» library search interfaces

To all those library webmasters out there:

Please stop making your search results pages auto-reset to the home page of the library after several minutes. I looked up that book, or author, or whatever for a reason; don't touch my stuff.

I know why you do this: you fear that somebody's going to walk away from an in-library terminal with search results up and some clueless user is going to come up to said terminal and be totally confused as to how to get something done. So you attempt to be helpful with this auto-reset magic.

Two comments. First, your home page is generally a travesty of UI design anyway, so you're not really helping anybody (especially since the “search” feature might not be immediately available off the home page, whereas it almost certainly is from the search results page(s)). Second, if this is really your concern, there's a simple solution: only do the magic reset when the accessing IP comes from one of your library terminals. Don't screw over those users coming in from home for the sake of some hypothetical clueless computer user.

Thanks.

posted by Nate @ 10:33 PM [ 15 July A.D. 2008 ]

» recursive books for children

When Jonathan was visiting for Gamefest, I mentioned teaching programming by starting out with recursion and introducing iteration as a special case later on. He expressed skepticism that anybody did things this way. At this point, I happily expounded on The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which teaches things precisely this way and was used in CS1 (6.001) at MIT for many years. Other books/courses from Indiana University etc. do things the same way.

I am happy to note that there are even children's books that do this. The classic Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, provides a basic introduction in function calling and recursion for your young child. To wit:

The kiddos are well on their way to learning Scheme as their first computer language!

posted by Nate @ 11:29 PM [ 30 June A.D. 2008 ]

» lies, damn lies, and...

A couple weeks (months?) ago, I remember talking to Dave about the cost of gold and whether it was subject to inflation. The discussion seemed to hinge on whose numbers you believed, and Dave suggested that the numbers showing gold becoming less valuable over time were based off of government-reported economic data. This data was not to be trusted, as the government was “cooking the books,” as it were. I recoiled at the thought and Dave being, well, Dave, didn't press the issue too much.

Today I stumbled upon Shadow Government Statistics, which explains in concrete terms what Dave was talking about. To wit:

As former Labor Secretary Bob Reich explained in his memoirs, the Clinton administration had found in its public polling that if the government inflated economic reporting, enough people would believe it to swing a close election. Accordingly, whatever integrity had survived in the economic reporting system disappeared during the Clinton years. Unemployment was redefined to eliminate five million discouraged workers and to lower the unemployment rate; methodologies were changed to reduce poverty reporting, to reduce reported CPI inflation, to inflate reported GDP growth, among others.

(To put the unemployment thing into perspective, that's changing the definition of “unemployment rate” to reduce it by roughly 1.5% or more. Puts “It's the economy, stupid,” in perspective, don'tcha think? To be fair, it's not just the Clinton administration, either; the article in question starts with the Kennedy administration and goes on from there...hitting pretty much everybody since.)

If you prefer your discussion in more layman's terms, there's Numbers racket, which some kind soul has reformatted to be more web-friendly.

posted by Nate @ 3:54 PM [ 29 June A.D. 2008 ]

» anniversary night

Tricia and I enjoyed a dinner date, complete with movie, this evening for our fifth anniversary. We gave the girls dinner and held off eating until I was able to got out and pick up pizza after the girls were in bed. Indulging in pizza and garlic breadsticks on the porch while watching the sun set...what a life, eh?

After that, we sat down to watch National Treasure 2 together. (Hey, we're married with children...we get things on Netflix first, rather the theatres, so we have to wait a while.) We enjoyed it and I have two things to comment on, one good and one bad.

The good first: the president was portrayed as a strong character in this movie, unlike other recent movies. Nicholas Cage had a particularly nice emphasis on this: he ended most sentences when speaking to the president with “sir,” and there was always this slight discernable pause before he said it. The pause really upped the respect factor.

The bad: the unbreakable Playfair cipher? Give me a break. Especially if you know the key is only five letters long...you don't sit Riley down in front of a computer to have him type in every five-letter word that pops into his mind. You have him write a computer program to try every five-letter word and report back on what appears to be the most likely candidate(s). Sigh.

posted by Nate @ 11:35 PM [ 28 June A.D. 2008 ]

» where to shop

This afternoon:

Tricia: We need matching bookshelves for the living room!

Becca: Mommy, we need to go to the matching store!

Shortly after dinner:

Becca: Daddy, we can use a big car instead of a big truck to do our moving! (said with the wonderment of a three-year old who has figured out a new fundamental fact of the universe)

Me: And where are we going to get this big car?

Becca: (after thinking for a bit) At the new big car store!

Me: I love you. (hugging Becca) You're so cute, Becca.

Becca: (nonchalantly) Yeah.

posted by Nate @ 11:41 PM [ 27 June A.D. 2008 ]

» home for the week

Last week, I traveled to Orlando for the Freescale Technology Forum. This past weekend was Gamefest 2008 and I spent a good bit of the weekend at Jerry's house. While both events were positive and enjoyable, I'm happy to be home this week and not, as far as I know, going much of anywhere.

posted by Nate @ 10:36 PM [ 22 June A.D. 2008 ]

» the jetsons

At FTF today, the keynote speaker talked about the Jetsons and how, in a decade or so, we may see some of the technologies suggested in the Jetsons as a reality in our daily lives. And that made me think. You know, the Jetsons had all this fantastic stuff, didn't have to drive themselves everywhere, freed from the tedium of housework, etc. etc. And yet there was still conflict to be had, work to be done...their lives really weren't that different from the sort of lives we go through everyday. Certainly makes one a bit skeptical about people who go on at length about how machines and computers will free us to do bigger and better things...the Jetsons certainly weren't.

posted by Nate @ 3:59 PM [ 18 June A.D. 2008 ]

» mechanical engineering

I am constantly amazed that my car, which takes a good bit of driving to warm up to its standard temperature of 200 degrees in the winter, can maintain that same temperature when being driven around in the scorching heat of summer, even when waiting in traffic. Hats off to mechanical engineers.

posted by Nate @ 9:42 PM [ 12 June A.D. 2008 ]

» state control of marriage

In thinking about gay unions, my inclination has been to take a somewhat laissez-faire approach: if the state wants to proclaim that Jim and John are “married” with all the attendant legal surroundings, what's wrong with that? The church, as an alternative world to the state, can continue to proclaim that “marriage” applies solely to heterosexual unions and simply direct gay couples to the nearest justice of the peace, politely but firmly indicating that their desired lifestyle is incompatible with the church. We shall then see whose viewpoint comes out the worse for the wear. Obviously, this is a somewhat idealized picture of things. (See also Peter Leithart's parable about Stanley in Against Christianity as to why this is somewhat unrealistic.)

However, a recent blog post suggests things might not be that simple:

Shouldn't we allow for what John Stuart Mill called “experiments in living”? Isn't an accommodation of differences in belief and behavior the essence of the American experiment: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? If Jim wants to pledge himself to John--or to Jane, Jill, and Jennifer--then why should we stand in the way?

There are many ways to answer these questions, but Douglas Farrow's provocatively titled book Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage provides an important insight that we do well to ponder. He sets aside the moral arguments against homosexual acts and concentrates on the lasting implications of gay marriage for our political culture.

A Canadian active in the recent failed efforts to block gay marriage there, Farrow looks at the legislation and its enabling amendments that made gay marriage possible in Canada in 2005. He finds an important shift. Where old laws spoke of husbands, wives, and children as “blood relations,” the new laws speak of “persons,” “legal parents,” and “legal parent-child relationships.”

In other words, in the old system, the state presumed the existence of a substantive, natural reality that required legal adumbration: the union of a man and a woman, and the children resulting from their sexual relations. Now the Canadian government sees that it must intervene and redefine marriage and parenthood in order to give fixed legal standing to otherwise fluid and uncertain social relations. When the gay friend donates his sperm to the surrogate mother hired by a lesbian couple, the resulting “family” is a purely legal construct, one that requires the power of state to enforce contracts and attach children to adoptive parents.

The result is the opposite of the libertarian dream of freedom. As Farrow observes, with gay marriage we are giving over the family to the state to define according to the needs of the moment. The upshot, he worries, will be a dangerous increase in the power of the state to define our lives in other realms once thought sacrosanct. “Remove religiously motivated restrictions on marriage,” he writes, “and it is much easier to remove religiously motivated restrictions on human behavior in general, and on the state's power to order human society as it sees fit.” The libertarian dream turns into the totalitarian nightmare. Who can or cannot be a spouse? That's for the state to decide. To whom do children belong? It's up to the state to assign parents as its social workers and judges think best.

Great.

posted by Nate @ 9:19 AM [ 12 June A.D. 2008 ]

» lisp software updates

New versions of TREES and Ironclad are available from their usual place. Performance enhancements and bugfixes are the order of the day here. There's also been an incompatible change in how PRODUCE-DIGEST works in Ironclad, so you may want to check the documentation for that.

posted by Nate @ 11:40 AM [ 17 May A.D. 2008 ]

» treehouse

John Derbyshire of National Review fame and some excellent mathematics histories (I guess that's what you'd call them) built a treehouse for his children, documenting the process in prose and photos. I always wanted a treehouse when I was little, but I never thought about how much work it'd be to actually put one together. Maybe if we plant a tree in our new house, my grandchildren can have a treehouse...

posted by Nate @ 9:07 PM [ 2 May A.D. 2008 ]

» young programmers

Everybody in the family except myself seems to be somewhat sick lately, so I have been taking a chunk of time off each day this week to assist with care. Yesterday that involved playing Duplos with Becca while Tricia and Ally slept. We built a Duplo car that was roughly the size of a good-size U-Haul moving van...strapped onto the chassis of a Honda Civic. As part of its accoutrements, it featured a house in the back for one of the Duplo animals she owns (the lion, in this case).

Becca also decided that there needed to be a computer on the roof of the car. She sat down one of her little Duplo men in from of the computer, prompting the question from me, “What's the Duplo man doing, Becca?” Her response: “Oh, he's just writing...he's just writing GCC.” She is her father's daughter.

posted by Nate @ 2:52 PM [ 30 April A.D. 2008 ]

» library thing meme

(via Zack Weinberg and bitbashing)

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place.

I'm too lazy to underline the ones I read for school. (Most of the not-published-the-last-fifty-years ones, though.) I need to work on my classic literature.

Current Music: Cates and dpL - Living in A

posted by Nate @ 10:09 PM [ 29 April A.D. 2008 ]

» home safety announcement

Pro tip: when attempting to determine if a burner on the stove was previously being using for cooking, do not lay your hand flat on the burner to test its temperature. Instead, hover your hand slightly above the burner to check for radiant heat. It's amazing how even a small number of pain points on the inside of your fingers can make doing simple tasks uncomfortable.

posted by Nate @ 12:25 PM [ 26 April A.D. 2008 ]

» shadow and claw

Mom and Dad D bought me Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun quadrilogy for my birthday this year. I read the first three by checking them out from the library last year, but was cruelly stymied from reading the conclusion because the library didn't have it. (They had virtually every other Gene Wolfe book...except The Citadel of the Autarch...go figure.) I'm rereading it right now, enjoying it just as much, but not perceiving the depth I've heard other people attribute to the series. I must say, though, that the stories Severian reads from Thecla's books are worth the price of admission just by themselves.

posted by Nate @ 11:33 PM [ 23 April A.D. 2008 ]