Category: Life

The Magic of Vinyl

johnjpeeblesLeave a comment

About a year ago, I put a Sonos sound system in my flat.  It had been more than 15 years since I’d had a stereo of any kind, and while I’d enjoyed being able to carry around my music collection on my phone for years, I never really listened to music at home, unless I was in front of a computer.  While it sounds incredibly cheesy, it really did help me fall in love with music again – I could listen while walking around the flat, working on something not in front of a computer, cooking, etc.

One of my favourite features of Apple Music (yes, lets not get into the Spotify vs. Apple debate) are the variety of radio stations and the playlist discovery, but I realised (after a year of listening to way more music than I’d ever managed before) that I’d gravitated to this almost anonymous way of interacting with artists, albums, and music.  One of my personal policies with the iTunes Store over the years was I would always buy the entire album of an artist.  I felt like an album was a sacred thing.  But here I was guilty of not having listened to a complete album in over a year.

I had lost something.  I had lost the ceremony of music.  I missed the experience of looking at the album artwork and liner notes (remember that?) and focusing on music the way the artist intended.    What to do?

I decided to get a record player.  Nothing fancy, and I’ve committed the sacrilege of hooking it up to my Sonos system which would horrify any analog purist, but I don’t care.  I also don’t care about audio quality that much either, and I’m not going to pretend that records sound better or that they’re warmer or any of the other stuff Vinyl Geeks will obsess over – that’s not the point.

The point is, the last couple of weeks I’ve sat down, dimmed the lights in the living room, put on a record, and experienced the album and artist in a way I haven’t since I was in high school.  Back then I would spend hours listening to music and intently study every piece of art and lyric that came with a new CD.

I still listen to playlists and radio stations my massive digital music collection while I’m walking, working, and running around the house.  But I now have a new avenue for music, and it was something that’s been missing.

I know I’m late to the party, but I’m glad I finally made it!

P.S. Sonos is my nominee for “company most likely to become like TiVo and squander a massive opportunity”.  Their hardware is great, their idea was revolutionary and visionary when they launched, but they’ve spent years coasting and delivering crummy software.  I don’t see them pulling out their tailspin anytime soon and Google, Apple, and a bunch of other companies will be eating their lunch over the next 2-3 years. Just like what happened to TiVo. It’s sad, really, but when your latest big feature (Alexa integration) takes you more than a year to ship AND it’s completely terrible, you kind of deserve it.

Visiting the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT

johnjpeebles3 Comments

Last night I experienced the privilege of visiting the Tech Model Railroad Club on MIT’s campus.  As an avid model railroader, computer science major, and great admirer of books like Hackers and Accidental Empires, I’ve heard of the TMRC for most of my life.  As a kid, my parents bought the 1986 edition of World Book, which underneath the entry “Model Railroads” included a picture of the TMRC layout, something I’ve never forgotten.

tmrc station

The first chapter of the book Hackers tells how some of the earliest computer science pioneers were involved in the TMRC .  A few of the notable members were Alan Kotok from DEC, Richard Greenblatt the coinventor of the MIT LISP machine (which is housed next door in the MIT Museum), John McCarthy who coined the term Artificial Intelligence and helped developed the LISP language, and Jack Dennis who was one of the founders of the Multics Project (the precursor to Unix).  These members along with others helped coin the term “Hacker”, and inscribed within the “Dictionary of the TMRC language” was the (now immortal to all computer scientists) phrase “Information wants to be free.”  These guys were budding computer scientists, brilliant minds, mischievous hackers, and they were serious about controlling model railroads.

The first chapter of Hackers describes the interplay between trains, their control, and what the TMRC meant to different students:

tmrc-overpass

“There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value, or creating realistic scenery for the layout. This was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent, and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the club for trips on aging train lines. The other faction centered on the Signals and Power Subcommittee of the club, and it cared far more about what went on under the layout. This was The System, which worked something like a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and Wernher von Braun, and it was constantly being improved, revamped, perfected, and sometimes “gronked”—in club jargon, screwed up. S&P people were obsessed with the way The System worked, its increasing complexities, how any change you made would affect other parts, and how you could put those relationships between the parts to optimal use.”

tram system

For model railroaders, the TMRC is probably in the top 10 most famous layouts in the world along with names like John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid, George Sellios’ Franklin & South Manchester, and famous club layouts like the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.  For techies, there is no other layout in the world of interest that’s anywhere in the TMRC’s league.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that model railroading and computers have always been bedfellows – even today model railroading has led the way in developing standards around Digital Command Control, interfacing locomotives, signalling, and other controls to a computer, and the Java Model Railroad Interface has provided us the world’s first successful test case of the Gnu Public License (the GPL), the open source software license that Linux and much of open source code relies on!

card operating schemeWith all of this background, I probably undersold the importance of the whole thing to my college roommate and his wife who live in Boston.   When they asked me what I wanted to do during our afternoon together it struck them as a bit odd that I’d already emailed the club from Scotland, had the phone number, and was anxious to make sure we didn’t miss the window.

Walking into the layout room we were met by the wonderful MIT alumnus and club member John Purbrick. He proceeded to give us an hour long tour showing us the various control systems, buildings, car card operating scheme, points of interest on the layout, and description of future plans.

custom built throttleTMRC uses a home grown software system (written in Java with the fronted in Python, all running on Linux) to run the trains.  The layout is still using DC block control, and trains can be run via the main computer system, or engines can be assigned to one of the many hand-built walk around throttles.  All turnouts are computer controlled and electronically operated, none are hand thrown.  For each yard or town area, there’s a diagram of the track layout with numbers on the left and right hand sides.  By keying in the number 0 on the left, and the number 5 on the right for example, the turnouts are all automatically thrown to present a route between the two points.  It’s simple, elegant, and impressive for a home built system.  As Mr. Purbrick put it, “We use a home built system on this layout because here at MIT, we have some experience with software.” Trains are detected by the software using electrical resistance, so operators can see from the software whether a train is on a siding, train with engine, or no train at all.

The main level of the layout is mostly complete, but there are plans for additional levels, and the layout features several huge helixes.  All visible mainline track is Code 83, sidings are Code 70, and there is some Code 55, and all visible turnouts are hand built.  There’s also a tram system that runs on one part of the layout.  Rolling stock varies but includes locomotives from Atlas, Athearn, and Kato. The president of Kato has visited from Japan and brought with him a gift of a few locomotives and some passenger cars.

soda machine

The TMRC receives no financial support from MIT other than free use of the space.  Just like in the late 50s (and covered in the book Hackers), the TMRC is supported from the proceeds that are made by selling soda from a machine in the hallway, and they turn a tidy profit according to Purbrick. A hand scrawled note affixed to the machine explains where the profits go and encourages patrons to email soda suggestions to the club for inclusion on the menu.

These days there aren’t many members left, apparently.  Maybe a dozen or so, although anyone can join. There was only one other member there while we visited, and the club struggles to get enough people together for operating sessions. Apparently there are several other thriving clubs in the area, but I wondered if there wouldn’t be a population of students out there who might not know of the TMRC’s heritage, it’s incredibly complex computer control system, and its delightful layout?

playing tetris on a buildingAs we made our way out at the end of the tour, Mr. Purbrick told us that we couldn’t leave without seeing the Tetris building.  From the hallway looking through the windows onto the layout, there is a control box.  When activated, the iconic tetris music begins to play, and the windows of the skyscraper light up to represent tetris blocks, which descend.  You can play a game of tetris represented on the windows of a building modelled by the TMRC, all powered by custom software and hardware components.  The creator of Tetris himself has been by to see this particular implementation, and while it wasn’t quite finished, he is said to have given it his approval.

“It’s one of our better hacks,” said John Purbrick, and I couldn’t agree more.

2013: Year in Review

johnjpeeblesLeave a comment

Wow, that was an incredible year! Find a few things.  Focus on them.  Make some changes.  You can do it.

Travel in 2013

  • Paris, France (twice – once to visit family and see the French Open, and once to Euro Disney)
  • Inverness, Scotland (twice)
  • Zurich, Switzerland (speaking)
  • Dallas, USA
  • Dubai, UAE
  • New York City, USA
  • Auckenlich, Scotland
  • Pitlochry, Scotland
  • Sutherland County, Scotland

Best Books I Read

Ultimately, I didn’t read quite as many books as I wanted to (goal of 24 last year), but I did manage to read a few. Here are some of the best. Non-cyclists won’t care about the cycling books.

  • The Dark Tower (Books 1-3)
  • Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
  • Strange Stones: Dispatches from East to West (best book of the year)
  • Seven Years in Tibet
  • Christians and Politics: Uneasy Partners
  • The Great Train Robbery (re-read)

Cycling Books

  • The Story of the Tour de France Volume 1
  • Lanced: The Shaming of Lance Armstrong
  • The Rider
  • The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France

Books I Hated

  • The Museum of Innocence
  • Cloud Atlas (loved the movie though)

Highlights of the Year

  • Attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (again)
  • Spending Thanksgiving in a 18th century Scottish estate (again)
  • Three cycling events: Tour of the Borders, Caledonian Etape, and Lafuga trip to Tuscany
  • Attending the French Open
  • Success at work – Administrate doubled its revenue in 2013

Cycling

This became my main hobby in 2013, despite the concern I’d not stick with it. I bought my first road bike in January, not really knowing what to expect, with a goal of riding the Caledonian Etape (81 miles), and trying to stick with it, mainly for health reasons.

I ended up riding and finishing the Tour of the Borders, which was one of the worst (best) events I could imagine, in the worst possible weather conditions I’ll probably ever ride in again. I finished.

Went on to ride a 50 mile sportive in Aviemore, attempted a 110 mile sportive from Glasgow to Edinburgh (DNF – destroyed tire), attempted a 100 mile Glasgow sportive (couldn’t make it due to rental car issues), and booked a three day cycling trip in Tuscany.

Overall for the year, I rode more than 1,800 miles and climbed more than 104,000 feet of elevation. Pretty happy about that.

Speaking

One of the big goals I had last year was to speak more. It’s something I really enjoy, it helps us recruit top notch developers, and I love hearing from other speakers at conferences, so for me, it’s a win-win-win. Two things I love to discuss are teamwork and great products, and I developed two talks around these topics which I gave several times around Europe. I also began to speak more and more (mostly locally) on why I believe Scotland is an incredible place to run a startup.

I spoke in Edinburgh four times (Lean Agile Scotland, Scotch on the Rocks, Turing Festival, and University of Edinburgh), London once (Digital Shoreditch), Zurich (FrontEndConf), and I was invited to speak in Poland, but just couldn’t make it due to some unfortunate scheduling issues. I’m hoping I can make that conference this coming year instead. I was really happy with the opportunities I received, and hope to continue the trend in 2014.

Work

In some ways we had a very challenging year at work, but almost every challenge ultimately paved the way for a really rewarding and successful year of growth. We wrote more about the success our team had on our company blog, and I was really proud of everyone pulling together to achieve our second year in a row of doubling in size.

Family

We added a “real” niece this year, and a “fake” niece to our collection of “fake nephews” in our third family.  And for Christmas this year, my family came over to Edinburgh to spend a few days which meant we all got to be together, explore the city and surrounding towns, and The Wife and I didn’t have to fly home for a manic tour of the States.  That was a huge relief.

Summary

2014 should be interesting, like every year. I’ve got some goals, but they’re mostly progressions of what I’m already focused on: work, cycling, speaking, and travel.  Stay tuned!

I’ve Never Wished I Was Less Technical

johnjpeebles5 Comments

I got an early-ish start with computers when I was about 6 or 7 years old.  My dad created an MS-DOS boot disk that got me to a DOS prompt on the one of the hard diskless IBM clones in his office.  Once I had booted to the command line, I’d put another floppy disk (these were 5.25 inch floppies, the ones that really flopped) in the B drive, type in the commands which I quickly memorised, and my six year old self would be ready for some hardcore word processing.  Using Multimate at first, but then moving on to PC Write, I penned a few short stories and would love to visit the office and use the computers.  My Dad’s staff even gave me access to the holy of holies – the one real IBM PC (not a clone) which had a 5 megabyte hard disk, and was protected by a password.  I was solemnly lectured to never disclose the password, not to anyone, and I never have, even to this day.

And so it was against this backdrop that I became interested in computers.  When I was nine my family bought our first computer from a back alley vendor in the Philippines.  It was an IBM compatible XT Turbo, which was technically an 8088, with a twenty megabyte hard disk and a monochrome CGA monitor.  It was outdated when we bought it, as the 386 had just been released, but I loved it.  I spent hours learning different software packages like Norton Commander, PC-Tools, and playing games like the Commander Keen trilogy.  We kept it until I was twelve, and then gave it to a Chinese friend when we replaced it with a 486 DX-33 we picked up in Hong Kong.  Built like a tank, it is probably still in operation somewhere.

Despite this early introduction to computers, I didn’t get started programming until I was sixteen.  It was harder then – we had just got the internet but the tutorials and blogs and wealth of easy information we have now didn’t exist.  It was also difficult to get the necessary software you needed – thanks to living in China I could buy a pirated copy of Borland C++ or Microsoft Visual C++ for about a dollar, but they were a bit overwhelming to setup.  I finally found someone who knew how to program and begged him into giving me a few sessions.  He had a book, helped me setup my compiler, and agreed to meet with me once a week to teach me.  I even managed to get these sessions accepted as school credit during my junior and senior year.  I still keep in touch with Erik now, and he was one of the groomsmen in my wedding.  Together we even managed to cobble together two “junk systems” from spare parts and after a few weeks of constant trial and error, we got Slackware running in 1998, still one of my proudest technical achievements.

Every American college bound student knows that their junior year of high school is crucial for getting accepted into their university of choice, and I began targeting computer science as my major.  I was heavily advised that I should focus on a business degree instead.  At the forefront of that group were several of my math teachers, who knew that I didn’t do well in that subject, but there were also many others who thought that I shouldn’t “waste” my people skills in a technical role.

But I was really enjoying programming!  My first real project was a string indexing program which could accept a block of text (much like this blog) and then create an alphabetical index of all the strings (words) and the number of times they appeared.  Written in C, I had to learn about memory management, debugging, data structures, file handling, functions, and a whole lot more.  It was way more mentally taxing than anything I’d ever done in school, and it required a ton of concentration.  I wasn’t bored like I often was in classes.  It was hard.  Erik would constantly challenge, berate, laugh at me, and most importantly, accurately assess me using an instructional style that I’d never been exposed to before – he only cared about the results, not the trying.

Although I was dead set on computer science, I really liked making money too.  My parents noticed this and for one semester during that crucial junior year they offered me financial rewards for grades achieved.  After I’d hosed my dad for over a hundred bucks due to my abnormally high grades that semester, he announced that “grades should be my own reward” and immediately discontinued the program.  There were plenty of people telling me that a degree in business would better suit these talents of mine, and if I was honest, at the time I knew they were probably right.  I was great in my non-science subjects, I could mail it in on papers and still get an A, and I knew that diligence, attention to detail, and math were weaknesses.  Getting a business degree would be stupidly easy.  Getting a computer science degree would be pretty hard, at least for me.

I was close to changing my mind when Erik mentioned, “You know, I’ve never wished I was less technical.”

This is advice that I really took to heart.  It rung true when I was seventeen.  It’s even more true today.

For me, the advantage that I incurred by getting a computer science degree meant that I could start my own consulting company and be one of the technical contributors while also being responsible for the business stuff.  It helped me obtain positions of leadership because I didn’t need technical middle men to explain things to me.  If things were going poorly, I could help manage the crisis effectively, and when things were going well I could explain why and point out the technical decisions that had carried us to success.

Guess what?  I got to do all the business stuff too!  Having a technical background has never limited my business acumen or hampered me in any way.  I haven’t coded for money since 2007, but I use my knowledge and experience every day, and I stay up to date with technology as much as possible.  I love it when our technical lead shows me the code behind the latest feature.  If anything, having an appreciation for complexity, code, and systems design has only helped me design and implement better budgets, business models, and pricing schemes.  I’ve never met any “business person” who is better than me at Excel, the language of business, and much of that stems from just knowing how to program.  This has made me the goto guy in almost every planning or budget meeting I’ve ever been in.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way.  People who aren’t technical will always struggle in any technically related environment.  I’ve met so many people who have struggled and struggled to make their great idea a reality chiefly because they weren’t technical, couldn’t contribute, couldn’t cut through the bullshit, and therefore couldn’t effectively manage their way to success.  Sometimes, they’ll try to fake it and just lose the respect of the programmers.  As many times as I’ve thought to myself how glad I am that I have a technical background, I’ve had others voice to me the frustration that they just wish they knew more about technology.

If you’re reading this, and you’re trying to figure out which way to go in life, make sure you get technical first.  If you didn’t choose that path, there’s still plenty of time – get out there and learn to code.  There are so many resources.

This is what the “everyone should learn to code” movement is really saying – not that everyone should be a coder, but that everyone could benefit from understanding the environment, pressures, and disciplines that drive a huge part of our economy.  It’s not just business either – artists can benefit from more creative displays and better performing websites, not-for-profits could benefit from volunteers who know how to help out in technical areas, and it’s just nice sometimes to be the guy who can get the projector working in a foreign country!

So get technical.  You’ll never regret it.  And if you’re a programmer and you ever see a kid who wants to learn, help them out, you may just find a friend for life.

2012, the Year in Review

johnjpeeblesLeave a comment

Here’s a review of what for me was one of the best years I’ve had since college.

Travel in 2012

  • Paris, France
  • Aberdeen, Scotland
  • Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Mallaig (Harry Potter Train)
  • London (Olympics), UK
  • Dubai, UAE
  • Boston, USA
  • Beirut, Lebanon
  • Campbeltown, Scotland

It’s really hard to choose which trip was the best for this year, but I’d probably give the nod to Paris, followed closely by Copenhagen.  I also had an amazing business trip to Beirut, which is an incredible place.

Best Books I Read

Highlights of the Year

Plans for 2013

We Consistently Underestimate Kids

johnjpeebles1 Comment

I’ve long believed that we seriously underestimate kids.  Hanging around with my friend’s daughters who were 2, 3, and 5 when I was in college was really illuminating as I found myself interacting and conversing with his (admittedly smart) 2 year old daughter on a level that we often wouldn’t even attempt with highschoolers.

I have a very clear memory of being nine years old, reading an autobiography about a family who adopted several kids.  At some point they became stranded in an airport.  Don’t worry though!  It was no problem the author (and mother) helpfully pointed out, because nothing fascinates a nine year old like riding the elevator up and down for hours.  What a load of crap, I thought to my nine year old self.  It’s like that mom thinks we’re mentally disabled or something.

As a parent (I have very little additional advice and zero experience in this area) don’t be afraid to expose your kids to things that might seem advanced for a child.  Check out this video of 7 year old Philip explaining how he programmed his first video game on a Raspberry Pi computer his dad bought and helped him configure.  I guarantee you there are huge portions of the adult population who couldn’t follow his instructions or achieve what he’s completed.  There’s nothing quite like a curious kid who sets their mind to something.  Nice job Philip and well done by his parents!

Safety First: A New Mantra for America

johnjpeebles1 Comment

I don’t ever watch the news on TV.  Maybe once a month, generally while sitting in a waiting room of some sort where you can’t help but listen to the TV blaring away in the corner.

A few months ago I was in that situation, and listened to Mayor Bloomberg utter the now all too common refrain that “safety of residents was his top priority.”  I don’t want to focus in on the specific situation he was referring to or anything along those lines, I just want to comment briefly on a once-bedrock notion that seems to have been lost permanently from the American Psyche: safety or security is not an ideal in and of itself.

Let me explain.

If you hang around geeks long enough, you’ll hear them discuss the security and safety of their computers.  There’s lot of things to secure (and thus talk about) too: their code, their servers, even security of non-computery things and other physical devices.  At some point, you’ll hear a version of this statement: “The only secure computer is one that’s turned off, unconnected to anything, encased in a block of concrete, sitting in the bottom of the ocean…and even that’s not going to be completely secure!”

What’s really being said here is that security is not a binary function of yes/no but a continuum between two mutually exclusive goals: utility and security.  In other words, security is a process during which intelligent and thoughtful trade-offs have to be made just to get stuff done.  This is why you will find nerds, geeks, and other computer professionals disproportionately critical of many modern security measures, processes, and other “security theater” institutions like the TSA.  Computer people already have a wealth of experience trading perfect security for reasonable security in order to achieve things, and we’ve done so without coercion or legislation or massive cost to the user.  The technology security analyst’s job is literally right on the pain point between these two opposing priorities and it’s often not pleasant, but that’s their job.

Back to America and our newfound obsession with safety and security.  Ben Franklin has an iconic quote (often paraphrased) which we seem to have lost sight of:

“Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”  

It’s as clear a signal from the framers of the United States as to what kind of country we were to be.   There’s an even more powerful quote which I’ll discuss in just a moment.

I’m not a George W. Bush fan, but I eagerly bought his book “Decision Points” when it came out and very much enjoyed reading it.  It clearly wasn’t ghost written, which was refreshing.  He plays fast and loose with the facts in a few places, and revises history in others, but the first chapter is genuinely inspiring as he documents his battle with alcoholism.

I found myself respecting him more after reading the book and I also gained a lot of insight into his thought processes.  Over and over again he justifies his, uhh, decision points by claiming that his primary duty was to keep Americans safe.  If you listen to talk radio even just a little this is a refrain you’ll hear over and over again.  We have to keep Americans and America safe.  We have to keep our allies safe.  It’s mentioned by commentators, newscasters, senators, congressmen, presidents, and people. Safe. Safe. Safe.

Except Bush, talk radio personalities, and anyone else who believes that safety is our ultimate priority are all wrong.  The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they designed the oath of the office of the President of the United States:

I, , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Presidents and Congress are to protect our Constitution, not Americans, and in doing so they protect America.  Pure safety is unatainable, and to get as close as we can to pure security means totalitarianism, and no happiness, life or liberty.  Just like with the almost-safe computer sitting in the bottom of the ocean, a purely safe life means being locked in a room in the bottom of the ocean where nobody can harm you.

We need to stop pursuing this idea that the end goal of America and Americans is safety.  I don’t want to live a safe life.  I want to live a fulfilling life, one that’s full of adventure and creation and freedom.  

We need do a better job at educating ourselves about the true risks in life.  The reality is that it’s much more dangerous to drive and pickup a pizza than to fly.  I’m more likely to get hit by lightning than be a victim of terrorism.  

There are dozens and dozens of examples that document how we’re living in an age of extreme safety and relative security, and none of this is due to security checks or military spending or increased wiretapping.  I’d encourage you to do the research and see if you come to the same conclusion.  

Back to the American oath of office.  Think of how natural it would have been to make the chief goal of our President be the security of his people.  Swearing an oath to the constitution was no accident.  Think of how easy it is to make bad decisions if all you care about is safety.

We have a higher calling in life than to be safe.  Most of history’s meaningful changes have been very unsafe affairs.  We should expect our leaders to understand this and we shouldn’t accept safety as our prime directive or even as a goal in and of itself.

 

Goodbye Current Events

johnjpeebles1 Comment

I’m trying something out and it only tangentially happens to correspond with the New Year.  It looks like a resolution, but it’s not.  Essentially, I’m going to unplug from most current events when at all possible.

This flies in the face of my normal desire to read and know about current events obsessively.  I may not be a full fledged news junkie, but I definitely used to read two newspapers pretty extensively, and generally spend large chunks of time reading about current events.  I even used to take daily notes of important events with the goal of being able to identify trends and analyze coverage, particularly longer running items like the 2008 Financial Meltdown or the Arab Spring.  Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I was better off reading well researched books that came out a few months or years later.  I enjoyed the treatment of the events better, they were more informative, and the coverage more balanced, and the whole experience was of course seasoned with hindsight.

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but should yield the following benefits.

More Time

The idea had already been percolating a bit but was reinforced during the last few months of an international move where I literally didn’t have time to follow current events.  The end result was I didn’t care that much.  And I had a lot more time to devote to moving.  Now I’ll have more time to devote to other things.

More Accuracy

There’s a name for a phenomenon (that I don’t have time to research) where you read media coverage of an event or detailed subject which you know a lot about and realize that the article is inaccurate, missing important details, or misses crucial nuance.  You smirk as you realize the reported missed the point or didn’t do the subject justice, then move on to the next article and trust they’re getting it right on all those other subjects on which you’re not an expert.  I’d rather research things in a more classical manner and read books by experts, and challenge their ideas with research.  None of this requires a newspaper subscription or online RSS reader.

A More Informed Citizen

The upcoming presidential election in the United States will probably be one of the biggest wastes of time and money since the last one.  Here’s a great article that surfaced recently which sums up my opinions pretty well: the US political process is dominated by money (94% of the time the candidate with the most money wins) and both political parties are essentially the same.  I’ve seen one blogger call them the Coke and Pepsi parties and I’m convinced it’s true.  Both spend a lot of time telling you they’re different, but at the end of the day, most people wouldn’t be able to objectively tell.  Certainly both parties are hellbent on remaining in power and enriching themselves.  Both are consistently advancing positions that I greatly disagree with and won’t be able to affect by voting for one candidate over another.  For damn sure I could never tell you (and I’d challenge you to honestly reflect for yourself) how one party affected my life compared to another to any measurable degree.

During the previous mid-term elections, I received a polling call that went through every single office and their attendant candidates that was up for election in South Florida, and asked if my choice as a voter would be affected by learning the following information.  All of them had been convicted for some form of fraud, bribery, election campaign funds misappropriation, and more.  The third party candidate calling me made a really good point: everyone in both parties is a criminal!

Ultimately, for the last two elections I’ve ended up spending an hour or so on Politifact for all non-national races, read the presidential candidate’s books, and talked to a few people I trust and made my decision.  I’ve found that the above process educated me significantly more than the breathless campaign coverage I was reading every day.

A More Interesting Person

I’m not going to ignore current events – if people are talking about things that are happening, I’ll tell them I haven’t heard of the event, and they can explain it to me.  It’s better than talking about the weather, it avoids me monologuing on my own opinions which can be a drag to others, and it’ll ultimately make things more interesting for both of us.

A Few Exceptions

I will still maintain a daily reading of technical, work related, and hobby related blogs.  These are intensely interesting and enjoyable, and aren’t really focused around current events most of the time.  I will also maintain a daily eye on the weather and train schedules because this is how I get to work.  I will monitor financial and investment information, but will limit most decisions to being made in a minimum 3-5 year time horizon (which is what I do anyway) and not worry about current doom and gloom.  Any substantive investment strategy should always assume gloom and doom by default and prepare for it, not react to the horrors of the day.

This is Not a New Idea

This is not a new or even novel idea.  I’ve seen this discussed in the book “I Was Blind but Now I See” by James Altucher, I believe it’s referenced in “The Art of Nonconformity” by Chris Guillebeau, and when I really think about it, it’s how I lived the first 15 years of my life without internet access in Asia.  I’m not really worried.

Updated 8 Jan 2011:

Updated thanks to a comment that just came in through email.  The phenomenon I mentioned above was coined by Michael Chrichton and is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.  He also mentioned this in an essay title “Why Speculate?” Thanks “jcs”!

Bucket List Item Completed: Skydiving

johnjpeebles1 Comment

This is probably one of the more generic bucket list items I have.  Everyone has skydiving on their list, but it’s also one that I could have completed at any point and just haven’t out of laziness.  A good friend had his first experience in June out in Vegas and proceeded to become a converted zealot, going all the way for his license within a matter of months, and this convinced myself and a few others down here in South Florida to schedule the date.

I don’t have what I’d call a major fear of heights.  More like a respect for heights.  My dad has what I’d characterize as a major fear of heights – the kind of thing where when you’re walking along a balcony he’s brushing a shoulder against the wall opposite the ledge.  I’m nowhere near that bad but I’m definitely not comfortable on catwalks or other similar spindly high structures.

The whole thing was scheduled very last minute, and I didn’t even find out what time I was meeting my friends until 10PM the previous night, which probably served to push the reality out of my mind.  We drove down to meetup in Hollywood and immediately had a bizarre series of snafus paying for parking that culminated in us paying 10 bucks for 10 hours of parking after several unsuccessful attempts at alternate payment methods.

Piled into the car, the four of us headed south to Homestead where SkyDiveMiami is located.  All of us being technical, we joked how we hoped the experience would be better than their website looked.  We got lost several times along the way but finally made it and as we walked into the office.  Right then a guy in Super Mario Brothers Luigi costume walked through, parachute on his back, helmet and goggles on his head, and proceeded to bellow in an Italian accent: “I’m-a-Luigi and I DROP IT LIKE IT’S A-HOT” while performing several dance moves in a remarkably lithe manner.  I had to admit he was dropping it like it was a-hot.  An onlooker with a shirt that said “Sluts Love Me” laughed and then got yelled at to suit up so he could perform camera duties.

We checked in at the desk and were told to watch a movie which predictably started with a driving musical score and videos of skydivers giving the thumbs up and then cut immediately to a guy with the longest, most impressive beard I’ve ever seen (here he is, judge for yourself).  He began to talk about how there’s no perfect plane, no perfect pilot, no perfect chute, and ACCIDENTS CAN HAPPEN.  He talked about death, and making sure we were willing to risk it all.  I kept looking at his beard.  I started to get a bit nervous.

We then began initialing and signing our way through the single most impressive legal release I could ever imagine.  We signed away our entire humanity.  There were clauses that we agreed to like even if we did sue, and won, we would have to pay all legal fees and winnings, back to ourselves.  We checked that we understood that we could die, and had reflected on this possibility.  We initialed that we had made arrangements to care for our family’s financial future.  We witnessed for each other.  We declined an additional $300 fee that would release us from certain indemnifications.  We were basically scared to death after the completion of those forms.

Punctuated throughout were little interjections from some of the employees who exhorted us to not worry, we would have a blast.  They told us the only part that’s weird is when we jump out first with no chute and the tandem guy jumps afterwards and swims towards us to link up.  It’s got to be great to just see a constant parade of new fear coming in and out of your business each day.  We smiled thinly and began to suit up.

We had decided to do SkyDiveMiami’s highest tandem jump, from 13,500 feet.  This would give us about a minute of free-fall (at roughly 120mph) until we deployed the chute at 5,000 feet, and we’d be strapped to a licensed parachutist instructor who would do most of the work.  I took a lot of comfort from the fact that if something wrong happened, we’d both die, as I’m a strong believer in the alignment of economic incentives.

Suiting up involved donning a union-suit style coverall, a harness, an altimeter, and fitting leather caps and goggles.  I listed myself as 210 pounds, and had to be weighed, where the scale confirmed I was actually 205, a full 20 pounds below the limit.

We waited outside and met our instructors.  Mine was maybe 5 feet tall and announced that “he always got paired with the big guys”.  They were nice and seemed professional, checked each other’s equipment and the eight of us along with one solo jumper climbed up a step ladder and into the plane.  A brief taxi later and we were taking off.  We could see out of a very large doorway that was covered by a plexiglass shield and after a minute or so we were pretty high up and I figured we were ready to jump.  Wrong.  I glanced at my altimeter, and we were at 2,000 feet.  That’s when I started to get pretty nervous.  My instructor saw my glance and told me to relax, it would take us about 15 minutes to get to the proper level.  I glance around and all the instructors were sleeping.  One of them was doing his sixth jump of the day.

At this point I began to get irrationally terrified.  We hadn’t even gotten a damn parking meter to work!  We’d been lost twice on our way!  I was in the plane with my friend Troy, the worst luck guy to fly with in the world: every flight I’ve been on with him was a disaster and we’d been delayed, emergency landed, and seen people arrested on flights we were on together.

Finally we leveled out and we were high enough you could clearly see the ocean, on both sides of Florida. The solo jumper got the thumbs up, shrugged, then just hurled himself out the plane.  That’s when it finally hit me how stupid this was.  I’d had this idea that when you jump out of a moving plane you fly backwards with the wind.   But you don’t.  You drop like a damn rock, straight down.  All of the instructors were talking to my friends, giving them last minute instructions.  Mine wasn’t.  Instead, mine leaned over to one of my friends and shouted, “JUST REMEMBER.  THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS.  OH WAIT!  YOU’VE GOT TO GO!” and then cackled to himself as they knee-walked towards the opening.

Then it was our turn.  When you jump out you’re on your knees, strapped very tightly to your instructor behind you who controls the chute.  You kneel on the edge of the plane and look down and you can barely see the ground you’re so high.  Then you cross your arms, lean your head back where you can see the wing of the plane, and with no count the guy just hurls you forward and out of the plane.  It’s an amazingly terrifying experience, and I was just petrified as we hurtled down at remarkable speed.

One of the things they forget to tell you in the training that was probably the second scariest part of the experience was that at 120mph you have intense wind blowing in your face which makes it hard to catch your breath.  I’ve traveled at 160mph on a motorcycle around a track, and 185mph on straight roads, but that’s with a helmet on.  Stick your head out of the window of a car at 60mph and it can be hard to catch your breath.  I couldn’t catch my breath and I was thinking to myself, great, I’m going to hyperventilate, pass out, and this is going to be so dumb.

After about 15 seconds I managed to to figure out a way to breathe and then realized my brain was working very very slowly.  We were doing turns, and it didn’t feel like we were falling, but I could see the horizon getting closer.  My ears were popping like fireworks.  I tried to remember to look at my altimeter, but I couldn’t, and I lost all track of time.  It seemed like four seconds after we were out of the plane we had deployed the chute.  It got a lot quieter and less scary, until my instructor announced that he was going to make a few comfort adjustments.  He had me hold the chute controls, then started fiddling, and I suddenly dropped in my harness about four inches.  I mentioned we didn’t need to be comfortable.  More fiddling.  I drop another few inches.  Then we began steering the chute around.

Meanwhile, our aforementioned friend Troy had a nice freefall, but when the chute opened, they immediately began spinning around and around at high speeds.  Another member of our party could see the chute spinning like crazy and heard his instructor mention “Uh oh”.  Troy later recounted to us that he got dizzier and dizzier and just closed his eyes.  We don’t really know what happened, something about the chute not deploying quite right, but in the end we all made it just fine.

We glided in and the last bit that was unnerving was that the chutes are amazingly maneuverable, which means you can descend quite quickly if you want to, but as we came in for our landing it was pefect and like stepping off a curb.  My instructor actually apologized for not hittine the 5 foot sand bullseye perfectly.  I couldn’t have cared less.

I had a massive headache, I was shaky from adrenaline, I had slobber coating my entire face, and I couldn’t even really process what had just happened, but we were back without any problems! We all were very grateful to our instructors and the very nice and professional crew at SkyDiveMiami for a very memorable experience.

Steve Jobs

johnjpeeblesLeave a comment

There’s been so much written about Steve Jobs that there’s not much to add.  Like millions of others, I remember the first time I ever used an Apple product.  It was to play Number Munchers and Oregon Trail.  My first Macintosh experience was on an LCII in one of the few airconditioned rooms in Taiwan – my elementary school’s computer lab.  While I was too young to appreciate the differences between the (at the time) very outdated Apple II and our fairly outdated IBM compatible XT Turbo, the Macintosh was clearly completely different.  I managed to swing an editor job on our 5th grade newspaper which afforded me almost unlimited time to learn how it worked.  Everything was exciting on that machine, even word processing!

I bought my very first Apple product in college, the 2nd generation iBook with a 500Mhz G3 processor and OS X.  It was a little underpowered, but the hardware design was incredible and I remember being thrilled when I got several OpenGL school projects to run on Windows, Linux, and my new Mac.

To me, Steve Jobs embodies hope.  A college dropout becomes a billionare.  A man with limited technical skills becomes the an incredible driver of technology.  Fired from his company, failing at NEXT, he stakes almost all of his personal fortune and strikes gold with Pixar.  He affects industry after industry, despite many many setbacks along the way.  Sure, he was a jerk, but that’s a hopeful story too – jerks can learn to movitate people and soften when they get older.  Of course, none of these thoughts are based on personal experience, but it’s the perception I get.  Steve’s life to me is a story of hope triumphing over reality.

I’m excited to read his biography, and I’m sad I never got the chance to meet Steve, except through his products, but here’s to a legacy of hope.