Author: JP

Musing about Kurt Vonnegut and writing software

Kurt Vonnegut, who died earlier this year, was that rare breed, a sane and articulate maverick. I’ve read most of his stuff, and enjoyed everything I’ve read. His last book, A Man Without A Country, was a wonderful read.

4.13 Kurt Vonnegut

Some years before he died, as part of a collection of hitherto unpublished short stories called Bagombo Snuff Box, he wrote this:

“Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.”

When I read that, I could not help but think that we need a simple equivalent for software. Something along the lines of:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the user at least one function or facility he or she can root for.
3. Every function should satisfy some user need, however basic.
4. Every screen should do one of two things: reveal new functions or extend an existing function.
5. ………..

You get my drift. Don’t be put off by my paltry attempt, but I was thinking of setting up a wiki with the text and inviting readers to submit their entries and to vote for the best, just for the crack. What do you think? Let me know if I should.

My thanks to Steve Brodner of drawger.com for the drawing, I really think he captures something of Vonnegut’s attitude in it.

Some Friday evening ruminations around Facebook et al

I guess I used to be a CIO for a while. At least that’s what my business card said. I have so far not been able to convince my employers, past or present, to let me call myself Grand Panjandrum or (my current preference) CXO (formally expanded as Chief Something-Or-The-Other). So CIO it was, and CIO it had to be. At least until recently, when I reverted to being a Managing Director, something else I used to be multiple iterations ago, in both my previous incarnations.

Because I was a CIO for a while, I became part of a network. Many networks. An embattled breed, CIOs tend to work together, ask each other for advice, share experiences and issues. Which is a good thing. Cross-enterprise collaboration is always a good thing.

Over the last eighteen months or so, one of the questions I got asked regularly was my attitude to Facebook. Some of the questioners read my blog, so they want to know why I am so pro Facebook. Others, less aware of my position, just want to know what my employers think. What stance we take.

So a lot of guys asked me about Facebook. Which was interesting. Because these guys never asked me my stance on MySpace. Or Bebo. Or CyWorld. Or Flickr. Or LinkedIn. Or Plaxo. Or Spoke. Or Xing. [For completeness’s sake, I should point out that a few of them did ask me about YouTube, particularly after there were rumours of an Amarillo video taking down the army’s network.]

Why is Facebook different? I don’t quite know, but it is. Stuff like MySpace and Bebo are overtly narcissistic, it’s all about how you express yourself. Facebook, on the other hand, is about relationships and conversations. I guess you can say that about LinkedIn as well, but it’s not the same thing. LinkedIn is a very narrow one-dimensional conversation. If you’re not looking to hire or be hired, it’s not a place to go. I may have a few hundred connections on LinkedIn, but the reality is that it becomes a useful virtual address book for me, one that gets kept up to date by the person who owns the address.

So that’s my guess, that Facebook is a multidimensional conversation. Why is that important to the enterprise? Why is it important to work-life balance? These are questions I will seek to answer over the next two days. If you’re interested, keep an eye out.

Stuff I’m reading, instalment 1752; A slightly long and rambling view

Let me start with an aside. Why 1752? I just love that year. Changing calendars, changing the start of the year, some parts of the world dropping the period 3rd to 13th September, riots as a result. How I’d love to be able to time-travel there and back.

It must have been a truly confusing time. Just look at this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Old Style and New Style dates:

Occasionally using different calendars has caused confusion between contemporaries. For example one of the contributory factors for Napoleon‘s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz was the confusion between the Russians, who were using the Julian calendar, and the Austrians, who were using the Gregorian calendar, over the date that their forces should combine.[14]

I wonder what today’s equivalent would be. A merger or takeover that fails because of Outlook synchronisation problems between key people on both sides, caused by their operating in different timezones?

Anyway, to the point of this post. Some of you have expressed interest in knowing what I’m reading at a given time, so here goes:

Some Like It Hot Buttered: Jeffrey Cohen: I’ve been a big fan of his ever since I read his Aaron Tucker mysteries. Fabulous read. Jeffrey does something very rare, he has a narrative style that makes you forget you’re reading fiction. It just flows. I enjoyed him so much I landed up reading his nonfiction on Asperger’s, and now I’m trying to get involved with helping people with Asperger’s. There’s something about that whole space that makes me want to learn more about it, and to do something to help people with that condition (edited text, see comments). And some serendipity. I found the Aaron Tucker mysteries around the same time that I’d finished reading Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time, and soon after I landed up having dinner with Steve Shirley, who has such an interest in autism that’s she’s set up a foundation pretty much focused on it. So now I have to do something about it.

Back to the book. A great read, light and fast and humorous and unputdownable. Like any other fan of Rex Stout or P.G. Wodehouse or Donald E. Westlake, I’ve learnt to put the brakes on while I’m reading a new Jeffrey Cohen. Savouring each page.
Musicophilia: Oliver Sacks: I tend to read anything and everything that Oliver Sacks writes. I have no idea why. He just happens to touch subjects I find myself drawn to, ever since I read The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings. And I really enjoyed Uncle Tungsten. An aside. When you go to his site, you are confronted with one of the most bizarre sets of options you will find anywhere. As you scan down the left-hand column, what you see is this: Anthropologist. Awakenings. Island. Leg. Hat. Migraine. Musicophilia. Oaxaca. Seeing Voices. Uncle Tungsten. Sacks does some very strange things.

I’m fascinated by the book, subtitled Tales of Music and the Brain. In the introduction, Sacks reminds people of Arthur Clarke’s Childhood’s End, where the aliens “as a species, lack music”. He reminds us of what Steven Pinker says about music “What benefit could there be to diverting time and energy to making plinking noises? …. As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless …. It could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged”. Apparently there has been “a running debate for more than two hundred years as to whether [music and language] evolved in tandem or independently”. Sacks’ stories are designed to help rank amateurs like me understand something about the connection between music and humans.

Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant: Daniel Tammet: Wikipedia describes Tammet as a high-functioning autistic savant. The book is a Road book of sorts, but with a difference: the journey Tammet takes is all inside his head. Still only part way through the book, I marvel at how well he is able to observe himself dispassionately and objectively, and how well he articulates what he observes. Another fascinating read.

Um: Slips, Stumbles and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean: Michael Erard: Shefaly pointed me at this book via a comment made some time ago on this blog. (I tend to follow up each and every comment, but it takes time. Stephen Smoliar’s comments alone keep me pretty busy!) I’d kept a wary eye on the book ever since I’d read the Kirkus Review on it (which was that rare thing, a starred review) and Shefaly’s comment tipped me over. Here’s what Richard Lederer says on the back cover:

Some people are bird-watchers and learn a great deal about the birds they watch. Michael Erard watches word-botchers and, in the process, enriches our experience of what language is about and what makes us human. After reading Um …. you’ll never hear the thud and blunder of everyday speech in the same way.”

I also like part of the Sigmund Freud quote in the frontispiece: “….So do not let us underestimate small indications; by their help we may succeed in getting on the track of something bigger.”

Vinnie’s Head: Marc Lecard: This is not a book for everyone. You have to be comfortable in that weird space where Tim Dorsey meets Christopher Moore meets Jeff Lindsay, slightly adrift of, and much darker than, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry and Donald E Westlake. I’m delighted to have found Johhnie LoDuco, I look forward to more from Lecard. Riotous.

How Much Should A Person Consume: Ramachandra Guha: I’ve read quite a lot of what Guha has written, and enjoy his stuff. I used to play bridge in Calcutta with a Ram Guha who fits his description (same age, similar education). I’ve tended to wonder if it’s the same guy. [Ram, if you used to come to my house in Moira St to play bridge with Mondip and Kini and me, then you’re the same guy. Maybe Devangshu will remember.] Excellent stuff, makes you think.

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs: Ken Jennings: Never heard of the book, never heard of the author. I’ve read many books about trivia and about trivia freaks, I’ve done my own hard time as a trivia freak, and nobody captures the madness of a quiz addict as well as Ken does. Great stuff. A must-read for anyone who spends serious time in quiz leagues and teams.

A coda. It’s amazing just how many of the people I’ve referred to now have a blog. Things are sure changing.

I’m a Believer

I really enjoy reading The Believer. Just the kind of magazine I need to read at the end of a long weekend, after completing my Sunday evening chores.

You see, I’m with Doc. I believe in VRM. I believe that in the 21st century, product-driven advertising is fundamentally flawed. Personal recommendations, whether direct or via collaborative filtering, count for a lot more. Recommendations from people I know and trust, recommendations that scale now that I have the tools and the technology to discover the recommendations and act on them.

So I enjoy reading magazines that have no ads in them. Magazines printed on good paper, with loving care taken on format and layout. Magazines that cover a range of subjects, enticing me into finding out more about things I know little about. Magazines that have copyright-free content. Magazines like the Believer.

While reading an article in the latest issue headlined The Modern Lovers: Ten Contemporary Artists Who Make Images of Their Beloved, I “discovered” Keith Arnatt, and as a result I’ve ordered a recent book by him. I was particularly taken with his “Notes from Jo, 1990-1994” exhibits; Jo, his wife, sadly passed away in 1996; Keith has chosen to share some of the notes she wrote to him, notes of the kind usually stuck on fridges or pinned on kitchen notice boards; notes that have a sense of easy familiarity that I cherish, that reflect a warm and worthwhile relationship.

So thank you Believer, thank you Leanne Shapton for selecting Keith Arnatt, and thank you Keith Arnatt for sharing Jo’s notes. And thank you Jo for writing them.

Learning from my children, part 97

My eldest daughter’s mobile phone decided to go to that great hunting ground in the sky. Without warning. So she in turn decided to get another one, and to use the opportunity to get it this time in her name rather than mine. Her bill rather than mine. Which meant she shopped around for deals, and the best deal required her to change her number. Which she did.

[Oh these rites of passage, when your young ones go and acquire their own bills and reduce yours]

That’s when it got interesting. She updated her Status on Facebook, as you would expect, saying that she’d changed her phone number. She then did something else. She set up a new Group, and invited a bunch of her friends to join. The invitation told other people about her change of number.

Fascinating. So I asked her why she did it. It was because she was really using some of the granularity of Facebook privacy. Not everyone on her friend list could see her status changes, many were on Limited Profile. She used Groups as a way of getting to the ones she needed to.

I think we’re going to see a lot of this happening. Variants of “giving someone a missed call”, we are going to see Generation M using things like Facebook creatively and differently, using the functionality in ways we do not expect. More importantly, using the functionality in ways that may not have been designed for, yet remain possible.