Never done.
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I stumbled on this quote in a Wikipedia article on Lutes:
Matheson, ca 1720, stated if a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning.
My immediate thought was that if a programmer has lived eighty then he’s probably spent sixty holding some combination of the control and arrow keys.
Inspired by some recent comments I made at the New York CTO club, my colleague Dan Woods just published an article at Forbes.com in which he interviewed me about what I see as some of the most significant advantages of the Groovy language in enterprise software development environments.
I will just add that over the past year I have found Groovy to be a lot of fun and surprisingly satisfying to work in. Over the years, I’ve worked in so many languages that at this point I just want something that allows me to clearly express the ideas I’m working with, and support the evolution of those ideas over time. For me, a lot of the pleasure in programming is still the process of coming to understand what it is that you are modeling. One of the things that I like best about Groovy, is that you can evolve your code alongside your understanding. So you can begin with a three line script that just does something very basic, and useful. You can then iterate those same lines into a more structured class, statically typed variables, interfaces and packages for managing name spaces and complexity, access modifiers for encapsulation, and build and deploy your code as a jar file or a war file just like any other Java component. And that component runs on the mature, high-performance Java virtual machine that we really know how to tune, monitor and scale.
Now if I could only get voice-recognition support for programming, I could use some of this recovery time to get some coding done…
Not sure if my Latin is correct, but my meaning was to seize the coldest day.
I just got into the office after a fantastic but normal morning commute. My bike is leaning against the wall by the window, and I’ll feeling way too warm under all the layers I’m wearing. Hard to believe I’m overdressed for temps in the 20’s and cold winds.
Riding through Central Park on the way here I was thinking that there’s a special pleasure in seizing something wonderful that other people don’t seem to see. All those people on the subway, packed in and unhappy (you can see it on their faces and read it in their bodies) — I know they can’t all hop on a bike and ride to work, but some of them could. And if they did, wouldn’t they find the same glorious parkway, almost empty except for a few hardy runners and the very occasional cyclist? The trees are leafless, bare and structural. The sky is available, cold but embracing. The buildings are at the periphery, a reminder but distant enough. I can’t say the air is much sweeter, but there’s certainly less diesel in it.
And each day, I get the warm, fluid feeling of using my body to move me around. Sitting at my desk is a rest between the rides. I’m about to run for the Y around the corner and try to slip in a fast swim before I shower and dress in more office-appropriate clothes. But I have to say to anyone reading this: it’s available to you, in some form. Right now. It turns out that “freezing” cold weather really isn’t so cold with a little bit of clothing and your body making its own heat.
I’m grateful every day I ride for many things, including the wise friends who urged me on or supported me in crossing over the line from seeing it as crazy to realizing that everyone else is just missing it. Think I’m crazy for riding my bike to work in mid-January? Then you need to try it out and discover what’s out there that is vibrantly alive and rewarding.
Each time I encounter another cyclist (in this weather especially) I say hello or good morning and see if they’re up for a little conversation and commuter-shop-talk. This morning I met two and had great little human exchanges of a kind that you don’t get on a subway. Camaraderie in the cold helps, but they both had the same light in their faces that I knew was shining out of mine: we were out in it, seizing it and loving it, and all the people bundled up against the cold and stepping down off the curbs could barely see us go by.
I’m going to get a mounted camera so I can start posting some images from these rides and capture the changing seasons of the city.
To the water!
This week finally brought the feel of winter to NYC streets. The wind reached inside and straight to the bones. The light was thin but blinding in the mornings, fast and short in the late afternoons. It’s tough when the sun’s setting by 4:30 and the avenues are filled with edgy taxis. The steam from my breath at red lights makes me feel a part of Con Edison’s underground network, sprouting my exertions up and out through the pavement too.
Morning commute temps ranged from 20’s to 30’s, and I tried a variety of gear to be comfortable and warm. Fingers are the hardest, because of the wind chill I guess, and they’re so isolated. I’m seriously tempted by the “lobster” style of gloves like these:
At least some of your fingers get company for warmth. Pearl Izumi makes one with two and two that I’ve heard good things about. For now, I’m using old snowboarding gauntlets that aren’t bad but a bit too thick in the fingers. A thin balaclava under a BMX helmet seems pretty good for the head (I’m only riding for 30 minutes each way), and my trusty Keene sneaker/shoes with wool socks do alright for the feet (another vulnerable spot on a bike in winter). I get pretty warm through the rest of my body, and have been just wearing loose jeans, or sometimes thermal bottoms underneath. My trusty Marmot insulated softshell over a winter biking jersey does a decent job of wicking moisture off me as I go, though by the time I hit midtown traffic I am working on my own terrarium. If I get out early enough I can usually squeeze in a quick swim at the Y before a hot shower, dry off in the sauna, and get to my desk around 9.
At that point, I’m ready to eat every scrap of food stashed near my desk, yogurt and granola and frozen berries, dried fruit and nuts. Sometimes a banana and an apple. On Wednesdays, there’s a great farmer’s market on 47th where I can pick up veggies and fruit after swimming. Lately the carrots have been a dream of crunchy, sweet and almost juicy. The apples and pears are delicious too.
Ironically, when I walk out for lunch, I feel much colder than when I’m pumping on the bike. But really, I’m just excited for Solstice so that I’ll know the light and warmth are coming back. I’m determined to make it all the way through the winter on the bike this year, though I haven’t sprung for those Schwalbe snow tires yet…
Yes, it just hit me like a thunderbolt! Jason, traveling around in his ship to bizarre and uncharted lands, running into horrible dangers and getting his butt saved because some alien babe falls for him and shows him the secret way out.
On a related note, this made me laugh hard:
And with both characters (Jason and James) I find there’s a lot to like and dislike in them.
A quick Google search didn’t turn up any scholarly papers on this subject, though.
I was down on Morton Street for a mid-day meeting, and had biked down from home along the Hudson Greenway — it reminded me of my Wall Street bike commuting days. To get to my afternoon meetings in midtown East, I tried out the bike lanes going up 8th Avenue, which are new and totally protected from traffic by a hard divider. It’s fantastic, the most safe and enjoyable city biking I’ve experienced, and a dramatic difference from any of the “bike lanes” that are just white lines painted on the asphalt (when they’re not obscured by double-parked cars). There are even traffic lights for the bikers, with those great little bike-shaped signals…
It reminded me of biking in Amsterdam in 1980, where there were separate lanes like these on each avenue. I wonder how far Amsterdam has advanced now?
I’ve had Apple computers off an on since 1980. I remember a IIci that I dragged across country and back. But it’s really been a Windows world for me for most of the past 15 years, I’d say.
Not anymore.
A sweet little Aluminum Macbook and the 10.5 release of the OS (Leopard) has won me over. I resisted, I was obstinate (can’t stand following the crowd, even when they’re still the minority crowd) but now each day it gets better and better. Spotlight, Quicksilver, Mail, Growl, Adium, GrowlMail, Fusion, GarageBand, Mail Act-On, even Safari…good stuff. And with an XP Pro VM running in Fusion, I feel I’m still able to run whatever I need to. Except, strangely, I don’t need to (except for some Visio and Project files).
It’s simply a better computer, better operating system, better quality of software. I wish I had switched over sooner.
That’s the story. Going back to having a good time with my computer now.
Over the past year or so I’ve served on the Advisory Board of a terrific project called UrbanOmnibus — and the site is now launched and growing beautifully. It’s under the auspices of the NY Architectural League:
The Omnibus features multi-media content to showcase design innovation, critical analysis and local expertise across a broad range of topics and locales, creating bridges between various communities of interest. Urban Omnibus makes vivid the processes and possibilities shaping New York. Our goal is to increase understanding of the city we have and encourage ideas that can lead to a more inclusive, more sustainable, more beautiful city that could be.
All things I believe in strongly. I just wish there were more bits about bicycles…
This guy is brilliant in finding ways to work with his aversion to time-tracking.
http://jexp.de/blog/archives/16-On-LEGO-Powered-Time-Tracking;-My-Daily-Column.html
I like science fiction just as much as every other purple-blooded American boy born in the 1960’s, though I wouldn’t call myself a fanatic. I was definitely influenced by Star Trek growing up, though I stopped watching TV a number of years ago and so I haven’t really kept up with the various TV sci-fi shows of the 90’s and on. I did, however, catch a few Farscape episodes and got pulled in for the ideas, production qualities and characters…enough to watch most of the first season on DVD. I haven’t thought about it for awhile until it just popped into my head as I was waking from a Sunday afternoon nap — that Farscape echoes Guardians of the Galaxy in a lot of ways…
