Graham Glass, etc.

Benny Hill

When I was a kid in the UK, I used to watch Benny Hill on TV. When I came to the US, I was surprised to learn how popular it was with many Americans, thanks to late night reruns on various cable channels. I'm watching it right now on BBC America, and have to say that it remains pretty darn hilarious.

Benny Hill revered Charlie Chapin and devoted his life to comedy. He never owned a house or car, never married, was rejected by the two women he proposed to, and sadly died alone while watching TV at the age of 68. He left behind an estate worth about 10 million pounds.

Benny Hill was a truly gifted comedian, and if you haven't seen one of his shows for a while, I recommend that you treat yourself to another viewing. It's on at 7pm and 11pm EST during weekdays.

The book Funny, Peculiar chronicles his life story.

Bio-Numbers

Just for fun, here are some very large bio-numbers to contemplate:

• Humans on Earth: 6,000,000,000
• Neurons in a human brain: 100,000,000,000
• Cells in a human body: 11,000,000,000,000
• Connections in a human brain: 30,000,000,000,000

What Kind of Movie are you?

My friend Kytari pointed out this fun quiz, which indicates that I am "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I like this classification, especially the "adventure" part.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What Kind of Leader Are You?

My friend Radovan pointed out this leadership quiz, and apparently I'm characterized as a "Clinton". The quiz takes a couple of minutes and is fun; give it a spin!

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Laser Eye Surgery: Taking the Plunge

I'm shortsighted and have worn contact lenses since I was 18. They work pretty well, but it's a drag putting them in every morning and taking them out every evening. In addition, they don't correct vision as well as glasses and I can't open my eyes when swimming underwater. So after tracking the progress of laser eye surgery for many years, I've finally decided to take the plunge.

I'm going to use Dr. John Baldinger in Virginia who utilizes the latest technology called Allegretto Wave Custom LASIK. This performs a much higher resolution correction than previous approaches, as well as avoiding problems such as reduced night vision. The surgery takes about 15 minutes and costs about $5,000. The surgery is scheduled for the end of April, and I'll blog the results.

Extending the Genetic Code

Genes in our DNA encode proteins using triples of four chemicals whose names begin with A, T, C and G. When a gene is being transcribed into a protein, each triple (such as A.C.T, A.G.C and G.T.A) is mapped to one of 20 amino acids, with T.A.A, T.A.G and T.G.A all meaning "end of sequence". Note that although a triplet could theoretically map to one of 4x4x4=64 different amino acids, several triples map to the same amino acid. The net result is that every protein is created out of a sequence of amino acids.

According to this article in The Economist, scientists are extending the genetic code by introducing more letters and mappings to the genetic language. Specifically, a new "letter" 3-FB has been added, allowing proteins to be made out of triples built from a larger vocabulary, such as A.C.3-FB and G.3-FB.C. The addition of this new letter allows new kinds of "alien" proteins to be encoded that utilize more than the original 20 amino acids. Note that this approach is backwards compatible with existing cellular machinery.

The article doesn't speculate on what the uses of expanded proteins might be, but it's fascinating to know that we're tinkering with the very fabric of life.

Living Will

One of the benefits of the publicity regarding Terri Schiavo is that a lot of people have decided to create living wills that unambiguously state their desire to be taken off life support in the event that they are declared to be in a vegetative state. Both of my parents have told me informally that they would hate to be kept alive in that kind of state, and I feel the same way. I'm going to call them next week and make sure that they've got this down in writing. I'm also going to contact an attorney and create a living will of my own.

One area that I don't know much about are the options that are available for ending my life in this kind of situation. When my cat was dying of cancer after using up his nine lives, I was thankful to be able to do the kind thing and end his life with a couple of painless injections. The first injection was a powerful anaesthetic that put him into a deep sleep. The second injection stopped his heart in a few seconds. It was terribly sad, but he died comfortably, surrounded by people who loved him, and it was the most loving thing to do under the circumstances.

When I hear about letting people on life support die by removing their feeding tube, it sounds like a lengthy and painful process. If I am unfortunate enough to end up in a vegetative state, I would want the executors of my living will to end my life quickly and painlessly, just like I was able to do for my furry friend.

Nausicaa

I'm a big fan of Japanese Anime and Manga, and Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite movies. I was very excited to hear that there are several other movies by the same director, so I've ordered his first movie, Nausicaa. I will post a review once I've watched it.

Animal Welfare

One of the charities that I support is the Animal Welfare Institute. This organization and others provide plenty of evidence that large numbers of animals are subject to unnecessary cruelty, primarily in order to reduce the cost of feeding our growing population. This situation will only improve when more people become aware of the way that animals are actually raised and killed.

In the short term, I think it would be good if high schools conducted field trips to slaughterhouses so that kids around the age of 16 could see where their food comes from. In the long term, I hope we figure out how to create artifical meat on a large scale so that we don't need to kill animals for food in the first place.

How to Produce Good Software, Part 7

In part 6, I discussed the creation of a product roadmap. In this part, I list the various aspects of software development that I aim to cover in the next ten or so installments of this series.

Here are the aspects that come to mind:

• programming language(s)
• coding standards
• development tools
• development methodology
• code and design reviews
• API design
• UI design
• testing
• documentation
• installation
• issue tracking
• support
• collaboration tools

If there is a topic that is missing that you'd like to hear my thoughts on, please let me know. Once all these topics have been covered, I will turn my attention to other aspects of producing software, such as building and maintaining a good software development team.

In the next part, I'll discuss specifics of the iterative development process.