Super Bowl XLI, the Inverted TiVo Experience

Everyone always talks about the Superbowl ads and how great they are. So I programmed my TiVo (it's really a Comcast DVR but everyone knows what TiVo is) to tape (oh excuse me, record) the Superbowl, all 4 hours and 5 minutes of the broadcast. And as I was watching the Superbowl yesterday it dawned on me that A Superbowl TiVo recording is probably one of the only shows, if not hte only, that people fast-forward through, just to get to the commercials. In a way, it's inverted TiVo. Kind of odd, isn't it. Oh and by the way, most ads were rather boring, except for the Bud commercials. They are mostly funny or cute but the beer still sucks. With that, congrats to the Colts and too bad for the Bears. At least Rex Grossmann lived up to the very low expectations that compared him to one of the worst quarterbacks in SuperBowl history, even before the game had started.

Scientifically Funny - Nailing jelly to a wall

I have been enjoying the blog from Improbable Research for a while and found a post today that investigated the feasibility of nailing jelly to a wall. It is scientifically funny.

When seemingly good ideas backfire ...

... or the 101 dumbest moments in business. Check it out.

Painful Presentations at Work

We have probably all witnessed one of these, either at school, at work or at some event in our spare time. A painful presentation. What makes a painful presentation you may ask? Here is my list of things that indicate a painful presentation:

1. The presenter apologizes for the readability of his/her slides. Never a good thing, if you know it's unreadable, don't use it or break it into more than one slide. Making good slides takes skill and a few tries but everyone who gives presentation should know that a picture says more than thousand words and is a good thing. On the other hand, too much text on a slide and too many slides make for a bad presentation.
   
2. Soft-spoken presenters. I know not everyone can have a booming voice and assert himself well and look confident. However, if the entire audience has to collectively hold their breath to be able to hear the words than you are witnessing a painful presentation because a listener spends all his concentration on making out the words.
3. Presenters that can't speak the language. I know, sometimes they don't have a choice but to me it's the same issue as #2. It is so tiring to make out the words and try to understand what the hell is being sad that I lose interest and look out the window. The inability to master a language coupled with a monotone voice simply sucks.
   
4. A presenter who tries to be funny but who is not. Yeah, I know, we all like to be comedians but very few can pull that off. So , unless you have a good feel for an audience and what kind of style they respond to, keep to your roots. After all, in my line of work, most presenters are scientists or engineers and teh majority is not funny.
5. A color-blind presenter. How can you tell? Look at the slides. They may be readable but looking at them makes you want to vomit or reminds youof wallpaper from the seventies? Than you are witnessing a presentation by someone who is blind, color-blind or simply has bad taste.

So, I think you can survive a presentation if only one of the above holds true and the presenter can offset one shortcoming like crowded slides with being a good speaker. But if you can check off more than one of the above issues in a presentation then it is time get out. Reminds me of the Southwest slogan: Want to get away? All I can say is run, run fast otherwise you will be wasting an hour or more of your life that will never get back. What else can save a bad presentation. Well, free food of course but it'd better be good or else your brain and your stomach will hurt.

Cool bike, but ...

The hyperbike probably won't fit in the bike lane and I am not sure I want to take this on the road and take on a Chevy Suburban.

The 8 foot wheels are super cool though. I just have my doubts about stopping when going superfast.

He did it again!

Do you remember Marco Materazzi? He was the cheesy, Italian defender that got head-butted by Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 Soccer World Cup Final. And oh well, it happened again. In a Serie A game in Italy, he got head-butted again by a guy named Delvecchio after allegedly provoking him. Makes you wonder what on earth he always tells the other players. I started playing soccer when I was 5 years old and kept playing on teams until I was 27. I never played professionally but games were still competitive and occasionally tempers flare. Unfortunately, provoking others is part of the game but in 20 years of playing I have never wanted to head-butt someone. And I have been called many things in games. For instance, when I was 14, my team was participating in a youth tournament in Denmark. We were well on our way in beating a norwegian team when things got a little nasty. Many fouls, yellow cards but we scored another goal. It was then, that the other team got frustrated and started calling us Nazis just because we were a German team. That didn't sit too well with us but we didn't head-butt or beat up the other players even though we wanted too. Having said that, it's unfortunate that Zidane and Delvecchio didn't keep their emotions in check. But I can't help to dislike Materazzi. Instead of standing up to others like a man he does it behind the referees back and when the other player touches him, he goes down as if shot with an AK 47. I think Materazzi is the epidemy of soccer. Instead of focusing on skill and being physical within the limits of the rules he chooses provocation to unsettle his opponents. One of these days he will get head-butted again and maybe then, getting up won't be as easy for him. I for one won't feel any sympathy for him.

Want to buy an island?

If you have enough cash or are in good standing with a bank you can buy the "Principality of Sealand"!! Wikipedia has a nice article about it. For anywhere between £65,000,000 and £504,000,000 it can be yours ... and it's butt-ugly too.

Want to go 300mpH at 70.5mpg?

Do you? Then you will need an Acabion. Apparently, what matters is weight and profile, the opposite of SUVs.

Debugging skills -- It's not Rocket Science!

Every programmer knows all too well that there will be times when (non-trivial) code does odd things. Yes, I am talking about bugs. Often times they are simple because they easily reproducible and the faulty behavior can be seen in a simplified environment. But what if the bug is not easily reproducible. That's where good debugging skills come to play.

Sometimes debugging feels like detective work but in almost all cases it really isn't much more than breaking a big problem into many smaller problems. Yes, simply breaking an input down to smaller pieces until a problem disappears is often a good way of making one's life a lot easier. Besides having a good grasp of eliminating possibilities, a decent knowledge of debugging techniques and tools is certainly helpful. On my last project, more than once I was asked to help fix some bugs by other developers. When I asked them what they have tried so far or found out they usually said nothing. They just needed help. My first thought was that it was laziness. ASking someone else to fix a problem is certainly easier than fixing it yourself. But after interacting with them it dawned on me that they often had no idea of how to get a handle on the problem. Just asking questions about how and when the problem presents itself are often not asked. Well, bugs never come with a manual on how to fix them so you better ask questions if you want to fix them.

Another helpful aspect for debugging is to know the code itself. A lot of times I have found that developers didn't even know how to debug their own code. Having a good knowledge of the structure of the code helps to eliminate potential sources of errors. I can't claim for myself that I am the world's best debugger nor do I want to do that. But I was surprised how few people actually can debug and provide useful information when helping to find fix a bug. Makes you wonder if the CS curriculum should be extended by a mandatory class: "Introduction to Debugging"

It's not rocket science -- like so many other things applying common sense and using the good ol' divide and conquer technique helps a good deal.

Ridiculous ...

As I was reading the newspaper today I saw an ad to lease a Bentley Continental. The down payment seemed normal and for only $2299/month for 42 month you could drive around in a Bentley. My mortgage payment is less than that ... I guess one would need a lot of disposable income.

The most popular sport in the world ... ? Definitely not American Football.

I am a big sports fan and I like to watch sports, especially team sports that involve a ball. I have never been a big fan of American Football but I do like to watch the highlights. However, there is a few things that simply rub me the wrong way about American Football. First of all, things can't get more artificial than in the NFL. Reviewable, non-reviewable play, eligible and ineligible receivers, two minute warning, taking a knee. All bullshit. But what always bothered me the most actually has nothing to do with the rules or any team and it's really not any team's fault. It's the NFL's fault. They call the Super Bowl winner the "World champs". But hey they are not alone, the NBA champion often refes to itself as the World champ and so does the "World Series" winner in baseball. I know, I know, many Americans believe the world revolves around their three big sports and there probably isn't a better American Football team in the entire world than those that play in NFL. But that's certainly not true anymore for the NBA and baseball. Or do I need to remind everyone of how the basketball dream team came up short repeatedly in the last few years. My problem with this is, that you should only call yourself the world champ if you even gave the rest of the world a chance to participate. Either by qualifying or by inviting teams from abroad to play. And I mean to qualify by playing the sport not by buying yourself into the league through means of an expansion team.
Anyway, as I was reading some sports news today, I came across a quote from the San Diedo Chargers coach, Marty Schottenheimer: ""It took me back to the old AFL days where you just try to find a way to have one more point than they do," Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer said. "It was the kind of game that makes the NFL the most popular sport in the world. If you couldn't enjoy this -- other than coach Lewis and his crowd -- then you might not enjoy football."
He said this after a remarkable comeback of his team which in itself was probably very exciting and one of the better moments in the NFL. But it truly shows how the three big American sports (NFL, MLB and NBA) have a self-perception problem. Yes, they are not the center of the world and there is many people in the rest of the world that don't even care about any of them. But one thing for sure, American Football is far from being the most popular sport. If you search around a little on the web you will find many top 10 of most popular sports and I have yet to find a list on which you can find American Football. The so-called big three should watch the NHL a bit. They are playing for the Stanley Cup and the winner is the Stanley CUp champ. Nothing more and nothing less. The NFL, MLB and the NBA should do the same.

So Marty, the Super Bowl may be one of the most watched sporting events in the world but to me it's not clear whether it's for the actual game or the halftime show. But football is definitely not the most popular sport in the world. Just count the number of people on a given weekend that participate in a soccer game versus an American football game.

pirates

pirates
Originally uploaded by jmeyer.

Ever heard of "Seagull Management" ?

A coworker and I were chatting about our current project at Yahoo! which we are about to release to the public. As we talked about who was really helpful, not so helpful, entirely useless or simply a pain in the butt, he brought up the term seagull management. Wonder what that is? It's managers, that fly in from time to time, aren't really well-informed, flap their wings and make a lot of noise and leave a bunch of crap behind for those people that actually do the work.

Anyway, on one or two occasions we had this happen on our project but overall it's looking good. Stay tuned for more on this? I am pretty excited about getting some of my work out to a large number of people. Never really had that IBM. I mean, we did cool stuff but unfortunately we never made anything available to the public because either IBM did not want to, could not decide in time or wanted to turn it into a secret ...
Let's see how things go. More later.

Two bad ideas ... or whatever happened to common sense.

On my way to work this morning I listened to NPR (National Public Radio) and they were talking about Jail for Judges. It's a measure that wants to do away with judicial immunity. What it seems to come down to is that, if the measure passes, judges can be sued if a grand jury decides that the sentence given out by the judge was a bit harsh. On top of that, the supporters of this measure want to apply this to anyone in public office. Does this country really need more opportunities for people to sue other parties? I don't think so. It already goes way to far. Remember the fat woman who bought coffee at McDonalds, put it between her legs and then burned herself by spilling it. She then sued McDonalds and was awarded an absurd amount of money for being just dumber than a brick. Now, we have warning labels on everything. Something like "Do not operate vehicle with this in place" on a sunscreen for car windshields. It even goes as far that a lot of companies and institutions cut services or ban certain things. For example, there iare several schools across the country that have banned contact sports like playing tag football or chasing games during recess time. Why? Out of fear for being held liable that a child gets hurt playing. What comes next, that kids have to wear seatbelts on their classroom charis because they could fall over. Or make them wear a helmet inside the classroom? In essence I am all for holding people responsible when they screw up but opening up more posibilities for people to sue the shit out of everything and everyone is wrong.

The "Bus" ...

Sonja and I have been debating for a while now to buy a bigger car. We owned a Volkswagen Jetta Wagon which did a fine job but was getting too small for us, the two boys and our dog. If we put the stroller in the trunk, our dog had to squeeze in behind a seat. Anyway, we have looked around and after a while it turned out that a minivan is the only logical choice. Why, you may ask? Well, we had a limited budget, so a nice Mercedes Benz wagon was out of the question. Additionally, while slightly bigger than our Jetta they would not have solved our space problem because having kids, a third row is noce to have. Then, there was the world of SUVs. The ones that are big enough suck in terms of gas mileage (some of the American brands) and the ones that are nice enough (like Lexus, Mercedes Benz and Audi) are too expensive and still suck in terms of gas mileage. We even tried the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which has ok gas mileage compared to the regular model but nothing near where you would say this is phenomenal. On top of that, the third row seats it had would be uncomfortable for even our 4-year old and its price tag was ridiculous for the base model that had next to no options in it. So here we are, looking around and the only car category that would basically fulfill all our needs was the minivan category. So, knowing they are not the sexiest automobiles, we went ahead and test drove some of them. We really liked the Honda Odyssey and ended up buying one:

I have to say, it is one of the nicest cars, if not the nicest, that we have ever owned. Do I have a problem with driving a minivan? Not at all, the car is nice, my kids love it and we can haul all kinds of stuff around. And the car has a shitload of options that make it nice. Not to mention that it has twice the horsepower of our old Jetta and a gas mileage rating that beats any big SUV by a wide margin. A lot of people will make fun of us now but I don't care. Anyway, since the car is a lot bigger than our old one we have already nicknamed it. We simply call it "the bus" ... and we like it.

I like birthdays ...

Especially my own. People are nice to me on at least one day a year and I get to see a lot of my friends all at once. This year we met at Trader Vic's, a cocktail bar/restaurant. We slurped quite a few of their concoctions and I have to admit I had a pretty bad hangover the next day. It was fun nonetheless. And the band in that place even sang a song for me. They called me "Jorge" but if you have read this blog from the beginning you know that I am used to that.

We even shared some crazy cocktails with straws that were at least 2 feet long. Thansk everyone for coming and thanks to Sonja for setting this up. I had a blast.

Cool electric car ...

Came across the Tesla Motors site. They make a fully electric sports car that actually looks cool. No info on price though and I doubt it is affordable. But I think it's pretty cool that companies try to buck the trend of making ever bigger vehicles that suck up more and more gas. One would hope that politicians would actually support the development of fuel-efficient cars more than they have in the past. But it appears that they are even against it. So, watch out, owners of Tesla Motors or you will ask yourself Who killed the electric car?.

Playing in the sand ...

Our son Jonas (18 months old) and I were playing in the sandbox and we had great fun launching all kinds of vehicles in the sand. I thought this looked kind of cool.

He is not a puppy ...

This is my dog and his name is "Peanut". Yes, I know it is a silly name but he had already been given that name when we "freed" him from the pound. Well, we didn't exactly free him and it wasn't an adventure at all but it sounds much better than "when we bought him". Anyway, we got Peanut through the South Bay Purebred Rescue Service. Oddly enough, Peanut is a mutt, most likely the mix between a cocker spaniel and a golden retriever. The latter is probably the reasosn why he appears to be a Golden puppy even though Peanut is already 6 years old. Which brings me to my actual story. Whenever we go places, people ask us about how old our puppy is. Usually, we very dryly remark that our "puppy is 6 years old, approaching 7 fast". What happens then is similar to what happens to me in emails when people seem to believe that I can't spell my name "Joerg" but must have meant "Jorge". Some people won't believe us. Same thing with the question about his breed. We usually answer "coker-retriever mix, most likely" which sometimes is met with great skepticism by these freaks that, just because they have a dog on themselves, believe they must be dog experts. To those people we then say: "Well, we weren't there but if you have seen his parents do it let us know". Anyway, Peanut's great, he loves to play ball, chase cats and squirrels and he is great with our two boys. An he will always be our puppy... ;-)

Hiring great people is hard ...

Back in those days when I worked at IBM I did a lot of interviewing candidates for jobs we had available there. What I noticed back then is that pretty much all candidates sound reasonable on paper but very few were actually as good as the paper made me believe. It even appeared as if only mediocre people would apply for the jobs we posted. What's the problem there? Well, Joel's blog provides some good explanations for this and I encourage anyone who is hiring or interviewing people to read his post on finding great developers. I completely agree with him on the one point that truly great people never really send resumes out to job postings, heck, they never even enter the job market. Why? For one thing, good people carry a reputation and will go to new places through friends, former co-workers that now work for someone else. Or they get approached approached by the same circle of people. So who is left on the job market? Probably those who were rejected before or those who just start out. I for one think that is almost always better to take someone who is fairly junior with good basic skills over a medicore candidate who may have some (worthless) experience already. We are currently looking for someone in my group and I am interviewing again. Let's see how that goes and hopefully we will find someone great. But what makes someone great? Well, for one thing it is hard to find that out in 30-45 minutes. And anyone who is not a complete idiot and has worked on a topic will sound like an expert in that particular field. Unless the interviewer works in the same field it is somtimes hard to determine whether the candidate is phony or not. What matters to me? Well, when interview I look at how people approach problems. I don't expect anyone to know all the answers to my questions in the area of programming or algorithms. But I expect them to come up with a reasonable/feasible way of attacking the problem. Should someone be able to write the source code for QuickSort in an interview? I don't think so because I couldn't do that either and it does not really prove anything. What is more important to me that someone could tell me about its properties or where he would go to find out about it.