Troubleshooting David.exe

We are Borg

2009-03-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

Sometimes David just rocks! A few days ago he presented me this lego sculpture saying: "look dad, it's a spaceship!"

Although I know for a fact he has jet to see his first StarTrek the resemblance is uncanny.

We are Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated...

Threads are evil

2009-02-27T05:10:00.000-08:00

Having a child is an exercise in chaos. If you're a software developer you will probably not even notice any change in your daily routine. It's basically all that's wrong with project management at your workplace. Late night refactorings, ever changing specs, volatile project scope, improbable deadlines and virtually no chance of success. Still you probably end up finishing every project no mater how mismanaged. Somehow things get done and the jumbled mess of incomprehensible code produces the desired output. On strings, prayer sand a roll of duck tape, you get through it and you live to fight another project.

That’s until you encounter concurrency computing.

If you’re a competent developer you know that threads are evil. But they pale in comparison with daily challenges of multi-offspring household. Having n > 1 children is a like developing a multithreaded application – with a few twists. In this case you’re the CPU processing the requests (this is where ~~being married~~ dual core pays off!), there’s no logging, exceptions are constant and unrelenting. Fixing a bug just means you’ve neglected to take care of something else. Being used to chaos you persevere – but invariably you burn out and fail.

It’s amazing how simple the problems you face at work seem to the veterans of n > 1 children families. Everything else is dead simple. Also you learn to appreciate your spouse. At the end of the day – she puts on her cape and turns into a superhero that saves the day. Barely being able to keep your eyes opened you gaze at the better half of your dynamic duo – she looks out of this world. You can finally close your eyes and take a nap. Her multitasking superpowers defeat the chaos. Your final thought before you daze into the never-land is: “She’d be an amazing programmer…”

Project Flowchart

2009-01-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much every project I've worked on:

And it accurately describes what having kids is all about. Whenever you think you've worked something out the landscape changes. You're back in the wild, it's getting dark and a low roar of the beast is heard in the distance...

OT: Why I think Amanda Palmer is semi-goddess

2008-11-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

Coz she shares beautiful, wacky, amazing and special moments with us? Because she’s odd? Because she gets Neil Gaiman staying at her place? Because she’s my age, but gives me more food for thought than Seth Godin? Coz she can Google?
Because hearing her voice makes Ema smile in her sleep?

Yes.

OT: Readable code and Regular updates

2008-10-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know my new blog is online. readable code is my C# blog and is more technical in nature. If you're interested in checking out the first 3 installments to my Building a Regular Expression Random Data Generator series head over there now and leave some comments!

Dad 2.0

2008-09-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you are blissfully unaware of - project Ivy is now called Ema. The last internal build was on Monday and we shipped Tuesday. There was no party, no confetti, no champagne (just some prescribed medication for mom). I might be biased but the final product turned out great. We missed the deadline by 4 days which I'm sure you'll agree is practically on schedule but we are feature complete (we've got voice recognition and emission tested, waste management system on-line, food intake running...) so I'm congratulating myself on a job well done!
Also we've changed our url, but that's a topic for the next post with the working title: My life is a box, (Boxing Goran?).
Also I'm internetless! For the first time in 8 years I'm offline. Well not completely off line as I got my mobile phone and this UMTS card for my laptop. But I feel as if I'm all alone and naked in the dark... OK. That was waaay off topic.
So no pictures till I get my computer running again, which is incredibly low on mom's priority list. So as soon as I set up the kitchen, build that rack, fix the sink and move that TV - you'll be the first to know.

The return of the lego dinosaurs

2008-08-31T12:33:00.001-07:00

David is definitely going through his dino phase. I fondly remember mine. Dinosaurs are all he thinks about all day. Here's a wonderful example of a Diplodocus...

It's still lego and it's still dino's but I'm much happier with the latest development. I'm sure you'll notice there is no cave men lurking around eager to play with the diplodocus. Yay!

Dad 1 : creationism 0.

Index is out of bounds

2008-08-31T11:58:00.000-07:00

Our countdown to project ivy has just returned an unhandled exception. We have passed zero and we're counting upwards.
On a side note we're also (4 days) late on moving-to-a-new-house project. I'm sure you'll notice that neither of these is my fault!
But being a bit late in a project is nothing new to us software developers. Now why is that? I'm sure we've all read books on project estimations, multiplied our estimates by pi, threatened to quit if project scope gets out of hands again. Still none of this makes a difference. The problem is that projects get late by the actions (or lack of actions) of people who have no vested interest in meeting the deadline. The guys that pour concrete don't care about me moving in. My boss keeps forgetting I have a life. And I guess "ivy" will come out whenever she's ready and isn't aiming for the due date.

OT: Interface pet peeves

2008-08-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

When talking about badly designed UI’s age verification interfaces surely deserve a few (thousand) words.

The basic premise of age verification controls is quite bizarre in itself. Somehow, somewhere, someone got the bright idea that the best way to weed out those not old enough to handle mature content is to ask for their birth date. Yeah.
Next up is the fact that 99 out of a 100 controls will use the dreaded drop down menus for day, month and year selection. Drop down menus are the worst UI invention since, well ever – but that’s another story. I guess using a calendar to choose a date would be too radical.
And last but not least, the vast majority of controls out there list years in a descending order. This means that 2008 (or the year the page was put up) is the first choice offered. How many less-then-one-year olds are using the internet these days? And are they really looking for mature content?

OT: Wiki Gaming

2008-07-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm always on a lookout for computer games that David might find interesting in the future. I'm looking for something non-violent that stimulates creativity and perhaps teaches you a few things about the world around you. So invariably most of the games in the selection are physics based.
I recently came across this gem of a game called Fantastic Contraption. The game simulates a simple 2D world with a few gadgets you can use to create a contraption. The goal of the game is to push, drag, drive or hurl an object from your work area to the goal area. Sounds simple right? Well, it depends on the level you play! And the level I had most fun on was this one:

Your task is to get the ball through the area of falling boulders to the goal. My first successful contraption was a caterpillar that dug through the boulders and used around 30 pieces to get the job done. But soon when enough people completed the first 20 levels new challenges were invented. Something the creator of the game never thought about. One of the challenges was to see what the lowest number of pieces is needed to complete a level. Surprisingly the answer is usually between 0 and 3 pieces!
So I got back to work and thought about using the using the boulders and a seesaw to hurl the ball to the goal. Sure enough I made a green solution (not using any of the powered widgets – another user game-play invention!) the level using 8 pieces and proudly posted it to the forums. Took them less then two hours to tweak my design to 3 pieces.

I'm always amazed by the power of collectives. Browsing through the contraptions has got to move you. So many ideas and approaches to solving the same problems, so many brilliant solutions. I'm definitely bookmarking this one.

Lego horror

2008-07-29T09:42:00.000-07:00

I came home the other day and to my horror found another lego set box in the middle of the hallway. It's not the legos you see. I love the fact David plays with them. Stimulating young minds and all that. But the box showed – ah just look at it.

Was I wrong at being horrified by this image? How about this one at the side of the box.

Dinosaurs and (what I can only gather are) neatherdals playing together? Is that creationists trying to creep their way in my home? Was it wrong that I sat David down and explained (ok, I'm not saying he got it) that dinos and humans never coexisted in the same period (he just smiled and said diinooo!). I continued railing on about Dinosauria, millions of years of evolution and DNA while mom slowly took him out of the room.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I fail to see significant difference between making sure David is safe from physical harm and making sure he’s safe from intellectual harm. So I’m doing my best on both fronts but the damn legos sure aren’t making things easy.

How do you tell if your boy is a Dilbert or a Pointy Haired Boss?

2008-07-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

The other day I was watching David play with his Legos. He was putting together a train when he encountered an engineering problem. You see, not all of the undercarriages can be joined together as some are missing their couplings. But just then in an “Also sprach Zarathustra” sound tracked moment he picked up the toy wrench and connected the final train-carriage.

I’m guessing he’s a Dilbert.

Right now David and Mom went to the sea-side and I’m home alone for the week. So I just miss them. A lot.

Project Ivy Private Beta

2008-06-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

Project Ivy has gone from concept phase to private beta. Still the wonders of modern technology make it possible to take a snapshot of the development build. And here's the exclusive!

How great is that? It's quite hard to believe we're able to create things like that - even though it's the second time around. And it's quite emotional for me to even look at that picture. I guess evolution wired us to feel like that, so that we might take better care of our offspring. But the other part of me thinks that this just might be on of the two cutest faces on the planet.
I'm off to view the rest of the video again (yes, that's why they call it the 4d ultrasound - don't get me started!) and give the Subversion server (mom) a big hug :)

Bug Bash And Meta

2008-05-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

The amount of news happening in my life is inversely proportional to the frequency of posts on this blog. Since all three of us came down with a flu I've got some time to spare.
Our next project is a (fingers crossed!) female version of David codenamed Ivy. I'm guessing 10 megatons will compare to the yield of that event. So I'm kinda wondering if I should discontinue David.exe or expand it?
I mean - come September I'll have zero time to report and by January I'll have two projects on my hands. And we're moving to a new house! How much will Ivy differ from David? Can they both fit in the same blog? Is it too soon for David to start blogging himself?
Leave a note after the beep...

A new project

2008-03-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, it’s time to come clean. I’ve been absent for a while as we (my significant other and I) were starting a new project. You see David has been going so well lately we somehow got the idea we’re actually good at this. Like - we could launch another startup while not breaking a step at the current one.
We’re overly optimistic I know!
If that wasn’t enough, we decided to move. Yep, when turning your life upside down it’s best to do it thoroughly. Paying obscene attention to detail, we’ve planed the moving date to coincide with the due date.
I know, perfect!
For those of you obsessed with everything David (and those of you not answering your phones!), the codename for this one is Percy. Got that? It’s David’s idea and if you don’t know who Percy is (hint: think locomotives with human faces) you do not have kids, are not around kids, do not like kids and shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway. Now the only officially stable aspect of my life is my job.
Don’t worry – it’s under consideration!

Teh Bugz

2008-01-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

Despite utilizing the latest and greatest development methodology, being agile, unit tested (Oops - test driven!), aspect oriented, interface based, source controlled, continuously integrated, FXCop-ed, NDepend checked and NBenchmarked, service layered, RESTed and KISSed on a regular basis - there’s this tiny little bug…

You see, David has no problem putting this puzzle together on his own. Gathering the right pieces, get them correctly aligned and oriented and popping them in. It’s just this one piece he keeps getting the wrong side up. Every time.

And I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

2007-12-25T01:09:00.000-08:00

The best gifts are carefully chosen

Let’s say it is Christmas season and you need to buy a gift for your geeky spouse. It’s the easiest task in the world! You see, we might have grown up, became parents project managers and all that. But we’re still geeks. So turn on that dusty laptop we bought you a long time ago, google for geek toys and buy anything with robot, usb or led in the description.

The best gifts are gifts that need assembling

It appeals to our geeky nature to have to figure things out, to learn what makes stuff tick and to get a gift as a collection of parts is pure heaven. To us the assembly phase is not the means to a goal, it is the goal.

The best gifts come with “spare” parts

Nothing worries us more then parts that don’t fit. You see, missing a part is not our fault. They forgot to pack it in so it’s their fault. But parts left over from construction – now that’s pure horror. Then again – perhaps we’re so brilliant we somehow managed optimize the construction and saved on parts.

The best gifts are robots

Period!

Two point oh and still in beta

2007-11-12T03:31:00.000-08:00

Yes, we did it! We shipped! You should have been there. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Parties, beaming with kids dancing to loud music… I watched confetti glitter in the disco light near the plasma TV. All those moments have been captured on digital discs as zeros and ones, to live forever in that which is web. Time to upload…

So what’s new in version 2.0?

Upgraded to Verbal Communication Foundation (with sl-si language support and reliable messaging services)
Waste Disposal Adapter (potty)
Auto navigation (not slamming into walls so much)
Auto recharging (self cleaning module missing!)
Voice Directed Action Control™ (stop, don’t, wait, OMG)
Innumerable bug fixes and corrections

But the most important thing isn’t visible in the fact sheets and comparison charts. There’s been a fundamental shift in the way this project is developed. Throughout the 1.0 phase it’s been mostly about mom and dad. Everything revolved around us. We controlled the vertical and the horizontal. As we approached the new milestone, we began detecting small foreign inputs, bits and pieces that didn’t fit in our neatly structured curriculum. A paradigm shift not unlike that which happened on the web had begun.

David’s progress and development had slipped out of our control. We’re no longer the editors. User generated content now replaces all we tried to teach. With so many information providers out there, you can’t really compete. It’s the kindergarten teacher, it’s his peers, it’s the tubes and the series of tubes, it’s the passerbys and bystanders. Mom and dad still matter, but matter less each day. I know that now and I’ll accept that one day. Till then I’ll take comfort in my zeros and ones captured on digital discs, that live forever in that which is web. Time to download…

OT: Gaming

2007-10-29T17:01:00.001-07:00

Just felt like sharing some of my favorite games. Surprisingly, most of them are free or really cheap games. Perhaps it's down to my c64 and amiga upbringing but games based on ideas attract me more then games based on polish and bling.
Also, most of the games are physics based. This is only natural as small scale / single developer games can't compete on professionally drawn graphics, orchestrated music, star actor voice-overs... A single guy doesn't have the time to draw all the baddies, but he can program them! So here's a short list:

Tower of Goo

Originally an experimental game-play project game (see below) but one that might have spun a new company for the author. The game is based upon a simple idea of having to build a tower using amorphous substance called goo. All you need to do is pick up a goo blob and stretch it to form a truss. Besides building a solid structure the player is rushed by remaining goo blobs which have a tendency to concentrate on the most precarious, the highest peek of the built structure. This shifting mass makes your buildings somewhat unstable and reaching the target height proves quite challenging.

Crayon physics

Another EGP favorite. The basic idea of this game is that your drawings become physical objects in the game. You draw a box and a box of the same size appears in the game, drops down to a see-saw and flings a ball across the screen. The object of each level is to touch a star with your ball.

Toribash

I bought this game a while ago but newer versions seem to be free. Also the rendering engine got upgraded a lot! The basic premise of this game is physics based fighting. You control a 3d fighter through issuing basic commands (relax, stretch, hold, grip...) to his joints. After making your moves the simulation continues a certain amount of frames whereupon you're given a choice to again issue new commands. In multi-player mode you have a limited time to issue your commands before the simulation continues. This results in an amazing combat game with no prefixed moves or combos but simply amazingly realistic action. The game is heavily modded and supports a wide array of game rules (most damage wins or player that touches the ground first looses etc.).

Zen bondage

In this game your task is to wrap a wooden object with a thread. Your task is to cover almost 100% of the object so any concave areas must be navigated with care.

Flow

An extraordinarily clever game following a unique game design philosophy. You control a small creature that gains size and speed by eating other creatures in the game. You're given free choice of progressing through the game levels (depth) in sequence or skipping through to the final level at once.

Bridge construction set

My all time favorite (although not free!) game. The history of this game started out with BridgeBuilder which was a 2d bridge building game. Next came Pontifex which moved the game in 3d environment and added different bridge building material. The last of the series called BridgeIt upgraded the graphics engine but for me BCS is still the best in the lot. Your task in this game is to use the available material (iron, steel trusses or cables) and build a bridge capable of passing a test (like having a train pass over it). It's one of those games where creativity rules. BBG still hosts contest where the most efficient bridge (read cheapest) which completes a level wins. Some of the entries just blow you away. Also somewhere along the line we started making walking / moving structures :). This was not something the creators of the game ever envisioned but clearly shows the power of building games as a platform for expression a not a collection of pretty pictures.

If you like games like these, then head over to Fun Motion, Experimental game-play project or Introversion Software. Those should keep you busy for months!

The Gnome Achievement

2007-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

Anyone even remotely connected to ~~gaming~~ computers has surely heard about Half-life 2. While most will agree the game is a brilliant example of what games can be – I for one believe it is much more then that. Half-life 2* is a metaphor for life.
Episode one begins with you waking up buried under a pile of rubble (womb). The character dog (your dad) helps you out (birth) at which point you are reunited with Alyx (your mom). You hit the ground running fending of Combine (bad influences), following Vortigaunts (good influences). Most of the game revolves around trying to escape the Citadel (college) and avoiding antlions and zombies (drugs and other dangers of college-life). Your choices are limited and usually directed by Alyx.
In episode two you have graduated to adulthood. You’re given more choice and control of movement. And finally, although cleverly hidden, you’re given a choice of ensuring progeny.
Of course I’m referring to the now infamous gnome achievement award. The gnome, you get a choice of bringing along through the game, is your child. In this wonderful parable that is episode two, you will be given the task of taking care of it, making sure it gets through to the next level and finally placing him carefully into the rocket thereby ensuring its prosperous future.

*1/2 life * 2 = life

About keeping score

2007-10-24T01:43:00.000-07:00

One thing we parents do obsess about is constantly testing our offspring to see how they measure up to other kids within the same age group. This “friendly” competition used to be quite contained to relatively small groups of friends and families. You could always rely on some smug relative commenting on the fact that his project reached a milestone a full week ahead of yours. “These things matter you know,” he’ll say. “She’s only two but by this time next year, we’ll be enrolling her to collage! She’s a genious like that kid on YourTubes!” (Yes, both misspellings were intentional)
While I’ve yet to meet a 5yo who can’t walk or talk (barring illness or birth defect!), it somehow seems crucial our kids start doing those things way ahead of schedule. I wonder why we’re less enthusiastic when our kids start dating at 15…
So the next time you get cornered like that, put on your best casual face and calmly retort with: “How wonderful! Ours just had his first beer.” and walk away.
Beats the hell out of “saved the rainforest”, “cured cancer” or “finished a new C++ compiler written entirely in javascript”.

Mom vs. Dad

2007-10-13T00:51:00.001-07:00

Sometimes life gets overwhelming and bloging falls of the daily routine. I know I have lots of catching up to do (there are a couple of posts that are missing parts) but this one takes priority.
Mom had to leave on a business trip today. As always, packing was done two weeks in advance. Mom is a waterfall model proponent. Me? I’m agile of course. I pack on (JIT) my way to the door. Luckily the bathroom is right next to the front door so I rarely forget my toothbrush.
Anyways, mom took a week planning the trip, mentally packing the suitcase, integrating various articles of clothes and testing for stylistic mismatch. With no automated regression testing (this is the specification phase of the project!) the only recourse is to mentally construct the model of a finished outfit and check for faux pas. This was followed by a week of separating, washing and rewashing of selected garments and actual packing. My agile approach would consist of grabbing any clean (not necessarily recently washed!) clothes spread out from the bedroom to the bathroom.
Special items such as gloves, umbrellas, second and third pair of shoes and other just-in-case objects would be purchased on a need-to-have basis at the airport at my place of destination. I probably need to buy them anyway so I might as well save myself an unnecessary trip to the shoe store. Not to mention the fact that thinking of things you'll bring along, talking them over with your spouse, then writing them down and finally putting them in your suitcase clearly violates the DRY principle!
With packing phase concluded it was time to find a lock for the suitcase. Security is the most overlooked part of any project. This is what mom’s idea of a suitcase padlock looks like:

A puny, tiny padlock hardly worthy of it’s name and clearly no match for the security device I selected:

Behold the Targus Defcon 1 – Ultra. All in one solution complete with 4 digit security code, status indicator and motion detection alarm. The first image shows the two in comparison. I know – as if there was any...

OT: Why I think William Shatner is a demigod

2007-07-18T02:34:00.000-07:00

When you say William Shatner people think Captain James Kirk of the Enterprise. How his amazing career managed to get hidden is unbelievable. Did you know he starred in a movie with all dialog spoken in Esperanto? Did you know he recorded two studio albums (some songs with Ben Folds among others)? If you get a chance go listen to Has Been please do (here’s a live performance of Pulp / Common People from the album) . It’s an amazing album and it’s more serious than it first appears. Did you know he wrote books (yes he, not some ghost writers)? Did you all manage to not see him play Big Giant Head in 3rd rock or Danny Crane in Boston Legal? The guy even has a vlog!

Anyways – that’s all I needed to say. You're no common man and I’m your number one fan!

Classic mistakes (part I)

2007-06-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Having recently been reminded of the classic mistakes in software development I decided to see how well they apply to parenting. As this covers a large area I’ll split the posting in three parts covering 12 points each. So here we go:

Undermined motivation
Your parents will (without fail) tell you (in excruciating detail) exactly what you are doing wrong. On rare occasions you'll do something right just to be reminded of the many times you did it wrong.
Weak personnel
Uhm… I should skip this one.
Uncontrolled problem employees
See 2.
Heroics
In this field you’ll need heroism. Especially at 3am while forming the words: “Honey, I think it’s your turn now.”
Adding people to a late project
Grandparents, friends, babysitters, friendly neighbors will add new behavioral patterns to your baby (they will not correct or improve them).
Noisy, crowded offices
The emphasis is on noisy.
Friction between developers and customers
Your baby may feel you are not cooperating and not meeting his/her needs. You may feel your baby is being unreasonable. This leads and is partially caused by poor communication.
Unrealistic expectations
You may expect to do a good job – give your offspring a happy childhood and all. Fifteen years from now, you’ll get a chance to explain it all to their psychiatrist.
Lack of effective project sponsorship
There are no sponsors in this business. There are however family members eager to fill the role.
Lack of stakeholder buy-in
See 9.
Lack of user input
You need to read this one as lack of meaningful user input. There’s plenty of meaningless user output (also see 6.)
Politics placed over substance
You’ll receive unbelievable amount of hints, suggestions to follow and vehement criticism for not following some latest parenting model (apparently - Indigo parenting has been renamed Fundamental Communication Parenting).

There’s nothing like taking a word most unrelated to children and stick parenting at the end. I recommend making-up your own parenting model to counter such advice. Lately I’ve had some luck using (well Agile and Asynchronous parenting were already taken!) Ajax parenting. The idea behind Ajax parenting… well it deserves a separate posting. Keep an eye on your rss reader for the next 12 points though.

OT: International Slow Server Day

2007-06-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

As a Chief Paradigm Administrator at my current place of employment I nominate this day - 13th of June as the International Slow Server Day. It's free - I checked!
You know those days when queries just seem to take forever, when transactions have a way of getting entangled, when every (l)user just has to access just about every record in the database, when rendering a simple "Hello world" is more then the poor ol' web server can handle, when disk access is maxed and constant and there's no free memory left? Well, today was that day...
So If you agree with my notion that we need a special day, dedicated to just keeping the servers cool and giving them a day off - sign up below.

Polyphonic David

2007-06-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Following some late night debugging sessions and feeling like I reached a dead-end I took a break. I browsed around my bookmarks (OT – I’m in the habit of book-marking interesting sites I discover while hunting for something else. Whenever I feel bored hor desperate I go rummaging through that dusty attic to see if there’s anything there to get me going again) and reading through some interesting articles I had an epiphany. It was right there in plain sight. This was the reason David had failed to respond to direct requests. My calls were blocked with no apparent cause – till I put on my reflector glasses. The signature of the main metod call was quite revealing:

public void Execute(CommandObject request) 
& public async Bribe(ISweet sweets)
{
   ...
}

The calls to the Execute method were stacking up but I failed to call the Bribe method. After this things went smoothly – it looked like anything implementing ISweet would do…
… that is until mom showed up and depreciated the Bribe method.

Why don’t you write about… #1

2007-06-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

… that new cool Japanese robot called CB2.

Well, for starters – it’s freaking me out. I can’t even bring myself to post a picture of the thing. It’s too big, it has the weirdest color they could possibly choose and it has a big mouth that is always open, so it looks like it wants to eat you. And I bet it could!

I love (nearly) all things Japanese (hey I play go :)) but this thing jumped the shark. Stop digging it – please!

Gizmodo David

2007-05-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

I know it's kinda weird but I love this :). Leave a message!

Get your own at Gizmoz.com

Model / Reality Impendence Mismatch

2007-05-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

As a newfangled dad, you’re blinded by idealistic visions. In these visions you see yourself teaching, guiding and building your child. Explaining things as you wish someone had explained them to you and revealing the secrets of nature as you have discovered them. You see your offspring sitting patiently, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. This is the Model.
As a newfangled dad, you’re faced with illuminating objectivity. Here you see yourself repeating lines (and mistakes?) your parents made and being bored to tears watching the episode of Teletubies for the umpth time. You see your child taking pleasure in deconstructing your (painstakingly glued and painted!) WWII model aircraft – deconstructing your Model. This is the Reality.
There are numerous schools of thought that pretend this impendence does not exist or that it is at least partially solved. You have your Attachment parenting, Balanced parenting, Christian parenting all the way to Quantum and Zen parenting. There are various commercial products (such as NAnny and They-Care) that purport to help you make the transition to model state completely transparent...
At the end of the day – it all depends on you. You are the system architect. It’s your job to make sure all deliverables are there on time. Be waterfall or be agile, but be there for your child. That’s all there is.

Implementing interfaces (IRespondable)

2007-05-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

The most important aspect of baby development is the correct and timely implementation of various interfaces in the Human.Babies namespace.

This week David implemented another useful interface. Finally this enables us to have meaningful conversation with our flagship product. The interface contract is quite simple:

namespace Human.Babies
{
   public interface IRespondable
   {
       bool GetResponse(string question);
   }
}

Unfortunately David’s implementation is even simpler:

public bool GetResponse(string question)
{
   return false;
}

Project failure #1: DadoVac

2007-05-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

I had this brilliant idea getting David to do a few house choirs. Considering his ability to break stuff I immediately discarded dishwashing and window washing. So I thought about vacuuming. Seeing how IRobots seem to be the industry leaders I thought I’d check out the competition.
I must say I’ve failed miserably. Here’s a short review:

Roomba	DadoVac

Vacuums dirt and debris from carpets and hard floors	Not enough surfaces vacuumed to make any analysis
Gets under beds and couches every time it cleans	Gets under beds and couches all the time
Knows where to clean—and where not to	Uses random cleaning patterns to catch your dust-balls unprepared
Works great on pet hair	Looks cute
Automatically returns to charge itself	Automatically asks for food when hungry
Try Roomba for yourself, with 30-day risk-free guarantee	No refund

OT: One-liners #1

2007-04-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

On this sunny morning I feel like this should be discovered by WeFeelFine.

OT:Report and a Trixie suggestion

2007-04-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

I’m sorry to report that family illness, accidents and work schedules prevented me from posting any updates. In addition we’ll be going off-line for the next few days for maintenance (off to the Jadran sea!). I’m sure you’ll be seeing other geek baby blogs. Some of you will even indulge in brief affairs. I’m sure you’ll claim it meant nothing and I’m sure I’ll forgive you.

In the mean-time, all you newfangled (or soon to be newfangled!) geek dads might want to check out the TrixieTracker. It’s your web 2.0 online baby management site. I have only three tiny little issues that are preventing me from using it:

It offers only paid subscription (Subscription fee in this day and age!? What kind of business mode is that?);
I discovered it just a bit late;
It was my bloody idea and they stole it two years before I thought of it!

Qrio vs. David

2007-04-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Somehow I’ve missed the news about fare well of QRIO and AIBO. It’s a bit sad really. I’m a part of generation that grew up thinking we’ll be going to work in our flying cars and robots will do most of the household chores. We saw ourselves as the Jetsons and it never occurred to us that what we saw on our TV screens wasn’t (jet) real. Our future was to be the SF future we read about in stories the Futurians wrote (remember Amazing, Astounding? The titles themselves convey the optimism of the era!). Yet we lived to see year 2000 pass as by as uneventful as the year before. There was no space odysseys for us, no trips to the Mars (nor zero gravity … er you know). But no matter - with companies like Sony working on our stuff of dreams there was a chance the next generation might get there. That’s why news like this gets me down.

Anyways – let’s get back to the topic! You might want to take a look at the Aibo / David comparison table. However, David received some major upgrades in the last year so an updated comparison table between David and Qrio was inevitable (due to lack of technical data for Qrio, this one focuses on the features).

Qrio vs. David (Comparison table)

	Qrio	David

Development time	2.5 years	1.5 years
Power consumption	1 hour – fully charged	7.5 hours – fully fed
Height	0.6 m	0.85 m
Weight	7.3 kg	13 kg
Top speed	23 cm/s	40 cm/s
Transportation mode	ISA powered - independent and stable bipedal	Quadpedal / Bipedal modes
Features	Wireless network	Uses wireless network
	Precision mechanism	Ambiguous mechanism
	Pinch detection sensors	Pinch avoidance sensors
	Quiet construction	Lifelike construction
	Safety cover	Safety covers optional
	Shock resistant	Self healing
	Obstacle detection sensors	Obstacle removal operators
	Internal mapping of locations	External mapping of locations (mostly with crayons)
	Face recognition	Face and food recognition
	Own vocabulary	Shared vocabulary
	Autonomous behavior	Independent behavior
	Expressing emotion	Emotional being
Extras	Can dance to choreography	Can spin (to the right)

All in all - I have to say David rulez!

OT: Re-labeling and stuff

2007-04-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that old TDE posts are popping up in your newsreader. I’ve decided to go through the old TDE posts and label them. Blogger.com didn’t have this feature when TDE started so most of the posts haven’t been labeled. I think TDE readers will appreciate the fact they can now get all the random things posts with one click.

For those of you that haven’t done so pls. re-subscribe to the new feed.

Who broke the build?

2007-04-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

Somebody (I say mom) messed up and David didn’t build (wake up) properly this week. Our CI server (crib) reported (loud cries) a failed build! It seemed like some (most) unit tests have failed and we’ll be able to fix him right up.
First of we identified the failed unit test and found it failing at:

Assert(this.Core.Temperature.ToCelsius() <= 37.5,
 "Core temperature to high!");

It’s always nice (sarcasm) to find a bug in your core library. So we re-built a debug version (washed, changed diapers, fed him), enabled tracers and run the standard tests again (went to the pediatrician). The results were inconclusive (“the lab results are inconclusive”) so our team (me and mom) decided (were told to) deploy the application (David) in the debug mode (closely watched) and see what happens (wait).
Of course we did some tweaks to the code (paracetamol, cough syrup, ventolin) and put other projects (work) on standby (dev null). This made a few project managers (bosses) happy (mad). They now had the time to reflect on (yell profanities) and improve (change beyond recognition) their project requirements (an e-mail) to better suit the reality (their imagination).
Eventually we resolved the temperature issue and our daily builds (mornings) are doing fine. The annoying thing is – we have no clue as to what went wrong and who broke the build! This is what they fail to teach you at parenting classes and this is what your parents never got around to tell you. Once your child is born - you will never know solid ground again. All that is certain from now on is the uncertainty. Sudden fevers will scare you, bumps and bruises will have you running to the ER. Coughs will put wild ideas in your head and most cries in the middle of the night will turn out to be yours.

OT: Vanity? Surely not me!

2007-04-10T04:16:00.000-07:00

After reading Haacked vanity piece I decided to check up on you - my reader(s). I’ve moved my rss feed to FeedBurner so if you get the chance please re-subscribe.

Or just leave a comment detailing why you do not wish to do so…

Or whatever...

Or come back tommorow for an on-topic post...

Four phases of development

2007-04-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

An interesting article (just follow on through tynerblain) articulating UX we all must have had being part of software development projects. And my current project is no different. The four phases of development are the following:
Oh it’s a Boy!
Great news! Lots of e-mails, SMS texts, quick phone calls, telegrams, oh joy, oh boy… - nothing gets done for weeks.
Oh Crap!
Baby and Mom get back from the hospital. Reality kicks in. Lots of “you get up”, “shut up”, “OMG”, “what is this coming out of his”… - nothing gets done for months.
Oh Ok!
Your baby finally breaks you. Lots of changing, bathing, cleaning… - that’s all that gets done for months.
Oh Cool!
Your baby gives you a hug. You faint… - you don’t feel like doing anything for a year.

Since Scott has put on such nice visuals I thought I should do as well.

Oh Boy!	Oh Shoot!
Oh Well!	Oh Wow!

You’ve been H4x0rd

2007-04-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

Newfangled parents tend to worry – a lot. One of the top 10 concerns (now there’s a dig story waiting to happen!) we have is child-proofing one’s home. So you decide to try and outwit your baby with clever gadgets designed to prevent him (her) from accessing dangerous resources, while still allowing you unrestricted and easy access. As is the case with most bright ideas parents come up with – this one too is inane.
Surely by now you realize your child is more intelligent then you? Well, if you were half as smart as your kid, you’d know. Those ingenious devices are nothing more then funny little puzzles for him (her) to solve.
So you end up buying bigger, better and more complicated locks and eventually you end up locked out while your child reigns free. You need to face the facts – you’re out of your league n00bie.

Lock #1 was cracked after 4 months. It’s quite vulnerable to random pulls and presents a challenge only to entry level hackers.

Lock #2 is on the verge of being cracked. It offers little resistance to brute force attacks.

Lock #3 proved to be quite resilient but is still relatively new and has yet to see any real action.

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t must do as a newfangled dad #9

2007-04-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

Buy your baby an expensive RC toy … you’ll end up playing with yourself!

Guiding system malfunction?

2007-03-23T14:22:00.001-07:00

This weekend marked the beginning of a series of failures in David's navigation subsystem. It started out with an uncertain step or two and quickly escalated into serious collisions with solid state objects. Our development team (mom and me) was stumped. David was apparently turning into a danger seeking missile. After lengthly consultation with senior developers (grandparents) we decided to continue monitoring the situation and keeping an eye on trace logs.
After a while it became apparent that there was no bug in the subsystem module. All system are go. It seems David just got way to confident in his abilities. A busted lip, some bruises and a few head bumps are just warning signs of things to come. It seems David is definitely not one of those quiet, unassuming, modest children that play with their toys while mom and dad lovingly observe them with that serene look on their faces. He's more like... well this:

Teeth counter #2

2007-03-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Teeth count is now at ten!

Distinction Driven Design

2007-02-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

One of the most frustrating issues I have with doors (and apparently it’s genetically inherited by David!) is their inherent direction ambiguity. Looking straight at a garden variety door- can you tell me which way it opens? Does it open towards you? Away from you? Does it swing both ways? The only practical way to determine the direction of this interface is by testing.
Would you care for an Api in your programming language of choice that contains such vagueness? Consider a series of DataAdapters with methods like Process, Do, OpenOrSave… Now some consider putting a label on a door a good enough solution. But that’s just like plugging a hole in a dam with your finger. Another one will spring right up. Some people can’t read, some don’t understand your language and most of us don’t bother to read. When was the last time you read code comments? When the damn thing stopped working, right? Sure I read those– right after I crash my head against the “pull” label.
So I’m watching David successfully navigating all sorts of door handles (push, pull, turn or raise handles) while still having problems figuring out which way the door swings and it got me thinking. There’s something inherently wrong about out door designs. If David can figure out how to turn off my computer he should not have problems with 19th century doors should he?

Multiple inheritance issue

2007-02-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

It turns out I was wrong about baby class inheritance. In addition to the abstract baby class (,which is responsible for most of your problems!) babies inherit a few things from both you and your partner. It’s a classic case of multiple inheritance and all that jazz.
The most important feature of any MI system is conflict resolution. How does the inheritor decide which inheritee implementation of a common method to use? Predictably – it tends to use the worst possible configuration it stumbles upon. What does that translate to?
For example: Mom likes to keep it neat while I like to crumple paper before throwing it in the tin can. The resulting combination at breakfast time is David keeping his part of the table neat by crumpling his toast and eggs and throwing them in the direction of the tin can.
I guess we have a few bugs to iron out here…

Something to think about

2007-02-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

According to this list of strange facts (boy if there’s anything internet was invented for – it’s the strange fact lists!) “The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day”. What does that mean?
Well if you subtract 8 hours of down-time, than your average answer-server (you) is responding to requests 16 hours / day. That averages to about a question every 2.4 minutes. Considering the time it takes for your child to finish his question and for you to answer it – I’m guessing - by the time David hits four, I’ll stop doing pretty much anything.
So please enjoy this blog while it lasts! And don’t bug me if I skip a day or two – I might be busy answering questions…

David’s Toribash

2007-01-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

At toddler stage you’ll see a rapid development of your baby’s mobility. Early stages of motion control will seem uncanny like Toribash. Each movement is overdone, each countermove over amplified and the end results wonderful and often scary. There is no gradient of control, if a limb needs extending - it is extended to the full. Whether your head is in the way or not.
Toribash effect isn’t limited to physical movements only. The same effect can be observed in your baby’s psyche. If laughter is required - it’s as loud as a train, if there is cause for tears -they flow a waterfall.

Your DNA?

2007-01-17T09:28:00.000-08:00

An interesting visualization project is up on baekdal.com. What does your DNA look like?

A new book

2007-01-02T08:11:00.000-08:00

Comming out soon!

Marry Christmas

2006-12-25T01:01:00.000-08:00

And a happy New Year!

Where have you been?

2006-12-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

I've been getting my life back. David reached his first year milestone and passed all the tests with flying colors. We had a small party afterwards with lots of developer friends showing up (more on this later).

In the mean time a new web 2.0 site popped up and I just couldn't resist testing it. And here's the result:

Talk to DavidBot

2006-11-20T09:52:00.000-08:00

Recently I discovered an interesting site offering free, customizable AI bots. So now you can talk to DavidBot!

Huston

2006-10-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

David stretched out his hands and grabbed at the sharpened edge of the art-deco coffee table. His vision slightly blurred by a casual glance at one of the multiple sources of light that matched the coffee table in style and color. He commanded his leg muscles to propel him upwards. “Height is good,” a thought flashed through his synapses. Reaching the desired level his muscles stopped automatically. “Now hold steady! Let’s have a look…” Suddenly there was a flash of color at his peripheral vision. It was coming from a TV set at his right. With a slight movement of hips he adjusted his posture now heading towards the plasma screen. “Walk!” he commanded and his legs followed with his hands now only slightly caressing the wooden surface varnished to perfection. “3,” a number flashed in his mind while he approached the far edge of the table. “2,” his fingers flowed along the surface without friction. “1,” a step separated him from the void that lay between the table and the TV.

With no further thought, David took his first step.

Consultants of swing

2006-10-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

David developed some bugs last week so I had to hire some consultants to help me fix the problems. As always outsourcing turned out to be an fascinating experience. Apparently The Consultants work through a strict checklist before they actually begin debugging.

Refer the project to another consultant.

Do nothing.

Express amazement at progress.

So David spent two days in a hospital to make us feel better I guess. He displayed an remarkable ability to self debug! I know what you are thinking: “how could I do it in my current project? I’m way behind schedule and I haven’t yet begun writing those pesky test suites…” Well, the truth is, don’t really remember putting that in, but I can’t have mom take the credit now can I?

Who cares, I’m just happy David is all better now!

Handling

2006-10-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

One of the most important aspects of interacting with the environment is shape recognition and object handling. Not surprisingly many of the so-called didactic toys supposedly teach your baby how to distinguish, grab and hold various shapes.
But simple cubes and pyramids are easy. The most difficult shapes are food items. You see it’s easy to recognize, grab and bite a sphere (provided it fits in your mouth!) but food items are more interesting.
I was watching David eat a cookie. This particular cookie is square shaped and as such is easy to recognize and hold. With each successive bite though – it changes shape. It becomes a square with a bite taken out, then it’s a kind of a triangle with a jagged edge, next it becomes almost a trapezoid… The wonderful thing is – it’s still a cookie and David has no problem understanding this. I know it’s common sense to us but that’s because you’ve learned that food items rarely change into non-food items just because you’ve taken a bite (interestingly, David does not recognize a banana without the peel).
An item that changes shape presents a difficult handling problem. You can teach a robot to hold an apple but that won’t help it hold a cherry. David must continually modify his gripping technique and be attuned to dangerous cookie fault lines. One false nip, one careless pinch and the cookie crumbles and escapes to the floor! Still, utilizing the Failure Driven Approach™ David more or less successfully eats a cookie by himself. A breathtaking testament to the triumphant progress our project is making. Go David go!

Interfacing the environment

2006-09-29T02:44:00.001-07:00

I’ve been reading Joel Spolskys User Interface Design for Programmers which is a useful paradigm shift for most programmers and it got me thinking…

I have quite a far amount of trouble keeping David from pressing the reset (and off!) button on my computer. Why is that? Why is he so interested in pressing that particular piece of plastic? He certainly has no idea of what it does or that it does anything.

It’s because the button invites pressing. It’s designed by professionals to look like something that can or rather should be pressed. That’s why David feels the need to turn knobs on the oven, handle the remote control, open closed drawers and rarely plays with his toys.

Toys designers got it all wrong. It’s not about the vivacious colors or the high pitched sounds. It’s about usability. So I’m off to buy some toys with interfaces!

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #8

2006-09-26T15:28:00.001-07:00

Let your baby get a hold of rattle.

Home alone

2006-09-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

So mom finally left for work and we’re home alone. This is a part of a cunning strategy to prepare for the inevitable. It’s been almost a year into the development of David and the time has come for a first candidate release. RC1 will be deployed in the local kindergarten in two weeks, which makes this the final push to locate and resolve any outstanding bugs or issues. I need time and concentration and that means we had to get rid of mom.

With mom out of the way I can finally start working on a few minor adjustments I’ve been hacking at for weeks.

Self maintenance, enabling self drinking

Self maintenance, enabling self feeding (a toughie)

Self awareness, preventing head bumps

Sokoban

2006-09-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

This week David started to walk around with a help of a cardboard box. He neither wants nor need any help from his parents and all the trolleys and walkers we bought are resting idly in the corner. So we’re having fun playing sokoban all day long.

Only there’s only one box…

And there’s no single area you need to place the box…

And you have no control over the sokoban…

The Ministry of Failure

2006-09-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

It’s interesting to observe emerging behavior in David, seeing his ideas and solutions not provided by me or mom. You begin to see how much your life is constrained by common sense, how your vision narrows with the accumulation of knowledge. It’s inspiring!
David’s learning path is not so much of following guidance – something we are taught throughout our lives. He trusts no authority and tests even the unlikeliest theories. He might like the taste of a squashed banana – but he will try to see if it tastes better if he squashes it himself, with my Logitech (cordless) mouse, while leaning against the TV and singing...
David’s an avid believer in The Ministry of Failure. To become better, you need to fail. To quote Niels Bohr: »An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.« Perhaps this is the next development paradigm that will surpass TDD (and if so – I claim copyright!). I call it the Failure Driven Development.

Legacy code

2006-09-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

It’s next to impossible to modify baby code. Once you program something, it’s there forever. Not unlike any legacy code you’re stuck with in your firm.
David was programmed to call me and mom “tada”. I’m not quite sure how or when it happened, but now it stuck. And no amount of role-playing and signaling “mama” changes anything.
So until David upgrades to 2.0 “tada” it is. You see with upgrades you get to shadow certain base methods, but the original programming will stay. So be very careful around your baby. Don’t say things you don’t mean. Don’t say things you don’t want repeated at the most inappropriate circumstances. Don’t say anything because you’re frustrated. Don’t say things you might regret later. Your baby understands more than you imagine!

You could be stuck with “tada” for a year or two…

OT: Daydream in blue

2006-08-31T09:03:00.001-07:00

Recently net’s crackpots were stirred by news about a little company called Steorn. Apparently Steorn invented a device that produces free energy.
That’s right, free energy – and I quote:

The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

While 1. is meaningless and 2. is debatable - 3. is just too vague to approach. Is there an outside source of energy or isn’t there? Or to put it more simply – where’s the little hamster at?
I guess insolitology needs an update.

Who's driving this project?

2006-08-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been noticing subtle shifts in project David’s scope and direction. While I’ve been trying to steer things in a more intellectual direction, a tranquil state, making things cool, something was pulling the project the other way. The activities were getting physical, more kinetic. We stopped looking at stuff – stuff was being thrown now. We stopped pointing at stuff and twaddle – we crawled, walked, climbed and grabbed.
Somehow David took over. I guess this is how all things come to pass – you turn around and it’s there. Yesterday you were in control, today you’re just along for the ride.
Still I am the current project manager. I am responsible for delivering deliverables on time, meeting project goals and staying within the budget. I ain’t giving up just yet! Not while you’re under my roof…

… and that’s how you turn into “dad”.

Teeth counter #1

2006-08-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

Teeth count is now at six!

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #7

2006-08-27T03:51:00.000-07:00

Teach your baby how to climb stuff.

Remoting

2006-08-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

As of today David can be operated by remote control. I don’t mean he listens to voice commands or anything. You operate David by placing the TV remote control at the desired location and just hang around.
Special sensors (ESP) enable David to immediately recognize an available remote control is within his domain. He then proceeds to locating the device (usually takes about 12 seconds) and then closes in for the grab. Once the device is acquired it is promptly put in the mouth and chewed. Unless of-course the batteries fall out – then those are put in the mouth and chewed.
In any case, remoting is a quite useful feature as it enables us to “program” David to do various tasks, such as climbing onto a chair, couch or a bed. Yey!

Upgrade

2006-08-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

In a few short months we will upgrade David to version 2.0. This will be the first mayor release since the beginning of the project. In light of this paramount event I've equiped myself with the new operations manual for babies v2.0.
If you thought managing baby was hard, you’ll never make it in phase two. Everything you think you know is useless, anything you actually do know has no bearing. It’s Alice through the looking glass all over again. And you better take the Red Queen seriously – you need to run just to stand still.

David's coming back!

2006-08-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Although we talked each day, although i could see him via video-calls, although I was almost there – it was not enough. It’s like using remote connection, the resolution is all wrong, the colors are missing and everything is slow.
That got me thinking. Will all this technology that we’re trying to reinvent – really help us communicate faster, cheaper, longer? Or will it finally enable us to travel remotely and stay home?

Void

2006-08-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

David went on a trip with mom. So this week all his methods return void...

OT: My friend needs the internet

2006-08-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

This is both funny and sad. In the 21st century, the future of all my childhood SF movies, with most people talking about broadband, net neutrality and web2.0, my friend lost his internet connection.
He was trying to switch his ISP (i did the same last year) and ended up in a no man's land between the bullying former ISP's parent company (i know!) and the incompetent current ISP (who now claim to be able to connect him by the end of next month).
I hope my netless friend gets back to the future soon as I miss having him around. But then again, internet is a big place. Perhaps there's a 2.0 version of him floating around...

Implementing interfaces (IThrow)

2006-07-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

The most important aspect of baby development is the correct and timely implementation of various interfaces in the Human.Babies namespace.

David has just implemented the IThrow interface today.

namespace Human.Babies
{
   public interface IThrow
   {
       void Throw();
   }
}

Note that the method accepts no parameters. There is no way to specify the direction, force or the object of the operation.

Aibo vs. David

2006-07-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

I won’t even pretend I have time to blog anymore. David finaly implemented the ICrawl interface! This means a sharp decrease in time I have available to blog (or do anything!)...

...and increases the chances of »someone« pressing the wrong button. I found that MSWord auto-recovery functionality doesn’t always get you what you wanted.

David has been developed to the point of being compared to other top products in the field of AI. Here’s the technical specification part of the Aibo vs David comparison table:

Aibo Ers-7 (mind service pack 2) vs. David (Comparison table)

	Aibo	David

Development time	6 years	8 months
CPU	64bit RISC	Brain
Main Memory	64MB SDRAM	Neural net (unknown capacity)
Additional Memory	Flash, PSM	None
IO	CCD camera, stereo microphones (2), speaker, heat sensor, infra-red range finder, acceleration detector, touch sensors, electric static sensor, pressure sensor, vibration sensor…	Eyes (2), ears (2), mouth, heat sensors, pressure sensors, taste sensors, acceleration sensors, balance sensors…
Power source	DC7.2V (Lithium ion battery)	Food – any
Power consumption	1.5 hours – fully charged	3.5 hours – fully fed
Dimensions (l, w, h)	319 x 180 x 278 mm (not including tail)	120 x 170 x 750 mm (not including hair)
Weight	0.3 kg	10 kg
Operation temperature	5-35 ºC	37 ºC

Ascii David

2006-06-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

A photo of David - geek style.



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Debugging (part II)

2006-06-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

I was on my own again.

I raided the home pharmacy (with my dad being an MD I do not use the term haphazardly) and found nothing (nothing I’m allowed to use on a 9.5 kg humanoid). It was time to go out and buy some drugs. This being the information age – the age of web 2.0 shops and services – one does not expect leaving the comfy chair would be necessary. In my country one would be wrong.
So I ventured out (physically walked!) in the friezing cold (ok I’m exaggerating here!). To my horror the pharmacy was packed. I had to wait in line while bunch of old ladies (with mean elbows!) got the info on the latest fad diseases. Meanwhile my wife sent me a MMS photo of David looking like Regan Teresa MacNeil at her worst. I’m not sure what happened next but the line in front of me was suddenly cleared. A few of the old ladies were moaning and the clerk was looking at me kinda funny but I paid cash and was out of there in a flash.

Remembrance of Things Past

2006-05-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

I'm in a proustian mood tonight. Browsing through my so 80’s collection I’m playing for David I stumbled upon Bryan Ferry’s Don’t stop the dance. Now for those of you who never owned an Amiga in the Amiga days, who never subscribed to Eurochartand never heard of Dr. Awesome of the Crusaders it wont mean much. To me it means a world of things.

What will David’s 20s collection be like? Will I get it?

A perfect excuse

2006-05-27T01:40:00.000-07:00

David ate my blog post!

I'm sorry!

2006-05-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry! I humbly apologize. I haven’t been taking care of this blog for a month now. I could list you tons of excuses buit the fact remains I’ve bloged not a single line this month.
I was toying with the idea od writing a substitute blogger to fill in when I can’t be bothered to write. But decided it wouldn’t be fair to you. So I apologize again and I swear I will…

Respect!

2006-04-21T01:16:00.000-07:00

I want to be a cool dad, you know? I’d hate being one of those uncool parents that show up at the wrong time, wearing the wrong things and saying the wrong thing to the wrong people. That would make me a failure in my book. So I’m doing some Googling on trends and music, joining cool IRC channels (avoiding the lame ones), learning how to sphr33k 4s h4xor lol! and correctly misuse the punctuation marks.
I do wonder if my hard earned skills will ever come in handy. I wonder if my dad went through all this? All I can say is - respect!

Debugging (part I)

2006-04-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago David started acting strangely. He was less cheerful then usual and that is a bad omen. He was crankier then usual; a regular mr. Ganglion! He was throwing more exceptions then usual - plus me and mom developed a splitting headache - so I knew we had a bug on our hands.

It was time to fire-up those debugging tools! The first tool you should always use in such situations is a Home Medical Encyclopedia. This is the kind of book your grandma buys from a ruthless encyclopedia salesman. This informed me David is either perfectly healthy, he is dying or any number of things in between.

My second weapon of choice was (of course) The Little Search Engine That Could. Only this time it couldn't. With links like: a survey, a credit card (I can still see the friggin’ numbers!) and ovaries I walked away with a strange feeing baby fever has more to do with female adult mental disorders than David!

So I phoned my dad who told me to sit tight and to call back if the fever gets up to 40°C.
Needles to say I wasn’t satisfied with this…

Geektionary: Mom

2006-04-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

A generic BabyEvent and BabyException handler.

Implementing interfaces (ITurnable)

2006-03-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

The most important aspect of baby development is the correct and timely implementation of various interfaces in the Human.Babies namespace.

David has just implemented the ITurnable interface today.

namespace Human.Babies
{
   public interface ITurnable
   {
       void TurnLeft();
       void TurnRight();
   }
}

Through the magic of abstract classes and inheritance we also get Turning and Turned events to bind on mom. She loves it and I recorded the first build on cam. You might have noticed I haven’t bloged any of the previous interfaces. Eg. yesterday’s post was a result of the IGrabber.GrabObject method. That is because they we’re already implemented at birth. Anyway, here’s a short list:

ICute
IGrabber
IKicker
IScreamer
IDemandable
ILovable

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #6

2006-03-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

Let your baby get a hold of your digital camera.

Project review

2006-03-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Scheduled pediatric check-ups are like the dreaded project review meeting on a project under-manned, over-sponsored and hopelessly behind schedule. So when the time comes – you just know things will not go as planned.

It starts off with a barrage of project related questions like: Is the baby breastfed? Is the baby being read to? Is the baby being exercised? And there’s no good answer to such questions.

Project sponsor: Is the baby breastfed?
You: Yes.
Project sponsor: I see. Perhaps you should consider switching to formula. Breastfeeding the baby can lead to baby becoming over-dependent…
You: ?
Project sponsor: Is the baby being exercised?
You: Why yes, we’re…
Project sponsor: I see your baby has over-developed muscle tonus. You should consider not putting your baby through so much exercise…

Next the project milestones are reviewed.
Project sponsor: Does the baby stand on its own?
You: Well no, he’s 4 months old!
Project sponsor: I see –you think your baby is developing at a satisfactory rate then?
You: I’ve done much reading on the subject and I think…
Project sponsor: I see – you thing reading a book or two on the subject makes you a specialist then?
You: I…
Project sponsor: Are you ok with your baby developing slower then his peers?
You: Wtf?
Project sponsor: “So where’s the Gantt?”

At this point you point your gun toward one of two possible directions depending on whether you are an introverted or extroverted individual…

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #5

2006-03-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

Use your baby’s birth-date as password.

The Gantt

2006-02-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

Every project needs a Gantt chart. It is essential. You can’t persuade any self-respecting middle-to-upper management cone-head to sign off on your project plan unless he sees the Gantt. He’ll tell you:
”Where’s the Gantt?”
And you’ll be like:
”Wtf, I just showed you the project schedule and…”
And he’ll just go:
“Where’s the Gantt?”
And you’ll try to explain:
”Look, there is no need for a Gantt chart – all the information you could cram into that chart is right…”
“So where’s the Gantt?” comes the reply.

So here’s the Gantt.

This needs some elaboration.

Familiarization (7.11-7.12)
As noted elsewhere, you inherit your baby project (roughly) 4% of the way through. Considering the fact you’re dealing with an 18 years long project, 4% is a lot. This means you’ll need to familiarize yourself with your baby.

Research (14.11-1.1)
In about a week, you will realize you haven’t the foggiest idea. You’ll read books, Google and call-up psychics. After two weeks you’ll give up.

Learning Basics (7.11-14.11)
In order to begin with the caretaking activities you will need to learn some basics. This includes (and is not limited to) feeding the baby, taking the baby for walks, keeping the baby clean and dry and keep the baby happy.

Caretaking Activities (14.11-?)
Apart from the developing stuff, you’ll actually need to maintain your baby. Have you ever worked on a project where you needed to maintain the data while actually developing system to manage the same data? We’ll it’s just like that.

Sleep (?)
What sleep?

Playing Your Favorite Board Game
I average 12 seconds a day. Which means I’ll finish a quick game of Go in about 450 days.

Household Tasks (daily)
The Baby Project is a perfect opportunity for your spouse to off-load some of the chores to you (this is an inherently bad idea – think Microsoft product support and India). At this time you have no choice but to pencil it in.

Teaching Basics (15.10-?)
A Baby requires you to teach it some of the basic skills of living in a civilized society. This includes (and is not limited to) eating, walking, talking, taking care of nature calls and to say “I’m really, really sorry” when he does something you don’t approve of.

Blogging (whenever)
This will fall under work-time (in case your boss is a cone-head, you will need to work at it at 1 am).

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #4

2006-02-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

Nice to meet you post

2006-02-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

Hi!

If I could keep a coherent thought in my head for more then fifteen seconds, knew how to form complete sentences, had a vocabulary, was able to type (well, strike the intended keys) then this would be written by me and not my dad.

<-- This is me today.

Well not really me – it’s a picture of me. Anyways, since dad takes care of the unmentionables and mom takes care of the food, I thought I should let him blog for me as well. As long as I’m full, dry, warm, had enough sleep and winamp is blasting Sugababes I’m good.

I wouldn’t call that high maintenance – would you? I do find my parents are hard to program. I have to guide them every step of the way. Nothing happens without my auditory signal. I swear, if I never cried they would forget to feed me! They just don’t seem very intelligent. I’ll have to work on them some more.

David

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #3

2006-02-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

Let your baby write blog.

Mm,.

2006-02-17T08:27:00.000-08:00

n ,l
, mmu89c++khcxjxo j h90

Geektionary: Baby.Diapers

2006-02-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

The purpose of Baby.Diaper classes is to catch and handle bowel exceptions. These vary in type, smell and mass.

Baby.Diper classes implement one of two common interfaces: IWashable or IDisposable.

Programming sleep mode

2006-02-11T00:47:00.000-08:00

First of all, you need to make sure your baby is at a stage of development where sleep method is implemented (we’re talking about the public sleep method here, not to be confused with internal InvokeUnconsciousness method which is called at random for the first few weeks).

Next, you need to realize there is no surefire way to invoke sleep. There are literally hundreds of overloads of the sleep method, ranging from simple .Sleep (MothersMilk food) to more complex .Sleep (Sound music, Toy teddy, String bedtimeStory, Int TimeoutInHours) methods. And each is more likely to throw an exception then work as advertised. But then again, they might work the next time you try them. The trick is to keep trying and experimenting!

For the past month David would instantly fall asleep to Guns’n’Roses’s Welcome to the Jungle played insanely loud while being held in my arms and gently bounced off beat with a freshly opened banana* nearby to provide the correct aromatic environment for sleeping. The key is to experiment! Naturally David stopped responding to this method two days ago – but I’m having some success with Enya’s May it be, Oranges, Mathmos space projector and circular walks through the apartment.

Did you know the word “banana” is the most commonly used password for female users named a variation of the name “Anna”?

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #2

2006-02-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

Start a blog about your baby.

Basic design flaws (part II)

2006-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: Inheritance

Despite what you might have learned at sex class – your baby does not inherit from you. Babies inherit from an abstract baby class. The bad news is over 90% of class methods are abstract and need implementation. The other 10% need redesign.

As you may have noticed – the designer of the abstract baby class had no clue and surely had no experience in OOP. Case in point is the “eat (object food)” method. You might think that putting any object as food would do. Certainly there’s nothing in the method signature that suggests otherwise. You would be wrong! You see, babies need different kind of food objects at different stages in their development. You’d think the almighty class designer would consider other solutions to the problem, but nooo. It’s up to you to know how your baby works and what to feed it and when. Talk about encapsulation…

As previously stated, the baby does not inherit from you. You see, none of your class methods will work in a baby. You need to write them from scratch. The good news is none of your spouse methods are implemented. So she needs to program them too.

And guess who’s a better programmer!

A random thing you will want to, but probably shouldn’t do as a newfangled dad #1

2006-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

Name variables after your baby’s name.

Mismanaging project(s) (part III)

2006-01-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: Time management

There is no time management because a prerequisite to time management is – time. You see, it’s kinda difficult to manage something you have so little of. Just look at this blog. This was supposed to be a daily blog. See anything new for the past week?

But that’s beside the point. The point is your baby needs to learn time management. You need to teach him what daytime is, what lunchtime means and what nighttime brings. This is a serious matter. How serious, you ask? Of the utmost seriousness. Sounds serious, doesn’t it? Well, it is. You see - you and your baby need sleep. Continuous, 6 hour, non of that pre-R.E.M. stuff sleep. It’s a vicious circle. If you or your baby do not get enough sleep, you get cranky (a no-no) or the baby gets cranky (a bigger no-no), then you’ll both get even less sleep during the day. This will result in an even higher level of crankiness, which may potentially result in heightened levels of crankiness in your spouse (the biggest no-no of them all!). If this escalates… We’ll it’s probably best not to go there.

And yet there’s something even more important. After all that crankiness and petulance you’ll take a long look at your baby, you’ll take him into your arms and he’ll reach out with his little hands and grab you by your face and your ear and smile and say “Ga!”. And you’ll forget all the bad stuff that happened during your day, all the crankiness will leave your body, nothing else will matter and everything will be just fine. And you know what that is? That’s daddy management.

Something your baby doesn’t need to be taught.

The Book

2006-01-16T10:36:00.000-08:00

There’s always a book (it’s usually quite colorful and has the following keywords in the title or the subtitle: children, happy, wonders, parenting and easy). And the book will have all the answers, and it will tell you what to do if you wish your child to become the president of your country and what to avoid if you do not wish your offspring to off a few of his schoolmates later on. It will be a firm teacher and a loving friend. And will tell you absolute crap and make your life miserable.

There’s no way to organize anything for the first few months. You’ll barely keep up with the daily tasks and activities. Just to show you an example: You’ll get up at 3:00 am (babies think of this as morning), get the baby out of the cradle, fetch some warm water, change the diaper (twice), wake-up mum to feed the baby, make the coffee, change the diaper again and put the baby back to sleep by carrying it around the apartment for a few hours. Around 9:00 am it will smile at you and fall into deep sleep. You’ll enjoy a brief moment of bliss knowing you’re a good daddy. At this moment the book will tell you that responding to your baby crying at 3:00 am was wrong, changing diapers at night will make your baby a violent sex offender, feeding a gremlin after midnight would have been a better idea, mum drinking coffee will cause the baby to stop drinking her milk and that babies must learn to comfort themselves and must not be held in arms for more the 30 minutes.

So I recommend a book that’s more like something a man can use. So pick up a copy of The Baby Owner's Manual at amazon. Your mileage may vary.

Though now I think the section on programming sleep mode needs to be expanded…

Basic design flaws

2006-01-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: Structured error (non)handling

Babies are purely designed classes. They suffer from basic design flaws which must be corrected before they are ready to be let out into the world without supervision. Case in point is the umbilical cord. You know what the umbilical cord is? It’s a classic case of broken encapsulation.

When a baby error occurs it’s caught and wrapped into the most general exception you can imagine and thrown out at you to handle. Not only do babies not even attempt to handle the problems themselves, they even hide any error information that may or may not be known to them. The only message that gets through the communication channel is a loud audio signal designed to wreak havoc on your nervous system.

The stack trace usually returns a simple: “…error at Baby.Sleep(54000);”.

So debugging babies is next to impossible. It’s more akin to voodoo science then debugging. You do A and the baby does B. Great! What you don’t realize is that you doing A has more chance of causing rain then for your baby to do B again. You see, your baby is probably not even reacting to your A. She stopped crying because there was a slight movement in her bowels she’s now investigating. You could be levitating in a lotus position and she wouldn’t flinch.

Also – babies tend to develop much quicker then you can follow. Whatever worked yesterday is old news. Sounds that stopped the crying instantly now only make it worse. How is a developer versed in structure, logic and control expected to deal with this? Well, think of it as working on a team project. Except you and your “team member” don’t communicate and he keeps changing your code without telling you about it. Now that is a familiar situation isn’t it?

Mismanaging project(s) (part II)

2006-01-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: Organization, structure and control

The first thing you must realize is this - you are not developing your baby from scratch. What you are doing is taking over a project nine months into its progress. It was a hostile takeover and mum (though sedated at this point) is not liking it. Naturally, the documentation is lacking and it is up to you to bring the project back on track.

So most of us turn to user manuals, operating instructions and best practices. As soon as you start delving into the available online resource on the subject you'll get the feeling 95% of the people in the biz range from different to nutz.

In short you have a half-baked product with heaps of undocumented features. The only thing you can do is try to figure it out yourself. This means testing. And I have some bad news on the way error handling is implemented in babies.

Mismanaging project(s)

2006-01-11T02:22:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: Planning

As previously stated, project “having a child” has no planning stage. Well there may have been some informal discussions beforehand and certainly a decision (conscious or not) has been made at some point not to use birth control. But that’s as far as it goes I mean really – have you ever met someone planning their parenthood? Anyone out there estimating costs? Setting deadlines? Estimating resources? I thought not! There are exceptions but then again – too few to mention.

Speaking of resource estimation, this is yet another overlooked planning phase of our mismanaged project. Estimating resources seems just too easy. There’s a mum, usually a dad, a couple of grandparents, an uncle somewhere out there and your next door teenaged girl. She’ll end up under expenses later on – but for now let’s count her in. Well there’s just one thing wrong with it, it has nothing to do with reality!

First of mum will be out of commission for the first week or two. She just went through a last minute solution build and deliver process, you can’t count on her. Grandparents will just make things worse. It’s been ages since they last worked at a project like this. They’re retired remember? And you can forget about the uncle or the babysitter till the project is in the later stage of development. It’s just you - dad…

Why the late start?

2006-01-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

So why the late start? David was born on 7th of November 2005 which theoretically gave me ample time to blog his development so far. That’s what I thought – well up to the second day David left the production line and became an in-house application. Since then I’ve been averaging about 5h sleep time / day (most of it in fragments of 20 mins). So much for theory…

So anyone telling you kids are easy is either lying to you or is at best someone’s uncle (or an aunt). Kids are !easy. And with good reason. Try to look at a child as a software application. Look at it from a viewpoint of a project manager. Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?

First of all there’s no project plan. Kids happen (well, you know what I mean). There’s no planning stage. No parents have sat down and sketched how the baby should turn out. It’s a classic cowboy programming approach. “Let’s have kids!” Well this is the aftermath…

I’m not saying having a child is bad. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy every microsecond of sharing this planet with my son. I’m just saying there’s more to this then you’ve heard. People with kids will rarely let you in on it. It’s preprogrammed in us by evolution. Species without this have since went extinct. See Dodo.