unthinkable revolutions

2011

Jarek Piórkowski — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:45:39 +0000

A calm, unremarkable year with some ups and some downs, slowly growing restless.
I got fibre-to-the-node DSL installed in early January, bringing an end to half a year of EDGE-only internet access at home. When the promotional price was about to run out in May, I instead got tetherable 3G, which got me through the rest of year. It’s workable, except I haven’t put in the effort to bridge my house router to this connection, and so I have two networks at home, one with my file server, one with the internet. Not a good setup.
Speaking of tetherable 3G, that’s Android, and I got reasonably-recent cellular technology in a 7″ Galaxy Tab to start off and then a Nexus One. I’m still not sure how I feel about the form-factor of the wide touchscreen candybar Nexus One, but the software is by most standards a huge upgrade over my BBOS 4.5 Pearl.
Music heavy year kicked off by bingeing on The Naked And Famous after discovering them in late April and seeing them three times within six months. Continued the Toronto music tradition by bingeing on The Rural Alberta Advantage and ohbijou starting in October, seeing each twice, and to a lesser degree Do Make Say Think, Owen Pallett, and Torq Campbell’s side projects. Paper Bag Records’ summer sampler brought me the single most-listened and probably catchiest song of the year, Johan Agebjörn’s Watch The World Go By. Further shows by Stars twice on back-to-back days, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Junior Boys, and M83, among others.
Not a photography-heavy year, as I continue to fail at timely Flickr; not a travel-heavy year, although I did visit Montreal in February (cold), Ottawa during Canada Day (busy), and Manhattan in August (warm).
What if I’m only satisfied when I’m at home, sitting in a city that’ll never let me go?

Ten

Jarek Piórkowski — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:33:42 +0000

Happy ten years to us.

How to clone Jobmine in a year

Jarek Piórkowski — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:49:20 +0000

So the replacement of Jobmine, known under a number of names, all of them too horrible to reproduce on an esteemed blog like this one, has been scrapped. Students disapproved and several resolved to write their own, one uttering the words “startup idea.”

Of ways to annoy me, proposing a startup as a part of solution for a problem you don’t understand well is near the top of the list.

Similar sentiments have been expressed previously during the project’s lifecycle; when first announced, several declared they could get it done within a four-month co-op term. This week, I was asked to explain why a Jobmine replacement is unrealistic for a year’s work. I had some procrastinating to do, so I jumped on the opportunity. (The title of this post is inspired by How to clone Delicious in 48 hours, which was written in response to similar reactions in December 2010.)

For those not in the loop, Jobmine is the online system supporting the co-operative education program at the University of Waterloo (UW hereafter). UW claims, with some justification, to operate the largest post-secondary co-op program in the world.

Jobmine was first introduced in 2004 and although an improvement over the previous incarnations, is generally agreed to be a horrible, horrible web application. Much of the blame lies with the horrible PeopleSoft software on which Jobmine was ~~based~~ hacked together. PeopleSoft promptly got itself acquired by Oracle next year. The horribleness was too much even for UW to handle and soon there were plans to do it all over again, but ourselves and better.

Disclosure: I was part of the project in the heady days of 2007 and early 2008. In 2007 I was prototyping and exploring and in 2008 I worked on a part deep inside the designed system. I haven’t been in close contact with the team since, and I have no insider information on the cancellation. I’m almost certain none of the prototype code is still active and although I’m not sure it wouldn’t surprise me if the latter code got axed or at least heavily reorganized since. That being said, I’d like to think that with the experience I understand what Jobmine actually is a bit better than the average student.

Here’s a brief guide to what a Jobmine replacement actually needs to do. Unless otherwise noted, this is the bare minimum to merely replace Jobmine, not improving on it much, presumably excluding the UI.

Student-facing components

You’ve probably seen this. Basic requirements are searching for, filtering, and applying to jobs. There are some caveats.

Specific students are allowed to see specific types of jobs. Co-op jobs are different from summer jobs are different from graduating jobs are different from alumni jobs. Some programs have their own separate postings: co-op pharmacy students can see jobs other co-ops can’t see, and then graduating pharmacy students can see jobs co-op pharmacy students can’t. You’ll want both positive and negative individual job filtering, the equivalents of today’s shortlist and a “I’ve seen this job and it doesn’t interest me, please don’t show it to me in any searches again” filter.

When can you search for jobs? When can you apply to these jobs? Is this calendar hand-entered by CECS every term?

You’ll want to devise a method of storing resumes agreeable to both CECS (representing employer interests) and students. Jobmine’s HTML solution has been much maligned, and not entirely without reason, as most students will find authoring HTML somewhat challenging and the Jobmine HTML processor was not written very well. PDF is a popular option in discussions, but it complicates things for those who don’t know how to print to PDF. PDF will also complicate the creation of ‘application packages,’ the combinations of your resume with co-op history and the academic transcript, which CECS and the employers like. You will probably want to at least accept a number of word processing software formats (.doc, .docx, .odf, .pages if you’re feeling generous) and convert them to the format you’ll end up using.

In the early plans of the project there was an initiative to do away with student formatted resumes and have students provide specific information on a section-by-predefined-section basis; this has advantages for employers (consistency of formatting, reordering sections to put the ones the employer feels most relevant to them near the top) and is more of a mixed bag for students (your resume won’t look terrible but it won’t stand out just based on formatting either). If this is still on the table, you’ll either have to implement this (likely along with a complimentary import from a number of file formats of your choosing) or convince CECS not to do this.

Have fun convincing CECS of anything.

You’ll want to devise a method for storing a number of resumes per student – more than Jobmine’s three would probably be a good idea – managing them, and linking resumes with applications. (What happens when a student deletes a resume they used to apply to a job?)

You need to handle interviews. You will want to notify students when they have been listed for an interview. Email is a good start but you will want to make this modular and expandable and seriously consider making SMS notifications part of 1.0. Selecting interview slots is the baseline, as is deselecting; because this is 2011, you might want to have a method of requesting and arranging slot swaps between students for better scheduling.

You need to handle rankings; nothing new here, you’ve probably seen this in action. This part is very heavily driven by CECS mandated functionality, so chances are you won’t have to change much from Jobmine.

Jobmine has functionality to submit comments about a work term evaluation; I don’t think this is heavily used and you could probably not implement this.

What happens after a work term? In some cases, you will be able to search for and apply to jobs while on a work term. In others, you will be on a school term but not able to apply. There is several dozen different possible streams of study-work sequences at Waterloo, and people fail or switch streams for other reasons. Do you have CECS employees do busywork keeping track of this, or do you decide to implement a complex mechanism to keep track of everything while still allowing for overrides and customizations?

Employer-facing components

The basics. Submitting a job posting for approval. When can you post jobs? Reviewing candidates once applications close, potentially with several passes – one to screen out the obviously unqualified, another to further cut down to candidates to interview. Come up with a snazzy but configurable way of displaying resume packages from applicants. Support both online reviewing and generation of some sort of printed packages – not all employers live in 2010s.

Submitting interview date and time preferences (day of week? AM/PM?). If you want to be good, submitting location preferences (interviewing in TC basement, I mean lower level, anyone?). Piggyback on previously created print functionality to allow for printing resume packages of the interviewed. Submit rankings.

After the work term, submit evaluations. Store and display evaluations on both student and employer-facing sites.

Oh yeah, somewhere between the student and employer sections, implement a method for returning to a previous job without it being posted and reapplying.

CECS-facing components

Approve job postings. Disapprove job postings. Will you ever have a situation in which a job posting has to be disapproved after it’s been approved? Cancel job postings. Repost job postings. For all of these cases, create appropriate views and displays in student and employer views. When can employers view applications their jobs might have? What is the defined behaviour of the students’ application limit, source of a Frankenbug/Frankenfeature in Jobmine?

CECS has to be able to enter text comments on essentially everything, starting from job postings, through interviews, to student and employer accounts in general. Students will communicate with CECS and CECS needs a ‘paper’ trail of these communications. Employers will definitely communicate with CECS and CECS definitely needs a paper trail of these communications. Do you want to be fancy and integrate or half-integrate the system with on-campus email servers so that, for example, CECS staff can send email to students or employers from within the system and have it show up in the paper trail? What about potential email replies from the students?

CECS field co-ordinators currently use a hodge-podge of systems to do their jobs, many of them home-grown by individual co-ordinators and nearly all of them duplicating data. They need to be able to keep track of students and employers, both existing and potential, in their coverage area; enter student evaluations, which will be visible to the students; enter their own comments on these evaluations, which will not be visible to students but may be visible to some other CECS staff; enter notes on general interactions with employers (expressed interest in hiring more next year, would like help attracting a different profile of students, etc). This role is actually being split into separate parts by a CECS reorganization, but your system will still have to do be able to do most of this, regardless of who’s going to be using it. Still, better have access control done up really nicely.

If you’re feeling fancy, design in methods for co-ordinators to access the data other than online via a website. Keep in mind the sensitive and private nature of the data in question. Can it be cached? Should it be encrypted?

How do students sign off jobs after their interview, how is this represented within the system, where are the notes about the reason stored and who can see them? If you’re feeling fancy, provide a way for students to sign off jobs before the interview as long as the employer hasn’t screened. Should CECS have to approve the latter? How is the necessary paper trail represented within the system?

How are interviews scheduled? How much assistance should a system built in 2011 give the CECS staff creating the schedules? What are the algorithms? What are the variables (again, TC basement)? How exactly do you handle the students that haven’t selected an interview time? How are you supporting multiple interviews per job (group interviews, flip/slide schedules), probably in different rooms and possibly on different days?

What happens when a student misses an interview? What happens when an employer misses an interview? Can interviews be rescheduled, what are the conditions in which they can?

Can CECS support staff assume the role of a student when accessing the system? How is this implemented?

Some students will need a certain amount of successful work terms before they can graduate. How will you keep track of the requirement? What happens when students switch? What is the format to provide this information to other on-campus systems?

Internal and systems driven components

How do you keep track of time? What defines when students can apply to jobs, when employers can screen applications and schedule interviews, and when employers and students can rank? Will each date be have to be entered manually or will you allow for rules to allow event X happen three business days after event Y?

You will have to get data from other on-campus systems. Student name and academic information from Quest is the obvious example. What’s the format of that data? Are there specifications? Is there sample fake data you can use while developing and testing, or will you have to create that? How often will the data change, are there modified flags or will you have to compare everything each time there is an import? Bonus: how do you handle name changes, including possibly username changes?

You will have to feed some data back to the network. At the very least, Quest needs to know students’ credit status for co-op terms. How is this data passed in? Does Quest have a testing area you can use to develop and test?

How is the student being “employed” defined? When is a student defined to have satisfied the co-op requirements of their degree, and who keeps track of this?

The matching algorithm will also have to be implemented, but luckily for you it’s very likely to be dictated by CECS so all you’ll have to do is implement it. Still, you’d better hope CECS has thought of absolutely every corner case.

Technology questions

How do users log into the system? It’s 2011, so you’ll probably want to use a centralized login for UW users. It’s UW, so you’ll probably want to make this modular to be able to swap login methods when the centralized login du jour changes (last I heard it was Kiwi, this has apparently changed since). How are employers handled? Can each supervisor at each employer have their own account so they can input the evaluation online? Is there a central manager at an employer who can add and delete these accounts? What happens when that supervisor account is deleted? What happens when the contact person for that account changes? For non-UW users, do you enforce password standards, which ones, and how?

In your web interfaces, do you handle multiple browser tabs/windows, and how? Do you handle the back button, what is the defined behaviour for precisely each possible case in which the user might use the back button, and how do you implement this?

Do you allow access via any non-web interfaces? What is the defined API for these? How is it secured? Will you allow only applications created by you, or third-party access as well – and if the latter, should you enforce data security, and how?

How does information flow out of the system other than the web interface? Automated email notifications? SMS/IM notifications? How does information flow back into the system?

What is your system design? Does everything run on one virtual server, one physical server, one HTTP server, or is there more? How is system communication handled? Is the system redundant? Does it hot swap? Can it handle a hardware failure? Can it handle 10,000 students applying en masse hours before the applications deadline?

What data storage method are you using? I’m not even interested if you ORM, that’s low level. How is the data backed up? Is it redundant? Does it hot swap? Can it handle 10,000 students applying en masse hours before the applications deadline?

You will be dealing with IST a lot. Who decides how the infrastructure for this project is connected to the rest of UW and the world? Who decides how it’s secured? Who is responsible for audits?

So yeah. Are you using Rails or Django for this?

Fine print

The above describes the co-op information system as it is imagined now. The majority of the functionality is probably necessary one way or another, but you might be able to convince CECS that some parts don’t have to included. If you decide to go that way, prepare to spend a lot of time in meetings. It’s not a very agile way, but it is what any project replacing Jobmine will have to deal with. (Jesse Rodgers reckons it might have been in part what killed the replacement.)

It might be nice if you’re able to just put a new interface on the student and employer-facing parts of the system. I have little idea how feasible this might be, but if thinking about this, remember that you are dealing with PeopleSoft software. Think what you have to go through to get your marks or your transcript out of Quest, another fine PeopleSoft product. Then consider taking the easy way out and riding the social bubble hoping to cash out on your .ly startup before the burst.

Because software engineering takes time.

2010

admin — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 04:45:39 +0000

I went to school for last four months, and then I graduated, and then I had a failing nightmare.
I bought a DSLR, and then I took some pictures.
I went to Iceland for two weeks, and then I got a lifetime of memories and a need to come back.
I moved to Toronto full-time, and then I lived half a year without wired internet at home.
I meant to write about all of this, and then I didn’t.
A new Hot Chip album came out. Then a new Muchy album came out. Then a new Crystal Castles album came out. Then a new Broken Social Scene album came out. Then a new Underworld album came out. It’s been a good year.
I saw the xx and Hot Chip live. I saw Stars live again. And I saw Broken Social Scene live again.
To był dobry rok, bez rocznic i postanowień, bez wspomnień i rozczarowań.

The Complete and Unabridged Blackberry Custom Dictionary

Jarek Piórkowski — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:07:55 +0000

I have had my Blackberry Pearl since September 2008. A Pearl user lives and dies by their dictionary; the half-QWERTY keyboard makes typing words not present in either the built-in dictionary or the learned custom dictionary a significant pain.

The earliest entries in this dictionary date from the device’s last software reflash, which was no earlier than January 2009. Since then, I have gone through the list and trimmed it occasionally. Most of the words removed were misspellings. As the Blackberry OS 4.5 does not have a Polish dictionary, I don’t normally use it for communicating in Polish, and I remove Polish words I feel I will never use again. This is my complete and unabridged* custom dictionary as of September 19, 2010.

#firstworldproblems
1a
52′s
accidental’s
adbusters
africa
ageist
ago’s
aha
ahoy
aint
Aint
Alcatraz
alright
alvie
americano
Americano
amirite
amoled
amorkans
amputee
android
angoss
ap
apple’s
apps
april
arcestra
arduino
Armini
armoured
artsies
artsy
ascii
asobi
Asobi
aspie
ass
aurora
autocompletes
autolux
avant
avp
aww
azerbaijan
azn
bah
barby
barclays
barista
basc
basia
bathurst
bbq
bbs
bbva
bbw
bering
beverley
bex’s
bff
bhm
birrer
bitching
bittorrent
biutiful
bixi
biznazz
blarg
blase
blogto
bloor
bluur
bmh
bobbie’s
bombardier
bono
bosko
boyz
branson
brb
bronfman
brunswick
bs
bsa
btw
bulat
Bulat
bullshit
bumfuck
bunching
burrito
buskerfest
busywork
bux
buy
byob
ca
Calgary
california
caltrain
canadian
cantonese
Cantonese
Caribana
carleton
carpooling
catharines
cc
ccs
cecca
cecs
CECS
centric
cera
Cera
cfa
CFA
charset
chcesz
cheques
cheung
chillax
chinese
clamshells
clive
cm
cnd
cne
coat’s
cobol
coed
colour
comfy
commenters
commie
congrats
contraire
corktown
couture
Couture
croquet
cs
CS
ctv
cyprus
czechs
czesc
dagenham
danforth
Danforth
darwinian
db
DB
dd
declasse
deedy
deemphasized
delicje
Deutsche
dev
dia
distillery
distracting
dnd
doable
dobry
doherty
dolce
dossier
dov
Dov
dt
dufferin
duh
dun
dundas
dunno
dzien
eatons
eduroam
eeeemo
eg
Eglinton
emailed
embraer
emiliana
encoding
engsoc
eom
er
estonian
etobicoke
euclid
Euclid
eurocent
european
expresspost
eyjafjallajokull
fab
fab’s
facebook
fanboy
fancyish
fanfic
faved
favourites
fb
fedbus
ferdydurke
Ferdydurke
fests
fff
fffuuu
fg
FG
fhl
fido
fiera
fifo
filenames
fillmore
finnance
firstworldproblems
fixie
flimsiest
fml
fob
foodie
forrealz
francisco
frapp
freaking
free
friday
fridge
friggin
frigging
ft
fuck
fucked
fucking
fucks
fwiw
fydp
fyl
gamers
Gamers
gelato
genitive
gentrifying
gentsia
germaphobe
germaphobes
gerrard
gg
gifs
gilead
gj
gladstone
Gladstone
gladwell
gmail
gn
goertz
goliath
Gombrowicz
goth
gotta
govt
gowalla
grainge
grillo
grimsby
gs
gsm
GSM
gsmarena
gtfo’d
guelph
gulag
guu
Guu
GUU
haha
halfie
hangings
harbord
hashtags
hazelnuty
headached
headdesky
heartthrob
heh
hella
hellenic
hf
hibernia
hipper
hipster
Hipster
hipsters
hitman
hk
HK
hn
hoodie
hookahs
hoorj
hr
hrish
hsbc
hspa
HSPA
Hummer
hura
huron
Huron
i’ll
i’m
ibook
iceland
icelanders
idiocies
idk
iglesias
iirc
IIRC
imo
indie
instituting
internets
iowa
ipa
IPA
ipad
iphone
ips
irl
ish
italy
itunes
Ixpress
jarek
jarekp
jaymis
jenny
jesusprof
jez
jk
jnessap
jobmine
joke’s
jomsie’s
jose
juno
jw
kanata
kanetix
katz
kay
kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
kbaied
kenny
kitchener
kk
klassy
knaan~
koenigsegg
krugman
kto
kurma
kwan
Kwan
lacoste
laurier
Laurier
lawls
layter
lcbo
lekarz
lenos
lenz
Lenz
lexus
lib
libs
licensing
liek
lightbox
linda
lindt
linkedin
linux
linuxcaffe
liveblog
lolol
Lolol
lololololol
lolterview
lolz
longish
lookalike
looong
lunix
luv
lx-5
macchiato
mah
makeout
markup
masa
maserati
matlab
maui
mayjames
mb
MB
mccaul
mcnuggets
me
meh
mels
menaji
merly
metre
mhm
mia
micalief
microswitch
midterm
misformatted
misplacing
mississauga
mkay
mlia
mobiroo
mochas
moldava
monetize
moneyz
morag
motherfucker
mpass
mr
mre
msn
mulan
munro
myspace
nabokov
nah
najs
natch
neighbours
nemo
nerdy
netwren
newsfeed
nfc
nie
nigiri
nki
nm
nn
nokia
nomming
noob
Noob
noobly
noobs
noonish
notl
np
ntfs
nubly
nuff
nuit
nutella
nvm
nyc
nyt
NYT
obnoxiousness
och
OCH
ofe
offline
ofina
oic
oicky
omg
OMG
onoz
ontario
ontario’s
oooh
ooooh
openbeak
orangatame
OS
ottawa
Ottawa
owen
panini
paperz
parkdale
passat
pasteur
Pasteur
paul
pay
paycheque
pd
pda
pdf
pebkac
pedophile
perl
Perl
phd
phds
php
Php
pics
pilsner
pincus
piorkowski
pirating
pismo
pix
plx
plz
pmall
polski
Polski
poserdom
postings
poutine
poutini’s
profs
pronouncable
psci
pupusas
qa
quebecois
qviri
RA
rajesh
ratatat
RBC
rbccm
rch
RCH
rcmp
realz
reboot
reflash
repartee
repaste
resetting
rfd
ricoh
riesling
rihanna
riiiight
ripoff
rl
rly
rn
roffles
rofl
rom
ROM
roncey
rong
roomba
rss
rumours
ryerson
samba
sasha
Sasha
sauga’s
sbucks
sbux
sbuxing
schadenfreude
schnapps
scifi
scotia
scott
secondcup
sedaris
Sedaris
segue
seksu
Seksu
sez
sherbourne
shhhh
shilling
shit
shitall
shits
shitty
showbiz
shteyngart
siebel
sketchier
skype’s
slc
slr
SLR
snd
snippy
sociale
soho
Solzhenitsyn
soonish
sorite
soundsystem
soviet
spadina
spcom
sql
srs
srsly
sry
starbucks
starcraft
stata
staten
stats
steeles
stinky
stoners
strachan
sublets
suburbanites
suicide
sukho
sunburnt
sup
superhero
sustainability
sux
suzie
sysadmin
tacs
takethegrt
takk
taleo
tao
tbbt
tbh
tbilisi
tegan
tempura
tenses
tesh
tetley’s
that’d
thinkpad
thnx
thomson
ths
tia
ticketmaster
tiff
timeframes
tinyurl
tipsy
tix
tldr
tmr
tofu
tomatoey
toronto
torontonian
torrenting
torrini
torx
tp
tpl
transliteration
trendier
tshirt
tshirts
tsk
tt
ttc
TTC
ttcu
ttd
tufd
tuts
tweet
twinnings
tyvm
ubuntu
uhhhhh
unawesome
unhipster
unmotivated
unscaredness
uploadings
url
usf
uw’s
uwaterloo
uWaterloo
van
vancouver
vespa
vi
voip
von
voteto
vta
warszawa
watcard
waterloo
wats
wb
weatherlolz
webpage
wednesdays
weeabooing
weeaboos
welland
whatsherface
whoa
why’s
wifi
wikipedia
wiktionary
workopolics
wsj
wtf
wunderkind
wut
xenophobes
xing
yall
yao
yay
yessss
yeye
ymmv
yonge
Yonge
yoo
york
yorkdale
youtube
yvr
zakrecona
zzz
ZZZ

* Except unintentional misspellings where correct form is obvious. One entry — the username part of an email address, not otherwise a word — was removed to protect the innocent. Not all words typed are added to the custom dictionary by the Blackberry OS.

Apple iPad

Jarek Piórkowski — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:10:55 +0000

The Apple iPad is out today. (In the United States.)

The device has generated many, many words even before being properly leaked, let alone announced, and more still after the January 27, 2010 announcement.

I’m not here to tell you the iPad is missing features, or underpowered, or overpriced. Features are relative to requirements, power is relative to needs, and price is relative to everything. It might be underpowered and overpriced for some, but others it will be just right. Poking fun at lack of USB ports or multitasking or Flash is cheap, easy, and popular, but it’s totally been done a thousand times over. Personally, I am intrigued by the slate form factor — just not the Apple implementation.

I’m here to tell you the Apple iPad makes me uneasy. Very uneasy.

Much of the more insightful commentary following the iPad announcement focused on the philosophy underlying the device, and not without reason.

I don’t have that much of a problem with iPad the movie watching slate or iPad the game console or iPad the ebook reader: iPad, the appliance.

I do have a large problem with iPad, the future of computing.

Apple seems very intent on expanding the deployment of iPhone OS. It’s spread from a smartphone, to a handheld device to a media slate. This from a company now calling itself a mobile device company. Of course, they should have an interest in expanding iPhone OS’s popularity: it’s likely cheaper and easier to develop and cheaper and easier to run, hardware-wise. I’m all for leaner, user-friendlier software. It probably doesn’t hurt Apple gets 30% of all the (official) software sales.

You will have no problem finding people to tell you the iPad is the future.

Many have commented on the tinkering, exploration, and play angles of the iPad Question; of those, Alex Payne’s and Mark Pilgrim’s posts caught my particular attention.

(Alex’s verdict: disturbing. Mark’s: a real loss.)

The general idea is that by encouraging playing, tinkering, and messing with things, computers of yore allowed their users to develop creativity, analytical thinking, and curiosity. Appropriately, for both the writers, the computers in question were made by Apple.

I have similar experiences — not on Apple computers, there weren’t a lot of those in Poland in mid-to-late 90s — but the personal stories are not the point here.

One of the responses to those arguments, by Faruk Ateş, charged:

When these men became programmers, they didn’t do so because tinkering was “so much fun”; they did it because there was no other way. [emphasis original]

He and many others manage to impressively miss the point.

Children don’t tinker because they want to become programmers, because they want to learn to program or learn anything else. Children tinker because it’s fun. There is no ultimate goal. They do not, at least initially, kick a football around because they want to be on Manchester United’s first team. They do not play in the kitchen because they want to become world-famous chefs, nor do they play with LEGO because they want to become mechanical or civil engineers. They play and tinker because they are curious and that is what children do.

Luckily, they do develop very important skills while tinkering, trying things out, pushing the boundaries, breaking things occasionally. This is a side effect — a very important and happy side effect, but a side effect nevertheless.

The iPad is a LEGO set that can only be assembled into what’s drawn on the box.

The iPad is a microwave. You can’t realistically do whatever you please with a microwave, and most people won’t expect to. But the future of food delivered from microwaves — quick, easy, user-friendly, one-button — is a bleak future. No one will become a world-famous chef by playing with making food in the microwave when they’re 12. The stove presents much more opportunity to mess up and spend hours cleaning up the aftermath, or even burn down the place. It also presents an opportunity for expression and exploration that just cannot be realized in the limited nature of the microwave oven.

It looks like Apple would really, really like it if more people would get rid of their stoves and only use microwaves.

The “it’s either secure, user friendly, easy to learn, or it’s tinkerable” line of thinking commonly used against these arguments is a false dichotomy. Mac OS X comes with a command-line terminal and a variety of other ways to mess with and, yes, break your system. Compared against the iPhone OS, the primary reason OS X might be considered more difficult is not because it’s easier to break; it’s because it’s more overwhelming with its functionality.

As Cory Doctorow wrote in a recent post that was otherwise less than pointed:

Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

This isn’t about us not understanding a paradigm shift. This isn’t about us not understanding how the new world moves. We understand it — and we are very afraid it will lack supremely important features of the old world.

Here’s to tinkering.

Montreal Streets

Jarek Piórkowski — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:47:57 +0000

This is an expansion to my thoughts on Montreal, as ~~threatened~~ promised.

Very interesting culture on the streets, at least downtown. I think we were crossing boulevard René-Lévesque when, upon seeing a car turning right all but drive over the heels of crossing pedestrians, my friend described Montreal drivers as aggressive. And yet it’s not that. They’re certainly assertive, but the turning driver was never going to hit anyone, and you could see the pedestrians knew it. We do our thing and you’ll do yours.

The entire four and a half days in Montreal I’ve only heard a single honk. A cyclist attempted to run a red on an evening Ste-Catherine across, if I remember correctly, de la Montagne in their clubland. An SUV which had the green took exception to being forced to stop rather rapidly. It ended there. During the four days, I’ve seen pedestrians and drivers live together at countless right turns; I’ve seen drivers tolerate others doing a late left turn on yellow; I’ve seen intersections get blocked when traffic ahead doesn’t move as fast as the drivers think it will and the very pointless but very common honk never materialized. Because what would be the point?

I came back to Kitchener-Waterloo and within an hour I heard someone honk after a left turn on late yellow from King onto University. What was the point?

It’s a weird city. They have, in places, forbidden turns for the first few second of a green so that pedestrians can enter their crossing and establish a number superiority, but also countless intersections with no pedestrian signal at all. (Thankfully, very few with that supremely anti-pedestrian system which doesn’t activate the pedestrian crossing even on relevant green unless you’ve pressed the button). They have bike paths, separated from the rest of the road, with dedicated signals and even a proper bike left-turn system (on Street View, too) at Berri and Cherrier, and probably more I don’t know of, and also drivers that know what they deserve, when they deserve it, and aren’t shy to go and take it — no honking required. They have lights which go straight from yellow for one direction to green for the other, and seemingly manage not to have a million collisions.

They have jaywalkers. Oh, the jaywalkers. I’ve jaywalked before, and like to pretend that my experience from a couple of days each in Paris and Rome at ages 12 and 13 respectively give me an obligation to uphold a jaywalker’s image. Needless to say, I was delighted by downtown Montreal. Wikitravel describes it as risking life and limb, but it’s really nothing but — it’s deliberate, not blind; assertive, not aggressive. Walking across the cross streets to Ste-Catherine is particularly fun; there’s just so many people around doing the exact same. As long as the nearest car visible won’t get to the intersection in the time it will take you to walk across, you walk. If there are no cars, you walk. If there are cars, you let them go. After a while, you stop looking at the lights downtown, because it doesn’t really matter except for the wide arteries, where the self-preservation instinct does kick in (cough, aforementioned boul. René-Lévesque). We do our thing and you’ll do yours.

Technically speaking, this is called normalization of deviance. Practically speaking, this is called nothing short of amazing.

Montreal

Jarek Piórkowski — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:45:32 +0000

Much of this was written in mid-September, forgotten in draft hell, put off for months, and occasionally augmented. I’m not sure it’s perfect yet, but it’s good enough.

A friend and I went to Montreal for four and a half days in September before classes started. My first visit to the city, though with any luck it won’t be the last. Here are some random thoughts collected by the end of the week. Not a proper blog post, but spamming all of this on Twitter would have been excessive. I have pictures; they will make their way to Flickr eventually.

Note that this uses “Montreal” to mean roughly “river to Jean-Talon, Beaudry to Atwater with a T-bias along Ste-Catherine and St-Denis plus Olympic and Expo parks”. Yes, I know.

Very pretty old town. I’m sure helps that it is out of the way these days, just off downtown, by the river, a perfect place to trap and milk tourists. But it is pretty, and despite the occasional horse shit smell (and I say that as appreciatively as possible), it is very nice to walk around in even as a stingy student not at all intent on $50 meals or $100 art pieces.
Less of a waterfront; they try, and I haven’t seen all of it, but the part beside old town is held back by being in active use more recently and the correspondingly higher piers. The stretch along Lachine Canal is nice, but nothing extraordinary. Perhaps I’ve looked in the wrong places, but I didn’t see anything on the level of Harbourfront.
Very interesting culture on the streets, at least downtown. I observed and thought so much, this had to be split out into a separate post which is coming shortly. For now, suffice to say Montreal seemed nothing short of amazing.
This might be more generally a large-city thing, but it seemed like there were a lot of people out and about around us. I don’t think I’ve seen that much in Toronto, let alone Waterloo. Ste-Catherine Ouest is a delight around the clock (or at least between noon and midnight), and we had curious experiences like the Métro being positively clogged on a weekday at noon for some random reason (admittedly around Berri, but nevertheless).
The local bilingualism can only be described as a uniquely Montrealian mix of pure awesomeness, hilarity, and adorableness. Officially, the language is French; in addition to French, the city also has a lot of English history. This leads to such charming street names as rue Bishop and rue Peel, to say nothing of rue City Councillors.
Just to confirm we are in Montreal, there is a Square Victoria, named after the queen, lending its name to Station Square-Victoria on the Montreal metro, name announced with stress on last syllables, with one of the entrances adorned by a Paris Métro staircase.
We went to see a concert; confusion about availability of doors tickets was only exacerbated when one of the bouncers spoke to us in French. (Success in not looking like obvious tourists!) I replied in English (a possibly rude but, as I’ve learned by then, definitely viable strategy), and he switched to perfectly fine English; we got in. A pair of girls behind us spoke to the bouncer in French; once in, they talked English to each other.
Perhaps it’s just a case of grass being greener on the other side, but the universities seem so pretty. On a late summer day, McGill’s quad (with trees!) surrounded by university buildings (but not overbuilt!) and city skyscrapers beyond looked lovely. Université de Montréal is on the wrong side of the mountain, but apart from that, it enjoys awesome views of north Montreal and some amazing sunsets. Coming back was a struggle.
As an aside, I am pretty sure whichever building houses the anthropology department at Université de Montréal has only one exit and it is the one we walked in through. Eventually we had to retrace our steps back out through the law building. We found another exit which, as far I could tell, was marked as “will sound alarm if opened between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.” It wasn’t 11 p.m., but I wasn’t quite prepared to test my French knowledge. (t)
I apologize, but as I saw it, the underground city has nothing on PATH. It might be longer in total, but the gaps and the missing connections make the much needed northwest PATH exit out of Union chill out and take a vacation on Gran Canaria and the Dundas-to-Bloor gap look like one of the many cracks in the Berkeley Stadium. Of course this is partially since the development downtown is older, but still.
The semi-enclosed mall along St-Hubert has at least 15 bridal stores along four blocks of storefronts. Not quite sure why. Also featured: creepy dolls, very ’80s–looking decor. (t)
Honoré-Beaugrand, Angrignon, Côte-Vertu, and Montmorency all have meanings now. Snowdon and Saint-Michel somewhat less so. Longueuil–Université-de-Sherbrooke even less so, because who wants to go there anyway? (I kid. The Expo islands are nice. The casino is massive.)
Of course Line 3 doesn’t exist.
The subway trains were noticeably narrower at first, but I got used to them pretty fast. On rubber, there is no squeal/whine while turning, and perhaps accordingly the lines do have more turns. I found the trains surprisingly loud anyway – I think it’s whatever they are using for a ventilation system. Also, surprisingly bumpy.
STM got their buses spec’d with narrow doors. Why? No idea.
The Biosphere has a major hard-on for Buckminster Fuller (even accounting for the fact he designed the thing), and features a massive greenwashing theme.
The Olympic Stadium Tower was built on an angle which takes away best view onto downtown. I realize viewsighting wasn’t the first priority, and I guess it was already enough of a disaster without trying to accommodate photo-hungry tourists like moi. (t)
Seeing the RF transit pass card (OPUS) in use was more than enough to convince me to shell out $3.50 for one. Beeping through the turnstiles by placing wallet on top was more than worth it. TTC, please get on this.
Cross-platform transfers are pretty cool (hello, Lionel-Groulx). Ending up on the wrong side of a cross-platform transfer is somewhat less cool (hello, UdeM to downtown via Snowdon).
Amazing weather all the way through. This was mostly luck, but the first time it got cloudy was the morning we were about to leave. I gambled and didn’t take anything heavier than a t-shirt; it paid well off.

2009

Jarek Piórkowski — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:45:46 +0000

3B, my best term by academic performance since first year, by a fair margin, not fully related to sudden spikes in intelligence or work ethic. Fun times with 4 midterms and 12 job interviews in four days just before the reading week. I finished with more job offers than midterms failed, so I consider it a success.
Last work term, went reasonably well.
4A, went pretty okay in the end, though at some points it felt like more work and less results than 2B two years ago. Special thanks to ECE, as usual.
Two projects I wanted to do, Take the GRT one of them, pretty much fizzled out. Not too thrilled about that, but that was the year.
Fell in love with Toronto. Because every building is a shop and every person is a shopper.
Fell in like with Montreal. The visit was too short, I will be back.
Became significantly jaded with Waterloo. Not its fault, really, but on categories influenced by size it can’t compete, and those became important.
Wheels fell of the Flickr train, and I now have a 11-month backlog. The fact I insist on uploading chronologically except in special circumstances does not help.
Managed not to buy another camera(s), but it doesn’t look like I will last long into 2010.
Completed my conversion into an appalling hipster. Music spam: Year of Broken Social Scene in the first half, and Cocteau Twins in the second half. Unsurprising, really. Four great releases to start off: Junior Boys, Metric, Phoenix, and Röyksopp. A new múm album leaked just before summer started and it proved to be the perfect summer album.
Other notable new albums from Young Galaxy, Think About Life, Mew, The xx (just barely, listened in late December).
Saw live: Bloc Party, Hexes and Ohs, Goran Bregović, Bell Orchestre, Broken Social Scene (@ Harbourfront, yes), M83, Think About Life, Young Galaxy, múm, Junior Boys.
You don’t have a clue.
Love and mathematics.

Stalin ad portas

Jarek Piórkowski — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:10:31 +0000

[December 16, 2009; morning.]

He’s the Scrawny Seventeen-year-old Conscript. He’s the type you conscript when you’re desperate in a war, or when your military doctrine calls for use of lots of cannon meat. The USSR found itself in both situations, and so the Scrawny Seventeen Conscript makes up one half of the vanguard flag-bearers posted by the company on the north roadway of University Avenue just east of Westmount Road today.

Why does University Avenue have two roadways during World War II, why it looks exactly the same as it does now, or indeed why it is called University Avenue, I do not know.

I couldn’t tell you why товарищ Сталин himself is in command of the company either, but that much is indisputable, and he is firmly planted on the southern roadway, calling out orders.

The American force is visible, easily; the vanguard placed a little past Minota Hagey, with main group slightly further back.

You can tell the Scrawny Seventeen Conscript is not comfortable here. He would much rather be someplace safe, or at least safer. He has the look of negative anticipation on him; the one when you hope an exam you’ve understudied for will be easy, or when you hope your evaluation will go better than it really should.

Unfortunately, everything seems to point to exam being worse than you hope it won’t be. After unambiguous preparations, a perfectly clear order to charge ahead sounds.

The Scrawny Seventeen Conscript, pressure and fear finally driving him over the edge moments after the order, plugs Stalin with three bullets.

Stalin is indifferent; he would rather get shot than retreat. Americans are winning the war, and have to be stopped. He is hurt, of course, badly, but the attack would go on.

The second flag-bearer is not afraid; whether it is machoism, adrenaline, or actual skill, he is not affected by the shooting and the subsequent scuffle as the Scrawny Seventeen Conscript is subdued. He was ordered to charge, and he does.

Why are flag-bearers leading the charge in 1940s, I do not know.

Befitting (European) military strategy circa 1410, the American vanguard counter-charges at her opponents. She is a young woman; this is unsurprising.

After very brief scuffle, the Brave Flag-Bearer breaks the American’s wooden standard, which she considers very improper and offensive. We are shown a picture of the broken standard. The link is a direct JPG URL of a Facebook picture.

The battle continues in the background.

We find out all of Stalin, the Scrawny Seventeen Conscript, and the Brave Flag-Bearer survived.