Category Archives: Worthy Feeds

Friends with Diabetes

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Jeff Mather


It’s Diabetes Blog Week again . . . yay! The last couple years were great, helping me meet so many wonderful people online with diabetes (POWDs?). Once again, Karen has done a fantastic job creating the topics and organizing the logistics. Kudos to her! Today’s topic invites us to “find a friend”—or rather, to share a friend with you, the reader.

I have met so many wonderful people with diabetes through their websites, Twitter feeds, and Facebook posts, that I don’t feel right naming just a few names. I have been fortunate enough over the last 18 months to meet several of these wonderful people and even call some of them my very best of friends. They’re not just people who really get diabetes and are there to share the triumphs, disappointments, and everyday shenanigans that is blood glucose. No, they’re also wonderful people with lives and interests and passions, and they’re most interesting (to me) when they share those other, “normal people” parts.

There are, however, a few people I read everyday because (a) we’ve met in real life, had a wonderful time, and grown close afterward, (b) they post several times a week, and (c) if I miss a post, I’m missing out on what’s going on in my friends’ lives, the same way that I would if I’m on vacation and cut off from the normal connections that bind friends together. That is to say, there’s no difference between these Internet friends and the ones across town; we just communicate differently. So Céline, Jess, Kim, Scully, and Victoria, here’s hoping others get to know how awesome you are. (And Caroline, I would totally put you in this group, too, if only you posted more often. :^) [Update 23 May 2012: Oh! Here it is!])

There’s someone I’ve never met in person and whom I’ve only just recently started following online. I think y’all should give her posts a look. Scully introduced me to her fellow Team Type 1 rider Becky Furuta’s awesome blog, Avec Délectation. (Don’t worry, ‘Mericans; it’s at least 99.44% English.) She’s smart and funny and thought-provoking. Her posts prompt me to think differently about diabetes . . . more matter-of-factly, more holistically, more—I dunno—post-hippy-Boulderite-like. If that’s not a good enough reason for having the Diabetes Online Community around, I don’t know what is. Oh, she also likes pounding diabetes into the ground as she rides her bike fast. She’s my kinda gal. One day, we will have to meet.

Posted in Diabetes, Diabetes Blog Week, Hoarding, Worthy Feeds | 3 Comments

Things You Should Be Reading – August Edition

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Jeff Mather

Hey everybody, I’m about a week late with the August edition of “Things You Should Be Reading.” There’s a little bit of something for everybody here.

Posted in Diabetes, General, Health Care, Software Engineering, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Things You Should Be Reading

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Jeff Mather

Hey, everybody. It’s that time again. The time to clean out a bunch of links that I’ve read and share them with you because I think you might find them interesting.

Posted in Computing, Cycling, Data-betes, Diabetes, Software Engineering, Worthy Feeds | 1 Comment

The One Where I’m on a Podcast

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Jeff Mather

After casually dropping enough hints that I might be interested in appearing on Just Talking, Christopher interviewed me yesterday for his diabetes/gaming/all-things-Christopher podcast. It was a hoot!

Listen here . . .

Posted in 101 in 1001, Baseball, Diabetes, I am Rembrandt, Worthy Feeds | 2 Comments

Blunt Lancet Interview

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Jeff Mather

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you no doubt have heard about Blunt Lancet’s new album that’s set to drop soon. Thanks to some connections, I got an advance copy of the CD, which I’ve had on heavy rotation. The band’s A&R team is really pushing the group, even helping make a VH1 “Behind the Music” episode.

But I don’t think they’re too happy about a leaked Rolling Stone interview with “Lancer,” the band’s faithful roadie. Here’s the full, previously unpublished article with details of an (as yet) unknown tell-all book about the band.

Kenny Powers from 'Eastbound and Down'

Rolling Stone: Lancer, you’ve written a book called Logbook: My Life on the Road with Blunt Lancet —

Lancer: You know, it was originally supposed to be called F**k the D-Police: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold our Blood Sugars Back.

RS: Really?! So how did it end up as —

L: Logbook? Yeah, I wasn’t too happy about that. I mean the band hates logbooks. But the lawyers made us do it, you know? Both Chuck D and Ice Cube threatened to sue. And if there’s one thing I wanna steer clear of, it’s that whole East Coast / West Coast bullsh*t.

RS: In your book, you reveal that the band had different names in the past, too. I think most die-hard fans know about the performances (and bootlegs) by “Dull Poker,” but what were some of the other names?

L: Yeah, there were about a dozen names the band used or considered. Most of them never came to anything, but we did produce a couple 45s under a couple of the names. [Conspiratorially] That’s something for you vinyl junkies out there to be on the lookout for.

RS: And what were some of those names?

L: Oh, right. Well, they tried “The Fab-104s” and “The BGs.”

That last one actually was the thing that got the band together, you know. We were all sitting around in Raw Sugar‘s basement when the BeeGees came on the “Hi Fi,” and we’re all thinking “We gotta check our blood sugar.” So Testkit, who was feeling a little hypo at the time pulls out a guitar and just starts riffin’ on “Stayin’ Alive.” And I’m thinking, “Hey, I think we really might have something here.”

RS: You tell in the book about the band’s troubled relationship with British heavy metal band Motörhead.

L: Tossers!

RS: Care to explain?

L: See, we were initially named “Blünt Lancet,” ’cause, ya know, it sounded really f**cking cool when Syringe would try to say it with his Aussie’s faux German accent. Anyway, we scrapped the umlaut because when we put the “U” with the dots on the drum kit — well, it just looked a bit too happy for the hardcore mood we were trying to set. That didn’t stop motherfü**ing Motörhead from using it. And “Ace of Spades?” PLEASE! We played those losers “A1Cs of Spades” one day, and they just totally ran with it. . . . “And don’t forget the poker. . . . Ace of Spades!”

RS: “Ace?”

L: Yeah, the “1″ is silent. What else do you wanna know, man?

RS: They’re not the only musicians you’ve feuded with in the past, though. Brian Eno, for example.

L: If you want to call that atmospheric stuff “music.” [pause] I see that you do.

It’s like this. The group is always up for switching it up. I mean we started punk/disco. Went country for a bit. Threw some R&B into a few albums. But all that “made for soundtrack music” that he wanted us to do was just dull as sh*t. I mean he’s a great producer, but I think he took the band’s name a little too seriously.

RS: Not to keep going on a sour note, but Motörhead wasn’t the only group that you “inspired.”

L: That’s right. Def Leppard pretty much stole “Pour Some Sugar on Me” from our B-side “I’m Low And I Need Some Juice.” That was something our (two-armed) drummer, Pancreas, said when we were on tour with them, and she wrote down the melody in the 15 minutes it took to rebound. That’s partly why it’s so ridiculous. People are always stealing our stuff.

RS: From time to time the results of working with other artists must be a little more positive. Any you want to share?

L: Well there was this one time we were all hanging out in the back of the bus with Carly Simon, and we were checking our BGs again, and Pumps was like “You’re all veins.” Carly was beside herself with joy. I don’t want to be too egotistical, but really that song is all about us. I got a writing credit on it, you know.

RS: Pumps?

L: F*******k! Backup singer — Sh*t! I swore I wasn’t going to say anything about that Fleetwood Mac-like period of the band. They were great times, but the drama. Both Pumps and Bumps were fighting over supplies and got busted by the D Police all the f**king time, man.

RS: Bumps?

L: Next question!

[We suspect that either "Pumps" or "Bumps" might be K2, the former lead singer of the on-again-off-again Insulin Whores Riot Grrrrl punk trio. — RS]

RS: When —

L: I don’t think I mentioned in the book that we got kicked out of East Germany. . . . We were playing some underground venues, but we overstayed our “diplomat” visas by a few hours. So they showed us to the border. We had to watch the wall come down from a bar in Frankfurt. It’s a shame. 24 hours later, and we might have been playing “Rage Bolus” from atop the wall.

We got kicked out of Tuscaloosa, too.

RS: So what’s next for the band?

L: Well, I’m just the roadie.

RS: Now you’re being modest.

L: Or maybe a bit coy. I don’t want to jinx anything. [Pause] We’re trying to get a bunch of bands together for SugaPalooza. The Insulin Whores, SugaSheen, George Simmons, . . . maybe even the alt/contemporary-classical group Langerhans Quartet. They’re hard to get. And weird, man.

RS: Motörhead?

L: Funny. Are we done here?

Posted in Diabetes, Historical Record, Life Lessons, Worthy Feeds | 7 Comments

New Discoveries

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Jeff Mather

We have guests coming tomorrow — my mom and step-dad — which explains why posting has been a little light here recently and will likely continue that way for the next week. (I hope you like photographs, because you’re likely to see more.)

“But, Jeff, there’s nothing to do at work in the days leading up to American Thanksgiving. Entertain me!” Oh, okay. Here are some wonderful, fun sites I discovered recently:

Enjoy your pre-Thanksgiving TSA pat-down.

Posted in Book Notes, City of Light, MetaBlogging, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2010, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Jeff Mather, Paste-up Monkey

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Jeff Mather

I love paper.li, the little service that extracts links from a Twitter feed and makes a newspaper-like collection of articles from them. It’s amazingly high quality for “alpha” software — it’s actually what we used to call “beta” software back in the day. (I guess the real question is whether they’ll make it to beta before Google nabs the idea for Google News.)

Unless you follow a very narrow group of people or like to see a hodge-podge of randomness, it’s most useful when applied to a list in Twitter. Here are a couple examples from my lists:

Go ahead, make your own paper. Discover some awesome articles.

Posted in General, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Performance Programming Links

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Jeff Mather

Faithful readers: This dispatch falls into the bucket of “stuff that’s about work and not diabetes.” (Not that diabetes isn’t its own kind of work.) This is what I do for my 9-5. It’s the stuff I do between thinking about diabetes, my next bike outing, where I want to travel someday, and all those other things. Don’t worry, we’ll get back to all that “good stuff” soon enough; but this post is for the lurking coworkers and people searching on the Google.

Here are a few performance-related articles and presentations that I stumbled upon recently:

Igor Ostrovsky at Microsoft wrote a very useful description of various processor cache effects. Here are the notes I took while reading it:

  • Array access is slower than math
  • Data alignment can determine how many cache lines are touched
  • Keep modifications/accesses within the same cache level
  • Be aware of instruction level dependencies and parallelism opportunities
  • Avoid touching too many memory locations from the same cache line, causes contention
  • There’s a trade-off between the size of what you’re putting in the cache and the number of elements you touch in it. — What does that mean, Jeff? Not exactly sure, but cache assoc. is usually not a huge deal compared to other issues.
  • Because cores have their own caches and because memory needs to remain consistent, avoid letting two threads modify data on the same cache line.
  • Even when you think you know what you’re doing, there’s other crazy stuff going on.

Isn’t that last one the sad truth about performance optimization?

Igor also has an excellent article about branch prediction. Basically, if you structure your code so that if branches are predictably true (or predictably false) the CPU can start walking down that code path until it’s proved wrong. But if it’s close to random, you’ll see performance hits.

Joe Duffy, also at Microsoft, debunks the “premature optimization is evil” myth. Joe summarizes the article himself quite well, so I’ll just quote him.

In this short article, we’ll look at some important principles that are counter to what many people erroneously believe this [“avoid premature optimization”] statement to be saying. To save you time and suspense, I will summarize the main conclusions: I do not advocate contorting oneself in order to achieve a perceived minor performance gain. Even the best performance architects, when following their intuition, are wrong 9 times out of 10 about what matters. (Or maybe 97 times out of 100, based on Knuth’s numbers.) What I do advocate is thoughtful and intentional performance tradeoffs being made as every line of code is written. Always understand the order of magnitude that matters, why it matters, and where it matters. And measure regularly! I am a big believer in statistics, so if a programmer sitting in his or her office writing code thinks just a little bit more about the performance implications of every line of code that is written, he or she will save an entire team that time and then some down the road. Given the choice between two ways of writing a line of code, both with similar readability, writability, and maintainability properties, and yet interestingly different performance profiles, don’t be a bozo: choose the performant approach. Eschew redundant work, and poorly written code. And lastly, avoid gratuitously abstract, generalized, and allocation-heavy code, when slimmer, more precise code will do the trick.

Follow these suggestions and your code will just about always win in both maintainability and performance.

If you do anything that falls under the labels of “multicore,” “multithreaded,” or “multi-processor,” then you should definitely add Multicore Info and Intel’s software blogs to your RSS feed aggregator.

One recent Intel offering is a recording of “Introducing Intel Parallel Building Blocks”. The Intel folks discusses Intel Cilk Plus, Threading Building Blocks (TBB), and Array Building Blocks. Here are some notes from the 45 minute presentation:

  • Intel Cilk Plus is a lower-level way to expose parallelism and the potential for vectorization to C++ code. It currently only works with the Intel compiler.
  • TBB is awesome. That’s me saying that. I use it to easily exploit data parallelism in our existing codebase. (Because I use it already, I didn’t take many notes on it. Sorry.)
  • Array Building Block (ArBB) provide the highest level of abstraction presenting the ability to specify array data containers (1-D to N-D, including nested containers and [soon] sparse data) and then do vector operations on the data in the containers. Sounds familiar.
  • Cilk Plus includes reducers to prevent data races, has #pragma simd to empower the compiler to make vector assumptions, and has a mechanism for specifying a range of vector data.
  • Parallel Inspector and Parallel Amplifier are alleged to help squeeze performance out of code that uses TBB.
  • ArBB uses a two-part compilation process, one of which is a runtime JIT.
  • There are collisions between the schedulers in Intel MKL and Cilk (and TBB, etc.). Beware.

And finally, there’s a recording of a webinar about Intel Parallel Advisor that may be of interest. It’s next in my queue of things to watch.

Posted in Computing, Fodder for Techno-weenies, Software Engineering, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Friday Links: Oily Pancreases and Time Machines

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Jeff Mather

I’m going to try something new, posting a small group of diverse links on a (more-or-less) weekly schedule. Hopefully this will help with my hoarding problem.

Living with Diabetes: Sarah has a really great piece on her site about growing up with the “bad kind” of diabetes. At least that’s how people differentiated type 1 and 2 while she was growing up. But really, all diabetes sucks, especially if you try to ignore it.

Software Development: Keith Swenson’s article 26 Hints for Successful Agile Development is full of good advice about how to do software development effectively — even if you’re not really doing Agile development. (via Infoq)

Functional Programming: Here’s a really l-o-n-g article about functional programming. It’s good, but . . . damn!

Risk and Oil Spills: You would think that a company like BP, whose contractors deal with potentially deadly situations on a daily basis, would have a better handle on risk. Even if BP engaged in neutral cost-benefit analysis, as this NY Times article suggests, it should have chosen the option that lowered its risk exposure. Remember: risk is cost of vulnerability times likelihood of vulnerability. In the case of deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, we’re seeing that the cost of an oil spill is astronomical. The probability of failure would have to be completely zero to make it worth choosing a less expensive option.

Time Machines: Stephen Hawking tells you how to build one using wormholes. He also advises against creating paradoxes where you kill yourself.

The Artificial Pancreas: So what’s this “artificial pancreas” that people with type 1 diabetes keep talking about? Let Wired magazine or Aaron Kowalski tell you. It’s not a cure, but (if done correctly) it will hopefully lower a lot of the variability that we see in our blood glucose levels. Basically, it’s an expert system built into a pump plus continuous glucose monitoring combo. It’s also a bundle of assumptions and heuristics. I find it somewhere between amazing and hella scary.

Posted in Diabetes, General, Hoarding, Life Lessons, Software Engineering, Uncategorized, Worthy Feeds | 1 Comment

The Day After “Armageddon” – The Healthcare Roundup

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Jeff Mather

Apologies for the overblown title to this post, but Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) just amused me to no end last night with his claim that it was Armageddon for America. I love hyperbole, especially about the Apocalypse; and it doesn’t get much more hyperbolic than saying the world is going to end in judgment and damnation if we do something. Anyway, on with a little recap of what happened yesterday.

First off, what does the new legislation do? The New York Times and the Washington Post each have good overviews. I honestly don’t understand why these easy-to-understand recaps were so elusive in the weeks leading up to yesterday’s votes.

Who wins and who loses in the healthcare bill? In a nutshell, around 32 million uninsured people and the name-brand drug companies gain the most, followed closely by people with pre-existing conditions. For doctors, hospitals, insurers, and generic drug companies, it’s a mixed bag of gains and loses.

In my opinion, the people leaving the most empty-handed seem to be the Republicans who proposed legislation very similar to this in the 90s but didn’t pursue it aggressively. And then over this last year — depending on your point of view — were either shut out of crafting the healthcare reform law or sat out in protest. Despite claims to the contrary, the plans are very heavily centered in the private sector, bringing lots of new healthcare consumers to private insurers, favoring private insurers over public plans, preserving drug company profits, and bringing federal dollars to hospitals, doctors, insurers, etc.

The costs and benefits for individuals/patients/consumers are mostly positive (in my opinion). There’s more access to insurance and less chance that it will be taken away or capped. New high-risk pools bring insurance options back for many of us. There are some tax increases on the wealthy (families making more than $250K per year would pay an additional tax on payroll and investments). And there are modest (probably too modest) penalties for people who don’t buy insurance; subsidies and low-cost options should make it possible for everyone to buy insurance.

The opinions of working-age people with chronic illnesses are mixed, just like in the rest of the population. Kerri at Six Until Me writes about how she feels liberated to start a new business now that she isn’t tied to one employer for her health benefits. Meanwhile, Sarah of Sugabetic wonders whether we’ll be paying the same amount for our healthcare plus a bit more in taxes. Mainly there’s a lot of wait and see and hope that it makes things better.

For one Canadian’s perspective — which sounds a lot like what my Canadian coworkers have said, though from a somewhat religious perspective — check out what Sarah at Emerging Mummy. She prefers universal, single-payer healthcare and doesn’t understand (or like) the tone of the last couple weeks down here.

Almost in the background of the healthcare debate, there’s healthcare. Not many doctors write on weblogs compared to patients. “Who has the time for that?” they ask. (It’s too bad, because patients are putting a lot of effort into our own health 24/7 and exposing our difficulties and vulnerabilities; but . . . that’s a post for another day.) Anyway, two cardiologists with blogs engaged in a thought experiment about what would happen to two hypothetical patients — one wealthy, one not — who are having heart attacks in England and the US.

If you really, really want more political and media meta-analysis about what happened, check out Dan Kennedy’s as-always well-written take on David Frum, Paul Krugman, and Rep. Steven Lynch (D-MA).

As for myself, I feel surprisingly upbeat. Soon I’m sure I’ll feel like Debra Gordon, who wants to pull the covers up over her head, but for now I’m happy. Because hopefully things like this and this will be leaving our social discourse.

Posted in Diabetes, Health Care, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Ignore the Code

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Jeff Mather

I recently discovered Ignore the Code, a well-written, nontechnical software/design weblog by Lukas Mathis. It’s really good. Go check it out.

Posted in Software Engineering, Worthy Feeds | 1 Comment

Random Bits of Awesome – February 2010

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Jeff Mather

Dear readers, it’s time for a roundup of topics that just aren’t big enough for their own posts. I’m just going to jumble them all together. Enjoy!

It’s Olympics time. Woo! I don’t understand people who profess not to love the games. You may not like every event — bobsled, ice dancing, whatever — but how can anyone not love the whole Olympic ideal? Me, I particularly enjoy the nordic events, especially biathlon.

DiabetesMine interviewed skier Kris Freeman, the first type-1 Olympian in an endurance sport before the 30km cross-country race and afterward — I think he’s my new role model. They’re both great reads for any athlete with diabetes.

Freeman was “pissed” about going hypo during the 30km race, but he was “really, really pissed” about a bad ski choice during the 15km. I’m sure he will rock the 50km on Sunday!

Thinking of Canada, Lisa and I went to Montréal early in January. It was sooo cold (-14ºC for a high). How do people live that way? We went to see a J. W. Waterhouse exhibit at the Musée des Beaux Arts. While there, we ate some great food — check out Paris Crêpes on the corner of Ste. Catherine and Crescent — and I enjoyed the city’s polyglot lifestyle.

(And as for art: Last week the MFA installed its first painting in the new Americas wing. I can hardly wait!)

While we were in Montréal, I procured a bit of Francophone music. 90% of Canada’s population may live within 100 miles of the border that sees the most commerce between any two nations; but it’s almost as if there’s a Mounty-patrolled iron curtain separating the US from bootleggers French music. You can find a little bit on iTunes, but it’s hit or miss. Here are some names to look for: A.D.N., Amadou & Mariam, Marie-Luce Béland, Daniel Bélanger, Carla Bruni, Cali, Camille, Caracol, Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, Cœur de Pirate, Les Cowboys Fringant, Étienne Drapeau, Dumas, Mylène Farmer, Grimskunk, Indochine, Kaïn, Karkwa, MC Solaar, Prototypes, Mara Tremblay, etc., etc., etc. The CBC nominated the top 50 Canadian francophone bands from this decade if you need more choices.

We also saw “Up in the Air” a month or two ago. Definitely recommended. It stars George Clooney, opens with a fabulous sequence of arial footage, uses a version of “This Land Was Made for You and Me” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and has a really strong story line. From time to time, I feel a bit like intern George‘s character — at least I share his attitude toward flying, but certainly not his brand loyalty (though I do have my preferences). But I’m not very savvy when it comes to getting the most of my air travel dollar, which is why I’ve been reading the Cranky Flier‘s web log.

Are you going on a trip anytime soon? Need reviews of places to eat, stay, visit? The Times gives a rundown of where to go online and in-print to figure where to go in real life. They mention TripAdvisor.com, IgoUgo.com, Oyster.com, and printed guidebooks. I’m starting to use TripAdvisor for hotel reviews, but books and magazines are still my destination for where to go and how to get there. Give me glossy pictures, a travelogue, and a map or two and I’ll be ready to pack my bags.

But my travel dance card is kinda full for a little while. I actually can’t believe how much I know about where I’m going in the coming years. Australia in just over three months. Bicycling in Provence, France sometime next year. England (and maybe Paris) in 2012. It’s not what I usually do . . . but I’ll take it.

More substance to come soon, I promise.

Posted in Australia, Crusty Old Paint, Cycling, Diabetes, General, Travel, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Idea of the Day

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Jeff Mather

If you don’t already subscribe to the New York Times‘ Idea of the Day weblog, you should.

(If I weren’t at work with a lot to do, I’d write about how it aggregates some of the best articles in print from the web concerning culture and the life of the mind. I’d say something about how it goes a little way toward fostering the kind of society-wide philosophical debates that are a common fixture in a certain Gallic country that I love. I’d delve deep into the contradictions between those last two sentences, digging into the inherent conflict between a time-shifted, remixed, excerpted, low-bandwidth form of communication (web sites) and the more active but ultimately futile discourse (about, say, the “hyperreal” in Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation) that tends to occur in the café or coffeehouse. But I am at work, and no one really wants to read about that anyway.)

Posted in General, Worthy Feeds | Leave a comment

Thanks, peeps!

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Jeff Mather

Well, dear readers. I’m almost done with this entire month of posting here, and I’m kinda glad that it’s almost over. It’s a bit like having homework again. Although, I have to confess that it’s been a good exercise in writing again.

Lisa and I are in Wyoming. We’ve been here since Sunday evening and are having a good time. I like visiting Casper, seeing my mom, and meeting up with high school friends again. (Although in the background now, someone is telling me all of the reasons why Casper is no good. Anyway.)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which promises to involve lots of food. Diabetes-wise, it hasn’t been a great few days. All of these highs tend to suggest to me that there’s still a lot of tweaking I should make with my pump settings and food estimation and whatnot. But tomorrow is another day. That doesn’t make it less stressful, but it does help with perspective.

The “diabetes online community” (D-OC) has been wonderful with giving me some perspective. I was part of a diabetes support group for a few years after being diagnosed, but I found that I needed a different kind of support experience. This ad hoc online community makes it easier to find and share the kind of information that’s important to me as a someone with type 1 diabetes. Beyond that, though, my fellow type 1 writers are so wonderful to read because they help remind me that we’re people, not just patients. We have happy diabetes moments. We have total WTF? moments. We have moments that would be almost impossible for people without diabetes to really get — not that we wouldn’t trade those in for non-diabetes lives.

There are lots of diabetes peeps out there, and I feel funny singling out anyone by name. But there are a few people who I just really love to read:

If you have a favorite which you think I should read, let me know in the comments. And have a happy Thanksgiving.

Posted in Diabetes, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo 2009, Worthy Feeds | 1 Comment

Rememberance of things past

Posted on May 21, 2009 by Jeff Mather

This has been the busiest year ever. True, last year I was in school and (consequently) working twice as much. But this year, I’ve actually gone places and done things that have generally kept me away from posting here.

In January, I went to the Electronic Imaging symposium in San Jose, promised to write about what I learned and then did not. In February, I went on a “business trip” to Cozumel — via cruise ship — and then posted some of the photos I made on my Holga camera. Then in March, Lisa and I went to Paris to celebrate my graduation. I could talk your ear off all day about how much I love Paris; and if you’re Lisa, you’re probably sick of hearing me walk around the house sighing and saying “I miss Paris.” (Sorry!) Most recently, I promised to post pictures from my backpacking/camping/hiking trip to Utah. I did put some of them into a photoset on Flickr, but I haven’t gotten them here yet. Tomorrow I’m off to Iowa for a family reunion.

“But what about the other 15-or-so weeks of the year? Why no posts?”

It isn’t that I haven’t had any ideas. Here are some of the things I jotted down that I should write about:

Physical architecture vs. software architecture, with respect to the visibility and communication of design — I actually started writing a bit about this after some lengthy conversations with coworkers. Basically, I yearn for the day when software engineers can have books like this, this, and this. We need a shared visual grammar, shared materials, and shared processes so that we too can have coffee-table books that inspire our cohort.

A response to Jeff Atwood on (not) reinventing the wheel again . . . and again — Given what I just wrote above, it’s no surprise that I would be disappointed after reading an article that advocates waste. I hope one day to live in a software engineering world which is more like a real engineering world, a world in which there are two kinds of software businesses: (1) the businesses where almost everyone buys off-the-shelf or special-order parts and uses them to build incredible things, innovating very broadly and (2) the businesses that specialize in making those off-the-shelf and special-order parts, making them well, and innovating very deeply.

Design blogs — I’ve been making a little list of design blogs that I like. . . . I’m a total tease, though, so I’ll share them later.

My notebooks — One of those afore(un)mentioned design web sites has an occasional series looking inside designers’ notebooks. (For example.) I keep most of my thoughts (and some designs) worth remembering in journals and took some beauty shots of them. I’ve actually downloaded the photos off my camera into Lightroom.

French music — The French are different. Especially in their musical tastes. I like some of it and thought about shilling for folks like Mylène Farmer, Mara Tremblay, A.D.N., Abd al Malik, Karna, MC Solaar, Cœur de Pirate, Alain Bashung, Dumas, Karkwa, Noir Désir, Prototypes, Vulgaires Machins, and Indochine.

Women in Software Engineering — Though I’m not part of the Ruby/Rails communities I was disappointed to see the kerfuffle over a recent presentation which reminded many of us how few women there are in our profession, how they’re often (subconsciously) typecast, and how their accomplishments don’t often get enough attention. So here are some belated congratulations to Barbara Liskov, winner of the most recent Turing Award. And I like Liz Keogh’s web site.

My grad program — In a nutshell, I enjoyed my time at Brandeis as I worked toward my master of software engineering (M.S.E.) degree. I learned a lot of practical things related to software construction, tooling, and process (just as I hoped that I would).

And finally, Lent and my year-long cleaning project — After graduating I looked around my office/library and was shocked at how cluttered it was. So just before the new year, I resolved to get through all of the magazines, papers, articles, etc. in my big cardboard “in-box” — seriously, it’s big — by the end of 2009 and recycle whatever is left on January 1st, 2010. My progress is slow. (I’m being very generous to myself right there.) So for Lent I decided to better myself by working on my reading pile. In particular, I forbade myself to add more things to it. Basically, I’ve gotten to that point in my life where I need to put myself on an information diet or two. Which I’ve done, although I find myself snacking a lot.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing: reading from the big in-box, watching some of the 499 films in my Netflix queue, reading other people’s web sites*, writing in my own journal, photographing, gardening, carpooling, and more-or-less not writing here. More to come, eventually. . . .

*   Thanks for nothing, Facebook and Twitter! Just kidding. You know I love you.

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