and stop whining about it.  Ah, would that it were so easy.  Back in the days when I used an alarm clock, it was utterly ineffective.  I’ve tried multiple alarm clocks.  I’ve tried placing the alarm clock across the room.  I’ve tried using an radio alarm clock tuned to a type of music that I can’t stand (country, in my case).  Nothing works.  Yes: I can get up, cross the room, and turn off the alarm clock—in my sleep.  Once, I was crashing for a few weeks in the dorm room of two friends of mine (this was the college years, so we were all owls at that point).  One of my friends bought an alarm clock that was so loud and strident that it sounded like a fire alarm.  The first time it went off, we all lept out of bed, terrified—it was that bad.  After a week or so, though, we began to sleep through it, and eventually the real fire alarm went off in the dormitory ... and we slept through that too.

During the years when I ran my own consulting company and mostly worked off-site, I gave up on alarm clocks completely and just woke up whenever the hell I felt like it.  Generally, this was around noon.  Of course, I was also staying up till 3 or 4am, generally working.  I like to work at night.  I can think at night; my brain is firing on all cylinders.  I can think in the afternoon too ... but only if I slept late enough.  It’s not that I’m requiring more sleep than other people.  I generally sleep around 7 hours a night at this point.  But if that 7 hours ends at 7am, I’m useless for the majority of the day.

From the time I wake up until the time I get to work is about 3 hours.  45 minutes of that is the commute time, of course.  It takes me perhaps 30 minutes to attend to my daily hygiene—shower, teeth, hair, clothes, etc—sometimes longer if I’m particularly groggy, but I think we can safely say that no more than an hour and a half is spent actually getting ready and driving in.  So where does that other hour and a half go?  Well, there’s breakfast, which in the past few years I’ve been successful at forcing myself to eat (when you wake up around 10, it often makes more sense to just wait a couple hours and have lunch for breakfast, although it turns out this is a bad habit, for many medical reasons).  But mainly that extranneous hour and a half is spent just ... waking up.  Yes, it’s literally around 90 minutes—on average—just for me to get into a state where I can function as a normal human being.  I’d like to tell you I spend this time with my family, but the truth is my family knows better than to try to talk to me in the morning.  Fruitless, that is.  I generally get some work done during this time: I find that mindless tasks like answering emails are perfect for this period, when I’m pretty mindless anyway.  But mostly it’s just a really long, extended warm-up time.  Like, you know in the old days, when you’d turn on the television set and then you’d have to wait fifteen minutes before the picture would show up?  That’s my brain in the morning.

I’m actually very fortunate to be very good at what I do.  Even after I stopped working for myself, I managed to find two jobs in a row (8 years now, between the two of them) where people didn’t care that I don’t show up until lunch time.  And that’s mostly because I’m worth waiting for, if I do say so myself.  They’ve learned that the time they see me physically in the office is only part of the time they get out of me.  At night, when the rest of my family is off to bed, I kick back with my laptop, and I get some serious work done.

Right this second, in fact, it’s 10 minutes to 3.  AM, that would be.  Sometimes I write these blog posts during Sunday afternoons, but mostly I like to do them late Saturday night (hey, after midnight it’s technically Sunday, right?).  Unless I have some other work to do.  But I get to stay up late at night, despite having 3 children, because the mother takes the early shift and deals with them in the mornings.  That way, she can go to bed early and count on me to deal with whatever craziness is going on after 10pm.  So, right now I’m finishing up a blog post, true.  I’m also waiting on my daughter to wake up so I can deliver her to her mom.

So I’m lucky to have found a way to live and work much of my life at times when my brain functions best.  I know that many people aren’t so lucky, and I feel for them.  And, then, there’s you morning people.  You will always have an easier time than I do, because the corporate world is geared to your schedule.  As several of those articles point out, there aren’t any sayings about us night people getting the worm.

I suppose I’ll just have to content myself with being smarter than you.  It’s a burden, but I’ll manage somehow.

Perl blog post #6

Been trying to get back into the swing of things at work, so I’ve been doing a bit of Perl coding this week, and I decided to write about it.  Check out the other blog if you like such things.

Next week perhaps I’ll get back to this blog.  Or not.

Postprocedural Meanderings

Well, as advertised last week, I had my minor medical procedure on Wednesday (I generally say “surgery,” but, to be pedantic, it was actually a “procedure” because they didn’t cut me open).  I thought for a while I might be feeling up to a normal blog post, but no such luck.  Of course, you are undoubtedly a highly intelligent person who has determined that they should not read this blog (also as advertised), so you probably don’t care.  But, then, you probably aren’t reading this, so who am I talking to anyway?

Quite the dilemma, indeed.  While I ponder it and hope that I can eventually move past my liquid diet enough to stop feeling continuously faint from hunger, you can feel relieved that you don’t have to listen to me babble this week and look forward to next week, when you can ignore me properly.

Perl blog post #5

Another uber-technology post this week, and, since it involved Perl this time, I decided to post it on my Perl blog.  Continuing in the vein of This vs That, it’s Perl vs Shell Scripts.  Hop on over if you’re so inclined.

Next week, I’ll be recovering from some (minor) surgery, so we’ll see if I have enough gumption to post something.  Wish me luck!

Shell Game

[This week I’m essaying a very technical topic.  This is partially because I want to spit out something fast, and I can do technobabble pretty easily.  Plus I’ve always wanted to write this down, because people—other technogeeks, obviously—ask me about this all the time, and it’s difficult to sum up in a quick sound bite.  But, if you’re not a techie (and specifically a *nix techie at that), you may wish to pretend that I scribbled out another “I don’t have time to write a proper post this week” interstitial post.]

Let’s talk for a moment about shells.  Linux shells, I mean, although we’ll speak in broad enough terms that it shouldn’t matter which flavor of Unix you prefer.  If you don’t what a shell is, you may as well find another blog post to read.  If you do, you probably know most of the history I’ll cover below, but it’s a nice refresher anyway.

The original Unix shell was the Bourne shell (sh), by Stephen Bourne, which goes all the way back to 1977.  Like all things Unix, there was nearly instantaneously a competing product: the C shell (csh), released in 1978, by Bill Joy (who also gave us vi).  The C shell has a number of improvements over the Bourne shell, but they’re utterly incompatible: the syntax isn’t remotely the same, in some cases to the point where you suspect Joy just did the opposite of what Bourne had done, out of spite.  Broadly speaking, the shells that followed hewed to one or the other syntax, giving us two “families” of shells, which are mostly compatible among themselves and not at all with each other.

So, next to come along was the Korn shell (ksh), by David Korn, in 1983; then the Tenex C shell (tcsh), by Ken Greer, later that same year; then the “Bourne-again” shell (bash) by Brian Fox, in 1989.  On the one side, we have the Bourne shell family (sh/ksh/bash); on the other side, the C shell family (csh/tcsh).  There are some other options out there, but these are the most popular by far, with the youngest member of each family eclipsing (for the most part) their elders.  And, these days, bash has emerged as the clear winner, and the others are hardly ever seen.

Well, except on my machines.

You see, I have the following philosophy on *nix shells: use tcsh at the command line; program with bash.  These days, at least on the Linux machines that I work on, that means having to install (or request to be installed) tcsh manually.  Many people ask me why I cling to tcsh.  This post will hopefully explain why.

Now, the first thing you must understand is that, when I came along, it wasn’t a choice between tcsh and bash: it was a choice between tcsh and ksh.  I never even saw a machine with bash on it until sometime in the 90’s, and I was well-established in my patterns by then.  So some of the reasons I made my decisions don’t even apply any more: bash has features that ksh lacked, and is just as good as tcsh these days in many areas, such as history.  But there are still enough reasons that do apply that I continue to refuse to switch.  If you think I’m wrong, though, I welcome your comments to show me the error of my ways.  However, realize that, while I always switch my personal account, I never switch the shell for the root account, so it’s not like I never use bash at the command line.

So, why is tcsh better for an interactive shell?  First of all, let’s look at some of those reasons that don’t really apply any more.  I won’t go into too much detail here, since ... well, since they don’t really apply any more.

• Tab completion.  ksh didn’t originally have it at all; the ‘93 ksh added it, and bash can do it pretty much as well as any other shell around.  But tcsh was basically invented for this, and had it first and best for many years.  Completion of history commands, in particular, I have never gotten to work right in either ksh or bash, although both claim to support it.
• History recall.  Now that bash does it too, it’s easy to forget how awesome !! was when only the C shells could do it ...
• Command line editing.  tcsh lets me use vi keys to edit my command line (which drives anyone trying to use my terminals crazy).  I’m pretty sure bash can do this as well; if ksh ever could, I never knew about it.

Now, what about the reasons that do still apply?  (Or, at least, do still apply as far as I know ... no doubt bash might have snuck some of these in when I wasn’t looking.)

• Shell redirection.  If I want to redirect both stderr and stdout of a command in the Bourne shell family, I have to do something like this: command >/dev/null 2>&1.  Ick.  In the C shells, it’s simpler: command >& /dev/null.  The Bourne versions let you redirect the two separately, true, but, in practice, I never want to do that on the command line.  Whereas redirecting both at once is very common.
• “Separate” environments.  This one is more conceptual.  Shells maintain variables, and those variables can either be visible to subshells (and other child processes) or not.  In the Bourne family, you think of them as two different types of variables.  I can set a variable, and it’s local; I then “export” that variable and it becomes global.  In the C shell family, you think of them as two different sets of variables.  If I want a local variable, I use one command (set), and if I want a global variable, I use a whole different command (setenv).  No mixing.  Perhaps it’s just a personal preference, but this really works for me much better.
• Alias arguments.  All shells will let you define aliases.  But, in the C shells, your aliases can have arguments.  So I can define lln as ls -lhtr !* | tail (and I have, as it happens).  In the Bourne shells, the arguments to your alias go at the end of the command line, period, no exceptions.  If you want it otherwise, you have to write a function.  Why do I want to write a function when I have a perfectly good alias?
• Customized prompts.  It’s true, bash has come a long way in this department.  But I still find tcsh easier.  My current prompt is "[${LOCALHOSTNAME}:%.04] ".  To do that in bash, I’d have to fiddle around with $PROMPT_DIRTRIM or somesuch, and I’m still not convinced I could end up with exactly the same thing.

Now, on the flip side, I would never use tcsh for a shell script.  The only scripting I ever do in tcsh is in my .tcshrc, and even that I find almost unbearably painful.  I regularly have to look up the syntax for loops and even if conditionals.  I originally used ksh for all my shell scripts, and I even held on to it long past the point when it was rational to do so: past the point where I was manually downloading pdksh because no one was shipping ksh any more.  I finally made the switch to bash about 10 years ago, and, other than having to change all my prints back to echos, it was fairly painless.

The definitive proscription against using the C shells for scripting is of course Tom Christiansen’s Csh Programming Considered Harmful, but I’ll give you my personal breakdown:

• Shell redirection.  In a shell script, I quite often do want to redirect stdout and stderr separately, and not being able to do so in the C shells is practically a non-starter.
• Unset variables.  In the Bourne shells, an unset variable expands to the empty string, which makes sense.  In the C shells, it expands to ... a syntax error.  You have to use $?VARNAME to see if the variable is set before trying to use it, unless you’re very very sure that it will be.  That’s just annoying.
• Backquotes.  Trying to use backquotes for capturing command output just sucks.  The ksh/bash construct of $(command) is so much better.  Interpolation works, nesting works, it just ... works.
• Basic string manipulation.  In ksh or bash, I can chop off prefixes or suffixes, do global substitutions, put in default values, and all sorts of other stuff.  In tcsh I pretty much have to echo my variables to sed or somesuch.
• Basic arithmetic.  In ksh or bash, it’s $(( $VAR + 6 )).  In tcsh, I’d have to pipe that to bc or something.
• Newlines in strings.  You just can’t in the C shells.
• Getopts.  No such thing in the C shells.
• Trap.  No such thing in the C shells.
• Extended pattern matching.  No such thing in the C shells.
• "$@".  No such thing in the C shells.

I could probably go on.  Or you could just read Tom Christiansen’s essay, linked above.  I don’t agree with everything he says, and some of what he says is nitpicky and doesn’t actually come up that often, but it’s comprehensive, and Tom has experience with “considered harmful” essays.

So hopefully the next time someone asks me why I still use tcsh, after all these years, I’ll pass on a link to this post and that’ll be the end of it.  I don’t mind switching to newer things when it makes sense (I did, eventually, switch from ksh to bash, as I mentioned above), but right now my .tcshrc is nearly 250 lines of painstakingly handcrafted customization over nearly 20 years, and there’s too much effort for not enough gain to try to get used to bash on the command line.  Maybe one day ... but probably not.  Maintaining compatibility with the Bourne syntax inherently creates some difficulties that I simply don’t have any need or desire to overcome.  Perhaps if tcsh ever gets as hard to come by as Betamax machines or PS/2 MCA buses, I’ll reluctantly give it up.  Until then ... why should I?

The Arrival and the Reunion

Yesterday, at 7:38am PST, we celebrated the arrival of Merrick Elizabeth Brunker Burden.  She was born at home, measured 21 inches from tip to tail, and weighed in at 8 pounds, 1 ounce.  Her Apgar scores were 9 at one minute and 10 at two minutes, and she currently has no known health issues.  She was, as is typically the case, the result of 9 months’ hard work on the part of her mother and a few minutes’ investment on the part of her father.

I’ve already discussed where her first name comes from; her second name is her maternal grandmother’s.  The third and fourth names she’s pretty much stuck with on account of her parents.

The aspect of the home birth was one that we considered for a long time.  Our eldest child was born in a hospital, and we witnessed firsthand how little control one has over the birth experience in that situation.  Our middle child was born in a birthing center, and that meant that our eldest was able to be there at the time and witness the miracle of his brother’s birth.  This was very affecting for him, and I personally always thought it brought them closer together.  A birth center was an option this time around as well, but in the end there’s quite a lot to recommend the home birth.  You don’t have to worry about driving anywhere, which often saves you hours waiting around for something to happen, since you usually don’t wait to be sure that labor is progressing well before rushing off to the hospital.  You get to pick your own CDs to play, and your own food and drinks to consume.  You can have who you want there, and you don’t have to worry about strange people whisking your newborn away to stick them with things that you probably wouldn’t agree to if you really knew what they were.  Best of all, when it’s all over, the mom can just crawl right back into her very own bed and roll over with her new baby and get some well deserved sleep.  Ask any mom who’s delivered in a hospital how much rest they got in that crappy hospital bed.

So we decided to take the plunge and do the birth as births were done for hundreds of years before we decided we were too smart and “modern” for all that nonsense.  When the time came, the mother had a midwife, a midwife’s assistant, a doula, and her mother.  And me, I suppose, although at that point there wasn’t a lot left for me to do.  I got accused of “hovering” a lot.  Which I was, I’ll admit.  Hovering around, trying to be useful, mostly.  Or at least to be out of the way of people who actually knew what they were doing.  It was a bit of a balancing act.  I think I did okay.

It was around midnight when the contractions got down to around 5 minutes apart, and anyone can tell you that that’s well before my bedtime.  So I never actually got to sleep; I lay down with the mother while she tried to get some rest for perhaps an hour and a half, and that was pretty much it until a nap later in the afternoon after it was all over.  Our elder son is as much of a night owl as I am, so he hadn’t gone to bed either when things started to get exciting.  For that matter, our younger son hadn’t been asleep that long.  They managed to wake up for the main event, though.  The eldest handled the video duties.  The soon-to-be-middle-child mainly patted his mother’s face and waited to see the new arrival.

When she came, he was excited for a few minutes, then he was ready to wander off and play video games.  We’ll see if this brings him as close to his sister as it did his brother to him.

Regarding fatherhood, Johnny Depp once said:

Having kids was a huge change for me.  Becoming a father.  But I think more than changing, I feel like I’ve been revealed to myself, I kind of found out who I was.  When you meet your child for the first time and you’re looking at this angel, you start realising what an idiot you’ve been for so many years and how much time you’ve wasted.

Looking into the eyes of your child for the first time is indeed a complex emotion; I think it’s difficult to describe, and probably different for everyone.  For me, there’s some of what Johnny Depp talks about.  Less of feeling like an idiot, perhaps, and more that whatever else there’s been just wasn’t that important ... if not completely irrelevant, at least minimized, as if it was a story about other people, one which was very engaging and seemed important at the time, but finally you’ve realized it is, after all, just a story.  But there’s also something else, something like a feeling of rightness, or perhaps purpose achieved.  Like this was the point of the whole ride, and I just hadn’t realized it before.  It is, of course, slightly different for each child, but still: there’s a lot of familiarity as well, a lot of clicking into place, a lot of “oh, yeah ... I was starting to forget, but now it all comes rushing back to me.”

It’s good to have those feelings renewed again.  It’s good to have another round coming up—scary, of course, as I’m getting older all the time and I worry about keeping up—but satisfying.  I’m very lucky to have the family I do, and I know it.  I’m looking forward to getting to know this little girl, and teaching, and learning, and remembering, and sharing.  Feels comfortable.  Feels like coming home.


Today’s post title comes from a song by Dead Can Dance off their album Aion.  It’s a pretty song, but in this case it’s the phrasing of the title that I’m primarily trying to evoke.

Fetal Distraction 2: The Quickening

You know, right up until a few minutes ago, I still thought I might do a post this week.

Silly man.

We’re two weeks away and counting, lots of new baby preparations going on, and my todo list is still pretty big.  But, on the positive side, the mother’s mother (that is, the person who would be my mother-in-law were this a more “traditional” relationship) will be here tomorrow, and I’m taking a day off from work to pick her up from the airport, and plus I had some notes and even a sentence or two that I jotted down last week before I gave up then.  Overall, it didn’t seem irrational to produce a mere 1500 words even in the midst of this chaos.

But one of the guidelines we have around this house is: don’t set yourself up to fail.  (Or, put alternatively, know your limitations.)  And, if I try to squeeze in a blog post today along with all my other shit to do, I’m just going to be making myself crazy all day and end up coming up short anyway, and that’s no good.  I’ve got to work on keeping my stress level down, because stress is bad for pregnant women, and stress is contagious.

So today I’ll just be chillin’.  Next week may well be more of the same.  We shall see what we shall see.

Fetal Distraction

Well, it’s exactly 3 weeks until the date that doctors and midwives tell us our daughter will be born, and things around the house are heating up to a fever pitch.  My “Saturday chore list” is getting out of control—pretty soon my “A1” todo’s won’t fit on a screenful of spreadsheet rows.

So there isn’t much of a blog post this week, and I suspect it won’t be the last time you, poor reader, are skimped out on—I even named the draft file of this post “Merrick1.”^*  What can I do but advise you (yet again) to refer to the title of the blog? 

So, while it’s very exciting over here, preparing for the birth, it’s also very hectic.  You know, when we moved into this house, it was emotional for the folks who were leaving.  This was the house where many of them had grown up, the house where the patriarch and matriarch lived (parents to some and grandparents to others), the house where the family would gather to stay in touch and renew their family ties.  It held a lot of memories for them.  The mother promised them that we would treasure it as much as they had, that we would make this our family’s home in the same way.  She told them that we would be having at least one baby in the house.  It looks like that promise will be fulfilled—literally, as we’re planning on a home birth.

So hopefully you’ll bear with me over the next month or so if my writing schedule is a bit erratic.  Forging new family memories takes a bit of a time investment.


* Check out my post on naming for whence that name.