Thursday, September 28, 2006

Crossing Jordan premiere bumped

From TV Squad:

Sorry, Crossing Jordan fans. NBC has pushed back the season premiere, in favor of a new game show hosted by Bob Saget. The game show is called 1 vs 100 and it's a game where one contestant battles 100 other people to win $1 million. It's the American version of a game show that is already popular in Europe. The series premiere is at 8 pm on October 20th, as a lead-in to the season premiere of Las Vegas.

NBC hasn't announced a new premiere date for Crossing Jordan.

Question: Why is Bob Saget still on TV? Has he ever been funny?

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Comnetix redux

Stuff I remembered about Comnetix after publishing the last article:

  • We decided to get a 1-800 number for Boston police officers to call if they were having technical problems with our system. We tried during one meeting to come up with an easy-to-remember number -- 1-800-CALL-BOB was our first choice (Bob was a retired RCMP officer and our head salescritter). A couple of suggestions, 1-800-DUMB-COP and 1-800-NO-DONUT, were nixed by management. We eventually got a number that didn't correspond to any words.
  • On reflection, I think calling Joan (the VP) useless was a little unfair. She had zero technical knowledge, and occasionally asked some dumb questions, but it wasn't her job — she did HR and accounting stuff. I didn't much like her personally, but I did get paid every month, so maybe she was really good at what she did. Joan, if you're reading this, my apologies.
  • One of the guys I worked with at Comnetix (Henri) is the brother of one of the guys I work with at Sybase (Jack).
  • One of the guys I worked with at Comnetix (Greg) left Comnetix about a year before I did and came to work for Sybase, though in the Mississauga office. His brother (Tim) used to work at Watcom (which eventually became Sybase).
  • Security in the Boston Police Department headquarters was a joke. I routinely just walked in the front door and either upstairs to where the IT people were, or downstairs to the server room, and the officer by the front door didn't even look up. The code to by the door lock to the server room was '154', which was the address of the building (154 Berkeley Street). I'm safe in posting this since the BPD headquarters has since moved to a brand new building, presumably with better security.
  • We also had a system in at the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (i.e. the Boston subway / bus cops) — they were far more concerned with security than BPD.
  • We went to a restaurant in Boston for dinner one night, and one of the guys asked for vinegar for his french fries. The waiter looked at him weird, then went away and came back with balsamic vinegar. Americans just don't get it.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Of fingerprint scanners and Elroy Jetson

Before I started at my current job, I worked at a small company in Mississauga called Comnetix. (Well, it was a small company when I worked there. When I left in 1997, there were less than 15 employees, but they've since grown a fair bit.) We made custom software for law enforcement agencies and the like — when I was there, customers included the Insurance Crime Prevention Bureau (of Canada), the RCMP, the Boston Police Department, the Metro Toronto Police, the Spanish National Police, and the Rochester Police Department. By the time I left, I was the team leader of the Boston police system; the system was quite cool. Whenever a person was arrested and booked in Boston, their personal, physical, and crime information was entered into the system, their mugshots were taken with a digital camera, and their fingerprints were scanned using a digital fingerprint scanner (I wrote the driver for that puppy), and everything was stored in a database. They could also take pictures of any scars, tattoos, or other distinguishing marks. The system would then make the information available to the Central Identification unit, who would classify the fingerprints (storing the classification data in the database too), and then perform searches on the classification to see if this person had ever been arrested before. If so, they could update the record to let the people at the booking station know who this person was. This could all happen within minutes.

Once the classification was done, the fingerprint images could be sent electronically to the FBI, and they would be stored in their database as well. (I wrote the code to do that, and BPD was the first police department in the world to be able to do this.) In fact, when this part of the system went live in August of 1995, they made a big deal of sending the first set of real prints to the FBI. Within a couple of hours, the FBI had received the prints, done a search, and determined that the suspect had been arrested several times before, including once for assault with intent to kill, in another state — something the BPD wouldn't have found out for weeks, if not months, with the old system.

We had other cool features in this app, like the ability to create a "lineup" — you chose a particular person in the database, then chose which physical attributes (height, weight, hair/eye colour, race, etc.) you wanted included in the search, and we would find other people in the database that matched (or matched closely) on the criteria you selected. You could then drag and drop the pictures into a photo array and print it off, and you'd have a bunch of pictures of people who look similar, which the officers could then show to witnesses, without having to get your suspect and witness into the police station at the same time.

I once installed a viewing station at the Secret Service office in Boston, so the Secret Service could do searches on the BPD database. While setting stuff up, I was sharing a room with an agent who was looking over a big stack of bills ($20's or $50's I think), checking which were counterfeit and which were real. One particular bill was giving him trouble, and he flagged down another agent who happened to be walking by. He showed her the bill and asked "This is real, isn't it?". The other agent looked at the bill for maybe three seconds before telling him that it was indeed real. I expressed my amazement, and he confirmed to me that she really can tell real money from fake that quickly. I was impressed.

The funniest story from that part of my career was when we were doing some on-site training. We had a test database set up, and during the training as well as testing, we could book ourselves and insert the records into the test database whenever we wanted. One day, I accidentally set the app to talk to the live database, and forgot to reset it back. Then we booked ourselves a few more times. It wasn't long before we realized that these bookings weren't showing up on the other test machines — that's when I figured out what I had done. We had to confess our sin to the Deputy Superintendent of the BPD, and he allowed us to delete the records from the BPD database. There was no mechanism for doing this (once a booking is entered it's supposed to be permanent), so I had to connect to the database directly and enter the SQL manually. However, the FBI link was up at the time, so one of my colleagues had her fingerprints sent to the FBI under the name "Elroy Jetson". (Luckily, only one booking submitted during this time had fingerprints attached to it.) Once we figured that out, we had to get the Deputy Superintendent to issue a court order to get the records expunged from the FBI database. I guess there were some problems with this process, because I got a call from this colleague a number of years later (long after I had left Comnetix), saying that she was now living in the US, and had applied for something (don't remember what) that required an FBI check, and one of these test records popped up in a search. She had to jump through a few hoops, but I think it all got straightened out in the end.

I have to say, I really enjoyed that job, mostly. Not only was the application itself really cool, and working with the police, FBI, Secret Service, and RCMP was cool as well, but we were using NeXTstep, which was just the coolest operating system I've ever used, with an amazingly powerful development environment. I've seen and used Mac OS X a couple of times, and it's quite cool too, which is not surprising, considering it's basically the next generation of NeXTstep.

But the job wasn't perfect. Not only was I a project leader and developer, I was part of the testing team, the documentation team, the technical support team (carried a pager every other week for the better part of three years), the end-user training team, I set up demos for our head salescritter at a couple of sales conferences (on-site -- New York City, Florida, Ottawa), and I was also the company sysadmin. Bonuses we were promised never showed up. The company was privately owned, so stock options were nonexistent. The VP was the president's wife; he was technically savvy as well as a pretty good business man, while she was useless. She once gave me crap for leaving at noon on a Friday without permission — given the amount of unpaid overtime I had put in over the previous couple of years (including staying until 9 or 10 the night before this happened), I figured she could have given me some slack (and I'm still bitter about that 9 years later). And I had one raise in three years. All things considered, I'm perfectly happy in my current job, where I get to the do the stuff I love to do (development), and not the stuff I don't want to do (support). Oh yeah, and my salary is more than double now what it was then.

Funny - I just realized that today I'm wearing the Hard Rock Cafe shirt that I bought on one of my many trips to Boston during my Comnetix years.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Perky

True love is the greatest thing in the world — except for a nice MLT, mutton, lettuce and tomato, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe — they're so perky, I love that.
Miracle Max, The Princess Bride

We had pancakes and peameal bacon for dinner the other day, and had a few pieces of peameal left over. When making my lunch this morning, I put the peameal in a ziplock and made myself two sandwiches with tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise. At lunch time, I planned on nuking the peameal to warm it up, then putting it on the sandwiches. All morning, I found myself looking forward to lunch time. I just finished my lunch, and I must say, I was not disappointed.

I think I'll change the tagline for this blog to something like: "Cut the Chatter — a blog that touches on the important issues of the day". Or maybe that should be "important issues of my day."

Monday, September 18, 2006

Golf tournament

I played in the Deiter's Love Memorial Golf Tournament this past weekend in Strathroy (west of London). I played in it last year as well, and also designed and built the website. The tournament is in memory of Deiter Rombouts, who was born prematurely and needed a liver and bowel transplant, and possibly a stomach and pancreas transplant as well. Deiter passed away at the age of six months while still on the transplant waiting list. These are the same four organs that our friend Sarah received when she was six months old, and that was over nine years ago. While Sarah was in the hospital in London for one of her many surgeries, her mom Cindy met Deiter's parents (Stacy and John) and became friends, and we met them through Cindy. Stacy and John started running this golf tournament and silent auction to raise money and awareness for organ donation, and I am proud to be part of it. <blatant plug>I've signed my organ donation card -- have you?</blatant plug>

I played with my friends Steve, Jeff, and Doug, and we finished the day with a 2 under par 69. I got to use my new driver, and actually hit it pretty well a couple of times. One of those times, I hit it too far, and we used Steve's drive (it's a best-ball tournament) because it was further back and gave us a better shot at the green. (Of course, he used a 5-iron, and I only outdrove him with my big-ass driver by about 30 yards, but still.) The winning team shot 10 under, so we didn't come close to winning (not that we expected to), but we had fun.

Didn't buy anything at the auction this year. I bid on a few items (Tiger-Cat tickets, some outdoor speakers for my dad, and I can't remember what else), but was outbid on all of them. Not true - I actually bid on and won a little green ribbon (for organ donation) charm for Gail, but found out later that she already had one. Silly mistake, but not very expensive ($10), and Gail said it was a very sweet thing to do, so it won me some husband points. Gail got a couple of crafty things, and the boys each got some toys. I bid on and won a putter last year, but I haven't touched it since, since I like the putter I have. I should have called Stacy and donated it back so they could auction it off again this year, but I didn't think about it until a day or two before the tournament. I'll probably donate it to the school silent auction in February.

Coincidence of the week: At last year's tournament, I bought one of those bracelets that everyone is wearing (like the Livestrong ones). This one was green and said "Donate Life". I didn't wear it much during the winter, but other than that, I've worn it almost every day since. I wore it again at the golf tournament, and then when taking it off yesterday, the day after this year's tournament, it broke.

Technorati tags:

Friday, September 15, 2006

My Obi-Wan has no head

Wil Wheaton, already one of my favourite bloggers / writers, posted this article yesterday. Man, did it bring back memories for me. It's all about how Wil went through a phase during his childhood when he played with Star Wars figures, as I did. He remembers to this day which ones he had, which ones he had that were broken (and what was broken about them), and which ones he wanted, as I do.

My first SW figure was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Eventually, his head broke off, and despite several efforts to glue it back on, it ended up just rolling around in the box where I kept the figures. I also had:

I always thought Hammerhead was the coolest, even though he was only in the first movie for a couple of scenes. That was it for figures, and the only vehicle I had was a landspeeder (and Wil has a great story about one of those), but I was jealous of my friend Jody who had the an X-Wing Fighter (the wings open up when you press down on R2-D2!) and Darth Vader's TIE Fighter. Spoiled rotten, that kid was.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

In 15 years, I'll be 52

Warning: Hockey article ahead. See you later, John.

So Rick DiPietro signed a 15 year $67.5 million contract with the Islanders the other day. This means he's getting $4.5 million per year until 2021. There is even a clause in there that says that if he gets injured (hockey-related injury) and has to retire, he still gets paid. If he decides to retire for any other reason, the deal is null and void, but why would he? Great deal for Rick, but why in hell would the Islanders do this? He's now on contract until he's 40, and very few NHL goalies are still playing, let alone competitive, at age 40. If he doesn't pan out as a top level goalie, you're still paying him that whole time, since this contract makes him untradeable. No other team would want to take that contract on — especially if the Islanders want to trade him because he didn't pan out.

You could argue that DiPietro might still be a competitive goalie in 10 years when he's 35, which may be true, so maybe the Islanders are thinking of it as a 10-year deal "amortized" over 15 years. If he happens to play the last 5 years as well, then that's a bonus for them. Looking at it that way, he's getting $6.75 million per year for 10 years (paid out over 15). The highest paid goalie in the league, Nikolai Khabibulin, currently makes $6.75 million per year (coincidence?). Is DiPietro the same caliber goalie as Khabibulin? No, so this way of thinking doesn't make much sense either.

Granted, the $4.5 million a year is not a huge amount by NHL standards, so if the cap goes down, it shouldn't affect them too much (it's not like it's A-Rod's "$250 million over 10 years" albatross), but I think it's still a big risk for the Islanders to take on an unproven goalie.

Update: A-Rod's contract is actually $252 million over 10 years, but hey, what's another $2 million?

Technorati tags:

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Great Gilligan Conspiracy

If you thought Gilligan's Island was just a silly comedy show, think again. The truth has finally been revealed — it was really a crime drama.

It makes you wonder about other shows as well; the most obvious one being: why did so many murders happen whenever Jessica Fletcher was around on Murder, She Wrote? She lives in a quiet little Maine town — which has a murder rate of one a week. She goes to visit friends in another town, someone dies. She goes on vacation, someone dies. Mystery writer or serial killer? You decide.

Thanks to cahwyguy for the Gilligan's Island link.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Spiritual Machines

I'm in the middle of re-reading The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. It's a very interesting read: all about what might (will?) happen in the very near future when computers are able to process information as fast as or faster than the human brain. Will they begin to actually think? Will they become self-aware? Will they grow a conscience? Will they, as the title suggests, become spiritual?

One of the things I found most fascinating was his descriptions of how the human brain works — sometimes he puts this process into computer terms, which is good for geeks like me. This particular part stuck with me:

When a batter hits a fly ball, it follows a path that can be predicted from the ball's initial trajectory, spin, and speed, as well as wind conditions. The outfielder, however, is unable to measure any of these properties directly and has to infer them from his angle of observation. To predict where the ball will go, and where the fielder should also go, would appear to require the solution of a rather overwhelming set of complex simultaneous equations. These equations need to be constantly recomputed as new visual data streams in. How does a ten-year-old Little Leaguer accomplish this, with no computer, no calculator, no pen and paper, having taken no calculus classes, and having only a few seconds of time?

The answer is, she doesn't. She uses her neural nets' pattern-recognition abilities, which provide the foundation for much of skill formation. The neural nets of the ten-year-old have had a lot of practice in comparing the observed flight of the ball to her own actions. Once she has learned the skill, it becomes second nature, meaning that she has no idea how she does it. Her neural nets have gained all the insights needed: Take a step back if the ball has gone above my field of view; take a step forward if the ball is below a certain level in my field of view and no longer rising, and so on. The human ballplayer is not mentally computing equations. Nor is there any such computation going on unconsciously in the player's brain. What is going on is pattern recognition, the foundation of most human thought.

One key to intelligence is knowing what not to compute. A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.


It should be somewhat obvious, but it was a bit of a revelation to me when I first read it. Now it seems that with neural net software, computers are starting to do pattern recognition almost as well as humans. Kurzweil talks in this book (which is 6 years old, BTW) about computers that can transcribe human speech (spoken at a normal speed) with almost perfect accuracy, and computers that can recognize faces — to the point where some banks trust their computers to perform face recognition on people to provide automatic cheque cashing, i.e. if the computer fails, real money is being given to the wrong people. The bank would have to be pretty damn confident in the face recognition software to make that puppy available to the general public.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Movie reviews

Movies Gail and I have seen in the last week or so:

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: I enjoyed it, though I found it kind of long. The sword fight on the big wheel was neat, but just kept going and going... I also found the scene where Elizabeth yells and throws rocks at Will, Jack, and the Commodore rather weak and out of character for her. I liked the ending though. Maybe it's just me, but I think the way they ended it left it wide open for another sequel!

Superman Returns: Excellent. I like Kevin Spacey as an actor, but for some reason I didn't think he could pull off Lex Luthor. I was wrong. Brandon Routh plays Superman, and he must have watched the original Superman movie a zillion times as preparation, because he captures Christopher Reeve as both Clark Kent and Superman really well. When we watched the original Superman the next day, we were surprised at how many lines in this movie were copied from the first one.

V for Vendetta: Excellent acting, intriguing story. We didn't know who the actor playing V was; turned out to be Hugo Weaving (Elrond from LOTR, Mr. Smith from The Matrix). He was excellent — you'd have to be a good actor to pull off a character like that without showing your face (a la Andy Serkis as Gollum in LOTR, though Gollum's face was kind of based on his anyway). Natalie Portman was very good as well, and she had an interesting accent; it sounded more South African than English at times.

Superman: Apart from the clothes and things like smoking in the office, it's not as dated as I was expecting. The special effects weren't all that bad, either. Gene Hackman was a great Lex Luthor.

Superman II: I remember this from my youth (I was 11 when it was released) as being way better than the first one. Boy, was I wrong. The story was good, but the special effects were really bad. Not just bad, awful. Not just awful, terrible. Half of Gene Hackman's lines sounded dubbed, and after reading the IMDB entry, it looks like they were. When watching any superhero movie, you have to have a certain level of suspension of disbelief, but even still, there were a lot of "yeah, right" moments. Is Lois Lane really stupid enough to jump into the rapids on a hunch? How could Lex Luthor build a holographic projector while in jail? Superman spent a long time figuring out who he was and why he was sent to Earth, and he uses his powers to benefit mankind; would he really give up his powers for Lois (the hell with mankind!), when (a) she didn't ask him to and may not want him to, and (b) they've been "together" for only a few hours? Where did Lois and Superman get the car they drove to the diner after he lost the ability to fly? Once he decided to go back, did he really just leave Lois and start walking north again? I'm amazed this movie did well enough to warrant another sequel, let alone two.

X-Men: The Final Stand: Pretty good. Considering it's the final X-Men movie (I believe), it was a fitting ending to the story. Having Rebecca Romijn naked didn't hurt either.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: As expected, it's like watching a live-action video game. The plot was secondary to the action and effects. I'm not a big fan of Angelina Jolie, but she pulled off the "action star" role here pretty well.

Lara Croft: Cradle of Life: Better than the first one, but still not very compelling.

18 Blocks: Very good. Bruce Willis is convincing as an older cop who seems like he's just counting the days until he can retire, while rapper Mos Def is excellent as the kid he's escorting to the courthouse. I really enjoyed this movie.