I’ve joined the Fediverse. Another kick at the can

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It was 1995 and I was in San Jose at a General Magic Developers conference. It was a weird week for me, since I was distracted by a referendum back home on whether Quebec would leave Canada. But something else stuck out for me that week. Wherever I went, there were billboards for companies with web URLs on them.

I had been following the web, but what really struck me that week was that this was moving out of technical world and into mainstream. Billboards in Canada didn’t have URLs on them, but I could now see that was coming, and it felt like a revolution. There was a feeling that this would democratize communications and let anyone become their own publisher. It would break the bonds on the large gatekeepers to communications: the telecom companies, the newspaper chains and the TV channels.

And it did,… for a while. Community associations and clubs and bands and special interest groups and sports teams and all sorts of other groups set up their own web sites. Everything was exciting, chaotic and dynamic. How do you set up a site? How do people find it? Eventually, how do you keep it secure.

And then, over time, a few big companies offered a simpler experience. With two clicks you could create a Facebook group. And everyone was on Facebook, weren’t they? I remember fighting to keep some groups from ditching their web site and going to a Facebook group. Once they are there, they control us. And what of people who don’t want to be on Facebook?

So, now we are all owned by a few big players: Meta, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tik Tok, Reddit, Twitter. And, as Cory Doctorow has noted, now that they have got both the users and the advertisers locked in, they are squeezing all of us. Facebook is full of ads, Google is suggesting thing only somewhat related to your search, Twitter is blocking people out and in meltdown.

So, it is time to take back ownership. The web is supposed to be a federation of equal players, not a set of large telecom-like gatekeepers. And that is where the Fediverse comes in. We can set up a new community of sharing and connecting and discussing without the worry that the gate-keeping organization will be bought out by someone with different interests and agendas.

So, here I am. Re-invigorating my blog by hooking it into the Fediverse. Perhaps the second time around we will be a little more jaded and careful about following the shiny baubles. I admit I may be too optimistic, but hope springs eternal.

Jack of all trades and labour disputes

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I got a couple of calls from CBC Radio (Ottawa) today regarding the on-going labour teacher dispute. The reporters were asking how the work-to-rule was affecting Proms and Fund-raising.

I could go on about the problems with Proms, oneupmanship and living on the border with a less uptight drinking-age routine, but I’ll save most of that for another day. What I was most interested in was the apparent superficial understanding of issues by reporters. I suppose it is only to be expected that when you have to cover a wide range of issue you become a bit of a “jack-of-all trades and master of none”.

The Prom question I could understand. Toronto’s public board recently decided to go ahead with Proms this year. In Toronto the staff supervise the formals. Not so in Ottawa. Proms in Ottawa are expensive affairs booked privately by students (or their parents) through a near-monopoly company that locks up all the best venues a year in advance. This is a consequence of the board’s overly risk-adverse lawyers coming into contact with a situation where 50% of the graduating class if of Quebec drinking age when the prom takes place, with the after-party not surprisingly held over the border.

So the board has wiped its hands of the whole thing and even discourages staff from showing up to see their students off. As an upside, this means that Proms (despite their over-the-top costs in Ottawa) will still go ahead this year, regardless of what happens with the labour dispute or any board motions.

I guess it’s not surprising that I got a call about that issue. The second one surprised me more though. I was called and asked if fund-raising was affected and what this meant for yearbooks. You don’t have to be very involved in the school system to know that fund-raising is generally a school council activity with little staff participation. More confusing though, was the presumed connection between fund-raising and the yearbook. Yes, generally the yearbook has a staff advisor, but this is a role that the administration could easily take on. The tie in ti fund-raising, though, I still haven’t figured out.

Please don’t get the impression that I don’t think the labour dispute is having serious impacts. Sports and Arts have pretty much ground to a halt and the field-trip based experiential learning and anecdotal reporting that are so much a part of the board’s excellent Alternative Program have been dealt a near death-blow. Things are bad and I feel like we have two petulant kids who are too immature to get together and just settle this thing.

But yearbooks as fund-raising?

Providing the Unexpected

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I have a WiFi-networked Brother inkjet printer for the house. Not a laser printer by any means, but it had four features I liked:

  1. decent price
  2. good Linux support
  3. WiFi networking, so I can put it anywhere and not have to depend on a computer being up
  4. Easy to refill cartridges

Ink has always been the bane of home printers. Just when you most need to print something, you find out you are out of cyan. You can’t even print in black, since the printer protects itself bu not allowing any printing. Ink cartridges are the disposable razers of the high-tech world — give the printer away and laugh your way to the bank on the ink.

So I didn’t mind paying a bit more for a printer with the expectation of less expensive ink. I have bought those re-fill it kits in the past and managed to stain my hands and desk as I carefully tried to inject the ink into a cartridge with my shaky hands. I’m older now and that, and oil changes on the car, is something I don’t consider it worth doing myself anymore. This is quite something from someone as stingy as I am.

So I was happy when the ink refill stores started popping up. I could get them to do the grunt work of refilling my cartridges and still save a bundle, especially if I bought a ten-pack. The one trade-off was that I would inevitably have to hang around the mall they were in for half an hour or so until they had finished the refill. For some this might not seem like a chore, but like many males, I am not a shopper and when I am a shopper (let’s say mid-December as a wild example) I don’t usually need to refill my ink.

Small price to pay I figured. Of course I was valuing my own time at about $0/hour which may not be the most sensible thing either.

So I walk into the Printwell here in Ottawa to refill a couple of colour ink cartridges, hand them over and ask how long. I’m expecting to hear “30 minutes”. Instead: “Right away. This is a common cartridge, so we now have re-filled ones available.”

It made my day. Someone thinking about how to improve their service. Similar to how you now swap your propane tanks instead of waiting for someone to refill them. But still, exceeding my expectations.

Something we could all strive to do everyday…

School Councils: Parents, Policy and Fundraising

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I was part of a panel today on CBC Ottawa’s afternoon drive-slot show “All in a Day“. The show started with an interview with an Education consultant who thinks that school councils are not doing enough to direct policy at their schools.

Shelley Rivier and I were asked for out opinion on parental involvement in policy at school councils. You can hear the interview here, but here are some of my thoughts condensed.

To be involved parents have to pass through several gates:

  • Availability. People lead busy lives
  • Awareness. New Canadians in particular may not be used to being allowed to question educators
  • Incentive. If parents are relatively happy (or don’t think they can make a change) then they are less likely to get involved
  • Authority. Principals are faced with a revolving set of parents who aren’t sure what their role is or what they are allowed to do. If a principal doesn’t encourage parents to challenge, parents may not even know it is an option. For instance, the board asks school councils for a Year End report every year and the principal passes this message on. Many councils therefore assume they have to do it and don’t question why.

Given all those hurdles, a parent then has two options:

  • Get engaged in “policy”. Here they are going up against seasoned paid professionals who jobs are not made easier by inviting dissent and by constantly educating parents. Furthermore, the field is already a 3-way tug-of-war between the province, trustees and senior staff. Fighting for policy change is a tough and seldom rewarding task. Needless to say, parents generally only follow this route when there is a crisis, such as a school closure or a program change.
  • Get engaged in social/fundraising efforts. Here the obstacles are less, the rewards are tangible and the work directly and immediately benefits the school and the students.

While I am torn over fundraising, since it deepens the inequity in education between have and have-not schools, I totally understand why parents are more interested in doing it. It is a logical choice. And it is hard to fault those parents who do this when the vast majority don’t get involved at all.

Iguanas and Skilled Trades

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It was 1990 and I was sitting in a bar in the jungles of Belize near the border with Guatemala. Rain forest preservation was a hot topic even 22 years ago and the common mantra among us self-righteous enviro-conscious youth at the time was that farmers needed to move to sustainable farming.

Iguanas, actually.

It turns out that iguanas can be harvested in a rain forest and produce more pounds of meat per hectare than cattle on clear-cut and razed land. Bio-diversity survives, erosion is averted, the forest remains, more meat is harvested. Win-win. Or so you’d think. Sure we’d have to adjust to eating iguana steaks, which would take some considerable marketing.

But in the bar in Belize I learned that something else was at play. Something much harder to fight than even changing farming practices and convincing the public to eat a lizard. Status. As I talked with locals in Belize and listened into their conversations, I became aware that cattle ranching in Central and South America is not just farming, or a business. It is status. Being a cattle farmer is akin to being a doctor or lawyer in North America. Something that bestows status and honour on the family.

And that brings us to the skilled trades in the developed world. This morning I heard on the radio yet again that there is a chronic shortage of skilled trades people, and that you can expect to earn six figures as a skilled tradesperson. Far more, I might add, than a normal B.A. will earn you. As a parent with kids in school, I have heard lots of parents nod sagely about the value of the skilled trades, and then say something along the lines of:

Skilled Trades are great and more kids should be going into them. But not my kid. He needs to go to University.

Here’s the rub. Parents can logically agree that skilled trades are valuable, just as I’m sure farmers in the amazon rain forest would agree with you that it would make more sense to raise iguanas in the rain forest than chop it down and graze cattle. But that is hypothetical. In the practical, here and now, among middle-class parents, their children are going to University. Just as that block of forest is being cut down to since the farmers are cattle farmers, damnit. And no one is taking that away from them.

The kids have bought in as well. I ran into a grade 12 student recently that I’ve known for years. Highly intelligent and very technically minded, with an interest in computer science. A geek in the most positive sense of the word. He was planning for after high school and had decided that a community college computer science course was more suited to what he wanted to do than a computer science B.Sc. His response: go to University to get a B.A. in psychology instead.

We can talk all we want about the value of the skilled trades, or iguana meat, or some great new business idea. These are undoubtedly valuable things that we should strive for. But we have to acknowledge our own biases and prejudices and realize that logic is not enough and we need more than just marketing and a solid business plan. We need to understand the social statuses and biases at play and work to overcome them.

Reuse and Egotism

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I regularly commute to a client’s site past a large hospital complex. The building consists of a series of wings, the first two of which are nearly identical and obviously were built at the same time. Two newer additions to the building sits beside them, each using an entirely different look and pattern. No reuse here.

It reminds me of growing up in Toronto back when there was only one terminal at its airport. When the terminal was built, the plans called for additional terminals to be built later using the same design. But that never happened. Three more terminals have been built since the first opened in 1964 all utilizing different designs.

No reuse here either.

So what is going on, and can we see any parallels to software architecture?

The technical answer is that requirements change. New wide-bodied jets made the round architecture of the first Toronto airport terminal inefficient, for instance. Perhaps new equipment or capabilities were required or new building materials became available that precluded the hospital from re-using its existing design. Perhaps.

But something else was surely going on here as well. Something that has stymied efforts over the years to develop re-usable software and the fabled software building blocks. Something called ego.

When a new team is brought in to build a new system, it can be guaranteed that they will not look at existing systems in place and recommend configuring or modifying one of them. Much more likely will be a total redevelopment using different technologies and patterns, mostly from the resumes of the new architects. There will be justifications around “not wanting to repeat past mistakes” (as the new team goes on to develop new and innovative mistakes), but the reality is that ego is a prime factor. No architect wants to come in and say “hey, let’s do what that guy did”. It doesn’t satisfy the itch to build something new. Nor does it justify the architect’s paycheque.

So what does this tell us?

  1. For one thing, architects, designers and developers must remember that one imperfect design is better than multiple designs, no matter how perfect any of them night be. The long term cost of any software project is maintenance, and the maintainers will have no idea why two systems that seem to tackle the same problem are built in different ways.
  2. Existing systems may have warts, but so will the new system. Known warts are cheaper than new and innovative ones.
  3. On the other side of the coin, build a system for your requirements and don’t try to guess how it might be re-used. You will get it wrong anyway and create an overly complex and error-prone system. If you ever get a second client (which is less likely than you think), utilize this thing called “refactoring” to pull out generic concepts and make the system re-usable.

Architects and designers are people with egos. And people with egos always overplay their own ability and underplay other’s. Take a slice of humble pie and ask yourself “Could we reuse that other system? Would it be good enough”. If you decide to build a new system, don’t design for re-use until you have a second user.

Microsofties, the Fondleslab and the Paradox of Choice

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While I am always attracted to Java and Open Source, I’m also not adverse to pitching in on other projects, including those using .Net. C# is really quite a good language. There I said it. I know it is a clone of Java in many ways, but it is quite clean and well thought out, for the most part.

One of the biggest differences working on a Java and .Net project is the Microsoft lock-in on the latter. Sure, the database may be SQL Server or Oracle, but other than that, most .Net shops buy the whole Microsoft tool-chain hook, line and sinker. Microsoft Server, VisualStudio, TeamTest, TFS, WCF, etc.

And most .Net developers are quite happy with this. They don’t get the disdain that other developers may show towards them. Microsoft produces tools they like and know. And lately I also notice that they like and know their iPods, iPhones and iPads…

What? How is it that Microsofties are all in love with Apple? The once and always adversaries for the desktop. I didn’t get it at first. Was I misreading people.

And then is started to dawn on me. While Microsoft has crushed its competition though market weight, with some say a monopolistic edge to it, it has at least done so, for the most part, in a competitive way. No closed app store for Microsoft. Apple, champion of great design, has recently been criticized for its controlling approach to its ecosystem.

And that’s where some .Net developers become fanbois. In many ways, the .Net development environment has become a closed shop. If you like Microsoft tools, you are comfortable there. Similarily, if you like iOS apps, you are also comfortable. So it is not so much that .Net developers are defecting to Apple, it is that Apple is adopting the close ecosystem model that .Net developers have already become comfortable with in the Microsoft development ecosystem.

Or maybe they are just overwhelmed, like the rest of us, by the Paradox of Choice…

Dancing Chickens, Pumps and 3G

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There was a case of a psychology experiment in which the scientists left some chickens over the weekend with an automatic feeder that periodically dispensed food. When they returned on Monday they found the chickens were performing some very odd dances and moves. It turned out to be a case of partial reinforcement with the chickens repeating any action that had preceded the appearance of food. Eventually more food would appear, reinforcing their repetitive actions.

Where does that leave me.

Well, at a cottage in the Quebec wilderness with a misbehaving pump and a sketch 3G service.

The pump seems to be acting up, shutting off after about 5 seconds of pumping and then coming on again a few minutes later. Sometimes, anyway. And sometimes it just works. But one of the times it just worked was when the cistern was already pretty full. The message: “pump the water frequently when the cistern is full”. So, we kept running it frequently and it started working better. Just like a dancing chicken.

That was last year. This year it acts up even when the cistern is almost full. There goes that theory.

Similarily my 3G service, while better than dial-up, is somewhat strained, often dropping from 3.1 Mbs to 153.6 kbs. And there I am, like a dancing chicken, holding the dongle in just the same way as the last time I got a better signal; or pushing my laptop to the edge to the table where I had got a better signal, or maybe pecking at the floor while flapping one wing in the air.

We’re all just eventually dancing chickens.

Hoarding

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I used to hoard programs. Or more specifically, installation programs. If you’re old enough, and a geek, you probably know what I’m talking about. When the web came along in the mid-90’s every geek’s computer I knew had a “downloads” directory full of stuff like:

  • netscape-install-1.2.7.zip
  • pkunzip.something.exe (or .sh)
  • ftp-tool.or-other.zip

I don’t have that anymore. If I want an application I download the latest version or use my update manager to get or update it.

My bookmarks in the browser window used to be full of stuff too. Every time I’d see an interesting page I would bookmark it into the long list of “WORN” URLs (“Write Once Read Never”). I then moved to del.icio.us, since it had better tags and meant I could get to them from anywhere. I don’t even bother doing that anymore either. Google is my friend.

And who still doesn’t have a music folder crammed full of mp3 files, bought, ripped, downloaded or otherwise acquired?

Why did we hoard all this stuff, why don’t we any longer, and what’s up with music?

We hoarded since the cost of downloading was high and we were afraid of losing it. But we learned over time for installation programs that they were always being updated and it was only getting quicker to re-download them. Easier and safer to offload the management of them to the internet. Need to re-install Firefox? Got to http://www.getfirefox.net . Or more probably, type it into Google, and have it remind you of the URL.

Segue into bookmarks. I hardly ever looked at my bookmarks, even on del.icio.us, and so have handed the job of finding stuff to the internet. The search engines are all good enough that if I want to show my kids the “Who’s on First” routine I do a four second search.

Music remains the hoarder’s treasure. A variety of reasons make it so. There is the obvious licencing issues, but more importantly music is more like applications than links or install programs. Something that costs a lot (in time) to download but that we want to use over and over again. Faster bandwidth can reduce this download cost, but there is still the issue of ownership. Unlike videos, the value of a piece of music goes up the more you listen to it, so renting it (even through subscription services) is something unattractive to us. If copyright laws restrict us in how we can access it, we want to control the music we do have, and that means having it sit on our metal.

We hoard two things: things we use infrequently but are hard to find or expensive to get; and things we use a lot. The first go away as the network and its services improve; the second are unlikely to.

Which is why I’m skeptical of user-targeted cloud services ever taking off.

Concurrency and the fallacy of self-documenting code

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There seems to be a ongoing debate about whether comments are necessary or even good in your code. The self-documenting code camp claims that if your code is well-factored and well-written then there is no need for comments. Any talented programmer will be able to follow the intent of the code and understand it.

It seems to me that there are two problems with this:

  • Mismatch between coding paradigm and problem domain.
  • Concurrency.

Let me give you an example of the second one. I was recently debugging some open source telephony code for a client of mine when I ran across this pseudo-code used to make a call:

this.setCallID(reserveCallId());

provider.createCall(this.getCallID(), address, terminal, dialedDigits);

this.toActive(Event.CAUSE_NEW_CALL);

I was getting a null-pointer exception in the last line, which I traced down to the “call id” being null. But “reserveCallId()” is guaranteed never to return null.

After uncovering the cause, the psudo-code fix was:

this.setCallID(reserveCallId());

provider.createCall(this.getCallID(), address, terminal, dialedDigits);

if(this.getCallID() == null) {  return null;}

this.toActive(Event.CAUSE_NEW_CALL);

At first glance, this new third line makes no sense. Another programmer would not easily understand why we would stop what we are doing if the call id is null at this point. Without comments, it is hard to see how any amount of refactoring or renaming of code would explain this logic.

The underlying reason for this odd code is that, depending on the telephony system, createCall() may not return until the call is connected. If, while being set up, the call is canceled  by another thread issuing a hangup command, then the call state is wiped out and the call id is set to null. Perhaps instead of checking for a null call id to see if this has happened, we can check the call state, but that is still not very clear: why would a newly created call be in an INVALID state?

A few lines of comments — ten seconds worth — is enough to explain it to whoever has to follow in your shoes:

// check if the call has been disconnected during set up,
// such as by an asynchronous hang-up
if(this.getCallID() == null) {  return null;}

Is that so hard?