Month: December 2008

The Dark Side of The Moon

40 years since Apollo 8. Hard to believe it. I can still remember being entranced by the photographs from the mission, I can even remember how elated I was when my grandfather gave me a first day cover with the stamp of the photograph. Anders, Borman and Lovell were writ large into my brain long before the astronauts of Apollo 11.

You see, Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to see the dark side of the moon; in order to do that, it became the first to leave the earth’s gravity, the first to enter the moon’s gravity, all this done at a time when NASA was still learning about manned moon missions. As a boy of 11, I thought it was incredibly brave of the trio to pioneer those things, and found the whole mission enthralling.

Without them, there couldn’t have been an Apollo 11. Someone had to pave the way. See what it felt like to go through the Van Allen belts for the first time. See how good the telemetry was when contact was reacquired after going round the dark side of the moon.

Without the experience gained in Apollo 8, Lovell may have found the challenges of Apollo 13 a lot harder; instead, Jim Lovell, one of the most experienced astronauts ever, was on hand to help deal with one of the mst unusual crises ever. Incidentally, as a result, Jim holds the unusual record of having been to the moon twice without getting off and setting foot there.

History may look at Apollo 11 as the mission to note, or for that matter Gagarin. But for a young boy in Calcutta, the idea of someone leaving the earth’s gravitational field for the first time, of passing through the Here Be Dragons worlds of the Van Allen radiation belts for the first time, of being captured by another body’s gravitational attraction, of doing all that and coming back home safe and sound, every one of these ideas represented a pioneering scientific spirit that lit something within him.

And that is why this photograph still sends shivers down my spine.

A coda. Noticed a tweet from @jerrymichalski retweeting @mitchkapor indicating the existence of this video clip, which also includes photographs of a far more recent mission.

It’s that time of year: something for young children

Take a look at this:

A mashup involving Google Earth, local time and Santa Claus. So that you can show your children precisely where Santa is at a given time. [The rest of the year, Santa lives at the North Pole, located just off 1 Infinite Loop, where his elves make iPhones, iPods and Macs].

My thanks to Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid; his tweet brought this to my attention.

Code_swarm and community

I wrote recently about a conversation with Jerm about commit logs, opensource and hiring; Ted chipped in to the debate with a reminder for us to visit code_swarm, a project I’d been aware of but only peripherally. There is much about the project that makes it interesting, even remarkable; one that gives me personal pleasure is the usage of Processing as the visualisation tool.

What Michael Ogawa has done is find better and better ways to visualise the human interactions that take place in software development, particularly community-based development. Many of the lessons we’ve learnt in opensource are made tangible and graspable by all, just by watching what happens. The organic nature of the process is brought out beautifully. Anyone interested in opensource and community-based development would do well to take a look. I think there are applications for the use of codeswarm in many open multisided platforms; as and when we use them I shall keep you posted.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the visualisations created by Michael and his team. Our thanks to them.

Musing about how people find things out

I love coffee. Haven’t had a cup since October 2006, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love coffee. Probably something to do with my South Indian roots, and being served fresh “decoction” coffee first thing in the morning for 16 of my 23 years in Calcutta. Wonderful stuff, I can still smell it. So when people tell me “wake up and smell the coffee”, I usually do. I can bring that aroma to mind at will.

[It took me a while to realise that my recidivist craving for nicotine was so deeply intertwined with that for caffeine; once I figured that out, and abstained from coffee and tea, the nicotine stayed given up. Cold turkey given up after a 31 year habit.]

So where was I? Yes, coffee. Here’s how it was made at home,  courtesy of Latha Narasimhan at the Yum Blog.

Nowadays I spend my time learning about different teas, training myself to distinguish my gunpowders from my silver needles. A part of me, nevertheless, keeps an eye on what’s happening in the world of coffee. Which brings me to the point of this post.

This little character. The luwak, a type of civet. Coffee beans that have been digested and egested by these creatures are treasured for their taste, treasured to the tune of $600 USD per pound. The most expensive coffee beans in the world.

That’s all right then. You get some coffee beans. Give them to your local friendly neighbourhood civet, wait for them to be digested and defecated. Then you collect the faeces, separate out the beans, make coffee with them. All’s well that ends well.

That wasn’t the part that got me. What got me was something far simpler. Questions like “How did they know? What made them try to make a drink out of the detritus in animal droppings? What else did they try? What are they going to convince us about next?”

Answers on a postcard. Preferably undigested.

more on why retarded hippies like me use Twitter; and a defence of the Long Tail

Today I “met” someone via Twitter. Dallas W.Taylor. The Dallas Taylor, as in “Crosby Stills Nash and Young Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves“. The Dallas Taylor who played drums on that album shown above (Deja Vu),  on the first album Crosby Stills and Nash, on the first Stephen Stills album, and on the two Manassas albums.

[And not the Dallas Taylor who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for a short while in 1953. Or any other Dallas Taylor.]

I’m delighted to learn that there’s a new band in the works and that there’s new music to come. For sure I will be buying it, I want to support a childhood legend. My wish to support him grew even stronger when I found out what Dallas has been doing in the decades since. Go here if you want more information on the work he’s been doing on addiction intervention.

An aside I can’t resist, germane to this discussion. I read an article in the Times today trashing the Long Tail, referring to a study I studiously avoided mentioning till now; it smelt of trolling. But now I can’t resist. The headline was, believe it or not, Long Tail Theory Contradicted As Study Reveals 10m Digital Music Tracks Unsold.

Turns out the study was done by Will Page, Chief Economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance. Yes, as in the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and the Performing Right Society.

Now I shall resist the temptation to say that it’s a bit like reading a report on why cigarettes don’t cause cancer written and published by Philip Morris, or maybe on why gas guzzlers have no impact on climate change written and published by General Motors. I won’t say that. Having successfully resisted that temptation, I will state that what I can glean about the study looks quite reasonable. Except for a couple of points. A couple of big points.

First, Long Tail actually requires you to make the right Long Tail things searchable, findable, sellable, buyable. Not just any old things hanging around in inventory like elephants-without-colour. The right things. Too much of past inventory management focused on what was sold, what wasn’t sold. Whereas what should be measured is intent, not sale or purchase. How many things, Long Tail things, didn’t get sold despite the intentions of buyers? Mary Modahl, in Now or Never, a worthwhile book written at the turn of the century, makes that point very well. Nowadays, understanding buying intentions is at the heart of VRM, particularly unfulfilled intentions.

The Long Tail may not always be visible in a business environment that has been Hit Culture dominated, at least partly because industries in such environments are so far away from the customer and her intentions. How else can we explain the fact that it would appear no one considered that it would be worth while to re-release the Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen versions of Hallelujah as physical CD singles last week?

Long Tail is about what happens when the costs of discovery and contracting drop in an environment where inventory can be managed flexibly and dynamically, making the case that there’s a lot of people wanting to buy a lot of things that they can’t buy because of unavailability, high search costs, high fulfilment costs and so on.

Second, even if the study’s conclusions were right, they will not continue to be right. Because people like me will buy the songs and albums of people like Dallas Taylor, even more so if he starts connecting up with the Greg Reeves and Chris Hillmans and Joe Lalas and Al Perkins and Paul Harris and Fuzzy Samuels.

You see, these people are part of the Long Tail. Many today have not heard of them. But enough have. Even measured in readers of this blog, there are enough. Even measured in Facebook friends, there are enough. Even measured in Twitter followers, there are enough. Enough to form a Long Tail.

So people will buy their music. And not necessarily through traditional routes either.

In the meantime, I will continue to relish the sensation of being in touch with someone whose name used to adorn my wall as a teenager.