Eric the Gray » General

I am not biased

Eric — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:46:23 +0000

I have been ranting to my students about Windows again recently. I do this whenever I’m forced to use it. The only thing that makes me use it these days is when I need to get something that I’m teaching working for my poor students who need to use it. This usually results in me playfully getting accused of being biased, of being one of those crazy mac-zealots that has tunnel vision. I usually just laugh it off and say something like, “If you only knew!”

But, this time it made me a little annoyed and uncomfortable. So, I looked up the word biased to see if I was. Here is the definition I found:

verb ( biased , biasing or biassed, biassing) 1 [ trans. ] (usu. be biased) show prejudice for or against (someone or something) unfairly : readers said the paper was biased toward the conservatives | the tests were biased against women and minorities | [as adj. ] ( biased) a biased view of the world. â€¢ influence unfairly to invoke favoritism : her well-rehearsed sob story failed to bias the jury.

I am not biased

Based on this definition I hereby declare myself to be unbiased about computers and operating systems. How can I claim this? Well, here is a list of the operating systems that I have used to the point of being a power user or expert during my career:

Apple IIe
IBM Mainframe (whatever that call the OS now)
Vax
DEC Unix
Intergraph workstation Unix
Macintosh System 6 through 9
Macintosh OS X 10.1 through 10.4
DOS
Windows versions 3.1 through XP

Linux (many distributions on servers and desktops)
At this point in my career I find that I am much more productive and happy on a unix variant. The current best one is Mac OS X. The current best hardware out there is from Apple. I like to use the best and that is my only bias.

Testing When It Really Matters

Eric — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 20:37:44 +0000

This is an EPI-Pen. They come in pairs and this one’s twin saved my life yesterday. I’m allergic to the stings of bees, hornets, and yellow jackets. Yesterday I was about to see a play at an outdoor theater. It was a perfect October day here in Wisconsin, sunny and in the mid-seventies. I was with my family and we were all excited to see a play together. But, we were outdoors in the fall when the yellow jackets are very aggressive and I got stung just 5 minutes before curtain time.

An allergic reaction to a bee sting can kill some people in a few minutes. The EPI-Pen can temporarily stop the reaction and allow you to get to a hospital. Typically, you get about 30 minutes before the reaction starts again. The pen gives you a shot of epinephrine when you press it against your leg. It fires a half-inch needle and then injects you, all automatically, while you are starting to gasp for breath. Pretty scary.

The interesting thing here to me, aside from still being alive, is that this device had to work. There are no second chances, it has to just work, right now. How do they make a product like this? Once it is used you have to throw it away. Therefore, the individual device that I used was not tested. To me this would be an engineering nightmare.

This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that actually coming up with a design for the product was quite simple. The really hard part was to design a way to predict that it would work for me yesterday. I can imagine that a lot of statistical analysis enters here too. They are probably made in batches and a percentage of each is tested. Once in a while an entire batch is destroyed by testing all of them. The production of this life-saving product is mostly about testing, testing, and more testing.

I’m a software developer. The testing of software seems to be in its infancy compared to this. There are now some good testing frameworks and I know lots of people who are really trying to change our culture. They want us to think about testing first and not as a secondary thing that we do a bit when we are done with the “real” work of the development. I’m not sure that software “engineering” will ever get to the point that hard engineering is already. Where the real work IS the testing and the work that users interact with is just the result of our good testing. I’m not even sure that the kind of person who is attracted to software development is capable of proper testing.

This experience will make me look harder at testing now. I have been really trying to find the right way to articulate how I was feeling about testing. I think I might have found it.

By the way, I am just fine now. Take care.

I love my MacBook Pro!

Eric — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 14:46:57 +0000

This is Sweet

I got a 17” MacBook Pro and it is changing the way I work. My new shiny laptop replaced a 12” PowerBook that I thought was the best computer on the planet. But, with the old laptop I really needed external monitors to get any real work done. I even bought monitors to leave at client sites so that I wasn’t constrained by 1024×768 pixels.

The MBP has 1680×1050 pixels in a 17” screen and this seems to be some sort of optimal sweet spot. I have a friend who has a 15.4” laptop with 1920×1200 pixels and the size of each pixel is just too small. He has to blow up all the fonts in order to use the machine. But, some things can’t be adjusted like that and he is not happy with the computer. He is looking at mine with great envy!

I have an Apple 23” display that is gorgeous and an office in my house that I made myself and an expensive chair to sit in. I just realized that I haven’t been in my office for a couple of weeks. I can now work anywhere. I sit on my bed rubbing my wife’s back while she does homework on her laptop. I sit on the futon in the family room in front of the fire when it is cold. I sit on the couch in the living room waiting for the kid’s bus.

I love this freedom and I love this machine!

No Burn, No Sale

Eric — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:58:07 +0000

I am a really big fan of the iTunes Music Store. It improved my music buying experience. One example from early in iTunes life was one day my daughter came home from school and said she needed to buy “The Planets” by Holst and wanted to go to a store and get a CD. About a half an hour later I presented her with a freshly burned CD of a nice recording of the classic piece. Daddy was a hero and little magic that day!

So it was with that in mind that I anticipated the day when we could buy movies the same way. Sigh, it was not to be. Apple, either by choice or coercion has really goofed up with the new iTunes Store. I can’t buy a movie and burn it to a DVD with my shiny new Mac Book Pro with its dual-layer DVD burner. Why is this so important that it is a complete deal-breaker for me? In a word, kids.

I have kids who want to watch movies from any TV in the house. They will watch them over and over again until they wear them out. We have a DVD player in the mini-van that is fabulous for trips. We can’t tie up my computer or any other computer in the house for this purpose. And we won’t even consider getting a movie from ANY online source if we can’t burn a copy to a real DVD.

No Burn, No Sale

Back at it

Eric — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 02:51:42 +0000

I am trying to get my blog back up and running. This time I’m just using WordPress as it is just easy to set up and run. Easy is good, especially when I have as busy a semester as I do this fall.