今日はぼくとつまがテニスをしました。上手じゃありませんが好きです。今日は DDR（ダンスダンスレボリューション）をもしました。家庭用のマットを買いました。
このブログポストは小さいですでもぼくが疲れきました。
Today was the second day at my new job. Well, it’s not completely new … I’m still at the same company, but in a different building, working for a different division, doing almost completely different things.
At first I was really worried. Am I jumping out of the frying pan, into the fire? How do I know the new place will be better than the old place?
And not that the old place was really that terrible. I had friends I liked hanging out with, and a lot of freedom to do development on whatever projects I found most interesting. But I never really hung out with any of my team members, and even the people I hung out with on the other teams weren’t really the sort of software developer types I had really enjoyed working with at my previous job. Add to this that management was technically incompetent and formed an almost impenetrable wall between our team and the outside world that made real progress towards solving users’ problems difficult at best—yes, it was definitely time for a change.
But still I wondered—would the new place be any better? When I had nervous thoughts like this, I comforted myself with thoughts of the sacks of money they were paying me to move. It wasn’t likely to be worse, I thought, so even if it wasn’t much better I’d still come out ahead.
But so far it has been better. The people on my team and the neighboring teams are talented, opinionated, and vocal. One of the things I really missed was having people who vehemently disagreed about stupid things like choice of operating system, development environment, or where to put the curly braces. It just seemed odd to be around a bunch of people who would happily use whatever was placed in front of them, even if it changed from project to project or from day to day.
It feels warm and familiar to have people who really care about the technology they’re using. (Even if, or perhaps especially if, they don’t agree with my own very strong opinions on the subject.) Random design discussions throughout the day, lunch conversations about what development methodologies are better, questions about roundabout ways of doing things just to stay in one’s preferred environment—these are the sorts of things that make me feel at home here.
I also feel like the problems scheduled to be tackled this year are very exciting ones—they match my strong points as well as areas in which I’d like to grow, and they match my interests too. I’m not sure how much time I’ll actually be able to work on these sorts of things (as opposed to the daily grind of less-enjoyable tasks), but at least the overall picture seems to line up well with my own visions.
I’ll keep updates coming as time goes on. After all, today is only the second day! (Not to mention that my new manager is out of town, so I’ve been enjoying a little more freedom than I perhaps otherwise would be having…)
February has not been a very good month for blogging.
Lately I’ve had other distractions on my mind. Probably the most significant is the fact that I’m changing jobs on Monday—I’m staying at the same company, just moving divisions (and buildings). It’s a big change, and I’m nervous about how different it will be from where I am now. But I won’t be able to find out until Monday!
Last month I blogged in Japanese. That was primarily for the benefit of N-san, my Japanese conversation exchange partner. (I’m not sure anyone else who reads this site can understand Japanese, much less my broken beginner’s Japanese.) But it was really fun to write! And really fun to see the results, too. And, a good learning experience since N-san kindly corrected my mistakes. I feel like I’m really learning a lot by working with him. I hope he’s learning a lot from me, too.
In any case, expect more Japanese blogging behavior!
I, like approximately a quarter of the population, am a multiple sneezer. The above link defines this type as “the sneezer that keeps sneezing one right after the other until he begins to look like Count von Count from Sesame Street.” My average is probably around five, with a range from two or three (rather rare) to six or seven or more.
This occasionally disturbs people who have not heard me sneeze before. They often ask if I have allergies, or if I’m all right, as if some terrible thing has happened. After moving desks recently, my new cubemate handed me a box of tissues after the first multiple-sneeze incident. I proffered my thanks, but noted that I already had several boxes sitting on my desk and that this was a normal, expected occurrence.
At a previous job, I had a coworker who followed the Latin American tradition of wishing the sneezer “Health” for the first sneeze, “Money” for the second sneeze, and “Love” for the third sneeze. (Wikipedia has a list of responses in various languages.) Apparently if you sneeze more than three times in a row, it throws them off. (This particular coworker insisted that the correct response was to hit the sneezer for each sneeze past three, a cultural peculiarity I have been unable to confirm via Google, but thankfully he never actually followed through.)
I’ve had friends who delight in counting, with much gusto, each individual sneeze, as if encouraging me to go higher and higher. Another individual wanted to statistically analyze my sneezes to determine whether they were predictable, and write a computer program that used past behavior to forecast when future sneezing fits would occur, as well as the estimated number of sneezes that the next batch would consist of.
Recently, during my usual spates of sneezes, I’ll get to around four or five sneezes and then suddenly think to myself, “Hey, I wonder how many I’ll get to! Wait, how many have I already sneezed?” which distracts me, and I stop sneezing. Oops.
今月歯の矯正に行きました。８週間毎に矯正歯科に行かないといけませんけど仕事場の近くにありましていいです。最初に軟らかい食物だったら食べられます、じゃがいもやスープやパスタや大丈夫です。今は百味を食べられますでも軟らかい物の方がいいです。最初に歯痛ありませんでしたでも第２、３日歯痛ありました。今は大丈夫です。歯軋りから歯の矯正行って今はまた少し歯軋りで方がいいなります。
In computer networking, there are a variety of different terms used to describe the process of moving bits of data from one place to another. Today I’m going to compare three oft-used terms—throughput, latency, and jitter—through the antics of our usual friends, Bob and Alice.
Alice and Bob like to send each messages, but they live across town from each other, making communication a bit difficult. So, they hire various courier services to deliver their messages as fast as possible.
Throughput (often imprecisely called bandwidth) is a measure of how many messages can be sent in a particular time frame—for example, a hundred pages of messages per day. Unfortunately, this measure reveals much less information than you’d initially think. For example, two different courier services could both send one hundred pages of messages per day, but have vastly different models. The first might pick up a single package of a hundred pages in the morning, and deliver it in the evening. The second might only be able to carry a single page at a time, but can deliver each page in only five minutes. Nevertheless, if the second has exactly one hundred pick-up times per day, it has exactly the same throughput as the first—one hundred pages per day.
Latency is one key measure for distinguishing different services that have identical throughput. Also called “lag”, this measures how long it takes a courier to get from Alice to Bob. The latency of the first courier from above is one day; the second courier’s latency is only five minutes. Since they both have identical throughput, the second courier is definitely preferable to the first.
However, connections often differ in both latency and throughput. For example, imagine a courier that takes a day to deliver a single package of a thousand pages, compared to a courier who delivers only a hundred pages a day, but each page can be delivered in only a few minutes. Alice might prefer the first if she’s trying to send a library of books to Bob, but might prefer the second if she’s trying to carry on a conversation. Even though the throughput of the first is better, a conversation isn’t so much concerned about how many pages can be sent in a day—it’s more interested in how fast the responses can be sent back and forth.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that the throughput is completely unimportant. A courier that could send a message every thirty seconds but could only send one word at a time would probably not be preferable to one that sent a whole page every two minutes, unless only two or three words needed to be sent before requiring a response. The best connection is the lowest-latency one that can accommodate messages of approximately the same size that need to be sent without a response. But what if the time it takes the courier to deliver messages varies?
Jitter is a measure of the variation in latency. For example, one courier might be able to send one page every minute, and each page takes exactly one hour to reach its destination. Meanwhile, another courier can also send a page every minute, but each page can take anywhere from five minutes to several hours to be delivered. But if the average delivery time is also one hour, then both couriers have identical latency. But the second courier has much higher jitter than the first. When does this matter?
Let’s say that Alice is sending a novel to Bob. As soon as Bob gets a page, he starts reading—but, being a slow reader, it takes him an hour to finish a single page. If Alice uses the first courier, then Bob will be able to start reading the novel when the very first page arrives, and continue uninterrupted until he finishes the last page. As soon as he finishes one page, the courier arrives with the next one. If Alice uses the second courier, however, then sometimes the courier will arrive before he finishes a page (not a problem), and sometimes the courier will arrive quite a while after he finishes a page, forcing Bob to have to wait, annoyed, wondering how the story will continue.
Bob can still have an uninterrupted reading experience with the second courier; he just needs to exercise some patience before picking up that first page. If he waits a few hours before he starts reading, then future jitter doesn’t matter as much. After he finishes the first page, even if the next courier is a bit late, he still has the previously-delivered second page. As long as the courier averages at an hour page (Bob’s reading rate), he’ll be able to read cover to cover without any maddening gaps in the middle of the story.
But what if Bob reads faster than a page an hour? What if he reads a page every half an hour? Well, using either of the two couriers, he can simply wait for half the time required to deliver the entire novel before he starts reading. That way, when he finishes the first half of the book (that was delivered before he started), half of the second half will be delivered. Once he finishes that half, half of what’s remaining will have been delivered. He can continue in this same way until he finishes the penultimate leaf, just as the final page is being delivered, once again enjoying an uninterrupted reading experience.
Since getting braces, I’ve been dreaming nearly every night. As you know, this is somewhat unusual for me. Does this mean I’m getting better sleep, entering the deep, restful REM sleep more often? Or does this mean I’m getting worse sleep, waking up more often during the night and therefore simply remembering my dreams more often? I’m not sure.
I do know the first two nights after I got braces, I woke up two hours earlier than normal, completely refreshed as if I’d had the best night of sleep ever, and I don’t think I ground my teeth. But the third night was the beginning of the roscivs household stomach flu, so I didn’t get an uninterrupted night of sleep for nearly a week. I’m almost completely recovered now, but I’m back to waking up the normal time with the normal rested, but tired feeling.
I think I’m back to grinding (or really, clenching) my teeth again at night, too. Maybe just because my body is more accustomed to braces now? Several nights ago I even had a dream where my teeth fell out. It wasn’t quite the same as my usual old dreams—normally they fall out one-by-one, and from the roots, i.e. the entire tooth comes out whole.
In this dream, however, the first tooth fell out by itself as normal, but it was only the top part of the tooth. In fact, in the dream, it was as if the tooth was made in two parts: an empty root, and a crown of the tooth like a peg, fitting into the square hole of the root. After the first tooth, the entire bottom-right set fell out together, all attached, like they weren’t individual teeth at all, but rather a string of teeth, again all crowns, pushed tight-fitting into the holes below.
Maybe Deck was right—maybe these dreams are connected to my temporal mandibular difficulties.
Recently featured on Concocted Glimpse was the book, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” which was a book about autism. Or at least a book written from the perspective an autistic child. Or was it?
In 2003, a lady who works at a special needs school in Singapore showed [the book] to me and asked for my comment. I read two pages. The protagonist (Christopher Boone) was describing his stream of consciousness. As I read, I felt my mind spinning. I gave up trying to untangle my confusion, returned the book and thanked the lady. When she asked for my comments again, I mentioned politely that the book was not really about autism.
Years later, I figured out why. The book was written by someone pretending to be autistic. No wonder I was puzzled! It was usually autistics pretending to be “normal”, not the other way around!
The above quote is from Eric Chen, a high-functioning autist from Singapore. He writes a fascinating critique of the book on his website, iautistic.com. Of course, he is careful to point out that “Mark Haddon did not use the word autism in his book, let alone claim to portray autism accurately. Certainly, he was not at fault. I have nothing against Mark Haddon or his work. … However, … I feel that I must explain why it should not to be taken seriously when many people (including teachers and autism professionals) recommend it as reading material on autism.”
I think the book is fascinating, entertaining, and definitely worth reading—and even helps people understand a little bit better about what autism is and what it’s like. But at the same time, as Eric points out, the book is written by a person pretending to be autistic, and therefore reveals more about the non-autistic mind than the autistic mind. Eric takes the liberty of re-writing a few sections of the book; I’ll quote here one of my favorite bits. This comes from part of the book that even I, with my limited understanding of autism, noticed as being an inaccurate portrayal.
On page 84 of the book, there is a passage that goes like this:
And he said, “What’s 251 times 864?”
And I thought about this and I said: “216,864″. Because it was a really easy sum because you just multiply 864 X 1000 which is 864,000. Then you divide it by 4 which is 216,000 and that’s 250 x 864. Then you add another 864 on to it and get 251 x 864. And that’s 216,864.
The paragraph shows Christopher working logically through the sums. Although autistics often reason with logic, their logic is often of a different quality. There are many autistics who accept queer ideas and persist with them despite convincing argument. Yes, they are logical, but their logic is not necessarily of high quality. I concede that it is possible an autistic would reason as above with sufficient training, but I consider this an exception, not the rule.
Autistic savants do not use logic, because it is too slow. They tap into the parallel processing power of the brain, often using the kinesthetic and visual processors of their brain. If I could rewrite this paragraph, perhaps it might read like this:
And he said, “What’s 251 times 864?”
As Christopher heard this, in his mind appeared two green shapes that looked a lot like uneven cubes. The shapes clashed into each other and rippled with lots of tiny cubes, squares and triangles. Eventually a new shape was formed. Christopher replied: “216,864″.
He was shocked. “Wow, that’s even faster than a calculator. How did you do it?”
Christopher was puzzled and thought carefully about what he meant. Perhaps he was asking who solved the sum. “I did.”
“I mean, what trick did you use?”
It took me a while for Christopher to understand what he said. Maybe he means, tricks as in cheating. So he means if Christopher had cheated. “No.”
“I don’t get it,” he declared. And to this very day, he still could not figure out Christopher’s secrets.
As a side-note, autistic youths usually have to struggle to understand human speech, especially the context behind every word. The smooth flow of thoughts and the apparent ease of understanding human speech in the novel are highly unrealistic experiences.
I recommend reading the rest of Eric’s critique. It is even more valuable than the book itself at peering into the world of autism.
Copyright violation is not “theft”, it is breaching a government mandated monopoly. It is morally equivalent to using Skype in a country where the government has granted one operator a monopoly on telecommunications.
Discuss.
I know, I know … all I ever write about these days are me and my braces. “What a boring blog, roscivs,” I can hear you all say. “Where are the endless discussions of the nuances of copyright? Where are the random riffs on economics? Where are the random yet interesting youtube videos?”
Well, those things have taken a back seat in my life to braces. (But fear not, interesting linguistical tidbits will be found in this braces-related post nonetheless.) Fortunately, not everything in my life has been replaced by a fixation on braces. In fact, my eating habits have nearly returned to normal. This last week I started eating english muffins again, and yesterday I even ate a hamburger! Carefully, I admit, and with no bacon or pickles, but I successfully chewed through a hamburger and fries with no pain or discomfort whatsoever. Normality ensues!
In my Japanese conversation exchange last week, I learned all sorts of braces-related words, like “teeth”, “braces”, “dentist”, “orthodontist”—and a very interesting Japanese word, “歯軋り”, or ha-gi-shi-ri. It means, according to my dictionary, “involuntary nocturnal tooth grinding”.
My conversation partner asked me to explain why I got braces. In English, the explanation is a little lengthy. “Well, my teeth interfere with each other, and so I grind my teeth at night, which causes problems, so I figured if I got my teeth straightened out it would help with that.”
In Japanese, the sentence is basically, “ha-gi-shi-ri-de-su”. Because of involuntary nocturnal tooth grinding. How convenient! The Japanese have a word for it indeed!
Shades of Sapir-Whorf, eh? Does language alter the way we think? Are Japanese people more easily able to express these sorts of concepts because of the way their language is shaped?
As I’ve discussed many times, I think the causal chain is reversed—it is because the Japanese more often discuss these sorts of concepts that they’ve shaped their language in such a way that makes it easy. (My conversation partner hypothesized that this is because Americans are able to release their stress in ways other than gnashing of the teeth, whereas the Japanese tend to keep their stress bottled up inside. I can’t speak to the accuracy of this theory, but it seems interesting.)
In support of the “culture-shapes-language, not vice-versa” argument, I present to you the word bruxism. If I’m not mistaken, it is a word nearly identical in meaning to 歯軋り. So, in theory, my English explanation could be just as succint as my Japanese explanation. Why did you get braces? “Oh, because of bruxism.”
But most people wouldn’t understand what I was saying. They either wouldn’t recognize the word, or wouldn’t recognize the further context that such a statement implied (e.g. the other medical problems that such a condition causes). Why is that? Why would a Japanese person understand a wealth of information behind the word 歯軋り, but not an American with bruxism? It’s not because there’s something lacking in the language. The word is there, ready to be used. The difference is in the culture, in how often the word is used, and in what contexts the word is used. If suddenly it became an important concept culturally, the English language would be fully “prepared to do its work” in conveying those ideas clearly and succinctly.
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