There’s a hypothesis that seems to be getting a lot of discussion, most notably in the book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (full disclosure: I haven’t read the book), that we need to put down our digital devices so we can properly be together together for face-to-face encounters.

I should agree agree with this. I’ve gotten angry at my spouse for seeming consumed with her iPhone; and been annoyed at “friends” who are quick with the online comment but never find time to get together.

But something bothered me. It would be nice to think that putting down the devices would result in substantial I-thou encounters. But I’m afraid it doesn’t really address the way people turn to devices when they feel alone alone.

The parent who spends all day with young children and never has an adult conversation feels alone alone.

The worker who looks all day at a screen of impersonal words and numbers can feel alone alone.

The husband waiting in the hospital for his wife to recover with no other family or friends around is alone alone.

The person who attends a community function where lots of people know each other but they don’t know anyone can be alone alone.

I’m not sure how to help in these situations but I wouldn’t demonize the technology.

First, I’m not sure smartphones have made things worse. Breakfast used to involve my dad completely hidden behind a newspaper. Businesspeople had a secretary to take messages, but if the phone rang at dinner, you had to answer it; and it was probably a telemarketer. Today we have the opportunity to talk about putting down our phones because we know our news and messages will wait until we choose to pick them up.

As a technology professional I’m somewhat biased in favor of technology, but the professional part is about knowing technology is not a magic bullet and how to apply it in a way that will do good.

I think the potential of digital networks to connect us is awesome, including the fact that often this communication actually enables face to face encounters: from planning, to arranging travel, to being able to have an in person experience without losing touch with home. And, I think there is still an opportunity to design gadgets would do an even better job nudging us to use them efficiently and then turn them off.

Two of the top news stories of the past few weeks have been about the earthquake and subsequent nuclear accident in Japan, and the murder of a family in Itamar, Israel. Both are a tragic human loss. I’m not sure which is more challenging to understand.

I can’t begin to comprehend having your home and family washed out to sea, to be left on the shore without food, medicine, or electricity. Or, to live with the danger of invisible radioactive fallout. But this doesn’t shatter my worldview. We live in a universe formed by supernovas and plate tectonics, awash with cosmic radiation, where the basic laws of physics mean that we need to use energy sources that can sometimes be deadly. To me, the miracle is not that the universe was created with Man at the center in Copernican style, but that we so improbably thrive when it wasn’t.

On the scale of universe, tragedy in a single household in Itamar shouldn’t seem like much, but I find it even harder to understand. Bad stuff happens, and people get angry, but ultimately, we find a way to share a small planet. Or so I like to think, which is why breaking into a house just to murder an unknown family with children is something I just can’t comprehend.

Then again, just this week, we heard helicopters and learned the State Police were searching for the perpetrator of shooting at a store here in Newton. No one was hurt, but it was bizarre that it wasn’t attempted armed robbery as much as pure intentional violence.

Yet we survive.

Tron–whether the original 1982 movie or this year’s Tron: Legacy–has got to be the movie that glamorizes computer technology more than any other, and that’s why I love it. It’s no stretch to say that the original furthered my interest in the field which turned into a career. (Although The Social Network, despite being a very different sort of movie, actually says many of the same things.) So, given that I’m biased, I want to think that the movie says something meaningful and hopefully positive about the role of the digital world in our lives.

I think the lesson is this: Despite attractive memes to the contrary (in both directions), digital technology is not destined to be a force either for good or for bad; it just lets people do the same things faster. It’s up to us to do something good with it. And, this actually reflects my experience in the software and IT industry: while some people assume that those of us who work with machines are essentially doing the work of machines, in fact a large part of my job is using human judgement to ensure the “programs” actually do something useful for the “users”–and it’s rarely a forgone conclusion exactly what that is.

(Embedded video clip is the first appearance of the Tron character as a logo for its creator, Lisberger Studios.)

There are a lot of cool gifts here but this suggestion for a free gift has to be one of the most thoughtful ever (for someone like me who starts a bunch of things that take him off on tangents!):

Free: ask them what they want to achieve over the next month/3 months/year, and ask if a daily/weekly/monthly call would help them out – if it would, call/visit them at regular intervals and ask them to show you what they have done. Some extra encouragement and motivation is often far more valuable than any product could be, if they are trying to turn a side project into a business.

via Some quick and easy gift ideas for geeks or my Christmas wishlist – Disorganized thoughts.

Here’s the recipe for the rolls I brought to Thanksgiving dinner.

I came up with this recipe while searching for a way to make egg-free challah and while this isn’t quite challah (although it can be braided if you like) found it to be a great rich, vegan homemade bread recipe. Whole spelt flour has the heartiness of whole wheat flour without the roughness.

My own experience is that while bread machines were a gimmick, a good stand mixer is essential to making homemade bread. This lets you keep the dough rather sticky, which is impossible to knead by by hand, and gives better results. (An extreme version of this principle is the New York Times’ No-Knead Bread Recipe.) There is no virtue in hard work of kneading by hand–do you really think any commercial bread you enjoy is completely hand-kneaded? (My wife bought me a mint-green KitchenAid Artisan a few years ago, so there are probably other brands that work, but I haven’t researched them.)

Put in mixer:

3 cups King Arthur unbleached white flour

2 cups whole spelt flour

¼ cup wheat gluten

1 packet instant yeast

1 ½ tsp salt

Mix for a minute to combine these ingredients. Then mix in gradually:

¼ cup honey (I like clover honey from a single source if I can find it)

6 tbsp Crisco (I said this was egg-less, not good for you! )

1-2 cups water

Add water gradually so that puddles do not form in the mixer, until it is slightly sticker than you could knead by hand, but still doughy, then knead for at least 2 minutes (depending on your mixer, the time may vary) so it cleans the sides of the bowl and looks like bread dough.

Place in a bowl sprayed with cooking spray, cover loosely, and leave it to rise. If you want it to rise slowly (all day/overnight), you can put in the fridge.

(Alternatively, I find that a way to make it rise quickly–in an hour or two–is to put on the stove [turned off!], with the hot halogen floodlights of my range hood above, to give it just a tiny amount of heat, taking advantage of the greenhouse effect by covering loosely with clear plastic wrap. Which really just proves that halogen lights are inefficient and, when the prices come down, we should all switch to more environmentally-friendly LED’s…but that’s another topic.)

When it has risen, punch down, knead a bit on a floured board, shape, and place on a nonstick (maybe greased or parchment-lined if you don’t have nonstick) dark baking sheet. If making a challah, you can sprinkle with some sugar to give it a bit of a glaze (thought it won’t be like the traditional egg wash). Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-45 minutes. Enjoy fresh from the oven, or freeze and reheat.

Tip: The wheat gluten is very sticky. I recommend washing the mixer parts with hot water and a paper towel you can throw away as it will get stuck in the holes of a sponge or scrubbing pad.

Crossposted to JHacker.org.

I tend to buy this argument…

What should other artists do? Well, I’m not really bothered. The sad truth is that almost everything almost every artist tries to earn money will fail. This has nothing to do with the internet, of course. Consider the remarkable statement from Alanis Morissette’s attorney at the Future of Music Conference: 97% of the artists signed to a major label before Napster earned $600 or less a year from it. And these were the lucky lotto winners, the tiny fraction of 1% who made it to a record deal. Almost every artist who sets out to earn a living from art won’t get there (for me, it took 19 years before I could afford to quit my day job), whether or not they give away their work, sign to a label, or stick it through every letterbox

via The real cost of free | Cory Doctorow | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

Tomorrow is my 36th birthday. It’s also the 5771th birthday of the world, Rosh HaShanah, according to the Hebrew calendar. A bit of numerology: the Hebrew numerals for 18 spell the word chai, “life.” 18 x 2 = 36. Ergo, Marc 2.0.

It’s not so unreasonable to think of this if I imagine one version of myself that became an adult at age 18, and while I made some mistakes and twists and turns (service packs, bug fixes, and enhancements to continue the software-version metaphor) I was just upgrading the same version. But as with software, sometimes you need to write a new version – compatible with the old, and performing the same functions, but with a new architecture that can keep performing into the future.

In practical terms, Marc 1.0 was about establishing myself; the fundamental design was about building a career and family; buying cars and homes. It wasn’t ever about material things, but about really growing up. The good news is: mission accomplished! I can no longer think in terms of, “when we have kids,” “when I get a better a job,” “when I get a bigger house or car” – I’ve done those things. It’s time for a new design.

I don’t know what that will be. I won’t entirely rule out a major career change, going back to school, starting a business, or anything else–indeed, those are the things I dream about. But I’ve also learned, as a software guy, the value of backward-compatibility, which means most things stay pretty much the same, while I continue to try some things that are new. Often, evolution is better than revolution.

It means a renewed focus on taking care of myself, mentally and physically; taking time for myself, and for the people who I depend on and who depend on me; and going forward unencumbered by anxiety.

I got an early birthday present today in the form of a new Yamaha DGX-640 “Portable Grand” keyboard.

Photo by Hannah Stober

There are a couple reasons I chose this model. I wanted something that would get played and sound good. The nice thing about a digital piano like this is that it’s designed to imitate a full-sized Yamaha grand piano that never goes out of tune. Of course it doesn’t sound or feel exactly the same, but neither does an older upright piano that doesn’t stay in tune and can’t be moved.

Secondly, I really just wanted a keyboard! I am a little ashamed to say this as there seems to be this idea that children should be classically trained on an acoustic piano, but if sometimes I could play jazz on a jazz organ, rock music on a vintage synthesizer, or even Bach on a church organ, that just means we’d play it more and have more fun and that’s what it all about. There were some models (YDP-181) that imitated an acoustic a little better in the same price range (but with less features), and professionally-oriented models (CP-5) that did everything better for a lot more money and a higher learning curve (maybe if I get better, someday…).

After all, while my daughter getting old enough for piano lessons was a justification, the reason we got this was because I wanted it! I took piano lessons from 1st or 2nd through 9th grade and kept practicing throughout high school, and only gave it up when I couldn’t take the piano with me on the plane to college. So, I’ve been wanting to get back to it for a while. And while there is a single button to get back to Grand Piano mode if she needs that to practice, if playing in a different voice gets her to practice more, is that wrong?

Maybe I’ll post some YouTube video but first I need to practice!

Great article on why good requirements are so important for building software, and why creating good requirements is a flexible, collaborative, dare I say iterative process; not about control and having someone to blame.

Success in software is delivering products that meet business needs, not in delivering requirements that enable you to enforce a contract.

via Dr Dobbs – Q&A: What’s Behind Good Requirements.