Mockingbird Molotov cocktails

I'm not much into poetry, but Rives seems to be monopolizing most of my rainy Sunday morning. Using June Cohen's words, "on the surface, it's light-hearted, but then he layers in unexpected depth and emotion".

Some cool things would happen if Rives controlled the internet, although I wish there were a transcript because he pushes my English skills a bit too far.


Mockingbird, including a TED 2006 remix that is not available in this text version, creates vivid surprising and pretty images on me.

But, my favourite, by far, is Compliment, in text and in beatboxer+poet+harmonica video. Mmmm, wait Xavier, that's dangerous stuff to listen to when you are happily and safely uninterested in that kind of love; so lets use a quote by George Bernand Shaw that I heard in Helen Fisher's TEDtalk The science of love, and the future of women:

Love consists in overestimating the differences between one woman and another

La felicidad y la bola de cristal

A toda prisa a la librería de la esquina [1] a comprarme Tropezar con la felicidad, de Daniel Gilbert, después de haber escuchado su divertida y sorprendente conferencia en TED Talks.

La idea básica de la conferencia es que somos muy malos en nuestras predicciones sobre lo que nos hará felices o no. Al parecer, tenemos las mismas posibilidades de ser felices tanto consiguiendo lo que deseamos como no consiguiéndolo.

Está llena de datos sorprendentes, como que, un año después de acontecimientos tan distintos como quedar parapléjico o ganar la loteria, las personas de los dos grupos muestran el mismo nivel de felicidad. O que mayores posibilidades de elección van en detrimento de nuestra felicidad (más sobre esto en la también sorprendente conferencia de Barry Schwartz The paradox of choice).



[1] Mi librero no tiene el libro, así que lo encargo y me llevo uno de José Antonio Marina. JAM siempre me gusta. La magia de escribir, escrito con María de la Válgoma.

Curioso: ¿por qué me da esta pájara de comprarme libros sobre escritura (Bird by Bird, The War Of Art, La magia de escribir)?!

Democratizing visualization

I learned today about IBM Research's Many Eyes, available at alphaWorks. Although at first sight it seems simply a nice tool to create nice visualizations, its goal is to enable collaboration around visualizations.

In Fernanda B. Viégas' words, the intend is "to enable people to collectively reason about the trends and patterns they see on the vivid representations of data called visualizations", or "distributed data analysis and collaborative sensemaking".


How? You can upload data sets. You can create visualizations of them. You can discuss the visualizations, highlighting parts of them.

You are not sold into the power of good visualizations? Check out Hans Rosling's Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen TEDTalk (aka No More Boring Data, as posted on youtube). Or play with a tool similar to the one that he uses in the presentation, at http://tools.google.com/gapminder.

And whatever you think about Many Eyes, Hans Rosling, logarithms or baseball, do go and check the improved TED site.

Update: It seems that Many Eyes is not the only project in this area. From an article by Fernanda and Martin Wattenberg,

We think that social data analysis is a lively area right now and we are not the only ones exploring this space - two other sites of note are Swivel and Data360. Each of the 3 sites has a different emphasis, but what we have in common is a belief that the web enables a new, social kind of data analysis; a type of statistical thinking that is both playful and serious.

Social Data Analysis. Nice term.

Evangelizing and toilets

One of Google's little secrets that has helped us to inspire our developers to write well-tested code: we write flyers about (testing techniques) and then regularly plaster the bathrooms all over Google with each episode, almost 500 stalls worldwide.

We've received a lot of feedback about it. Some favorable ("This is great because I'm always forgetting to bring my copy of Linux Nerd 2000 to the bathroom!") and some not ("I'm trying to use the bathroom, can you folks please just LEAVE ME ALONE?")

Stumbled upon this evangelizing technique in Introducing "Testing on the Toilet", while googling trying to decide which JavaScript unit testing framework use (yeah, shame on me, I've been doing lots of JavaScript lately without doing Test Driven Development).

They not only use a surprising evangelizing technique, but also have a great banner and motto for their blog: "Debugging sucks. Testing Rocks."

Turn them off!

It is turn off TV week. Just do it!

And if it is not TV but your PC/phone what is keeping you from having green knees at the end of the day, it is a good week to give it a thought to this: who is in charge, you or your gadgets?

Healthy urge

Or, in Calvin's words,

If your knees aren't green by the end of the day,
you ought to seriously re-examine your life.

Orenetes i puputs

Foto a flickr de JulioCaldas

Fa uns dies vaig veure una puput (info, videos, mp3) desde la finestra de casa. Segons la wikipedia, a China es considera que veure'n porta bona sort ; jo sempre em sento molt afortunat quan en veig. El primer cop que en vaig veure una va ser passejant al Parc del Guinardó i no podia creure'm que bèsties tan maques voltessin per Barcelona. D'això ja deu fer vuit o nou anys, i fins el que he vist per la finestra, a Barcelona no n'havia tornat a veure.

Buscant saber-ne més sobre les puputs, he ensopegat amb el Projecte Orenetes, que manté un cens dels nius amb la col·laboració de qui vulgui (una idea maca per a escoles). L'any passat vaig considerar comprar un niu artificial, però em van semblar molt cars; no és problema: aquest any en farem quatre!

Tiddlywiki YourSearch plugin

If you are a tiddlywiki user and you have not installed the YourSearch plugin, you don't know what you are missing. Serious.

Bàsquet en viu (sic)

Els meus fills i jo hem tornat a veure un partit de l'UB Barça. I ja hi estem una mica engantxats. Buscant el resultat del partit de playoff d'avui, he vist que la Federació dona notícies en directe sobre els partits a http://baloncestoenvivo.feb.es/. A més de la lliga femenina, no sé per quines atres competicions ho fan.

Seguir un partit així no és la cosa més divertida del món, però l'aplicació Flash té la seva gràcia. Veus el marcador, les faltes, els punts, les estadístiques...
És particularment curiosa la part en la que pots veure des d'on ha tirat cada jugadora.

New phone: PyBluez and Gammu to the rescue

My Sony Ericsson K610i may end up being friendlier to my ThinkPad. I downloaded the binary version of Wammu and have been able to send an SMS from my PC via bluetooth, send a file to my phone, retrieve calls, contacts, calendar info...

Wammu sits on top of

• Gammu (a project which encompasses applications, scripts and drivers for managing various functions on cellular phones and similiar devices) with Python bindings
  
• PyBluez (a Python wrapper for Bluetooth)
  
• wxPython (a Python API for the great wxWidgets toolkit, formerly known as wxWindows)

Looks like synchronizing with Google calendar will require some hacking, unlikely to happen any time soon. Add to that the general calendar mess in my life, where there is the phone, Lotus Notes, Google Calendar and MonkeyGTD tiddlywiki.

The Wammu logs start with

(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):1 - "OBEX SyncML Client"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):2 - "Dial-up Networking"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):3 - "Serial Port"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):25 - "Music Streaming Service"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):23 - "Remote Control TG Service"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):23 - "Remote Control Service"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):15 - "PAN Network Access PointNAP (...)"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):4 - "Hands-Free Gateway"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):5 - "Headset Gateway"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):6 - "OBEX Object Push"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):7 - "OBEX File Transfer"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):8 - "OBEX IrMC Sync Server"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):17 - "HID Mouse & Keyboard"
(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):9 - "OBEX Phonebook Server"

I'm guessing that this comes from PyBluez, and that, as soon as I change the binary installation of Wammu with the original Python packages, it should be quite simple to take advantage of some of this services, or, at least, start some educated googling.

Dragó, Dragonet al Museu de Zoologia

Gran èxit de l'expedició familiar al Museu de Ciències Naturals, gràcies al estoig didàctic "Dragó, Dragonet" que deixen a les famílies amb nens de 3 a 12 anys. No és fàcil que una tarda de pluja amb un nen de 9 i una nena de 4 resulti tan interessant i agradable.

Foto de unite (flickr).

New gadget, new problems

I just changed my cell phone service provider and the move got me a Sony Ericsson K610i. It is my first Bluetooth/USB enabled cell phone and I had high expectations on this: using my PC keyboard to type SMSs, synchronize the phone's calendar with Google Calendar, use my PC to manage contacts... After playing with the (buggy and feature-poor) supplied PC software, googling for hours, learning a bunch of names new to me (SyncML, OBEX, OMA...), looking into toolkits and the Sony Ericsson's Knowledge Base, I think that the bluetooth/usb connection will only be useful to use the cell as a modem and to exchange music/pictures. Maybe I'd be happier if I were an Outlook/LookOut user.

Since the phone was cheap (39€), my disappointment is only mild. But I think that I'd be very annoyed if I'd had to pay for the full phone price.


Additional notes from the field after my first UMTS/GPRS experience ever

• OperaMini is much nicer than the phone's built-in browser.
• GMail movile java app is quite nice (it would be nicer if it allowed to save drafts)
• Using Yahoo! Messanger from the phone is hardly compatible with my fat fingers
• Internet access was quite fast when using an UMTS network, but did not work as soon as the phone decided to use a GPRS one. Unlike in some reports about recent changes by Yoigo, I had no probem using the phone as a modem for my laptop,
  

Although this was not my main driver to change provider and phone, I like the idea of being able to browse the web/check email/connect my ThinkPad from any place for 1.2€ at most during a day. I hope that I'll remember that "being able" is not the same thing as "having to".

Eduqueu les Criatures (tots dos)

Ensopego amb el programa de Catalunya Radio Eduqueu les Criatures, de Carles Capdevila: interessant i divertit. Una de les falques és "un pare... i cap teoria".

Hi he anat a parar a partir d'un post a La Colometa, un blog d'un pare que parla de la relació amb la seva filla i de custodia compartida SENSE FER SERVIR MAJÚSCULES CRIDANERES, ni caricatures i simplificacions grolleres, que malauradament, són coses que no és molt estrany trobar quan es parla, a favor o en contra, de custodia compartida. També a La Colometa m'envien cap a Con Igualdad, amb un bon recull de premsa sobre la coparentalitat.

És agradable i esperançador veure que la coparentalitat després del divorci s'explica, no com una guerra de sexes que omple de vergonya (i por!), sino com una manera d'organitzar-se que granteix temps de qualitat per a nens, mares, pares, avis...

Com escriu en Carles Capdevila amb mal regust a la boca després del debat sobre custodia compartida que m'ha portat a conèixer el seu programa, "el feminisme necessita aliar-se amb aquests homes avançats que si obtinguessin la custòdia afavoririen la conciliació laboral i familiar d'ella. Que no li convé tenir-los frustrats, pringats, maltractats. Però em diu el lector que cert feminisme els posa bastons a les rodes, prefereix mantenir un sistema que, per ser antiquat, els dóna a elles la paella pel mànec en cas de divorci". Per sort, hi ha un sector del feminisme que ho entén molt bé.