ewiethoff

Training! Twenty-five years ago, the vice president of the engineering consulting firm where I worked got some bee in her bonnet and announced that the "staff" needed some sort of "training." Being young and politically foolish, I glared at her and said, "Training is for chimps. And don't call a room full of people with engineering degrees staff."

I have no idea what your 'enterprise architect's actual abilities are, but the poor gal talks like a chimp.

I believe you are correct. I have no clue whether vaksel is American, but I do think Americans (I'm one) have absorbed--been fed?--a fair amount of hooey about HIV transmission and how to be "safe." Keep in mind, if you're old enough, AIDS was/is "that gay disease" and something quite a small number of injecting druggies were getting--as the "need" for a War on Drugs was building. I'm sorry to report, Americans are a fearful lot.

OMG, I just got an insight. I'm an effective Rover or mentoring "navigator" as long as no one expects me to read. I need to not look at the monitor, not try to read the code or docs or whatever. As long as all I do in the presence of talking people is do my own listening and talking, my brain doesn't turn to complete mush. I noticed long ago that I have almost zero reading comprehension when I read English (native language) aloud. I also remember covering my ears while reading silently when someone else reads or the teacher is talking. Etc. So the big insight is, my reading incomprehension in the presence of speech extends to reading computer code! I have a reading problem (or attention problem, or whatever it boils down to) which frustrates my ability to pair.

That explains why I have such a hard time understanding even a single line of code in most pairing sessions. That explains why, when I'm the "extra set of eyes," all I'm good for is syntax and spelling check (which really should be done by software, not me). Writing code happens to be a lot more of reading what's on the monitor than head's down typing. So, the question is, how am I able to drive okay with insightful and not-so-obtrusive Apoorva? Well, it often doesn't work. But I notice it does work when there's only one other pair in the room and I haul Apoorva and me to the far end. That cuts the other voices down significantly.

Thank you, thank you for prompting me to think this through.

My pediatrician switched his practice to "allergy and asthma" in 1970. He told my mom he did so because he wanted to try to help whatever the heck is wrong with me. Well, I can't read his mind for motives, but that's what my mom reported.

I astound and baffle allergists when their tests reveal the huge numbers of foods--and varieties of foods--I'm allergic to. (Note to self: I am not going into my other allergy foods here.) Their first reaction is to blurt out, "What do you eat?! How do you live?! It's a wonder you're alive!" After that, their reactions and attempts to help vary considerably. The closest I've gotten to an explanation from a live doctor is hearing one mutter something about "volatile oils" into his Dragon Naturally Speaking before walking off and leaving his nurse distressed for my sake.

I do get strange satisfaction knowing that food allergies have gotten much more prevalent in the past decade or so. This means more researchers take more interest in it, the FDA changes its food labeling laws, the general populace has a little more knowledge, etc. When I'm feeling grandiose, I tell myself that my strange body (and that of a guy I spoke to on the phone who is a guinea pig at the Mayo because he's allergic to all foods) are the vanguard or cassandras or whatever for something new and weird going on in the world. But perhaps I read too many Greg Bear novels. ;-)

I subscribe to an allergy research newsletter from South Africa, which contains a lot of fascinating, nerdly stuff I never hear from live doctors. And when I do try to mention research, I get, "That means you don't need me except to prescribe Epipens." But I got away from reading it a few years ago. I think I'll head back to doing so. Thank you for indirectly putting the bee in my bonnet. http://www.allallergy.net/abstracts/index.cfm

Ah! A quick glance reveals an article called "The importance of nasal provocation test in the diagnosis of natural rubber latex allergy." This just might pertain to me even though I have a banana allergy, not a latex allergy... But I think I'll leave it for a few days. This whole topic is getting way too heavy today. Bye, folks. I'm logging out.

Yes, my three allergists have all called it "oral allergy syndrome." One of them speculated my problem might have to do with "volatile oils," considering I'm also allergic to the smell of the raw produce. 19th and 20th century chemistry is amazing. Did you know that "flavors" for factory foods are food perfumes, top secret stuff concocted by perfume chemists? I learned that around ten years ago in a book called Mauve, about the history of fabric dying, of all things. (Some years earlier, I concluded the scent that remains long after slapping on some Polo is blueberry from old Betty Crocker blueberry muffin mix.)

So the thought of being allergic to volatile oils made pretty good sense to me. But as soon as I say "volatile oils" to people in combination with "cooking," they get all confused. Maybe they think I want to solve my problems by blowing up my kitchen or setting the building on fire or starting a heated argument. I'm happy to think that "denatured proteins" will sound a lot less volatile.

BTW, I'm a she, not a he. I also happen to be blondish and thin with a weak voice. I find that many people in real life, whom I shall not bother to classify here by occupation or sex, don't take me seriously. If you like, you can picture Julianne Moore in "Safe," a film which I find both uncomfortable and terribly funny.

"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."

As for the allergies, shall I come to your home for a demonstration? You can watch my lips and tongue swell up while I scratch my chin and neck something fierce and spend a couple hours wheezing. It's pretty frightening to watch, and it gets worse over the years. I'm glad I've needed to be hauled to an emergency room only once. I do keep an Epipens on me.

Someday when you are prescribed Epipens by bona fide allergist MDs, you will be handed several brochures. Some of them will comfort you with the statement that many people out there, commonly your most immediate family members, won't believe you and think you're (consciously or subconsciously) making this all up. And some of them are designed for other people to read so that they will take you seriously.

To be honest, living with dangerous allergies--especially a large number of bizarre, dangerous allergies--is mind-blowingly tough, physically, nutritionally, logistically, emotionally, socially, and professionally.

Enough with the heavy stuff. I shall end on what I hope is a more pleasant note. I find it amusing that when I make an occasional trip to a health food store and people ask me about my grocery needs, about 3/4 of them recommend some naturopath or other for some loony muscle test, and the rest are firmly convinced there's no such thing as allergy at all to anything "natural."

We live in a strange world. :-)

I can't "navigate" someone moderately competent because it takes me forever to stuff a pile of someone else's code into my head. I have to keep scrolling here and looking there, which I can't do without a separate keyboard and monitor. I want to navigate from an extra computer so I can flip through the code, look up docs, and so on. But, by gum, that's not "pair programming." Hence, the only thing I'm good for as a navigator is catching syntax and spelling errors, which is something an appropriate editor or IDE can do.

And I can't accomplish much while I'm "driving" because either I have to spend all my time explaining everything to the noob, or I'm not allowed time to think. If I stare into space or scroll around a bit, the navigator thinks I'm stuck and feels compelled to chatter away with advice or questions or something. And unlike the author's "Progammer Man," the code I produce solo in the Zone is better than the code I produce in a pair out of the Zone. The best "navigator" is someone who watches awhile then gives up and "pairs" with someone else! No, I take that back. Apoorva is a decent navigator. He mostly just sits there and makes a few pleasant quips, occasionally raising an insightful question. I guess I'm very, very finicky about navigators.

  I'm a hacker and I'm okay
  I play all night and I sleep all day

I've had about nine years of various music lessons but no formal ear training. So, the following advice is what I figured out myself, mostly in my thirties. It's geared a little more toward singing than playing, more toward arranging than original composing. You'll probably notice I don't have a terrific head for jazz. This advice shows my age (and my whiteness), but hey, sometimes old music is good music, sometimes old composers are good composers. Stand on the shoulders of giants, and all.

Advice (in approximate order of difficulty and creativity):

1) Give up air guitar. :-> You need to make your own noises.

2) Play and sing intervals and scales. Pick a note, any note, such as D. Start at D and jump up a 2nd, jump up a minor 3rd, jump up a major 3rd, etc. Jump down a 4th. Go up and down the major scale, the minor scale, the Spanish/Jewish scale, etc. Hum this stuff to yourself while you're driving or cooking or waiting to fall asleep. Also, hear these things in your head without making audible noise. You can work on your intervals and scales in your head while your significant other is asleep.

3) Sing the appropriate do-re-mi words to the notes of simple songs (major keys without accidentals). Listen to "Do-Re-Mi" from "The Sound of Music." I mean, the "do mi mi, mi so so" and "so do la fa mi do re" stuff toward the end. That's what you're going to do. For example, sing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star..." as "Do do so so la la so..." Your voice might be bad, but your brain is getting the hang of something new and interesting.

4) Play and sing chords. Pick a key, any key, such as D. Learn to play and hum the notes in the Dmaj, Dmin, Daug, Dsus, D6, D7, Dmaj7, D9, etc. chords. Hum broken chords as you go about your day, and work on them silently in your head when forced to sit through a PowerPoint presentation.

5) Hear, sing, and play bass lines. Listen to disco. I'm serious, listen to disco. A disco bass is prominent and follows nice patterns, and so this exercise is not too tough. Identify what the bass is doing and hum along, even if you need to do so one or two octaves higher. Memorize that bass line. Then play it on your piano. Play it in a different key if that's easier on your brain. Play it in different keys because that's hard on your brain. (Hint: "Funky Town" is much easier than "Disco Inferno," which is much easier than "You Should Be Dancing.") If you're having trouble with this, get a book of boogies and notice the patterns your left hand is playing. Then head back to those disco records. After disco, try the bass in other pop genres. It's usually not as loud and patternous, and sometimes it gets "lost" in power chords. Yes, "Day Tripper" and "Smoke on the Water" have famous bass licks, but the trick is hearing the bass throughout.

6) Hear, sing, and play vocal lines. Listen to the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, BeeGees, or some show tunes. Identify each voice in the recording and take turns singing along with the various voices, not just the melody or whatever vocal notes happen to be the highest. (Hearing the non-melody or the not-highest vocal can be especially tough.) Sit down at the piano and play those parts simultaneously. Graduate to barbershop quartet, doo-wop, the Beach Boys, and jazz vocal groups (Andrews Sisters, Pointer Sisters, Three Mo' Tenors, Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, etc.). Take a stab at someone like Rossini or Verdi (I find Puccini awfully hard to grok). You might have a lousy voice, or your playing might be awkward, but the point is your brain knows what's going on with all the vocals.

7) Imagine a given song done in a different style or time signature, even if all you can handle is the melody and you can only kind of, sort of imagine other parts and instruments. Examples: Neil Sedaka doing "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" in two very different styles; "La Dona E Mobile" from "Rigoletto" (3/4 time) and the theme song from the "Lidia's Italy" cooking show (same melody in 4/4). Some years ago, I was singing something very bland in a choir, and I noticed my alto part was a doo-wop bass vocal sung an octave too high and in completely wrong rhythm. Oh, and it needed to be "Bubba da-boom, sha-boom..." instead of whatever my lyrics were. I spent the drive home imagining the whole shebang done as doo-wop, which helped me feel much better about that bland thing we were stuck with.

8) Hear the essential chord changes in recorded songs. Listen closely to folk, country, blues, early rock, Southern rock, or roots rock. These have a rather small number of essential chords, and they don't change all that often--even if a melody wanders all over, even if John and Paul are harmonizing all over, even if a guitar screams all over, even if Jerry Lee Lewis pounds keys all over. In fact, a few songs boil down to just one chord. If a song has acoustic guitar strumming, you're in luck because it's playing the essential chords, and you can easily hear when they change. Otherwise, listening to the bass comes in very handy: when the bass pattern changes, that's a chord change; when the bass hits a different low note, that's a different chord. You can verify the changes you're hearing by looking at printed music that shows the chords across the top.

9) Figure out the obvious chords that go with the simple songs you sang in kindergarten. I'm talking "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Jingle Bells," "The Hokey Pokey," "The Farmer in the Dell," and so on. Do this without listening to recordings. How? With a circle of fifths diagram. You know from listening to the songs in exercise 8 how often the chords are likely to change. So now the question is, just what are those chords? Pick a key, any key. Find it on the outside of the circle. These really simple Western songs in major keys always start with that chord, though not always on that note, "do," otherwise known as the tonic. "Twinkle" starts on the tonic (do), "Jingle" starts a third higher (mi), "Hokey" and "Farmer" start a fourth lower (so). Start hitting chords and singing along. When you sense a need for a chord change, head one or two steps clockwise or counter-clockwise around the outside of the circle. When you go up a fifth (the Wikipedia circle shows this as clockwise), you might want to play a 7th chord (minor 7th). When you go down a fifth (counter-clockwise) or return to your original chord, the basic chord will do (no 7th). Your chords on the diagram will remain very close to that first chord, and you will return to that first chord often. In fact, I guarantee you will end on it. These neighboring circle of fifths chords will sound "right" and obvious. You'll notice that rounds, such as "Three Blind Mice" and "Frere Jacques," don't have much going on. In slightly more advanced songs (off the top of my head, perhaps in the long "peace" in "Silent Night"), you will occasionally want to play the minor chord on the inside of the circle instead of the major chord on the outside.

10) Hear and identify the essential chords in recorded songs. Listen to those songs from exercise 8. Now you can hear the essential chords and identify them on the circle of fifths! Things get easier from now on. Play rhythmic chords with your right hand and the bass line with your left. As you play, sing the melody or invent a harmony. Now you're starting to cook. The fact that you're not playing all the notes you hear in the recording doesn't matter. What's important is, you're playing something that works. In fact, you can do a passable job in a garage band, especially if it has no bass player.

11) Listen to Christmas carols. Even if you're not a Christian--even if you're a hardcore Ayn Randian--listen to carols, especially the "religious" stuff from hymnals. The point is, you want to listen to a zillion different versions of the same ostensibly straightforward songs that have been around forever. Identify the essential chords you hear. Most versions use the "right" chords. (The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is "right.") Simon and Garfunkel's "Silent Night" is right but horrifying. A lot of versions are right-ish and funkified. Keep alert for versions which are "wrong" somehow. For example, Bruce Cockburn and Sam Phillips do an eerily wrong "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" by changing the melody a bit and playing wrong chords. IIRC, it shows up in the WWII movie by the same name.

12) Play or sing one song (in a suitable key) while listening to a recording of a different song. Yes, it's doable, even if you need to do one of the songs a bit "wrong." This is called counterpoint, and it's something that used to amaze me when I was a little kid watching "The Carol Burnett Show." Steve Lawrence or someone would show up as a guest, and he and Carol would sing two different songs simultanously or interleaved. If you're too young to remember or can't get your hands on old Carol Burnett episodes, listen to "The Music Man," which contains several examples of counterpoint: "Lida Rose" with "Will I Ever Tell You?", "Seventy-six Trombones" with "Goodnight, My Someone," and "Pick a Little, Talk a Little" with "Goodnight, Ladies." For decades I wondered how anybody could possibly know which song fits with which. When my brain finally started hearing what chord progressions are suitable for what melodies, and how to be "wrong" but good, it became obvious. Oddly, I started out hearing U2 with other stuff, maybe because U2 is pretty simple. For example, if you zoom through "Bullet the Blue Sky" (with the shorter rap) it fits exactly into John Denver's "Wooden Indian." You can sing a wrongish rendition of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" with "Love, Rescue Me." With some ingenuity, you can fit the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" (including the weird, climbing orchestra and the "ah"s) into "Numb" (then tack the giant piano chord onto the end). Etc. BTW, Collective Soul's "December" is almost the Doobie Brothers' "Black Water," and you can sort of sing Verdi's "Gloria all'Egitto" march in "Aida" to Richard Rogers' "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" wedding march in "The Sound of Music." Pretty soon, if you've heard one song, you've heard them all, and they're all interchangeable.

13) Call yourself a musician. Find the cool people in your town, and join or form a garage band. You can do a passable job by now, which means, yes, you are a musician. You want your bandmates to be better musicians than you so that you keep growing. How do you find cool people, decent musicians? Well, you can hang out in coffee houses. You can mingle at the receptions and after parties following smallish-venue concerts. You can bring your instrument or voice to jam sessions at bars. Here's the thing: when someone says "Are you a musican?" or "You must be a musician," always say "Yes," even if you feel like a lying dork. Saying yes to the right people opens amazing doors. I've wound up playing in garage bands, creating orignal music arrangements for churches, and performing opera. Just keep calling yourself a musician.

Sorry I got long-winded here. But your question got me pacing the floor, and I had fun writing my answer.

The author says: "There's nothing complex or confusing about iCal's event entry UI. And with specific fields for each item of data, it is more obvious than Backpack's--but only for a first-time user, which is the wrong case to optimize for. But to me iCal's date entry UI is clearly worse, much worse, and the reason why can be expressed by the fact that it forces you to deal with about 10 user interface elements, versus just 2 for Backpack."

In summary, an interface with many elements which follow conventions might be fine for first-time users and those who use prefer a mouse to keyboard navigation. But the author wants an interface with fewer elements--even if their meaning is not obvious--because he likes to hit the tab key, not click a mouse.

The page is utterly useless without JS. I keep JS turned off. It's a good thing I read here about the animation eye candy before trying to turn it on to explore the NYT page. Side-to-side movement on a screen gives me brain seizures. If NYT sticks with this new plan, that will be yet one more site that's off limits to me.

If I want movement and eye candy with my news, I can turn on the TV.

  Eraserhead
  Forbidden Zone
  Gaslight
  Invaders from Mars
  Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  Laura
  Minority Report
  Mirage
  Rebecca
  Suddenly, Last Summer
  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  The Devil's Advocate
  The Wizard of Oz
  Total Recall
  Vanilla Sky

In Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood and specialty newspapers are still prevalent, numerous, and of good quality. A real joy to read compared with the neighborhood papers of New York City. But, then, I guess the Twin Cities has a culture of indie publishing.