Tomato Plants on the Balcony

Many years ago, when I lived with my parents, I would plant a garden in our backyard. I'd grow things like beans and tomatoes. I quite liked doing it because it was relaxing.

When I moved into the city I wanted to grow tomatoes in pots on the balcony. My first year wasn't very successful. My second year wasn't either. I figured my balcony wasn't getting enough sun or something.

I switched apartments a few years ago and this new apartment had a balcony that was in the sun for most of the day. The tomato plants still didn't do well. In fact, they didn't grow at all. All they did was turn purple.

Eventually I figured out what was wrong. It turns out that I was using the wrong soil.




For whatever reason, "black earth" has, in my family, always been a by-word for rich soil. So, when I went looking for soil to plant my tomato plants in I went with the big bag labeled black earth. Unfortunately, the black earth I got didn't help the tomato plants grow. I'm still not clear on why, although I've been told that tomatoes like something more organic. Great. Tomatoes are hippies.

Anyway, the second time I planted my tomatoes on the sunny balcony of my new apartment, I used a mixture of soils. I actually suspected that my they-aren't-getting-enough-sun hypothesis was bogus, so I planted 6 tomatoes plants n a mixture of different soils. The soil that did best was regular potting soil made for house plants. I can't remember the name of the soil but it was something ridiculous like "Mr. Magic's incredible miracle soil".

(for the experienced tomato growers: No, I didn't have compost in my selection of soils.. I'm getting to that :-) )

They did fine in the miracle soil (by fine I mean they actually grew. This had not happened before). Then I went to visit my parents. My parents still grow tomatoes and their tomatoes were twice the size of mine. I was annoyed but curious. Apparently, there was still room for improvement.

A little while later I noticed my plants had stopped growing. I became very frustrated but hypothesized that they might need more fertilizer. I had this jar of flowing houseplant fertilizer and I decided that since my tomato plants weren't producing anything that I might as well amuse myself by testing this hypothesis by trying to over fertilize them.

I started by giving them the weekly recommended dose every day. Their response was to turn an incredibly deep green then start growing by about an inch per day. It was really impressive.

I went to ask my local plant person about this and they said that tomatoes are always hungry. They really like nutrients and completely sap the soil of any. The house plant stuff I used was nicely balanced but not rich enough in the stuff the tomato plants wanted. I should plant them in pure compost. This made me relived as I half expected them to say they needed blood! Fresh blood and plenty of it! I dodged a bullet there.

So this year I have planted them in a mostly compost mix. They are bright green but and a bit tiny but I'm betting it's because they are cold. After bringing in a plant for a week and seeing its size doubled my hypothesis seems to be confirmed. Well, June is coming so that shouldn't be much of a problem anymore (June always likes the heat turned up to full. She's a funny girl is June.).

Growing tomato plants on your balcony is fun and results in a comical number of tomatoes at the end of the summer (if you've done it right).

The things you need are a balcony that gets plenty of direct sun from about 10am to 2pm. You need pots that are about 17 to 22 L (10 inch pots, deeper is better). You need pure compose soil (maybe mixed with something - opinions on the internet differ. I'm mixing with various amount of regular house plant soil in ratios of two thirds compost to seven eights compost the rest regular house plant soil).

Cherry tomato plants seem to be more resilient and less finicky.

Anti-squirrel gun installations may be needed depending on where you live.

Since my parents have a large compost pile where they compost just about everything I went down there and picked up some real, organic compost. You can also buy compost at the store. I've been told sea shell compost is quite good since tomatoes like the calcium. There are other composts as well. If you buy your soil at a real plant place you can ask the guy. If you're visiting a downtown botanist make sure you make it clear you're not using tomato plants as a euphemism for pot plants. Man, the miss-understandings I've had.. wow... As long as you use some type of organic compost soil you're probably ok. I'm still looking for soil tips to try out next year. Post pictures of your plants and soil tips in the forums :-)... I'd love to see them.

Tomato plants are fun to grow and fun for kids too since once they start growing you can actually see the amount they grow per day. This is growth on a kid-friendly time scale.

Oh and tomatoes taste so much stronger straight off the plant. Don't put them in the fridge because it destroys the taste.

Ok, enough about tomatoes. See you next time.

Worst website nomination

So there I was, looking for some information on JavaFX, the new.. ummm.. something language from Sun which is great for.. well.. I'm not sure..

Anyway, I was looking for informaiton on JavaFX when I came across the JavaFX website:

http://javafx.com/

My jaw dropped to the floor. They really worked hard on it. It's so sad. The site is a total nightmare.

JavaFX.com is the kind of site that gives rise to inside-the-box thinking.

Here are the problems I have with it:

1) The "next page" icon things are inscrutable.
2) The amount of information per "page" is tiny.
2b) The content is laughably superficial as well.
3) The "floating" thing.. hereafter called the WTF windoid is so tiny as to make is useless.
4) The information presentation is noisy, filled with decoration compared with the amount of information displayed.
5) The minimized WTF windoids are hard to read.
6) The current WTF windoid hides other minimized WTF windoids behind it.
7) The transition effects don't work smoothly on my machine; everything just jumps around.
8) My font size settings break its assumptions about font sizes, so text flies off the end of the WTF windoids "titlebars".
9) There's not "throw a brick at the author" button.
10) Ugly as sin.. And black with white or sharp contrasting colors is my favorite color scheme too! - That's how my website is done. :-)

A "unix" UI rant

I think I'm finally getting the hand of the Unix/Linux mentality.

For years, now, I've maintained that trying to use Linux was about as much fun as a visit to the dentist. I think I'm finally starting to get it, though.

You see, Linux, in general, has a terrible UI. Not only that but it has been incredibly slow to improve. I fully expected, back in 1999, that'd this problem would be completely solved by now. With the massive rush of ex-apple programmers and general interest it shouldn't be too much effort to fix up Linux to be usable by people unwilling to dedicate several years of their life to learning it. yeah...

So anyway, today I managed to install a piece of software that was obviously programmed by some unix-type. I'm so proud of myself. It only took me two tries. The second try I approached it with the idea that 1) the programmer expects me to know about how everything and 2) put no thought into user interface.

Fun facts:

1) You needed to tinker with a config file that came with its own syntax.
2) The client and server concepts were backwards (*my machine* was the server and I had to ssh into the other machine and tell it connect to *me* so I could use it).
3) Security by insanity - do I know your login name? Yes? Ok, I'll talk to you. I mean, at least you could pretend it was a password; that's what it acts like.
4) The configuration was such that you needed to add two configuration entries to do something that really only needs 1 (for the most common use case). If you only added one configuration line your mouse cursor became trapped on the other screen. oh no!

The thing that really gets me though, is that once it was configured it actually works. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it! No stupid, bugs or miss-features it does what it was supposed to do. It's really a shame that this great software is hiding behind such a terrible interface.

Want to try it yourself? (the software or configuration odyssey. I'm not picky) The software is called synergy. It's purpose is to allow you to use a second computer, with a second screen as if it were really just an extra screen for your main computer.

You see, I run a PC most of the time, but I also have a mac that I want to use. I don't want to keep switching keyboards and mice, though. I'd rather just be able to mouse over to the mac screen and use it like that.

Those familiar with VNC can think of it as setting up VNC session on a monitor hooked up to a different computer. Synergy works better than that because isn't of using VNC to display the remote screen on your computer. You just use the physical monitor attached to other computer's and send your mouse and keyboard command are sent to it.

This works great if you have the two computers sitting on the floor next to you.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to flick the mouse over to the Macs screen because the screen saver has come on again..

Ok, so it has one (known) bug:
"The Mac OS X port is incomplete. It does not synchronize the screen saver, only text clipboard data works (i.e. HTML and bitmap data do not work), the cursor won't hide when not on the screen, and there may be problems with mouse wheel acceleration. Other problems should be filed as bugs."

OpenPro Computer - A mac clone!

Apparently Psystar is making macintosh clones. The OpenPro Computer model looks familiar. Oh yes, the case is the Antec P182. Essentially that same as my home PC's P180. Good choice.

"UI is the root of all evil" or UI is hard

A friend pointed this one out to me. It's an article about the dangers of not considering the GUI when doing development.

http://blogs.pathf.com/agileajax/2008/04/the-user-interf.html

In the context of my previous blog posting, think of it as what could happen if the UI design is late and your design process is not agile. :-)

(planning is good)

Cooper vs extreme programming

I was at last year's SD Best Practices conference at Boston. One thing I remember was the two times I heard programmers complain about Alan Cooper's views on UI design.

The complaints were both by programmers directed at the aspects of Interaction Design which are incompatible with extreme programming.

First off, I've never been a big fan of extreme programming.

I believe that a great number of programmers have a code-first-think-about-it-later approach to programming. I believe this mentality is a big barrier to creating large, scalable, long-lived software. I find it disturbing that someone would actually advocate a process that actually *encourages* more of this.

I met 3 programmers at SD Best Practices that took extreme programming to mean absolutely no design. As if thinking ahead was banned outright. Talking to them brought to mind scenes from 1984 where instead of being banned from remembering, you were banned from thinking ahead. I don't buy it. To plan is to think ahead is to avert disaster. Imagine trying to build a building or plan a trip or save for retirement without thinking ahead! The extremist extreme programming mentality is that the future so uncertain that all planning is futile. This is only a very coarse approximation of what extreme programming actually advocates but what extreme programming actually advocates is complete overkill in most projects anyway.

At any rate, the Interaction Design (as explained by Copper) conflicts with XP (extreme programming as explained by Kent Beck) in at least two ways.

1. XP advocates user involvement in the design process. You ask the user, you give them a prototype, they tell you what's wrong, repeat until convergence.

User Interaction design says "don't ask the user!". The rational is that users don't know what they want! UI design is hard and should be done by a trained, professional Interaction Designer.

2. XP advocates short iterations and an iterative methodology that takes into account learned mistakes as the project progresses..

User Interaction mandates that the Interaction Designer do the design more or less in one shot, up front.


These two methodologies are not directly comparable. Not only are they trying to solve different parts of the software engineering problem but they are coming from a different set of assumption about what sort of environment they are operating in.

Interaction design is all about user interface design. It does mention how to go about developing software except where software development intersects user interface design. Doing design up front is a good idea with user interfaces because 90% of GUI design is optimizing for the most common cases. You either know what the common cases are or you have to go out into the field and observe the users at work.

The net result of this process is usually a design that is highly optimized to how people work. As with any highly optimized system, GUIs can have a large amount of cross cutting features; that is features that are interdependent. As a result of this, a small change somewhere could change the nature of the GUI completely. Adding one extra click or a pause or adding a step can have a huge impact if that case is common. As a result, user interfaces should be thought of as one holistic piece.

Consider this example: Radiologists look at X-rays and diagnose problems like broken feet and arrows piercing the head. Their workflow (simplified) is 1) load image 2) dictate image 3) next image. I've watched them at work and they work fast. They average about 2 minutes per case. If we had a workflow that added 1 extra click somewhere to that workflow we would have added somewhere around 7 * 60 / 2 =~ 200 clicks. Multiply this by the number of radiologist at work and that tiny, little design decision has single handedly caused hundred of cases of repetitive strain injury! You can do a similar time base calculation. if your extra click requires the user to think about what to do next.

This may seem trivial to some but we've actually had certain minimum workflow standard written into our contracts with some of our clients because they are sick of vendors pushing an extra click on them for no reason.

I've always viewed XP's desire to bring the user into the design process and have them practically design the UI as a first order approximation on how to design a GUI. XP's assumption about having continuous access to a user (or group of users) is very a-typical, in my experience. Also, users are very bad at vocalizing what they want of need:

http://andrewtrumper.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-ui-design-is-import-in-apis-and.html
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/09/listening_to_us.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html

etc..

My favorite users-don't-know-what-they-want story comes from when I was developing a piece of image-burning software. The idea was that this software would be for burning X-ray (or other modalities) series to CD. We knew what sort of users we wanted to target. We thought we knew what they wanted in the software, since we had this big feature list. The only question remaining was what should the "GUI look like?". I looked at the feature list and the target user and I couldn't match them up in my head. I just couldn't believe that the users we were targeting really wanted this big complicated GUI. I decided to ask for an on-site visit. Before the on site visit I'd prepared a list of questions that I wanted to answer. These questions were about whether a certain features were desired or not and about the relative frequencies of various occurrences.

I was curious about what they'd tell me if I just asked them my questions point blank. Did you need this feature? yes! My test users wanted every feature, expect that ones they didn't understand. Did this edge case happen frequently? no! How often? Once every 6 months of so.

I then observed them for three hours. During the three hours each one of the edge conditions happened at least once. They also never needed the extra features. It turned out that the software they were using had the features I was asking about. However, even in cases where they should have logically used these features, they didn't because it wasn't worth the effort to configure them! AGH! I came away from this with a better, streamline GUI and the notion that users (at least these users) had no clue what they wanted.

The second major point of disagreement between ID (Interaction Design) and XP (extreme pornography.. I mean programming) is the use of iterations.

As I've mentioned ID isn't about how to build the thing; it's about the GUI. Nothing is stopping you from using iterations to build the big-bang-GUI. In fact, in my practical experience, you have to start building before the GUI is completely ready because it takes so-freaking-long to design the GUI. Yes, by all mean do iterations. Not doing iterations is silly. You might want to stretch out your iterations longer than the ones suggested by XP, though. XP mandates uber tiny iterations (1 week). With such iterations you're actually under-valuing planning.

Planning is good! Over planning is no so good. Being forced to over-plan then stick with that plan is extremely bad. In my experience, excellent planners (or planner *teams*, rather) can plan two months in advance with a good degree of accuracy. Good planners are about a month and ordinary, mere mortals can plan a week or two if they practice at it. All these estimates depend on the context, of course. Your planning horizon can vary tremendously depending on the problem, the degree of familiarity and the skill of the planner.

My favorite planning story is the time we planned out our "roaming preferences" feature. Essentially we managed to plan out about three months of work and have that plan executed with little or no change within 5% of the estimated number of hours. Hurrah! A hole in one! Then, in the next iteration, we tried to plan out 1 month of work and both the major aspects I was responsible for were completely wrong.. Luckily both things that we got wrong were wrong in opposite directions. One took 4 times longer than I though and the other tool about 1/10 the estimated time. The reason for this was that we had to make a modification that changed where the bulk of the work went so it's not really a co-incidence. We actually knew this was high risk going into it since we were modifying old code we didn't know very well.

Remember to include the risk component in your time estimates and proposed designs!

So, iterations are a way of mitigating against the risk of planning errors. They do this by scheduling points where the design and progress of a project can be re-evaluated and adjusted. The downside to short iterations is that it can artificially limit you to a fixed design horizon. Limiting your design horizon can introduce costly refactoring or code scaring. For a real-life analogy of the dangers of under planning, consider the joys of mountain biking with your eyes closed. Ouch!

Using super short iterations on a project with no risk is silly. Using super long iterations on a project with high risk is silly.

None of this has to do with GUI design. Even if your GUI design is low risk, other aspects of implementing that design might be high risk. The length of iterations for a project is a programmer thing. Interaction designers do their GUI thing and programmers mitigate against their potential errors and their own by having short iterations. The two do not conflict because they are tackling different aspects of the problem. The only major change for XP people is that the GUI design is done by someone else and becomes lower risk. (In practice, politics and errors affect this somewhat)

I like to say that even if you're not doing iterations the best way of actually these implementing these big designs is by making use of iterations.

In my mind, ID (Intelligent Design .. I mean Interaction Design) and XP do not conflict. ID is a way of creating a better GUI. XP is a set of techniques for mitigating against the troubles brought by changes by embracing them.

bye.

Lucid dreaming

Recently, at a party, I got into a conversation about lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you're dreaming.

I first became fascinated by this subject when I started to wonder why you always know that you're not dreaming when you aren't but why you don't when you are. Then I actually experienced a dream where I realized that I was dreaming and that really spooked me.

Why aren't all dreams lucid?

I didn't feel like I was dreaming when I was dreaming. Maybe I'm doing something equivalent to dreaming all the time - spending my life in a daze and not really knowing it. I decided that I was going to work on making all my dreams lucid dreams.

Talking to the guy at the party I was reminded that many people don't remember their dreams at all. Other have never had a lucid dream. Others don't believe it's possible.

Yeah, lucid dreaming is possible. It's not as fun as you might think but it's possible.

After practicing for a few years I managed to have lucid dreams about one every other night.

Many people seem to think that if they knew they were dreaming they'd be able to do all sorts of stuff they've always wanted to do. In practice, my experience is the dream already has an agenda and if you don't play along you wake up. That's not to say you can't do some cool things in dreams, it's just a lucid dream isn't your own personal holodeck.

Dreams are manifestations of your expectations.

Let's say you built a computer. This computer makes up models of the world. It tries to find patterns and guess what's going to happen. This computer is very good at it and after some amount of training develops a whole bunch of models of how things work. It knows when lunch is. It knows you like coffee at the start of the day. It knows if you let go of something in mid-air it falls. It's got a fairly good view of the world.

Now you want to take it to the next level. You want to make this computer interact with the world very quickly; without having to think about what's going to happen. You essentially want it to figure out that if I drop something fragile it should attempt to catch it! Fast! There's no time to think about what's going to happen when you let go then figure out it's going to fall then figure out that it's fragile then figure out that it will break and that you will get mad and yell at it. It needs to know the rule that: If fragile item falls you (the computer) catch it.

How do you do that?

Well, as I said, the computer knows about how the world works. So if you bring up its memory of the lab and then ask it: "What sort of things could happen in the lab?" it will know: the same few people tend to walk in, in the morning. Lots of these people have coffee. Coffee is always in cups. The sun shines through the window in the morning. People occasional brush past things and push things onto the floor. etc.. blah blah.

Really, you don't need to teach the computer about the world, you can simply run it's models of the world against itself and it will figure out (eventually) most of what it needs to know. So long as you take more or less random branches out of the possible scenarios you'll end up producing experiences that have never happened. This is useful to train against.

The human brain is a bit like this. It makes models of the world and builds up expectations. Dreams just run these expectations against one another... presumably to help you react better if this situation should come up in real life.

Actually, there's another important factor: emotion.

If dreams were only about expectations you would have really boring dreams. Most of the stuff we expect to happen is fairly dull. The thing with dreams is they often choose which expectation wins based on emotional response.

Here's an example. Let's say you were in high school and you're standing in the cafeteria. Consider these events:
- Someone you're friends with waves at you from across the crowd.
- Someone drops their tray.
- There's a good seat available for you a few feet away.

Not much emotional response. How about these:
- You buy some lunch but discover that your pocket has a hole in it and all the money is gone!
- All the seats are somehow taken.
- A teacher walks up an casually mentions you just got an A on a test you were worried about.
- Terrorists!

Dreams go for the big emotional responses.

If you become lucid you can't suddenly start trying to make things happen that are just "neat". "neat" doesn't play well in dreams. "Dangerous" is fine. "Angry" is fine. "Really totally awsome" is fine.. "neat" isn't.

.. and don't try things just to find out what will happen. It's a dream! Trying stuff in a dream just to see what will happen is like having the following conversation with yourself:

"So.. what will happen if I do this?"
"I dunno. What do you think?"
"No, I'm asking you."
"Well, what do you think the answer should be?"
"Actually, I'm just curious about what you think should happen."
"Well what do you think should happen?"

If you do this enough, you dream will go "ah, screw this" and wake you up.

In a dream your job is to react to things not make stuff happen. You can make stuff happen but you have to go along with the flow of the dream. Try to make it a reaction to something.

Oh no a tiger! Good thing I'm in a dream since that means I can fly away! (model of how thing works goes "yeah ok".. so you fly.. Good thing your instinctual brain never took physics).

That's about the long and short of it.

In the end I started having weird semi-lucid dreams. In this semi-lucid dreams I know on some level that I'm in a dream because I know that all the things I used to do in lucid dreams will work.. I also know I can just escape by waking up. Well, unless I have a really bad nightmare in which case I an usually so focused on the moment I don't get that strange "this place follows dream logic" feeling. What I think happened is my behavior adapted to included the fact that, in dreams, the rules are different.

Sometimes I think my brain has built its own parallel universe. I have a "dream montreal" that doesn't look like real montreal but is more-or-less consistent every night. I have a map of my home town that includes things which are completely wrong but very consistent between dreams. They aren't spatially correct but they are emotionally correct. That is, the distance between two buildings is a "short" or "long" walk. That the main street contains an "annoying" amount of traffic. That buildings in the new art of town are "taller" and "newer" than the old part. That some buildings are "tall" while others are "scary tall". It's hard to describe. It's not montreal. It's obviously not montreal.. but it feels like it.

.. oh and all the elevators are dangerous and unreliable. I know that if the elevator doesn't work it's because I'm dreaming :-)..

So how do you get into a lucid dreaming state?
Read this link:
http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#techniques

The most important thing is to remember that you can never tell you're dreaming! Especially if you've woken up from a dream! Your body doesn't like waking you up for no reason so it will tend to fake waking you up. When waking up from lucid dreaming always make sure you're not still dreaming.

.. checking for dream signs requires excellent self control.. Actually I think the ability to extract yourself from the moment is the primary benefits to pursuing lucid dreams.

So read all that stuff and you will have a lucid dream tonight. Seriously. (Go flying in reaction to something. It's scary fun.).. good luck having a second lucid dream but the first one usually comes easy. :-)

good book:
The Head Trip - It deals with various states of consciousness including lucid dreaming. No LSD or drugs here. All these states are natural ones.

If you like lucid dreaming you might like to experience the watch. Another fun altered state of consciousness easily accessible by messing with your sleep patterns. :-)