My favorite quote:

“Tomorrow composts today.”

Very cool – both the quote, and the book.

Sterling looks at five classes of technosocial relationships:

• Artifacts / Hunters and Farmers
• Machines / Customers
• Products / Consumers
• Gizmos / End-Users
• Spimes / Wranglers

Definitely worth a read.

I got it from the library, and I’m going to hang on to it for a little while longer and read it again.  It’s short, but conceptually dense.

Definitely worth a re-read.

I came across this fantastic quote by Steve Wozniak in “Making it Big in Software,” by Sam Lightstone.  Woz is talking about designing the Apple II:

“And I did every piece of software from the ground up, through applications that you can’t pin down for any one of them.  The hardware was so interrelated that I can’t really divide it into software and hardware alone.  Those days were that way.  Today, if you work on embedded processors, you put a little microprocessor into a small product.  That’s the job in the world that I would love to this day! That’s what I did back then; it mixed both hardware and software.”

Sounds like Woz wants my job.  :-)

Hacks people hack.  They want hardware and software (aka “technology” or “tech”) they can change, optimize, use as they please, modify, destroy, etc. – in short, they want to hack.

Hack-Nots people do not hack. They don’t want to know what “hacking” means. They want their hardware and software to Just Work.  They don’t want to be aware of technology at all, they just don’t care.  They want to email, work, check Facebook, etc. – in short, they want to do something other than use the tech.  Technology is a means to an end, nothing more.

Hacks check email, Facebook, blogs, etc. just like Hack-Nots, but for Hacks the journey is more important than the destination.  The experience of checking email is more important than the email itself.  Configurability is key.  Even if it Just Works out of the box, Hacks will optimize it to their liking.  Technology is an end in itself.

For Hacks, optimization and configurability are more than just a Nice To Have, they are Moral Imperatives.  They believe it is actually morally wrong to not be able to mess with their technology.  They believe that being told they can only use C++ is slavery.  Even if C++ is their favorite programming language in the world, not having a choice is wrong.

For Hack-Nots, optimization and configurability are a distraction. Putzing around with settings is a waste of time.  They do not want to mess with technology that already works.  They do not care that software can only be written in C++.  They do not know what C++ is, and they will never care.

Until the last five or ten years most computing technology was made by, and for, Hacks.  Recently this trend has changed. Most technology is still made by Hacks, by definition.  Somewhere, however,  someone with an eye for the desires and dollars of the Hack-Nots took notice and is now telling the Hacks what to make.

Not in all cases, of course.  Most technology is still Hacks-only.

But the Hack-Nots are coming, and technology is on its way to meet them.  Hack-Nots will drive the marketplace simply because they are more numerous than the Hacks.

Anyway – the book is very good.  Gary says, “This book is written by a firmware engineer but is directed primarily to hardware engineers.”  I’ve been a hardware engineer and a firmware engineer, and I think both groups should read this book.

Gary has been in the trenches of firmware/hardware co-design for 20+ years and this book shows it.  The book gives 300+ “Best Practices” which are actually usable and practical – a departure from many software or hardware design books.  Gary talks about low-level concepts like interrupts, register definitions, and debugging, as well as higher level concepts like planning, documentation, and block partitioning across multiple product generations.

Summary: You should read this book if you’re a hardware or firmware engineer.

This is one of the books that I’ll probably revisit a couple of times a year to refresh myself on A Right Way to do hardware/firmware co-design.

‘Nuff said.

“But as soon as everything is important, nothing is important.”

That quote applies to pretty much any area of life.

Like money, priorities and importance can be devalued through inflation.

Plan, measure, and react accordingly.

It’s a scifi novel which starts in the near-future with the first hints of computers augmenting man’s intelligence.  The Singularity draws near as man becomes more integrated with machine  – posthumans are born.  Well, not born, more like evolved.  Humans and intelligence change more rapidly than many can cope with.

The most fascinating idea from the book is that of cognitive forking (my phrase, not Stross’s): people can “fork” threads of their own consciousness to carry out tasks in parallel to their primary consciousness.  When a forked thread of consciousness is done with its task it rejoins your primary consciousness and you instantly know whatever it learned.   Want to research several things at once?  Fork a thread for each task, wait a little while, and voilà!  You’re smarter in 1/Nth the time than if you’d just had your primary consciousness.

The book also discusses what happens to people who are unwilling or unable to keep up with the ever-faster changes in technology and humanity:

“The faux-young boomers feel betrayed, forced back into the labor pool, but unable to cope with the implant-accelerated culture of the new millennium, their hard-earned experience rendered obsolete by deflationary time.”

“Capitalism doesn’t have a lot to say about workers whose skills are obsolete, other than that they should invest wisely while they’re earning and maybe retrain: but just knowing how to invest in Economics 2.0 is beyond an unaugmented human. You can’t retrain as a seagull, can you, and it’s quite as hard to retool for Economics 2.0.”

It is a GREAT book – one of the most original books I have ever read – highly recommended.

You can read the whole book online at Stross’s site.

I also recommend another book by Stross, Halting State.

A few days ago I switched to a new theme that I really liked, “LonelyTree.” One of my favorite parts of that theme was the header graphic: a great big, beautiful, wise looking tree.

Today I got an email from Oliver Flores, an artist from Guadalajara, Mexico, saying that the image was his, and could I please take it down. His email was very polite, and he gave me this link to his original image: http://oliverflores.blogspot.com/2007/10/grow.html

A quick look told me that the LonelyTree theme seems to have ripped off Oliver’s image, so I changed my theme and sent Oliver info on where I got it.

I browsed through some of Oliver’s other art, and it’s really good! You should definitely check it out. So even though I lost a great header image (for good reason!), I have a new artist to follow.

Nice, eh?

Though that little heart favicon has got to go.

Today’s race was a 5K, sort of.  There were five people per team, each ran one part of a marathon: 12K, 10K, 10K, 5K, and 5K.  I ran the penultimate 5K and blew away my time expectations – I guess I wasn’t training hard enough.

I’ve been training three days a week for the last month or so, doing 1-2 mile runs the first couple of weeks and then 3-4 mile runs the last couple of weeks.  I was running 10-11 minute miles pretty consistently, so I was hoping I could get near the 10 minute mark for today’s 5K.

I clocked myself at around 8:13 for the first mile.  Uh-oh.  Note to self: SLOW DOWN!  I realized during this first mile that drinking water from a cup while running is a skill that I do not possess.  The course had water stations, and I happily grabbed a Dixie cup of water only to choke and cough as I tried to take a regular sitting-down-at-dinner drink.  I recovered without spitting up too much water, poured the rest on my head, and ran on.

Mile two flew by.  I clocked myself at 7:10.  Uh-oh.  I wasn’t slowing down, I was speeding up!  Note to self: learn how to pace yourself.  I was worried that I would start dragging and have to walk.

The final 1.2 miles were definitely slower: my time was 13:08, which works out to about 11 minutes/mile.

My final 5K time was 28:31, which is 9:11/mile.  I felt pretty good at the end of the race, I ran the entire way, and I beat my time goal.  It helped that my wife was there cheering me on, as were a bunch of coworkers who were also competing.  (I think at least 30% of my department was running, including my entire management chain up to the VP.)

Our team (“Tortugo”) ran the entire marathon in 4:10:03, which I think is pretty dang good.

I look forward to running more 5K races this fall, and hope to work myself up to a 10K or two as well.  I think I may have even talked my wife into doing a 5K with me, which should be fun.

As I continue training I need to learn how to pace myself better, and push myself more – 9:11/mile felt pretty good, 8:30 here I come!