hyphenated - Filed under 'science & technology'

April 22, 2010 9:29 AM

the techvolution continues

Preface

Hyphenated celebrated it's one year anniversary last Sunday without much fanfare or, unfortunately, cake. I suppose that the Go Daddy automatic renewal email for my domain could be considered an e-card, albeit a really lame one. In any case, the least I can do to mark the date is dedicate a blog post to the milestone. It's belated, partly because I was hosting a third (and final, for now) consecutive set of visitors and spent Sunday touring Alcatraz, but here it is.

♻♻♻

Just over a year ago, my first post listed some of the reasons I started a blog. All of the reasons still apply a year later, especially the one related to keeping in touch with family. Still no sign of my parents on Facebook or Twitter. Knowing that my grandmother will read this makes me smile. I also still envision the blog as a creative outlet. I try to write posts that are extensions of my thoughts and voice, and I resist the urge to use Posterous as a simple way to share photos and online content without any value added beyond the title. The goal of keeping it interesting remains important too.

In addition to the reasons for starting the blog are the reasons to continue blogging. The great feeling that comes from a friend saying that they're reading and enjoying my blog and enjoying it is one. While many don't post comments, I get direct personal feedback that means a lot to me. Storytelling is another unforeseen aspect of blogging that appeals to me. So many of the posts that resonate, with me and my audience, include stories. Whether they be from my childhood or last weekend, I really enjoy telling stories and the blog is a great way to share them.

Looking back, the blog was my initial independent foray into unknown online territory. Given the developments of the last year and living in what seems to be the center of the technology universe, I haven't stopped exploring. When friends come to visit me in San Francisco, I show them around the city and I give them a tour of my iPhone apps. I usually end up talking a lot about FourSquare tips and trending locations. The techvolution continues.

♻♻♻

Postscript

Seeing as it's April 22nd, a blog post isn't complete without some Earth Day content:

Filed under // family & friends science & technology sustainability

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January 26, 2010 11:34 AM

learning to program through osmosis

There are times when I wish learning by osmosis was less dream and more reality. Studying for exams is probably the circumstance where I wished this the most (you know: step 1 - place textbook under pillow, step 2 - sleep, step 3 - wake up refreshed the next morning knowing the contents of all 14 chapters and the glossary, step 4 - ace exam). But I've also fantasized about learning by osmosis when it came to developing some basic web design and programming skills. Before I mislead you into thinking that I developed a way to do just that, the closest I've gotten to living the dream is by moving to San Francisco, being unemployed, and living with four YC alumni.

I've created some websites in the past using WYSIWYG editors. I won't be posting links to them here because they're, well, ugly. At the time, I didn't have time to learn enough HTML and CSS to do away with Dreamweaver and tables and all of their inherently frustrating limitations.

In contrast, when I arrived in SF I had time. Lots and lots of time. And I had a premise for a site. And I was surrounded by guys and their Macbooks and their nearly constant creativity. Not only were they creating things, they were creative in the sense that creativity is synonymous with innovation, initiative, enterprise, and resourcefulness. And I was inspired. I bought a domain.

After asking my roommies a few questions, I concluded that I was starting so close to knowing nothing about web development that perusing the results of Google searches would suffice as my guide. Sensei Google. I borrowed an O'Reilly book, but found myself returning to Google for tidbits of assistance (with a background in biology, most of my time with the O'Reilly book was spent speculating on what the species of fish was on the cover... salmon, in case you're also curious).

I began by mocking stuff out in Photoshop by following a few online tutorials. One of my roommies was hosting a houseguest who worked as a graphic designer, and he shared a few tips and tricks. I played with colours and wondered aloud why Photoshop tools were so counter-intuitive. Needless to say, the ⌘+⌥+Z keys got a lot of use.

Once I had a better idea of what the site would look like, got some feedback from a graphic designer friend, and determined the extent of the site's functionality, I debated whether I should learn Ruby on Rails (the language of choice around here) for the backend. Ultimately, I decided to create a custom theme for Wordpress (despite being warned that Wordpress could be a nightmare). Enter more tutorials.

I started with a template from a tutorial and started modifying it. Trial and error was the name of the game. I came to appreciate that the method isn't called "trail and flawless" - there was a lot of error. Starting with the CSS in a TextEdit window, I made changes, saved, and refreshed. And I did that again and again and again. For awhile, I would enter #000000 and expect white to appear. I then realized that, because the absence of all light/color is black, the nomenclature actually made sense. I got pretty far just by editing the CSS, but reached a point where I couldn't ignore the HTML any longer.

More trial, more error. I'd think that I was on the right track, then I'd make a change, save, refresh, and (fingers crossed) ... error. I began to understand more of the nomenclature. I developed a love-hate, or rather hate-love, relationship with semicolons (hating them when one was missing and the structure of the page suddenly collapsed in a heap of div rubble and loving them when inserting one would miraculously fix everything). When trying to float divs, I found myself envisioning the position of lily-pads in a pond. Eventually, I got to the point where I would make a change in the code and was no longer surprised that the desired change would materialize in the browser window. The code made sense and I was able to appreciate that the code I was using as template was inelegant and inefficient. The experience was analogous to learning the basics of a foreign language using a textbook only to discover that the textbook was poorly written.

Then came Wordpress. Kevin graciously set up the server side of things and I began the process of integration. The tutorial was less than helpful, but I followed it to the best of my limited abilities. Ultimately, Kevin helped me navigate the intersection of HTML and PHP. More trial. More error. But I was learning. As a result, I have a website: www.amerishock.com

It's not perfect, but it's far from fail and it's mine. The design is mine. The underlying structure (minus the Wordpress code) is mine. The idea is mine. And, most importantly, I learned to program. Admittedly, what I learned was very basic but it can still be classified as learning.

While it wasn't learning by osmosis, the learning process was relatively friction-free. Being immersed in a culture where spending hours at home staring into the glowing screen of a laptop is seen as creative and productive, rather than antisocial, makes it easy to put in the time and effort needed to learn to code. And if you already code, I can't help but conclude that living in SF can only be good for productivity. Sharing an apartment with YC alumn can't hurt, either.

Filed under // San Francisco science & technology

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December 5, 2009 4:04 PM

power on

Flip the switch and, voila!, there is light. It's something I do everyday, without really thinking about it. I take electricity for granted and I know that I shouldn't, mainly because I found myself at the heart of the so-called Triangle of Darkness during the ice storm that ravaged Quebec in 1998. For twenty-eight days (minus the few hours between when John purchased a generator and when he deemed it defective because, in addition to generating power, it was generating an unsettling blue flame) lightbulbs were useless and I was forced to appreciate what life was like before Franklin's potentially idiotic kite experiment.

Given that producing light is as simple as flipping the switch, it's easy to ignore where the power comes from and even easier to leave lights on unnecessarily. In addition to turning superfluous lights off, my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint have included purchasing compact fluorescent bulbs in order to reduce power consumption for the purpose of illumination. The equation is simple: less power consumed = less power generated = less carbon emissions.

In the two places I've lived before now, the nature of the source of the electricity was implicit in the names printed on my utility bills: Hydro Québec and BC Hydro. I was always left wondering what impacts my effort to reduce my electricity consumption had if the bulk of the environmental impacts associated with producing the power were incurred in the past, when the dam was built and the landscape was flooded and the power lines were erected. The ongoing generation of hydroelectricity is considered relatively clean so the equation isn't so simple. Where hydroelectricity is concerned, reducing consumption limits demand in an effort to reduce the need to construct additional dams or power plants in the future, rather than reducing emissions now.

Our utility now does not have 'hydro' in its name and I was curious as to our current source of power. So I did some research and found some data for our zip code, which I've graphed:

So, in California, the link between turning off the lights and minimizing my footprint is more obvious, along with the fact that my footprint is probably larger here given the mix of energy sources. About 75% of the pie is non-renewable and fossil fuels make up more than half of the non-renewable energy sources, while the remaining piece is nuclear. Long story short, the pie is neither sustainable nor appetizing. Here's hoping that the recipe is tweaked sooner than later.

Filed under // science & technology sustainability

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November 8, 2009 12:09 PM

plenty of fish

When we left Vancouver, our friends Mark and Stephanie gave us some money as a gift with specific instructions for spending it. Mark described a place in San Francisco that he had read about consisting of an aquarium, a biodome, and a planetarium under one roof and insisted that we visit it. Kevin and I forgot the name of the attraction, but intended on looking it up once we got settled here.

Yesterday morning over coffee, we were discussing weekend plans with our roommate and the latest houseguest (houseguests are a regular occurrence here). We had none and Paul was going to the California Academy of Sciences (the CalAcademy) with a friend. I asked what that was and Paul described it as an aquarium, a biodome, and a planetarium under one (green) roof. Assuming that this must be the place Mark referred us to, we went along.

The CalAcademy was great, especially the aquarium. The re-created tropical seascape reminded me of the course I took at McGill that involved two weeks in Barbados studying the coral reef ecosystem (Kevin claims that I only enrol in programs where I get credits to travel to warm destinations - I also went to Baja Mexico for a grad school course). Many of the fish were familiar, but many of the names had evaporated from my memory. Proof of the "if you don't use it, you lose it" principle.

The dark rooms of the aquarium were packed full of families (consequence of going on a weekend), including small children captivated by colourful fish schooling amongst the coral in the huge tanks. Unlike me, they had names for many of the fishees, such as Nemo and Dora.

Standing before the glass, mesmerized by the fish swimming to and fro in their limited habitat, I couldn't help but contemplate the potential for coral reefs to become artifacts in my lifetime, seen only in aquariums and natural history museums. The prospect of not being able to snorkel in natural living reef ecosystems with parrotfish, eels, butterflyfish, angelfish, urchins, groupers... the list goes on, is disturbing and depressing but highly likely, due in part to climate change:

It is clear that anthropogenic climate change is already negatively impacting the world’s corals and coral reefs. The threat will almost surely grow over the next several decades as the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases and ocean warming and acidification accelerate. Predicting future impacts of climate change on corals and coral reefs is complicated given all the uncertainty about the political response, future technologies, changes in human behavior, the earth climate system and the actual effects on reef inhabitants. But even conservative forecasts suggest that we could loose coral reef ecosystems by the end of the 21st century.

Bruno, John (Lead Author); Mark McGinley (Topic Editor). 2008. "Coral reefs and climate change." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth December 19, 2007; Last revised August 26, 2008; Retrieved November 8, 2009]

We didn't make it into the biodome because of the long line, but I'm thinking we'll get a membership to the CalAcademy and go back.

Click here to download:

plenty_of_fish.zip (2321 KB)

Filed under // San Francisco science & technology sustainability

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October 7, 2009 8:06 AM

mutant sock puppets

Last month, we were at a friend's wedding. After the ceremony and before the reception, the bride's brother hosted a casual garden party. Sitting around in the yard and chatting with friends from school, the topic of toe socks somehow came up.

My friend Jonn happened to be wearing a pair and began signing their praises. He listed all the reasons why toe socks were better than regular socks. And then he took off his shoe to show us how free his toes were able to move independently of one another. We all cringed. There's something about toe socks that is fundamentally... uncomfortable.

I don't mind seeing bare feet, but socks that enable each toe to wiggle on its own make me wrinkle my nose. Thankfully, socked feet are largely contained within shoes so I can largely ignore the existence of toe socks. Also, I sense that I'm not alone in my views regarding toe socks so I don't think I need to worry about conventional socks being completely replaced by toe socks. And, as a result, cute sock puppets need not worry about becoming scary-looking mutants.

Once Jonn revealed his freely wiggling socked toes, Kevin brought up the emergence of Five Fingers, a new line of shoes by Vibram that transfer the principle behind toe socks to the realm of footwear. More cringing.

Kevin has been interested in Five Fingers since he was made aware of their existence and, since then, I've been staunchly against them. I have even threatened not to be seen in public with him if he decided to buy a pair and wear them on the street. Unlike toe socks, toe shoes cannot be ignored - one cannot wear Five Fingers discretely or secretly. They're right out there.

In my mind, Five Fingers make the Birkenstock-sock combo fashionable (assuming that the socks are conventional socks and not toe socks). Even if Five Fingers are superior to normal shoes from an orthopaedic perspective, any benefits are overshadowed by their absolute hideousness. I know that my repulsion to toe socks and Five Fingers is completely irrational. My sense of aesthetic rarely trumps practical considerations, but my aversion to feet in gloves is an instance where aesthetics take precedence.

Filed under // family & friends science & technology

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September 4, 2009 12:20 AM

vital stats

Leave it to Twitter to raise some interesting questions to ponder. One that came up in my stream recently:

Would you be dead or alive if there was no western medicine during your lifetime?

via @finitor via @iangogame

Having given it quite a bit of thought, I don't know. Before the age at which I can recall events vividly, I had an asthma attack that resulted in being taken to the hospital and given a mask with some meds (I only remember the mask because I got to take it home and we played doctor with it for years after). It was the one and only asthma incident in my life and I'm not sure if I would've died without modern medicine, but it seems to be the closest I ever came.

Actually, the closest I probably ever came to dying was caused by modern medicine. I inherited a lazy eye such that I had double vision until it was surgically corrected when I was five. During the surgery, my heart started beating irregularly and may have stopped for a brief period. After diagnostic testing post-surgery, the conclusion was that I had an adverse reaction to the anesthetic. While modern medicine allows me to see straight most of the time (when I'm really tired, my left eye has a tendency to drift off center to this day - sexy, I know), it also threatened my very existence.

The question also got me thinking about something I've pondered a bit in the past: how has modern medicine impacted gene frequencies within the population? I started contemplating this when a friend of mine was speculating on the reasons for the increased prevalence of allergies amongst children.

source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db10.pdf

I've heard the hypotheses about the links between immunizations, cleanliness, etc. and allergies, but I've yet to be convinced and I'm sticking to my theory: more and more people with potentially fatal food allergies are surviving to reproduce (due to modern medicine) and, as a result, the prevalence of food allergies is increasing. My theory is that modern medicine is to some extent responsible for the rise in allergies. Modern medicine has essentially transformed traits that once greatly compromised a person's fitness into traits that are almost inconsequential from a Darwinian perspective.

Back in the day, if you were unknowingly allergic to peanuts as a child and ate a peanut you'd probably go into anaphylactic shock and die, such that the genes that contributed to the allergy would not propagate. Today, children with severe peanut allergies are more likely to survive allergic reactions (due to advances in modern medicine), learn to avoid peanuts, and live to reproduce. And, the gene(s) responsible for the allergy are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. And so on, with the frequency of the gene(s) and the number of people with the allergy increasing with every subsequent generation.

Just some more food for thought.

Filed under // food science & technology

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July 22, 2009 11:03 PM

chemistry + physics = beauty

I presume that the environmental impacts of fireworks is probably high. The impacts of the noise and the smoke and the chemicals on the surrounding environment is the one thing about fireworks that I don't appreciate.

I do enjoy the bright colours and the grandeur and the magic of fireworks though. Kevin can attest that I get pretty excited about fireworks. I am drawn to the combination of an explosive substance with chemicals to create huge, awe-inspiring, fleeting art installations. Being rooted in scientific principles (and reminiscent of a high school chemistry experiment), fireworks are an art form that appeals to me. Chemistry + physics = beauty.

Every summer, Vancouver hosts a fireworks competition between four countries. The venue is English Bay and the best seats are on the beach five minutes from our place. As a result, our neighborhood is flooded with fireworks spectators each of the four nights. The main streets are closed to traffic and vehicles are replaced by crowds flowing towards the bay, not unlike water flowing in rivers towards the ocean.

The restaurants are packed, the line ups at the grocery store are huge, and every patch of sand and grass with a view of the barge (from which the pyrotechnics are launched) become completely covered by blankets and chairs (to the extent that the city has to erect giant blue fences around gardens in the vicinity of the beach to prevent people from trampling the flowers). To stifle any spontaneous post-fireworks festivities (or stabbings, as have been know to occur), the police presence in the West End during the event is huge. Cops on horses, cops in helicopters, cops on foot. It's surreal.

Every spring, the fireworks competition is cancelled for the lack of sponsors and I am simultaneously relieved (our neighborhood won't be invaded) and disappointed (there won't be any fireworks). Every year, a new sponsor steps up and I re-live the emotions. It's a love-hate relationship, really.

Tonight was the first of the four nights of the aptly-named Celebration of Light. I found a patch of grass with a good view despite only going out a half hour in advance of the show (living in the area provides good insider knowledge of less obvious vantage points). I waited in eager anticipation with thousands of other spectators for the show to start. An I marveled at the spectacularly exhilarating combination of light and sound. The theme of tonight's show was The Wizard of Oz (which made me think of one of Tommy's recent posts).

And now I'm home, listening to the sound of noisy crowds making their way home as the police helicopter (complete with spotlight) circles overhead. The drown will persist for another few hours, long after the joy I've derived has faded somewhere over the rainbow.

Click here to download:

chemistry_physics_beauty.zip (4164 KB)

Filed under // books & art science & technology sustainability Vancouver

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July 19, 2009 9:21 PM

a temporary escape

Camping is in my blood. All family trips during my childhood (with the exception of one to visit Grandma and Grandpa is Florida when they were snowbirds) involved a tent and a Coleman stove. Weeks at Rollins Pond in the Adirondacks canoeing, swimming, trapping crawfish, roasting marshmallows by the campfire were highlights of my summer vacations throughout elementary school.

I spent this weekend camping and doing most of the activities listed above (I didn't see any crawfish) as part of my friend Katherine's bachelorette festivities. Despite having a shower upon my return home, the smell of campfire smoke lingers in my hair and I feel rejuvenated by the fresh air yet drained by the sun's rays. There's nothing quite like camping to slow down the pace and to appreciate the simple and subtler elements of life. Blue skies and crisp air and the sound of water lapping at the underside of the canoe. A temporary escape from the daily routine and modern amenities...

Alas, my cellphone rang while setting up the tent. And a friend responded to messages on her Blackberry while sitting by the campfire. So much for escaping.

Filed under // family & friends science & technology

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July 12, 2009 12:30 PM

you don't know what you've got till it's gone

I've added something new to my morning routine - shower, eat breakfast, check email, brush teeth, pollinate, get dressed, do hair, do makeup. If you guessed that pollinate was the recent addition, you're right.

When growing fruit, tomatoes in my case, indoors the absence of bees and other pollinators is an issue. Without spreading the pollen from one flower to another, tomatoes will not grow. The pollination process is not very complicated - I basically poke my finger in all the flowers that are open, starting and ending with the same flower. Seems to do the trick, as tomatoes are developing on my plants.

Having to take time to pollinate, water, and fertilize my indoor garden simply because it is indoors and isolated from the natural environment really exemplifies the extent of the natural processes that we traditionally depend on in the production of food. For the most part, humanity has supplemented or replaced many ecosystem services, such as fertilization and irrigation, by relying on technological innovation and finite resources (such as fossil water and fossil fuels) in order to increase yield. But pollination is one ecosystem service we haven't yet replaced and that we rely on tremendously. To think that our current food supply depends intrinsically on the activity of insects, largely bees, and other pollinators is humbling.

Humans are at the top of the food chain, but we rely extensively on the links in the chain that extend right to the bottom. Pollination is a prime example.

In contemplating the importance of bees, a verse from a well-known Joni Mitchell song entered my thoughts:

Hey farmer farmer

Put away that DDT now

Give me spots on my apples

But leave me the birds and the bees

Please!

Dont it always seem to go

That you dont know what youve got

Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

Combined with the recent discovery that bees are on the decline for reasons yet to be fully understood, reading the lyrics to the song left me feeling ... nostalgic. Nostalgic in the sense of "a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past." Partly because this is a song from my childhood and reminds me of hot summer afternoons on the porch with family and partly because I find myself mourning the loss of the bees in nature (the latter being a feeling in direct conflict with my phobia of bees and other insects with stingers) resulting from what is referred to as colony collapse disorder.

If human activity is causing the decline of the bees, I hope that we, as a society, have the common sense to rectify the situation. Loosing the bees seems like a case of not really knowing what we've got till it's gone. Pollinating ten tomatoes plants manually is one thing - pollinating all crops without help from bees is quite another.

Filed under // family & friends food science & technology sustainability

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July 8, 2009 5:16 PM

green roof

Green roofs are awesome, mainly because they deliver a plentitude of environmental benefits, including:

Sustainable stormwater management
Microclimate regulation
Biodiversity enhancement
Building performance improvements

That said, transforming a traditional roof to a green roof is not trivial and, as pointed out on one site, "You should speak to a structural engineer or architect to assess an existing roof before making plans to convert it into a green roof." Indeed, leaks can result from the ad hoc installation of a green roof.

I guess that's why I was greeted by drips from the ceiling this morning. Our roof is very green and it is very ad hoc. Specifically, it is green because of the moss:

via Google maps

Our building desperately needs a new roof and, at this point, I could care less if it is green or conventional. As long as it keeps the rain out, I'll be happy.

Filed under // science & technology sustainability

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