Category Archives: General

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Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Lisa makes the best T-shirts! This Christmas gift might just be perfect.

Posted in Diabetes, General, I am Rembrandt | 3 Comments

An Experiment with SSE

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Updated: 6 February 2012.

Techie people, the good stuff—code, results, more info—is below the fold.

Friends, I’ve been in my head a bit recently. That’s not necessarily bad—it’s a nice neighborhood, really—but one of the dark alleys I’ve had to walk past a lot lately involves way too many imposter-type feelings. As I previously mentioned, we’re hiring, and we’re looking for someone to do many of the same job tasks that I do. Being mostly self-taught at software engineering and computer science, I have to remind myself that I have more than a dozen years of experience; whereas, for most of the people whose résumés cross my desk, they do not.

It’s sometimes hard to silence those voices that say “everyone else is more accomplished than you.” Even though it’s not true, I’ve been meaning to pick up some more skills so that I can (a) try to feel like less of an imposter and (b) write more awesome code to make our product more awesome and help us fend off our competitors and make more loot.

So yesterday afternoon, rather than coming up with (yet another) daunting list of all of the places where I feel like I should learn more, I just picked one that I already knew about: Streaming SIMD Extensions, a.k.a. SSE. For me, the best way to learn is to write a program that does something (theoretically) useful, run into real-life obstacles, and workaround the pitfalls I encountered. Practice, practice, practice.

My dear readers who don’t program, you can now safely navigate away for another day without guilt. The rest of the post is rather technical and describes how I took an example I found online, made it work with gcc, and got a 4x speedup by using SSE. A speedup and happier outlook. Not bad for a few hours on a Saturday!

Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Fodder for Techno-weenies, General | 1 Comment

Criticizing Brainstorming

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Friends, I think I might have something interesting say in the next couple of days. Until then, here are some more excerpts, this time from Cliff Kuang’s Fast Company article “The Brainstorming Process Is B.S. But Can We Rework It?”. And, yes, it also has that contrarian, all-those-ideas-from-the-forties-through-the-seventies-were-pretty-much-wrong flavor (with at least a hint of maybe-it-was-partly-right-but-we-know-better-now).

The business practice of brainstorming has been around with us so long that it seems like unadorned common sense: If you want a rash of new ideas, you get a group of people in a room, have them shout things out, and make sure not to criticize, because that sort of self-censoring is sure to kill the flow of new thoughts. . . .

[Alex Osborn, the 1940s ad man and inventor of brainstorming] thought, quite reasonably, that creativity was both brittle and fickle: In the presence of criticism, it simply couldn’t wring itself free from our own minds. We could only call our muses if judgments didn’t drag us down. Osborn claimed that this very brainstorming process was the secret to BBDO’s durable creativity, allowing his ad guys to produce as many as 87 ideas in 90 minutes—a veritable avalanche. “The brainstorm had turned his employees into imagination machines,” writes Jonah Lehrer in a long, excellent article in The New Yorker. But as Lehrer argues, the only problem with all this is that brainstorming is total bullshit. . . .

You’re More Creative Working Alone: “Putting people into big groups doesn’t actually increase the flow of ideas. Group dynamics themselves—rather than overt criticism—work to stifle each person’s potential.”
Criticism Improves the Brainstorming Process: “Usually, inventions often begin when an inventor spots a problem. Good ideas usually don’t hang by themselves, unattached. They come about as solutions. Thus, allowing criticism into a room full of people trying to brainstorm allows them to refine and redefine a problem.”
Creativity Is About Happenstance, Not Planning: “Too much familiarity bred groupthink. Too little meant that they didn’t have enough chemistry to challenge each other. The most productive groups were those with a baseline of familiarity but just enough fresh blood to make things interesting. . . . Studies have shown that the most successful groups of scientists also work in extremely close physical proximity. Just being around another creative person is vital to the process . . .”

Posted in General, Life Lessons, This is who we are | Leave a comment

Now Hiring Image Processing Software Engineers

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Jeff Mather

My group at work—the Image Processing and Geospatial Computing Group at MathWorks—is hiring a couple of software engineers. One of them could be you.

We need someone with GPU and multicore programming skills. We’re looking for experience with CUDA, OpenCL, OpenMP, Intel’s Threading Building Blocks, or similar technologies. If you’re into making algorithms run wicked fast, you should definitely apply.

The other position focuses on image processing and code generation. If you like implementing image processing algorithms and converting MATLAB code to C code, then this is the job for you.

I’ve been at The MathWorks for almost fourteen years now, and it’s a really great company with an excellent corporate culture, competitive compensation, fantastic benefits, and lots of perks. Because everyone uses MATLAB and because we’ve made some very sensible business decisions over the last 28 years, it’s a very stable company to work for. (Did I mention that we’re putting up our fourth building in our Natick campus? And I think I also mentioned that the entire worldwide staff went on a cruise a few years ago.)

If image processing isn’t your thing, we have dozens of other positions open. Everything from web development to legal department work. Human resources to customer service. Technical writing to application engineering and consulting. Marketing to program management. QE, sales, usability, and more software development positions than you can shake a stick at.

Come, help us accelerate the pace of engineering and science worldwide. And if you do apply, tell them I sent you.

Posted in General, Software Engineering | Leave a comment

Age of Majority

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Jeff Mather

Eighteen years ago today, Lisa and I had our first “official” date. We watched Bill Clinton give hist first “State of the Union” address to Congress. Aww . . .

Now, our love has finally reached the age of majority. It can vote, form contracts, go to the casino, and buy lottery tickets and cigarettes legally. It no longer has the luxury of being sent to juvie for minor infractions. In New Hampshire it can ride a motorcycle without a helmet. In Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, it can buy its own booze.

It’s a brave new world for our relationship.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Hurry, Christmas! Don’t Be Late!

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Jeff Mather

I’ve been laboring all week under the impression that it’s the last day of the workweek. I actually awoke Tuesday morning when the alarm went off wondering (a) “Why is the alarm going off?” and (b) “Is today Saturday or Sunday?” And it’s just gone downhill from there. Everyday after work I’ve been positive that not only is tomorrow Saturday but that I would also be celebrating Christmas on the next day.

sigh

Anyway, here’s a few pictures and some updates . . . bullet-point style!

Last Saturday Lisa and I went to New York for the day to visit a few galleries. The “Calder 1941″ exhibit at Pace’s 57th gallery was amazing! And Nan Goldin’s “Scopophilia” show at Matthew Marks is worth a trip to Chelsea. Our day-trip occurred 52 weeks after the trip where we met Kim, Gina, Caroline, and Allison. Time flies!
Sunday we traveled into Cambridge to see “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Lisa had been looking forward to it for months, and it didn’t disappoint. It was our second trip into Cambridge in as many weeks. The previous weekend we attended an alumni event there, and I got a shout-out from the new president of the college. Evidently, we engineers from liberal arts schools are rare beasts.
I haven’t gone for a run since last Thursday, when I tested the waters with an easy three-mile treadmill workout. The next day my foot was a little cranky again, so I’m taking some more time off running. I’m still riding and swimming, but I miss my long runs and my speedwork sessions.
Speaking of swimming, I got a bit depressed Monday and yesterday when I realized that the “really good” triathletes in my races cover the same distance in half the time it takes me. So I talked to my sports psychologist (Lisa) who helped me with some perspective: I’m not a super-fast swimmer—as long as Dara is at the pool, I’ll never be the fastest—but I shouldn’t worry so much as long as I’m still making progress. If I put too much pressure on myself, then I won’t have any fun. And, even though it’s really hard for me to seek assistance, I need to ask some of my of peeps and/or a coach to look at what I’m doing and give me some pointers. (I find it difficult to work at something for a long time and not be as good at it as I believe I can be. It’s good that it keeps me motivated, but I’m trying to work on managing frustration.)
When I went to the pool this morning, I decided I was just going to swim without worrying about times or how much progress I am (not) making or other people’s abilities. Part of this involved changing the way that I talk to myself while swimming; if I can’t make the voices in my head say positive things, perhaps I can give them something else to talk about. My inner boatswain kept me going with this conversation: “We’re going to do three things today: stop dropping my glide arm so much after entry; roll from side to side better during the stroke; and pull through the whole stroke farther. Bup bup bup!” That seemed to work. Even though I wasn’t worrying about times, I was encouraged by the splits I saw. Turns out, I swam the fastest ever by almost a minute per mile. Yay!

What’s new with you?

Posted in General, New York, OPP, Photography, Swimming | 1 Comment

Progress Report

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Jeff Mather

I went for a run today on the treadmill. (I like watching “The Walking Dead” while I run and go nowhere. It seems appropriate for the brainlessness of the treadmill.) It was my first run since I felt the pain of plantar fasciitis appear six miles into my easy, seven mile, recovery-week run on Sunday. Even though I didn’t feel any pain this morning when I got out of bed (the time when it’s usually worst) I only ran three easy miles. I don’t want to push my recovery.

And tomorrow morning, I’m going back to the pool for the first time since last Friday. I had such a great swim a week ago that I planned to write that evening about how awesome it was. Except, by the time the evening rolled around, I couldn’t raise my left arm high enough without pain to use the computer. After five days off, I probably could have gone back yesterday, but I didn’t want to push that either.

Being injured was hard. Being doubly injured was ten times worse. I’m so happy to be well enough to get back to training. *touch wood*

(I’m not a superstitious or magical-thinking thinking kind of person, though I am known to indulge in two things. When things are going really well, I don’t like to talk about it. Everything could suddenly change. Why? Hubris, of course. It’s best to just keep going quietly as long as things are going well, all the while expecting that bad things could happen at any moment. . . . I also throw salt over my shoulder when I spill some, because throwing salt is fun.)

Friends, I am not good at being injured. The first few days were the most difficult. On Monday, I definitely had my cranky pants on. I tend to arrive at the worst possible conclusions: I’ll be injured for a long time; I won’t be able to do the events that I’ve signed up for; I won’t be able to achieve my goals; I won’t be able to be who I want to be. I’m a very goal-oriented person, and I derive a lot of my self-worth from setting and meeting them. (Lisa and I debate whether or not this is not a good way of thinking. At any rate, I need to remember to take the long view.)

I’m trying to be better at handling the occasional injury, and I feel grateful that each of my recent issues were very minor in the great scheme of things. And I need to start working on my injury prevention.

So what was I going to write on Friday? Given that I already injured myself, there’s no fate to tempt by talking about how great my swim on Friday was.

I’m not very fast yet, but I’m consistent during my workouts. I also think I’m improving my technique: I have started to feel my catch more, and I’m starting to see how to generate power during my stroke. Despite these improvements—which may or may not have caused my shoulder problem—I was starting to wonder whether I was actually getting faster or not. After all, the whole point of working on technique is to reduce my times, and I was much faster in the open-water over the summer than I ever have been at the pool. But what about my times just at the pool?

I went back to the historical record (a.k.a., mapmyrun.com). Turns out, I am swimming faster—and not just a little. Last Friday, I swam a bit over a mile at 36:12/mile pace. That’s two minutes faster than on Halloween and more than three minutes faster than just before my first triathlon. At this time last year, I swam at a 43:00/mile pace . . . and I wasn’t even going a full mile. This is a great trend, and I hope to keep it going. (And for the record, the first time I went to the pool, I swam six lengths in twenty-five minutes. That’s 277 minutes per mile.)

See you at the pool!

Posted in General, Historical Record, Life Lessons, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 1 Comment

Outing

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Jeff Mather

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .

Yesterday, my work group went into Boston for an outing: lunch at Legal Seafood’s “Test Kitchen” and then a guided tour of the Institute of Contemporary Art. I had a great time. The food was delicious, and the art was “interesting.”

I know! Two contemporary art museum visits in three weeks. Crazy! It’s hard spending so much time thinking about art (mostly) on a meta-level: “What is the art saying about art?” But there were a few pieces that really spoke to me, and I got to spend part of the afternoon with my girlfriend, Maggie Cheung, while taking in Isaac Julien’s ~~film~~ nine-screen installation TEN THOUSAND WAVES. Fun fun fun!

Posted in 101 in 1001, Cycling, General, I am Rembrandt | 3 Comments

Floating Down the Amazon, Slowly

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Jeff Mather

We have received new release date information related to the order you
placed on October 19, 2010 (Order# [snipped]). The item(s) listed below
will actually ship sooner than we originally expected based on the new
release date:

Alec Soth, John Gossage "John Gossage & Alec Soth: The Auckland Project"
Previous estimated arrival date: January 05, 2012
New estimated arrival date: December 15, 2011

You know, Amazon, I wouldn’t actually be crowing about the fact that you’re shipping something “sooner than originally expected” when the new delivery estimate was 420 days after the original estimate—so much longer that you had to send yet another e-mail telling me to enter new credit card information because the old one had expired in the interim. I especially disliked the way that you dribbled out little notices over the last fourteen months telling me to wait just a little bit longer and giving a new completely made up delivery date. (The aforementioned credit card e-mail is the only reason I have any confidence that you might actually have something to ship this time. Of course, I could have canceled, but that’s really not the point here.)

Don’t get me wrong; I still like you, Amazon, but you’re no longer seem as awesome as you were a couple years ago. For the first I’m starting to wonder about your supply chain and ability to fulfill orders. The main reason I keep coming back to you is price, but a large part is also trust. When you say something is in stock and available, I believe it will ship and arrive on the dates you listed. Normally you’re pretty good, but this isn’t the first time this has happened. (Usually, it’s for limited run art books like this one.) If more of this happens, I might have to reassess my position.

Now, I just wonder how long I’ll have to wait for my PhotoQuai 2011 book to arrive. . . .

Commande n° 	[snipped]
Date d'expédition : 	16 novembre 2011
Destination : 	Natick, MA, United States
Date de livraison estimée : 	6 décembre 2011

Suivez votre colis
Date 			Heure 	Lieu	 	Détails de l'événement
22 novembre 2011 	18:04 	Croydon 	Scan de départ
22 novembre 2011 	15:44 	Croydon 	Colis reçu par le transporteur

Updated 12 December 2011 — Hey hey! Both books arrived today. Since the original post last Friday, I have since read that if you’re ordering something from Amazon.fr, Amazon.jp, etc., it’s a good idea to use the somewhat more expensive expedited shipping option. It seems that returned deliveries after selecting the normal shipping method is somewhat de rigueur, on account of the super-saver shipping company not being very good at what they do when it comes to shipping to the USA. (Despite having the book in my hands, the DHL Global Alliance tracker still says that it’s in Croydon. Ha!)

Posted in Book Notes, General, Whining | 1 Comment

What (Kinda) Works Now

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Jeff Mather

Chris sent me a message saying that someone might ask me about running with type-1 diabetes. I haven’t yet heard from him/her, but it got me thinking about what I’m doing now and how it’s going. It’s not perfect, of course, but I’m actually in a pretty good place.

Let’s start with the big disclaimers. First, this is what (kinda) works for me. Your diabetes may vary; it likely will. Second, this has only recently started working for me; it could all change tomorrow. Third, it assumes that you use an insulin pump and that your basal and bolus rates are correct-ish; mine are getting there. Finally, I can’t consistently reproduce what I do in training when I’m racing; something always seems to happen.

Remember, three big things impact BGs during exercise: insulin, food, and intensity. (There are other things, but these are the big ones that you can control.)

Active Insulin: I tend to workout when I have no (or, at least, minimal) insulin on board. For example, I swim and do my long running/cycling first thing in the morning before any boluses. And when I workout in the afternoon, it’s been 4-5 hours since my lunch bolus. This means that there’s very little extra insulin to bring down my blood sugar. When I do have rather high BGs (but no ketones) because I misjudged a meal, for example, I will sometimes give myself a little insulin. I’m really conservative doing this, though, since it usually brings me down more than I think it will.

Basal Insulin: I am starting to think that changing my basal insulin has less of an effect (for me) than I had originally suspected. This might be because my basal rates are fairly low now, or it could be that my body is better at using fat and carbs together than it was in the past. Who knows? Anyway, when I run or ride my bike, I set a 30% reduction 1-2 hours before I start. Usually longer in the afternoon and shorter in the morning, since I like sleeping. When I swim, I set a 0% basal rate (i.e., no insulin) starting 45-or-so minutes before I hop in the water. There are three reasons: (1) I’m skittish when it comes to insulin and water, (2) it’s similar to what happens during triathlons, where I need to detach from my pump to leave it in transition before hopping in the water, and (3) it seems to work.

Food Before: Food is not the best part of the three for me. I want to eat more before I train, because food is fuel, and I hate running out of steam. (We’re remarkably like people without diabetes in this respect.) Food normally means insulin, which violates that whole “minimal insulin on board” thing. But I’m working on getting myself in a mindset where I can experiment with small amounts of insulin to cover pre-athletic carbs. High glycemic foods still spike my BGs when I’m working out, often more than I would like. Lower glycemic things do better, but quantity counts; 20g of carbs from Greek yoghurt about 10 minutes before I did a two-hour run worked well yesterday, the first time I tried it. Be careful here.

Food During: I tend to eat like I don’t have diabetes when I bike or run. It’s just how it works for me. I eat an energy gel every 45 minutes to keep up my energy. I also carry a full tube of glucose tablets with me, just in case. And I drink water. Water is important.

Food and Insulin After: I find that I always need to give myself insulin after I’m done exercising. I haven’t yet figured out how much to give, but I usually bolus the full amount of any correction I would need (or enough to bring me down 25 mg/dL [1.5 mmol] if my BGs are in range). After really hard workouts, I like a protein-rich snack with carbs. (Odwalla’s Chocolate Protein Monster is my favorite.) These carbs and protein are important for recovery, and I find it necessary to bolus the full amount for this snack, even though I will eventually be more insulin sensitive for the next 24 hours after big workouts.

Frequency: It helps to have a regular frequency, usually three or four times per week (or more). If I workout at least this often—although I can’t remember the last time I did less—my insulin sensitivity stays much more “normal” than if I don’t. Consistency is key.

Supplies: I bring these things with me on my workouts.

A full tube of glucose tablets
My pump (enclosed in a Zip-Lock bag to keep perspiration from killing it)
My BG meter when I go on longer runs or when I’m curious about what’s happening on shorter outings. I use the OneTouch Ultra Mini just for exercise.
Energy gels. I’m not very brand-loyal; I like vanilla and chocolate Gu and Clif Shots and just about any Hammer Gel flavor.
Water (in a FuelBelt Sprint Palm Holder)
I also carry about $10-15 with me in case I need to buy some extra food.

There are some other things I like, but they don’t have anything to do with diabetes preparedness. I have a Petzl Tikka headlamp, which is great for running on these dark afternoon; I’ve never had a jacket as nice as my Asics one; and I need shorts and pants with pockets . . . and a drawstring. (Without the drawstring, all of the extra stuff in my pockets makes ‘em fall right off.)

Good luck! And just remember, do whatever works; there’s no single right way.

Posted in Cycling, Diabetes, General, Life Lessons, Reluctant Triathlete, Running, Swimming | 7 Comments

All Politics is Horse-racing

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Jeff Mather

I’ll confess. I bought my first e-book over the weekend.

See, it was like this. Saturday night Lisa was out singing her big, wonderful heart out in the second of three holiday concerts. I stayed home, since some friends and I were going to take it in on Sunday before going to a post-concert dinner and Muppet movie viewing together with Lisa. So there I was sitting on the sofa (with the cat sleeping on my lap) catching up on a week’s worth of snail mail, writing odds-and-ends and worry and bullshit in my journal, plotting out my 12-mile running route for Sunday morning, and watching TiVo’ed “BBC World News” and “Charlie Rose” episodes.

I go back-and-forth between liking and loathing Charlie’s show.

Shoulder Jeff #1: “He’s the voice of the American, white, male, moneyed, center-right Washington/NYC-based establishment. While his guests have a variety of opinions, they helped talk you into supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq . . . or, at least, not opposing it.”

Shoulder Jeff #2: “True, true. But his guests also talk about all of those things that interest you. And since you don’t read as much as non-diabetes/triathlon stuff as you used to, he’s bringing those opinion-makers opinions to you. Besides, you only seem to write in your journal when you’ve been reading the New York Times, watching Charlie, or traveling. Clearly you need him and his guests for inspiration. Plus, you still have Terri Gross’s daily NPR show/podcast/tumblr Fresh Air for balance. Anyway, it’s good background noise while Lisa is away.”

Shoulder Jeff #1: “Okay, well at least be careful. Especially of his guests with ties.”

All true, little shoulder Jeffs.

The last episode I watched had three 40-to-60-something guys (all wearing neckties . . . except maybe John Meacham) sitting around his table talking about the GOP presidential ~~clown parade~~ candidates. It was not a great interview, but it made me want to read their little book: Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back. It’s one of those “insiders traveling with the candidates tell you about the presidential sausage being made” works that I always like reading in Newsweek after the election.

Except this wasn’t a real book at all. It was one of those “electronic” books. Did I really want to buy a bunch of bits to read on my iPod?

Shoulder Jeff #1: “Why don’t you start, Jeff’s reactionary psyche voice?”

Shoulder Jeff #2: “Oh goody! Okay, I have a list. You won’t actually own anything. What if the forces enabling DRM decide one day that you aren’t licensed to read it anymore? And you won’t be able to lend it out after you’ve read it. And when you’re done where will it go? There’s no bookshelf-able “thing.” If your hard drive crashes, it will be gone. (Well, okay, not gone gone . . . gone-until-you-redownload it gone.) And *gasp* it will be hard to read page after page on a smaller-than-a-notecard sized thing. Plus you’re going to encourage the publishers not to sell real books anymore.”

Shoulder Jeff #1: “WTF, man? It’s not like the words are going to be different. And do you really want to keep this 73-page gem around for your never-to-exist grandchildren to pick up randomly off the bookshelf. ‘Oh look, that Michelle Bachman person sounded cray cray forty years ago.’ Riiiight. Or maybe you’re ‘going to need it for part of a major research project’ in the future? Yeah, okay. Listen. You’ve been buying virtual iTunes music for the last seven years, *and* you still buy CDs when you come across amazing whole albums. Plus it’s just $2.99.”

So I bought the e-book.

(That last paragraph was actually supposed to be the majority of this dispatch, but I got carried away. Sorry.)

Posted in Book Notes, General, Hoarding, This is who we are | 2 Comments

Before There Was Facebook: A Short, Subjective, Incomplete Insider’s History of PlanetAll

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Jeff Mather

This is one of the posts that I wrote on Wednesday during the great NaBloPoMo purge of 2011.

My first job out of college was as a “Customer Service Ambassador” at PlanetAll, a startup in Cambridge, Mass. Before there was Facebook, there were MySpace and Friendster. Before there was Friendster there were PlanetAll and SixDegrees. We were bigger and more successful than our rival, but you’ve probably never heard of either of us.

PlanetAll was an early online community, possibly the earliest social network site. It wanted to be Facebook, but it didn’t know it. Like LinkedIn, it let you keep track of your professional details and make connections. Like (early) Facebook it let you join groups and post messages to the group and share information about high school reunions and useful stuff like that. (If YouTube had existed, it would have let you share links to cute pet videos.) Unlike Facebook it was thought up by a guy after his graduation so that he could keep in touch with people. (Unlike Zuckerburg, who invented FB as a college student so that he could keep track of people down the hall.)

It had good press, back in the day when magazines like PC World and Wired mattered. It had lots of venture capital. It had a shit-ton of newly minted MIT CompSci grads to write code for the web site and for an app to synchronize contact data with your Palm Pilot. (Remember those?)

But what it never had was a profit. In the six months in 1997-1998 that I was there, they burned through a lot of cash. And then one day—just after Christmas—there was a staff meeting telling us about the half of the staff that they let go (including my boss and 2/3 of my customer service cronies).

That’s when I started revising my résumé and checking out who was hiring in the Boston area. It’s good that I left, but it was hard hearing the news a few months later that Amazon bought PlanetAll along with another company for $280 million. True, I had exercised what few stock options were available to me before I left, but if I’d stayed a little longer, I would be writing this trip down memory lane in a house that I could have paid for in one shot.

Why did Amazon buy PlanetAll? It’s because of you and your friends and everyone that you know. Amazon wanted the customer list of PlanetAll to fold into its then-emerging community features: think wishlists and recommendations. And they wanted the idea behind PlanetAll; Amazon used PlanetAll as part of its patent application on social networking.

Basically Amazon saw the potential of PlanetAll better than the executives in the company did. The people running the company thought in terms of “contacts” and always-up-to-date “connections” and hoped that these early social networking ideas would encourage you to come to the web site often enough and long enough so that they could make enough ad “impressions” to turn a profit one day. Unlike Facebook, the web wasn’t mature enough to keep you on the site long enough or to make you want to come back. It just wasn’t interactive enough. No chat. No posting of photos or videos. No good way to see a stream of status updates.

They web just wasn’t ready to be used as a platform. In fact, the primary way of communicating was the pre-Web: e-mail. They built a “mail cannon” to deliver all of the status updates and class newsletters and jokes-of-the-day and swingers ads and whatnot. While you did need to visit the site to make new connections or join new groups, the tools for finding people to link were primitive, and it never got a critical mass of users.

Plus the technology often failed. Everything was hacked together. I learned SQL so that I could fix database problems and restart stalled processes. I learned shell scripting so that I could relaunch the mail cannon after deleting lots of unset messages. (Sorry if yours was one of them.) And I learned SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) so that I could pretend I was a computer and debug why the mail cannon wasn’t working.

In a nutshell, PlanetAll was a good idea that hatched before its time. It failed to thrive in a web ecosystem that wasn’t nourishing enough to keep it going. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t successful or important. Part of $280 million is a lot of loot just for an idea. Then again, PlanetAll’s part of $280 million is a minuscule fraction of all of Facebook’s $100 billion current valuation.

Posted in General, History, Life Lessons, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2011 | Leave a comment

Closing the Books on November

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Jeff Mather

Here we are: November 30th. The last day of November. The last day of post-something-everyday month. I feel this year’s NaBloPoMo has gone better than last year’s, and I’m thinking about some possible tweaks for next year. Maybe I will take a little hiatus starting tomorrow, using the time to read books on my reading list and further purge the office of mental baggage. We’ll see when I’m moved to ~~post~~ write something new next.

One thing I had hoped to do a month ago was to clear out a bunch of the things I had in mind to post. I posted roughly half of them. Yay! This dispatch aims to tidy up some loose ends. It will probably be long, and it might be rambling. Beware! If anything turns out to be just a bit too long or important, I’ll break it out into its own post.

It’s a good time to clear the decks. Lisa is out for the evening, I’m streaming a concert by Cœur de Pirate (mp3), and I’m in the mood to write. In fact, I’m in the mood to do just about anything to take my mind off the fact that I’m basal testing and have to skip dinner. Fortunately, at lunch I had some of the very delicious Comté cheese that we bought in Montréal last weekend; I hope that it will fortify me for another four-or-so hours when I can eat a very late (10PM) dinner.

Oh, one more thing before I get going with the things I had intended to write about. I’ve been listening to (and loving) the new album by Caracol. Unfortunately, it isn’t available in the US yet. (Next year, she hopes.) But you can stream the tracks from the web site. It’s so good! In my book, it’s one of my Top 5 for 2011. Go check it out and tell me what you think and what albums/CDs/whatever you really liked this year.

On with the show.

Basal Testing: I hate basal testing. I don’t think anybody who uses an insulin pump likes to do it. Why would we? It involves eating a normal meal, waiting at least three hours since the last insulin bolus, skipping the next meal, waiting 4-6 hours after the normal meal time to eat again, and recording blood glucose every two hours (or so). And that’s just during the daytime. At night, the requirement is to go to bed without a snack and then wake up at 1:00 and 4:00 (for example) to test.

Ideally, you see an awesome, tight range of numbers that make you feel confident that your basal (background) insulin rates are correct. But if there’s too much movement one way or another, you have to stop. This means you get to eat early, but it also means that you have to make an adjustment in the pattern and then run the test again on another day. Plus, who actually does a basal test when everything is going right? No one except crazy people. No, you only do a test to figure out what is going wrong.

But in October I decided to bit the bullet and get my all my basal rates as correct as they can be. I was noticing a lot of trends in my CGM graphs and decided against just making changes willy-nilly. I still suspect that most of my problem is under-bolusing for meals, but I can never know without checking that the basals are correct first.

One big problem with basal testing is each day is a big ole cycle that leads straight into the next. Where do you start? Some people say, “Overnight. Get that right and then you can start your march through the day.” Maybe for them. My evenings are cray-cray, going high after my after-work training and then bouncing around after dinner before I give myself my final “well, I’ve messed up today pretty good” insulin and/or snack before bedtime. That makes overnight testing difficult.

For me, it’s been easiest to find a few mornings that seemed designed for testing—in-range BGs, flat/normal CGM graphs overnight—and skip breakfast. Then I tested my breakfast bolus ratio and timing. Then I skipped lunch for an afternoon basal test, followed by the lunch bolus test. And now here we are at dinnertime without dinner. Once I’m done here I can figure out a rubric for my afternoon/evening workouts and test that before taking a stab at dinner and (finally) the overnight basal.

One hard question I’ve had to answer is whether to exercise on days when I do basal testing. Since I train 5-6 days each week, I feel okay skipping one for the greater good. But then there’s the admonition that you should do what you normally do, which for me means exercise. Today I skipped a bike session in the basement, which is “okay” since I swam this morning, but it’s also torture because I really, really want to ride my new bike. Greater good.

By the way, to any CDEs, endos, etc., who might be reading this, please note: I’ve been on the pump for over ten years, and this will (hopefully) be the first time that my basal rates and bolus ratios are correct/proven. If you’re going to put someone on the pump, you need to (a) make sure y’all work together to get the settings locked down from the start, and (b) work on all of the behavioral issues that come along with multiple daily injection (MDI) therapy. Just saying.

I just hope that when I get through with this process, I’ll be able to translate all of this hunger into a baseline for making amazing observations about exercise+insulin+food.

Three hours to go.

Organized Bike Touring: I was asked several times right after my trip (photos) whether I would do another organized bicycle trip. Most of the people on the tour had done several already and were talking about which one they would do next. I always played coy. “Maybe.”

I enjoyed myself quite a lot. The scenery was great. I really enjoyed spending time with Mom in France. My fellow travelers were wonderful. The tour leaders were fantastic people. It was terrific having so many details taken care of; all I had to do was get on my bike and ride. And there was plenty of time to do things other than cycling.

But two things brought me down. (1) I wish there had been more actual riding. I could easily have gone an extra 20-30 miles most days, and I wouldn’t have minded a slightly faster pace. I certainly wasn’t expecting a race or even a hard ride each day, but I think the tour company we used was aiming at a more casual riding experience . . . which is totally cool, if that’s what you’re after. No judgement from me. Honest. And (2) Lisa wasn’t with me. I was having a great time doing and seeing interesting things, eating delicious food, and going to beautiful places that she would have also loved . . . just without the bike.

If only there were a way to bring Lisa, a noncyclist, along on a trip that involves some (longer distance or more intense) bicycling. Oh wait, maybe there is! Clearly it involves bringing a larger group of friends to France, some of whom ride and some who don’t. We’ll see what happens in a couple years. :^)

Two and a half hours . . .

Occupy This! will be posted tomorrow.

Two hours to go.

iOS v. Android: I have an iPod Touch. It’s great. I have all sorts of useful apps, and I use it all the time. It syncs with my Mac apps, including iTunes. It doesn’t make phone calls.

I have a Google Nexus One phone. It has a nicer-than-the-iPod’s input editor coupled with its not-quite-as-nice touchscreen keyboard. It has a couple of apps that I used when I was in France, only one of which was not already on my iPod. It kind of plays music. It shares data with “useful” Google apps on the web. It makes phone calls, is unlocked, and accepts normal SIM cards like the one I bought in France that let me call home at 4¢/min. (No shit! 15€ gave Mom and me so much talk time over two weeks that we had a bunch left over when we returned home.)

I wish I had a mythical, nonexistent, unlocked iPhone that supports pay-as-you-go and takes regular SIM cards. That would be perfect.

Are we there yet?

Before There Was Facebook: A Short, Subjective, Incomplete Insider’s History of PlanetAll will be posted Friday.

Almost there! By the time I write one more and then proofread, it should be “dinner time.”

Cyclocross: Early in the month I had thought about writing about how I was considering cyclocross as an off-season pursuit. But then I saw one and decided that it looked painful (and not in a fun kind of way). Although this did make me laugh.

Yay! I made it! I did my proofreading, took one more BG test, and had dinner while chatting with Lisa, who just arrived home. The results are mostly good news: I was incredibly stable until 9:00, at which time I started to drop slowly but steadily. That happens to be just an hour after my basal rate kicks up from 0.4 u/hr to 0.7 u/hr. That hardly seems like a coincidence.

Posted in Cycling, Data-betes, Diabetes, General, MetaBlogging, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2011, Travel | 2 Comments

The Writing is in the Wall

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Jeff Mather

Today was a busy day. I brought this home:

I had the second part of my bike fit today, actually riding my own bike. Turns out, my left leg is longer than my right one, and it was affecting my pedal stroke. I also have narrow feet and very collapsed arches. We tweaked a lot of things, added shims between my shoe and pedals, added orthotic inserts to my bike shoes, and more. Tonight when I was riding on the trainer, I started to feel some of those changes for the better. Tomorrow or Wednesday, I’ll swap out my road bike and my new one and give it a longer ride.

And then there was the beam-signing at the office. We’re adding another building (and parking garage and traffic flow patterns and landscaping) to our campus after we’ve outgrown the other three. Everyone in the company was invited to sign the last structural beam before it was set into place this afternoon. Here are a few pictures.