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Complexity of Life in Miscellany
Here it is Monday morning with a mind brimming with a demanding miscellany of tasks, priorities, and appointments. Probably don’t have the time to write this even…
This weekend was a blur filled with reading and thinking about school , work, and what I have to do to keep my head above water with it all. On Thursday it’s off to Chicago so a compressed week it will be.
Spent some travel time reading Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinburger for a book report that’s coming up a week from tomorrow. The author does a good job describing the emergence of knowledge that we’re only now beginning to recognize but have invisibly relied on for years. It’s obvious when you consider that everyone understands what you mean when you say, “Google it….”
Working a little on a possible assignment excursion this morning, I wanted to figure out how to call Perl scripts via Apache that I have running with WAMP on one of my home computers. So I Google for “perl cgi apache config setup”, read a couple tutorials, edit some files, and got it working in no time. I rely on a knowledge that exists for a purpose shared by others.
Today is going to be a mad rush. Thanks for reading.
Do you rely on and/or contribute to the knowledge that is the Net? I know you do.
Organization systems and taxonomies
A late night studying. Here we are again.
Tonight I worked on a DRAT1 homework assignment and did some reading in the book for Information Architecture. The chapter was on Organization Systems.
While I’m still digesting this chapter, I’m already get caught up in the ideas I’ve been reading in a book dealing with organization and categorization called, “Everything is Miscellaneous”2. In this book, the author describes the classical types of organizing that have all been based on physical objects or physical objects referring to locations of other physical objects. In what he calls the “third order or order”, or the digital order, a leaf of information can appear on any relevant branch. And relevancy is subjective…alas the spice.
For this DRAT assignment, we had to finish a script that fetches MySpace user’s page and retrieves links to that person’s friends. Through the magic of Perl, we retrieve the original person’s friend’s friends and spit all this out to a file showing who is friends with who.
The result was pretty interesting and described a pretty complex network of relationships.
Where is the organization system in this? Is there a taxonomy? The random seeming but organized result of this friend network is just cool.
Image: The network image of 773 friends of a friend of a stranger.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Symbols, words, meaning…you figure it out
Traffic wasn’t bad going into work school today and the parking garage had 400+ spots when I arrived. A nice change of pace from last semester when there would be 1 or 2 open spots on the display as I’d turn the corner.
I don’t remember who it was, but years ago I caught a television segment where some guy with either big curly hair or a pony-tail was lecturing on how the Internet and the information accessible therein is meaningless without a brain to interpret, give it meaning. Otherwise the data is virtually meaningless.
Sitting through lectures today on how to scrape web pages for chunks of data and later how to analyze shopper patterns to maximize conversion, I couldn’t help but think about how all the data we access is nothing but a bunch of magnetized bits distributed in a nearly impossible to follow manner…and we don’t care really about it. How it’s stored that is. We ultimately see patterns, put sentences together, assemble meaning based on arrangement of words etc. Pictures add a few words I suppose…
But let us not forget the subtle but unmistakable body language, smell, sound, even silence. When you’re around someone and nary a word is spoken (or IM’ed), is there still communication?
Inspired by a classmate, I took on the task of writing a Perl script to scrub an exported xml file of this blog so I could upload it to ManyEyes and Wordle to see what it had to say. Here is the script for the curious out there who want to appreciate the Perl programming language. I’ve no doubt this is a lame example, could be improved upon, and shows my general level of ignorance with Perl…I’d be inclined to agree.
open(IN,"wordpress.2008-09-23.xml") || die "FAIL. Could not open wordpress.2008-09-23.xml for reading. \n";
while($line = <IN>) {
$some++;
chomp;
if ($line =~ /\<title\>.+\<\/title\>/) {
$line =~ s/\<title\>//;
$line =~ s/\<\/title\>//;
$title = $line;
next;
}
if ($line =~ /=\"\w+\">http:\/\/blog\.interspike\.com\/\?p=/) {
$getanother = 1;
while ($getanother) {
<IN>;
$line = <IN>;
if ($line =~ /<\!\[CDATA\[/) {
while ($line !~ /\]\]><\/content\:encoded>/) {
chomp($line);
$line =~ s/<.+[\"\/]>|<\/.+\>|<.+\[|<.+\>/ /g;
$line =~ s/[^a-zA-Z0-9 '\.,\?\!]*//g;
$title =~ s/[\t\n\r\f]+//g;
$posts{$title} .= $line;
$line = <IN>;
}
$getanother--;
}
}
}
#last if ($some > 2000);
}
for $title (keys %posts) {
print "$title\n$posts{$title}\n\n";
}
close(IN);
Image: This is the result of a “wordle” based on all the words appearing in all my posts since fall of 2006. See anything interesting?
Behind the scenes
The real action always happens behind the scenes. What goes on behind the scenes is a vehicle for those whose goal is information, design, architecture, and human-computer interaction. To the information architect, the action is behind the scenes. Mostly effective when unnoticed.
Days pass, unceasing flow of situation and circumstance. The hours bring challenge, the unexpected. An interesting surge of projects, tracking, family, school, programming, and sometimes injury…ah, never dull.
A Harley, by the sound of it, roars outside muffled by the dirt, cement, and walls of this house and basement.
So many posts drafted in my head never find the screen. So many emails crafted never reach the dispatcher. Sometimes nothing to say takes a long time to say it.
I stitch these thoughts onto a drive somewhere, miles away. A never ending string of 1’s and 0’s flying at near light speed from my keyboard.
The weekend awaits and pillow beckons. Studies and homework stalk.
DK: Thinking about you, and those you care about.
Ma: I hope you made it home safe.
R: Hang in there. Don’t be a stranger.
SS: Don’t be a stranger either.
W: You are awesome I guess.
Image: A meaningless picture of the alley I walk through to the parking garage on Tuesdays of the next 12 weeks.
Munging and Architecture
I was lucky enough to find myself in a meeting today to discuss what I equate to be the future of applications where I work. Sure, having always developed web applications one might think I’m a little biased, but I’m not. I value the knowledge and expertise of desktop developers. But I feel that the future of applications isn’t tied to the desktop or the web. It isn’t so clearly distinguished. It is a munged future.
The question has come up before, “do we rewrite applications to work on the web or transform existing applications to be Internet aware?” The answer, as any information architect should reply, depends on the content, context, and users…and in every case, the overall circumstances. If you have dozens of gifted, brilliant, windows application programmers, expecting them to become web developers isn’t realistic. If you have a bunch of gifted web developers, expecting them to understand the challenges of desktop applications is just silly. The answer is a munge. It is a reworking, a transformation. Something new is built on and from something old. A developmental evolution that requires and involves everybody.
I can’t help but think that every day is sort of like that. A string of situations that sometimes seem like mistakes, failures, successes, maybe totally random WTH events. As a result we find room to explore, to experience confusion, frustration, anger, warm fuzzies. We find fertile ground in which to grow understanding and awareness. School is like that. Work is like that. Marriage is like that. All fertile ground.
But it is never that easy. Often movement is sideways-seeming or backward-tracking. This might be the result of un-directed or misdirected focus. Part of growth that has to be dealt with.
Growth is about munging what is with what can be. Munging is about embracing what exists while continuously working to transform it into something you want it to be. I don’t see this is a derogatory effort. Imperfectly transforming something presupposes perfection…and something supposed is nothing while something composed, however haphazard it may be, is something that cannot and should not be ignored or dismissed. Munge that shix and see what happens.
Image: I could have had better pictures for this post had not my camera mysteriously fallen into a garbage can near my cat’s food bowl. Lucky for me, W. thought to look there and all is well. I took this picture tonight. This pile of books is waiting for me to continue my embrace of the wisdom they contain. Not enough time…but alas.