Category: Journal

Quote of the day 2009-03-31

From [The Record](http://news.therecord.com/arts/article/512523)

> It’s hard to link people across so many thousands of kilometres, so you have to sort of dig deep sometimes to find those common threads, and I think (it’s) maybe facial hair. Perhaps in the beginning it was a response to the elements, but certainly over time, a fashion statement is one of the unifying themes in Canadian culture.

I mean, Brian Blessed… Richard Stallman… these guys, whoever they are… Maybe I should grow a beard. Throw in [peace and harmony](http://www.holybeard.com/Home.php) and I’m sold.

Ad Astra 2009

I like [Ad Astra](http://www.ad-astra.org/). It’s a cute little con.

Got in last night. I was giving Holly a ride so I decided to take off early. Unfortunately, I forgot that I promised I’d also give Eric and Alex a ride. Oops. I was just passing under the 427 when I got Eric’s call asking when I could pick them up. They were able to catch a ride into town later, though, so that worked out okay. Which is good, since I’m staying in their room.

Friday night was mostly just hanging out. I ran into some surprising people. Today I’ll probably sit in on some readings and things.

### Notes ###
* I’ve signed Eric and myself up for the D&D 4e game tonight, so I’ll finally get to try that out. I haven’t played D&D in ages. I’ll let you know how it goes.
* Tamora Pierce gives a shout-out to Sventlana Chmakova. Wishes she’d write more Dramacon. :D
* Good creative writing panel about overcoming creative blocks and distractions. I’m finding that stuff relevant to coding stuff as well.
* Was hoping to sit down for a game of D&D 4e (was going to play a cat girl avenger). A medical emergency prevented that from happening. Looks like everyone’s probably okay, but we were a bit shaken by it all.

Ada Lovelace Day: Barbara Liskov

It’s [Ada Lovelace Day](http://findingada.com/). Here’s my post:

[[wiki:Barbara Liskov]] is a pioneering computer scientist and winner of the ACM Turing Award for 2008. She’s currently head of the Programming Methodology Group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Barbara Liskov in 1975] Back in the 70s, she designed a programming language called [[wiki:CLU (programming language)|CLU]], which established fundamental concepts about data abstraction that influence every object-oriented programming language (which, honestly, means pretty much every programming language–you heard me, Lisp weenies) being used today. Ruby, C++, C#, Java… they were all built on her work.

*I* know about Barbara Liskov mostly from the [Liskov Substitution Principle](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/02/the_liskov_substitution_princi.html):

> Let q(x) be a property provable about objects x of type T. Then q(y) should be true for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T.

Put another way (and you probably need to know a little bit about object-oriented design to appreciate this), subtypes must always be able to be substituted for a supertype. Programmers mess this up all the time, and it makes for god-awful messes in code, which is why we need Barbara Liskov to set us straight.

[Barbara Liskov]

* [Recent NPR interview](http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200903135)
* [Dr. Dobbs interview](http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/215801518)
* [Faculty homepage](http://www.pmg.lcs.mit.edu/~liskov/)
* [MIT computer science brochure from 1975](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/LCS-75/languages.html)
* [Other Babara Liskov posts for Ada Lovelace Day](http://ada.pint.org.uk/subject.php?subject=Barbara%20Liskov)

The Blue Coat

[[wiki:Character Options]], the dudes who make Doctor Who action figures, [announced](http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_1165_6492&products_id=50540) that they will be releasing a special, limited edition version of the Sixth Doctor action figure in a blue coat.

[A blue coat!!!]A blue coat!

I cannot express how unbelievably awesome this is.

I’ll try.

Back in the 80s, when [[wiki:Colin Baker]] was tapped to be the Sixth Doctor, the producer at the time, [[wiki:John Nathan-Turner]], was starting to lose his mind. He decided to (a) make Colin Baker’s Doctor a total dick, in contrast to Peter Davison’s nice Doctor and (b) make him dress up in an obnoxious multi-coloured coat that would make Andrew Lloyd Weber wince. Colin Baker’s Doctor is not warmly regarded by very many fans of the original series, and his run was marred by bad writing, unfortunate schedule changes, a hostile BBC management and an eighteen month hiatus where the series’ future was in serious question.

Doctor Who carried on after the show was canceled in 1989 (several years after Colin left). A [[wiki:Big Finish Productions|group of guys]]* who were doing fan-produced audio plays in the 80s started producing licensed Doctor Who plays with the original surviving actors and releasing them on CD around 2000.

Colin Baker, in reprising the Sixth Doctor, wanted to reinvent aspects of his character that he thought were a mistake. His Doctor became more nuanced and less argumentative. He was teamed up with an elderly history professor named Evelyn Smythe, who was less tolerant of his cocky bluster than either Peri or Mel. The pair worked surprisingly well.

Another thing Colin Baker said he’d always wanted to change if he got the chance was his outfit. He said he would’ve preferred basic black himself.

[Real Time] A few years before the the new series came online, BBC Interactive wanted to get some original content for the “Cult” Doctor Who site. They commissioned Big Finish (the audio play guys) to do a play for them, [Real Time](http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/realtime/index.shtml), and they provided visuals in the form of still images by [[wiki:Lee Sullivan]]. One of the challenges in doing those images was the Sixth Doctor’s coat. It’s a pain to colour, and in order to save some effort, they wanted to re-use art by flipping images, which you can’t do with a multi-coloured, asymmetric coat. And since no-one beside John Nathan-Turner ever liked Colin’s on-screen outfit, they changed it, for a toned-down blue version of a similar design. The blue coat idea had been used previously on book covers, but this was the first time we got to see it in action, as it were.

The blue coat was referenced in later Big Finish audio adventures, and it’s become their official costume for the stories that take place after [[wiki:Trial of a Time Lord]].

And now there’s going to be a toy to make it even more official. And I’m thrilled.

Letter to the editor

I wrote a [letter to the editor of the Waterloo Region Record](http://news.therecord.com/Opinions/article/483932) this week. It was in response to [an editorial on Wednesday](http://news.therecord.com/article/481864). It was printed today.

I have a hard time being proud of this. I mean, I kind of am, in the sort of way where I’m mentally imagining my mom cutting it out and putting it on the fridge, and then giving me a cookie. I don’t think you ever really shake that. The fact that I was driven to write it makes me kind of sad. The fact that I *had* to write it makes me even sadder.

I’m not going to bore you with the particulars of the issue. I’m just really disheartened lately that people, particularly people in the media, seem less and less inclined to value democracy. I’ve seen plenty of instances lately where it seems to me that journalists are blindly reporting spin from one particular party. Maybe they do it for all parties, but I’m just more *offended* by one party’s spin than the others, so I recognize it more.

I didn’t think they were supposed to do that. I naively thought that they took spin, looked at it and said “Yup, uh huh. I know that’s what you *want* me to say, but let’s dig a little deeper here and find out what’s really going on.” That’s what I want them to do, anyway.

Coincidentally, I happened to be listening to [Paul Kennedy’s talk on the Canadian Voices podcast](http://www.canadianvoices.org/speakers.php?id=56), talking about how politicians don’t seem to need to have ideas anymore:

> …Journalism is responsible, or the media is responsible for a lot of the problems there. Politicians in their superficiality, in their concern for spin, in their focus group methodology, they’re responding to the media, because they want to be in the media. The way one gets elected is to get one’s face on television and one’s voice on the radio and one’s words on the front page of newspapers. And the way one does that is to appeal to journalists. Well, journalists plainly then are looking for exactly what politicians are giving them.
>
> I have been increasingly discouraged in the last two or three federal elections and all of the provincial elections that I have experienced in the last few years and in the way that elections are covered in the media. It’s all about polls. I thought it was about policies. But every day, you pick up the Globe and Mail or you turn on the CBC, television *or* radio, and they’re reporting “Oh, the latest Angus Reid polls say that the Tories have gone up two points and the Liberals have gone down one.” Yeah? What did Stephen Harper say? What did Mr Dion say? I want to know what Stephen Harper thinks about Kyoto and I want him to tell me and he has to justify his opinion, and I have a lot of questions for him if he says what I think he’s going to say.

I want journalism to be better. I don’t care if they report on the horse race so long as they’re actually asking questions that matter too. If people choose to vote for a certain party fully informed of what that party believes in and what their policies are, I will be happy. I may be disappointed that those beliefs and policies are at odds with mine and the ones I favour, but I’ll still be happy that democracy works the way it’s supposed to.

Democracy can’t work when the people are deliberately lied to, and the people who are charged in our society with uncovering truth can’t be bothered anymore.

[The vast majority of Canadians don’t even know how their own democracy works](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi1yhp-_x7A). And if the media isn’t going to tell them, I guess it’s down to people like me. Me. I resent being put in this position. This isn’t what I want to be. I don’t consider myself a genius expert here. I don’t want to be, and I’m not. I just paid attention in goddamned grade 10 history class.