Album Covers

It seems like music albums are slowly becoming irrelevant in the high speed internet era. Even still, I like the concept of an album of songs, even if it is primarily a music industry plot to suck more dollars from the consumer. Songs seem stronger when they're listened to in context of the album, Pink Floyd especially. Admittedly, not all artists weave an album's songs together or use a musical or lyrical thread like Pink Floyd did, but at least the songs typically share the same producer, engineering, and time frame in which they were composed.

Another great part of having an album is the album cover. The band Yes had albums that featured some cool art, and Led Zeppelin IV's cover is instantly recognizable.

During one summer of boredom, I wrote some techno-like music using this MIDI application called MusikTyme and put mini-albums on my Geocities page, consisting of three musically-connected MIDI songs and a custom-made album cover. I could have put more than three songs per album, of course, but then I wouldn't have been able to make as many album covers (which I enjoyed as much as writing the songs).



The songs on each album would fit the cover. For example Old School Fool featured a song reminiscent of the Theme from Shaft, Return to India contained faux Eastern-sounding melodies, Back From Helk's songs had a lot of dissonant sounds, and so on. Man, I wish I still had those MIDI files--not that it's great music, but just so I can appreciate the effort and thought I put into the songs.

Some equally boring summer later I felt compelled to do some more Squaz material. Rather than waste my time writing more songs, though, I decided to just make album covers. As you can tell, I got a lot of inspiration from images on my family's computer.



The whole reason I bring up my album cover making past is because I recently stumbled upon a link to some guy's collection of worst album covers (warning: they're hilarious at first, but then they get creepy and eventually disturbing). I was talking with my brother about these horrific things today when he mentioned how some of Squaz's album covers could qualify as "worst." At first I was indignant, but now that I look at my album covers more, I'm beginning to think he was right (not Squazimoto or Killing Killer Whales, though--those covers rock!)

Joe's Popcorn Eating Axiom

Whenever you eat popcorn, no matter how little, you'll inevitably get a little piece of hull stuck in between teeth and gums.

Cable Cutting Countdown

The more I consider cancelling our cable TV service, the more I watch TV in order to take advantage of the serivce while we have it. But the more I watch TV, the more compelled I am to cancel the service. It's a vicious parabola. I'm not sure at what value of f(t) I'll actually cancel the service, but clearly as t->T_cancellation, f(t)'s value increases all the more.

• t=August: We discover that we just don't watch TV as much since our time is increasingly more devoted to cleaning up the boys' messes...and Facebook.
• t=September: Much to my surprise, I begin realize that professional wrestling is stupid.
• t=Last week: I accidentally expose the boys to some sci-fi horror imagery, boxing, a murder, and Carrot Top while flipping through some channels.
• t=Tonight: It seems as if the Disney Channel is airing movies and shows about witches, Halloween and magic all month. Blech.

At this rate, T_cancellation may be only weeks away.

The GRE

I took the GRE this morning. I survived. I marginally conquered, even. I didn't rock its socks off, but I did well enough to not hinder my chances at getting accepted into an engineering graduate school, and that's what's really at stake. As I was studying for the test, my primary concern was with my vocabulary, but I soon discovered there were a handful of mathematical challenges that I've forgotten how to tackle. For example, what's the sum of the integers between 1 and 50? Normally, I would write a simple, single-line BeanShell script to tell me, but without the aid of scripting or GRE practice, I would have inevitably embarked upon the time consuming, brute force path. Now I know that you just take the average of the first and last integers (25.5 in this case) times the number of integers (which is equal to the last number minus the first, plus one--50). Allow me verify my standard and new found approaches with some interactive BeanShell action:

bsh % t = 0; for(i = 1; i <= 50; ++i) t+=i; print(t); bsh % bsh % 1275 bsh % print(25.5 * 50.0); 1275.0

1275. Nice. (By the way, did you know that a 30°-60°-90° triangle's sides will have lengths proportional to 1, 2, and √3?). Another area of concern I didn't initially take into consideration was stamina. This became apparent to me as I ran through a practice test, and was verified on the actual test itself. I was struggling to stay focused towards the end. Maybe my low stamina is attributable towards my disengagement from scholarly pursuits over the past five years--or maybe I wore myself out by listening to too many of DragonForce's 200bpm shred-filled epics. In any case, thank God for getting me through this and onto the next challenges that await.

It Hurts to Save

Maybe my and Katie's frugality coupled with our fiscal responsibility isn't a good fit for this country right now. The Federal Reserve cut the prime interest rate yesterday after slowly inching it up over the past year or so. Not surprisingly, oil and the Euro are at all-time US Dollar highs, and gold has shot up as well. Heck, at the Wendy's drive through the other day, a Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe set me back a buck nineteen. A dollar's not what it used to be. So why am I saving USD again? Maybe I should convert my dollars to something else before things get even more out of hand.

Daughtry vs. White

According to the Top Album section of my my.yahoo portal, two of the current best selling rock albums are The White Stripe's Icky Thump and Daughtry's self-titled record. Before I go on, allmusic.com tells me the band name is technically DAUGHTRY--all capitalized--to distinguish the band from its front man, former American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry. Apparently Chris felt he'd get more credibility by being in a rock band. I think he should have differentiated his band name from his surname with slightly less subtlety than mere capitalization, though. Maybe a band name like DAUGHTRY SUCKS or DAUGH-FAIL would not only provide more distinction but a more accurate indication of the type of music they play. I cringe every time Daughtry's "What I Want" comes on, but I force myself to listen to it so I can justify my scorn. It should suffice it to say that the chorus hook is "What I want, what I need..."; that's the lyrical equivalent of the literary "It was a dark and stormy night..." In stark contrast to "What I Want" is "Icky Thump." I frequently head over to its video at vids.myspace.com just to listen to it since Pandora doesn't throw it into my rotation frequently enough. Sure, it's a beefed up "Seven Nation Army," but when your rockin' originates from your heart instead of from a highly paid producer's music market expertise, it doesn't matter.

The Master Plan

I'm considering getting my Masters of Engineering. I've bounced the idea off Katie, our parents, Pastor Steve, even, and they've all felt that it would be a good thing to do. I find that reassuring and encouraging. I'm not sure why they think I should get a Masters, but here are my reasons:

• To Justify My "Engineer" Title: Even though I'm a Computer Science graduate from UVA's School of Engineering and my job title is "Software Engineer," I don't feel like a true Engineer. True Engineers apply math and science to create value-added products. I use no math or science whatsoever. I'm leaning towards a degree in Systems Engineering, which is admittedly not as true of a discipline as mechanical or electrical engineering, but it should make me more of an Engineer than just Computer Science.
• To Increase My Employment Potential: I have no intentions to leave my job, but just in case there happens to be a particularly turbulent recession (or depression) as the US transitions from a consumer-based to a production-based nation, I will want to have a job. Traditionally during recessions/depressions, the more education you have, the better chance you have at getting/keeping a job.
• To Increase My Compensation Potential: Chances are that with higher education I could earn more pay than I would with just a Bachelor's degree. One of my goals is to allow Katie to be a full-time mom, meaning our family would just get by on my income. Being able to earn more pay would, obviously, help towards that goal.
• To Help the USA: In order for the US economy to be truly strong, it will need to produce more, and that's going to require engineers.

As of now, I'm planning on appling to the Commonwealth Graduate Engineering Program. I'm scheduled to take my GREs by the end of this month. I just need to find some referrals.

The Mark of a Good Sitcom

I was doing my typical Saturday night activity of watching the Disney Channel when I was reminded of something that I had determined long ago: a good sitcom makes the half hour go by quickly. The sitcoms that led to the rediscovery of my tenet were Cory in the House and That's So Raven. It started with Cory in the House. I would watch seemingly 5 or so minutes at a time, get distracted by something, catch another 5 minutes, do something else...wow, is this show still on? Not that it was boring or anything, the episode just seemed lengthy. After it had ended, I felt as if I had devoted a lot of energy into watching that show--but not enough energy to keep me from watching more Disney Channel, of course. Next up was Raven. It was a good episode--the series finale, I think--but it wasn't one of those best-of or reflect-fondly-on-the-past episodes. In any case, it was over before I even realized that I had taken the time to start watching it, and watching it was effortless. Needless to say, That's So Raven is better than Cory in the House (that should be obvious to anyone even if they don't agree with my attestation of sitcom speediness).

• By the way, you can watch Raven and Cory episodes on disneychannel.com.
• Also, I've always felt that Family Guy episodes took a lot of time and energy to get through--becoming more depraved can be a chore sometimes, I suppose.
• Although in the case of Arrested Development, becoming more depraved is a speedy process.
• If I didn't have clocks to prove otherwise, I could swear The Office is only a 15 minute show, tops.

Are Java Generics Worth It?

Java 5 introduced a feature called Generics that was an attempt to duplicate, more or less, the Template feature of C++. The motivation behind it was to allow the compiler to provide more type safety--making sure you don't accidentally use the wrong type object. It was also touted as a way to prevent casting. So, for example, let's say I wanted to sum the contents of a Collection of Integers, I'd write this (before Java 5):

int sum = 0; for (Iterator it = coll.iterator(); it.hasNext(); ) sum += ((Integer)it.next()).intValue();

(Note that before Java 5, I could also add a String to my collection, which would have caused a runtime error in my summation code.) In Java 5, I write this:

int sum = 0; for (Integer i : coll) sum += i;

(I'm also taking advantage of another new Java 5 feature called autoboxing, but I digress...) If I tried adding a String to my collection, the compiler wouldn't let me, thus preventing the runtime error.
This is all wonderful, you may think, but there are downsides I've discovered:

• Extra Keystrokes: I may avoid casting and its associated keystrokes with Generics, but I have to type a lot more just to declare that I'm using Generics. Compare the two Collection instantiations below.
  Collection coll = new ArrayList(); // pre-Java 5 Collection<Integer> coll = new ArrayList<Integer>(); // Java 5
  Hmm...Java 5 is a little bit wordier. But it can easily get worse, like if I wanted, say, a Map of Strings to a Collection of Integers:
  Map map = new HashMap(); // pre-Java 5 Map<String,Collection<Integer>> map = new HashMap<String,Collection<Integer>>(); // Java 5
  Java 5 doesn't require you to explicitly specify Generic types, but it will give you a warning if you're not.
• Type "Interference": For lack of a better way of describing this, sometimes in an attempt to use Genericized code, you can find yourself struggling to placate the compiler so that it lets you do what you want to do. I think the issue is partially related to backwards compatability, wildcards, and covariance-- which is a fancy way of saying that subtypes and supertypes aren't interchangable. This article does a good job of explaining the quirks. It'll suffice to say that nuances and subtleties with Generics sometimes hinders your ability to program more than the type safety provided helps you program.
• Compiler Errors: I stick with the Sun compilers, so it could be their problem, but I depending on the version of the compiler I use, sometimes my complex Generics code compiles, sometimes it doesn't. We used to have problems with JDK 1.5.0_08 but had those problems resovled by _09. Now we're getting a new compiler errors after switching to 1.6.0_02. You really need to execise more caution with JDK upgrades when your code relies on Generics.
• Unreadable Code: This is the most troubling of the problems I have with Generics. A mark of a good programmer, in my opinion, is working code that is readable and therefore understandable. But sometimes if there's some code that is Genericized using other Genericized code, you get this snowball effect and before you know it your code is littered with so many angle brackets you'd think you were writing XML. Check out this class declaration from some code written for my latest work project:
  public abstract class FooDAG<F extends Foo,     B extends Bar<F, F, B>,     E extends FooDAG.Edge<F, B, E>>   extends FooGraph<F, B, E, FooDAG.Node<F, B, E>>   implements Iterable<FooDAG.Node<F, B, E>>
  Even though I helped write this class, I honestly don't fully understand at this time what it does or why it needs to be that way, at least without a good 15 minutes reading the class over.

In any case, I'm beginning to conclude that the extra type safety offered by Generics isn't worth it, especially nowadays with with popularity of loosely-typed dynamic languages and dependency injection frameworks like Spring, which let you retrieve objects from a Factory which you need to explicitly cast into the object of your choice. I do enjoy using the Generics built in to the JavaSE API, namely the java.util package, but as far as using Generics in your own private APIs, I don't think it's worth it.

LDS Wedding

A coworker invited me to his wedding reception at a Latter-Day Saints Church this past weekend. The wedding itself was in the Temple adjacent to the church, which we could not attend because we weren't of the "restored sainthood" (plus you need an official LDS card affirming your worthiness). However, on our way to the church we made a wrong turn into the temple parking lot and managed to get a fairly up-close view of the outside of the place.

I noticed some architectural similarities between the temple and some Masonic buildings I've seen, specifically the Masonic Temple in Alexandria and a lodge a couple miles from where we live.

1. No Windows - although the Masonic Temple appears to have windows, the lodge and the Mormon Temple were void of any inlet for natural light. It's a little odd that something touted as "a light to the world" shields the outside world from any light originating from within it.


2. Near Symmetrical Design - all the buildings are symmetrical, or as the Masons seem to refer to it "geometrical." The only non-symmetrical feature of the temple is the spire holding the statue of Moroni. Note that the remaining five spires form a slightly elliptical inverted pentagram behind him. (OK, so maybe that's a little bit of a stretch, but some Mormon temples do have pentagrams on them.)


3. Out-of-place -both the temples sort of show up out of nowhere. You're driving down the beltway towards the Wilson Bridge, noticing the large commercial buildings and then all of sudden you say "What's that?" as the Masonic Temple comes into view. Likewise, the spectacle of the gigantic, marble white Mormon Temple nested within a quiet, lush, wooded area elicits even more of an exclamation.
   
4. Creepy - the creepiness is probably results from a combination of the out-of-place nature, unusual architecture, and the enigmatic nature of Mormonism and Masonry. It was uncomfortable to be there.

Some claim Mormonism has no relation to Freemasonry, other than that Joseph Smith himself was a 32nd-level Mason, the highest level to which any non-US President can attain to (Smith also possessed +12 Charisma and +5 Accuracy with the long bow...I kid). But apparently there's a lot of material out there linking the two more deeply, architecturally and ceremonially. I'm not going to tread those waters right now.

I would like to offer my congratulations to my coworker, though. He and his wife are a great fit and make a cute couple.

Debt & Debtor

I've been reading a lot of stock market news along with doom and gloom stories about the economy. I think the gist is that long-term loans became so cheap, people were enticed to buy things with borrowed money. With all this money (rather, credit) circulating, houses became a lot more expensive--not because they were actually increasing in value, but because people had more and more credit to spend. So people borrowed even more money to buy these homes. Long story short, more money has been loaned out than actually exists, and that's causing problems; you can't pay back loans with non-existent money: Nicholas Andre: (looking at peices of paper in a suticase) Where's all the money? Lloyd Christmas: That's as good as money sir, those are IOUs. Go ahead and add it up every cents accounted for. Look, see this that's a car, 275 thou--might want to hang on to that one. Being able to compare US consumers with Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber makes me nervous. So here's the rundown as I've gathered:

• People borrow more money than they're able to pay back.
• Banks lose money on the loans given to these people.
• Banks can't give out more loans since they don't have as much money to loan out.
• People can't get the loans they need to buy things, so they have to stop spending.
• Companies profiting from people buying their stuff lose sales.
• Investors used to steady, rising company profits get upset and cash out their investments.
• Stock prices fall, companies lose capital they need to do business, people lose jobs, the economy goes south.

Hey, doesn't this sound familiar? Anyways, the difference between now and 1929 is that we have federal groups that are supposed pull strings to try to keep the economy going. Good luck with that. To be fair, the latest move by the Fed--lowering the interest rate for loans they give to banks--did help the market rebound today, but that just adds more borrowed money into the mix.

Eventually the US is going to have to generate money, maybe some lucrative new energy source, perhaps? Until then, I'm not sure what to do. If this scenario causes the value of the dollar to increase (as a result of credit being harder to obtain and prices decreasing), I'll want to hold onto cash. On the other hand, if the US economy tanks and the dollar loses its value, then my cash will be worthess, so maybe I'll want to buy gold or something to protect my dollars.

What is Technology?

"Technology" gets thrown around to describe lots of different things, some of which are truly technology while others are just boring "stuff." I listen to WTOP during my commute and a fair number of ads seem to be companies offering technology "solutions" that meet "critical requirements." My hunch is that the majority of these "solutions" are just attempts at using some newer boring stuff to replace older boring stuff clients already use. The newer stuff will hopefully be an improvement over the older stuff, but that's assuming the contractor is able get the newer boring stuff in place within time and budget constraints--a surprisingly difficult feat (and a whole other topic). Here are some examples of boring stuff passed off as technology:

1. Standards (CSS, EJB): A standard is nothing more than an agreed way of doing things that people implement in partially incompatable ways. Nothing that can be done using one standard that can't be done with a different standard.
2. Programming Languages (.NET, Java, Ruby): New languages allow people to do the same things they've always been able to do with a different syntax. Ultimately, though, all languages end up as a bunch of zeros and ones pumping through a processor. And that's boring.
3. XML (XSLT, Schema, XForms, XML-RPC): XML is a standard (and a yucky programming language), but it deserves it's own bullet because it's the parent of dozens of derivative standards that are all equally boring.
4. Web-enabling: This is the process of moving applications from one OS (Windows/Unix/Mac) to another, more limited OS (Internet Explorer/Firefox/Safari).

Things that are really technology require scientific research to discover and implement, in my opinion--things that are produced by engineering not marketing.

Outlet

I started this blog to externalize my thoughts in order to make room for other thoughts or good ideas...ideas like how to start a successful business or getting free lunches. To avoid random rants, I will try to focus postings into four categories corresponding to the prominent areas of my life (which are sadly not always in this order): Christ, Family, Money, Technology.

I used to have a pre-Google Blogger blog in college that I neglected and now is forever lost among the Google server farms. Then I posted some things on my myspace blog...but myspace is lame (sorry, Rupert). We'll see how it goes this time around.