by Chester | Jan 30, 2012 | Writings
The road we walk constantly changes and yet it’s constancy creates a sense of sameness. Each step is abstracted into a vision of the whole road. Each step is new, but each step is simply repeating the past. Young men look at the road in front of them and see one hundred thousand paths and variations. Old men look down the road in front of them and see the same path they’ve traveled all...
by Chester | Dec 28, 2011 | Writings
Emotionally Involved Why do we become so emotionally involved with our tools? How can we feel betrayed by a golf club, mocked by a pull-start lawn mower, or sabotaged by backup software? How can a pair of shoes or a guitar bring about feelings of guilt? How can an emotionally inert, inanimate object affect our emotions so suddenly and powerfully? When we understand that the value of a tool is directly related to the potential that tool represents, then it becomes clear why we’re so emotionally involved with our tools. Focusing on the Potential I bought a guitar a decade and a half ago. It cost $300. I still have it. I’ve played it 20 times. Maybe. And when I look at it I’m filled with mixed emotions of regret, guilt, inadequacy, and shame. Not because I owe the guitar anything, or even because I promised anyone that I’d use the darn thing. It’s because I love music and dream of someday being able to create music on my own, and when I see the guitar it reminds me that I am not accomplishing my goal or fulfilling my dream. It’s not an overwhelming feeling, and it passes in an instant. I don’t think I’m alone in this, or even in the minority. Most of us have a possession or activity (or person) that consistently evokes in us a feeling of guilt. And the reason for this has nothing to do with the object, but has everything to do with the potential of the object—the task that we imagined we’d accomplish with it, or the person the tool would...
by Chester | Dec 26, 2011 | Writings
The scale of a problem dictates the solution. I’ve built a small script that automates the creation of multiple time-lapses from webcam snapshots. It works well and I don’t have any plans on fundamentally changing the code. At one point in time, I considered turning the script into a web service that would allow an unlimited number of people to have time-lapses generated from their own webcams. While thinking through what it would take to accomplish this I realized that my script (and the server it was running on) simply could not create more than a few dozen time-lapses an hour without failing. Image storage, timing, processing power, multiple instances, and bandwidth were just a few of the issues that arose when I looked at my problem on a larger scale. The solution that I identified was unfortunately out of my area of expertise, and while still captivated by the idea of a web service to create time-lapses for every cubical-sitting, cat-loving webcam owner, I’ve embraced the fact that even though I’ve solved the problem on a small scale, I can’t (within reason) solve the problem on a large scale. The scale of the solution presents a problem of it’s own. Take the problem of cookies. Say your going to start a business baking cookies. The task of supplying your local coffee shop with fresh-baked cookies is infinitely simpler than the task of supplying a nation-wide grocery chain with fresh-baked cookies. While the process may still be the same—identify a recipe, procure ingredients, mix, bake, deliver, and collect—the solution will be directly shaped by the scale of the problem....
