Graham Glass, etc.

Millions

Millions is a Brit-flick that asks the question: what would you do if a lot of money literally fell out of the sky into your hands? It's an entertaining and thought-provoking movie that operates on several levels. On one level, it's a light-hearted comedy with plenty of funny moments. But on a deeper level, it makes you ponder the troubles that money can bring, and how it might be best spent. Highly recommended.

Robot Wars

According to this article, Hitachi has entered the fray of Japanese companies competing to have the most advanced robot. So now we have the Hitachi Emiew, Honda Asimo, and the Sony Qrio. None of these robots are available commercially, and exist primarily to showcase technical expertise and advance the state of the art. The rate of progress is exciting. When robots enter mainstream society, it will have profound socio-economic effects. My guess is that this will happen in 30 years or less, with software being the gating factor rather than the hardware.

Bungee Jumping Secrets

I remember my first bungee jump very well. I was teaching C++ for Nortel in Calgary, Canada, and was a bit restless at the end of the week. So I looked in the local paper for something to spice things up and noticed that bungee jumping was available at the local Olympic complex. I jumped in the car and was soon gazing at a metal cage suspended over the Olympic swimming pool.

After a little hesitation, I paid the fees and was hoisted up in the cage. It didn't look too high from the ground, but when I was in the tiny little metal box over the pool and looked down, the drop looked precipitous. I could barely see the ripples on the surface of the water, and the pool was small enough that I wondered if I'd miss it altogether when I jumped!

The woman in charge told me that she'd count down from three and that I should jump when she got to zero. Three... two... one... zero. I froze. I did not want to jump. I was laughing because to the awkwardness of the situation, but the woman was not amused. "Come on you English wimp" she said, and cajoled me into preparing for another countdown. This time, I blanked my mind and leaped; the Japanese tourists at the bottom got some great photos of me bouncing up and down on the end of the rubber cord with a huge smile on my face. "That wasn't too bad" I said to myself. In fact, I was hooked.

From then on, it's hard for me to resist jumping from any bungee site that I come across. So far, I've jumped over a beautiful green tropical pool in the heart of Kurunda Rain forest in Cairns, Australia, as well as off a bridge over a gorge in New Zealand. I hope to jump many more times.

I think the secret to bungee jumping is to conciously blank your mind as you approach the moment of jumping and not think at all until you're flying through the air. It's the mental equivalent of holding your breath, and seems quite easy do to. The fear comes from all the cognitive processing that is natural to do in moments like that. So don't think. Don't analyze. Just jump.

My bungee jumping photo album is here. The picture below shows me in mid-flight over a gorge in New Zealand.

Dream Home

My friend Pilar recently posted a question: what would your dream home be like? So for fun, I spent an hour over dinner coming up with a sketch of an awesome residence together with some notes on its special features.

Here are my thoughts.

Entry to the house is via a large gate framed with palm trees. The gate opens to a straight driveway lined by palm trees. To the left and right of the driveway is a lake populated with swans and ducks. The straight portion of the driveway leads to a circular portion with a fountain in the center. There are four exits off the circular road. One exit leads to the guest house. Another exit leads to a good-sized garage connected to the main house. Another exit leads to the front door of the main house. The last exit leads to the servant quarters. Vibe: Refreshing.

The house itself is Mediterranean style, two levels, sunny and breezy throughout. It has a beautiful ocean view. Vibe: Tropical.

The front door has palm trees to either side and is lit by torches with flickering flames. The entrance hall has high ceilings, a dramatic sweeping asymmetric staircase, a modern crystal chandelier, and a few spotlit modern sculptures. Vibe: Elegant.

The living room has large expanses of glass with a great view of the pool area and the ocean. Tropical fish tanks are built into the walls, and one contains jellyfish bathed in cool ultraviolet light. There is a modern fireplace for chilly nights. Vibe: Inspiring.

The pool has both an indoor and an outdoor part which can be separated by a large glass panel when the weather is cold. The pool is an infinity design, with water overflowing over the top and cascading off the sides. There is a diving board, water slide, jacuzzi, hammock area, and plenty of grass and flowers. The guest house shares the pool area with the main house. Vibe: Playful.

The library has plenty of space for books, a few comfy chairs, a grandfather clock, an old-fashioned fireplace, and a well-hidden computer console. Vibe: Cozy.

The master bedroom has a glass ceiling that is opaque by default but can be turned transparent to allow for star gazing. There's a modern tall four-poster bed with delicate gauze drapes. There's a patio with a pool/ocean view and a staircase that leads down to the pool. Vibe: Sensual.

The master bathroom has separate his-and-her areas with their own sink and closet, as well as a large shared walk-thru shower. The shower includes ceiling-mounted faucets to provide a rainfall-like effect. Vibe: Practical.

For fun, there are several secret passageways and hiding spaces. Where are they? I'm not going to tell you! Vibe: Secretive.

The security system provides visual and auditory access to most places in the house, and is password-accessable from any web browser. Better keep that password safe! Vibe: 007.

The various rooms in the house are sometimes linked in unusual and innovative ways that indicate that the architect was thinking in three dimensions instead of two. Vibe: Creative.

My guess is that a house like this would cost between 3 and 10 million dollars depending on its location. Here's a link to a house that is similar to what I have in mind.

For the record, I spend very little time thinking about this kind of luxury, and it doesn't even make it into my top 10 list of things I want in life. That being said, I bet it would be a lot of fun!

If you decided to blog your own idea of a dream home, please email me a link. Here are the dream homes so far: Kytari, Becky, Chris, Alan, Ben.

Semantic Web: Rise of the Machines, Part 2

In part 1, I presented a high-level description of the Semantic Web project. In this part, I delve a little deeper into one of the core challenges: how to you develop a common vocabulary?

The Semantic Web project is all about allowing machines to easily converse with each other, so ideally they should share a common vocabulary. For example, it's a lot easier for two machines to exchange information about employee salaries if they use the same words for "employee" and "salary". Without a common vocabulary, some form of translation is needed, which is both time-consuming and expensive. In addition, as the number of machines grows, the number of possible translations grows exponentially which is very hard to support.

The tough question is: how do you develop a shared vocabulary? Before discussing some approaches that use modern technologies, it's instructive to look at how the English Language evolved. Maybe we can learn something from history.

Because of the invasion by France in 1066, legal, noble, and diplomatic communications inside England were actually conducted in French. Only the lower classes tended to use the English language, which at that time was fairly primitive and spread via word of mouth. But as England became stronger and more unified, the use of the English language grew, and by 1349, it was being taught at schools again. It was generally adopted for writing around 1425, and by 1489, it replaced French as the official language for use in Parliament. But incredibly enough, there still was no formal English dictionary!

In 1582, Richard Mulcaster decided to bring order to the chaos and wrote Elementarie, the first English dictionary, which listed around 8000 common words. During the creation of the book, he also simplified the spelling of some words to introduce more consistency to the language. Elementarie was not a true dictionary because it only spelt words and did not include their meanings.

In 1604, Robert Cawdrey released a Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, which listed around 2,500 less common English words together with a short description of their meaning. Although it covered less words than Elementarie, it improved the overall structure and content of what a dictionary should be.

In 1721, Nathaniel Bailey introduced the Universal Etymological English Dictionary, which was the first attempt to list all the words in the English language. It was a fairly formal book, and focused on providing precise literal meanings for words rather than practical examples of usage. Although this was a good stride forward, England was still behind the French and the Italians, who already had more advanced offerings for their own languages.

In 1746, Samuel Johnson signed a contract to create the first comprehensive, easy-to-use Dictionary of the English Language, and delivered the finished product in 1755. Initially he thought it would take just 3 years; oops! One funny thing about the Johnson dictionary is that he occasionally provided word definitions that were colored by his own personal opinions. For example, "excise" was defined as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid". I bet the IRS would not be too thrilled by that definition!

In summary, a primitive form of the English language was spread informally by mouth until around 1582, when the first dictionary was introduced. Several versions of English dictionary followed, which gradually included more words together with their semantic meaning.

In the next part, I'll discuss how a vocabulary for machines might be developed.

A Treasure's Trove, Part 3

I've become fairly addicted to A Treasure's Trove, and spent about 8 hours today reading the 12Gems and Tweleve forms to get up to speed with the community's progress. I'd like to contribute to the group-think on this topic, and therefore want to avoid wasting valuable time trying to crack puzzles that have already been solved.

If you're interested in similar books, I recommend checking out Treasure, which contains clues to a golden horse worth over a millions dollars. The puzzle was solved after the expiration date, but is still a fascinating read.

A Treasure's Trove, Part 2

I finally got my copy of A Treasure's Trove from Amazon, and have started to hunt through it for clues. There are two sites dedicated to helping readers share clues and find the treasures:  12Gems and Tweleve (not a typo). An interesting article in Wired describes how these sites are allowing readers to network and form giant problem-solving machines, cracking puzzles far quicker than in the past. Thankfully, in spite of all this activity, none of the gems have been found so far. This blog claims a complete solution, but I've heard that it is bogus.

This is the second in a series of blog entries: here is part 3.

Ruby, REXML, and Electric XML

I wrote the original version of Electric XML, a high performance Java toolkit for parsing and manipulating XML, back in the early days of The Mind Electric. One of the coolest things about Electric XML was that it provided easy-to-use APIs and standard DOM APIs simultaneously so that you didn't have to convert between in-memory representations depending on which APIs you wanted to use. Electric XML was originally available as separate download, but now only ships as part of the webMethods Glue distribution.

A short while after releasing Electric XML, a guy called Sean Russell contacted me and asked if he could use Electric XML as the basis for an XML toolkit for the Ruby language. I agreed. Sean made many improvements to take advantage of the Ruby language capabilities and libraries, but the APIs still look quite familiar to anyone who's used Electric XML. The resulting Ruby XML toolkit is called REXML, and is described nicely in this article on IBM developerWorks as well as in this article in Linux Journal.

Tears for Fears: Interview

If you like Tears for Fears, you'll enjoy this interview with Roland Orzabal, who discusses his reunion with Curt Smith as well as their new album Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. A link to the audio portion of the interview is here.

Mac Feng Shui

I'm thinking of changing my home computer from a Windows PC to an Apple Mac, and shared this news with a friend tonight. We talked about the pros of cons of Apple versus Microsoft, and concluded that a major part of the Apple appeal is the elegance that its products bring to their surroundings.

We came up with an idea for what I think would be a cool Apple marketing campaign. The slogan would be something like "Mac Feng Shui".

Here's what the TV ad would be like:

A woman walks into a beautifully appointed loft-style apartment, complete with a minature Japanese garden. Clearly, the Feng Shui level of this place is ridiculously high. Then she unpacks a Windows-style PC and attempts to place it somewhere in the room that doesn't ruin its Feng Shui. Using time-lapse photography, you see that wherever she places the PC, it sticks out like a sore thumb and destroys the elegance of the room. Ultimately, she packs up the PC and sends it away. Next, you see her unpack an Apple Mac and place it on a glass desk in the room. Instantly, it fits harmoniously in with the environment, increasing its Feng Shui and bringing a peaceful smile to the woman's face.

I think this ad would highlight the true essence of the Apple brand as well as demonstrate the elegance of the Mac line of computers.

Mac Feng Shui. Think different.