The Googlespace

Yesterday, while talking with my office mate, we coined a new term: Googlespace. (To be fair, we didn't invent it, but reinvented it.)

In this particular case, I was looking for the package required to run ruby from a command line, and was having a horrible time searching for it. I didn't know what it was called, and using the words "command" and "line" with any programming language will have a suite of hits that lock onto a specific target about as well as a shotgun blast. Knowing that my office mate was using this tool already, I asked him to tell me what it was called, telling him that I was lost in Googlespace. This term seemed to please him, as it did me.

Spaces have a rather rigorous mathematical definition, such as vector spaces, or returning to an old post, eigenspaces. So surely there must be some sort of encapsulating space for the seemingly infinite Googlespace.

I was a little surprised, when I Googled Googlespace to find hits that had nothing to do with my version whatsoever. As you scroll down the page, there's something about a giant earwig. Near the bottom of the first page, there were a couple of hits that were closer to our idea of Googlespace. The definition by the urban dictionary was somewhat poorly defined, as it has more do with the space you take up in Google rather than the vastness of Googlespace (i.e. it's a definition of the subset within Googlespace that describes you).

But still, I like the concept of Googlespace. Maybe one day, when I have absolutely nothing better to do I will pursue this. However, I truly hope that day never comes.

Comfort In Those Words

Before getting to those comforting words, I must tell a story.

But first, I must tell you about SETI.

There's a program run out of UC Berkeley called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. Basically, the project listens to the universe, hoping to hear something from another life-form, like a radio transmission. Now, as you can imagine, the universe is kind of a big place, so it takes a lot of time, energy, and computer power to listen to it all. To help with this gargantuan project, SETI elicits help from whomever is willing to help them. They developed a program, called SETI@home, that you can download and run on your home computer.

Here's how SETI@home works. When your computer is idle it will spend its time and energy searching for new life in the universe. Every couple of days, your computer will report into SETI and let it know where it didn't find anything. The report includes an ID for the computer as well as its IP address.

Okay, now the story:

Meet James Melin, a software developer in Minnesota. He and his wife have seven home computers. Since it is hard to keep seven home computers occupied at once, James installed SETI@home on them. Sadly, a couple of months ago, his wife's laptop was stolen. The police had no leads, but Mr. Melin was determined to do what he could to get it back. Knowing the SETI ID for the computer, he went to the database where computers send their reports back to SETI. He found his computer ID, found the IP address, and gave that info to the police. The police then got a subpoena and were able to get the actual mailing address from the internet service provider. With that information, they recovered the laptop.

So, what are the comforting words?

Well when being interviewed after the whole ordeal was over, here's what his wife had to say about the love of her life:

I always knew a geek would make a great husband....He's a genius - my hero!

Best Calculator Ever

This one goes out to all you Linux/UNIX/Mac users out there. (I know there's gotta be at least one of you....) Today, I found the coolest command-line calculator ever. It's a Perl script that goes and queries the Google Calculator. Here it is in action.

Fan Mail

Sent to me by the U.S. Department of Commerce:

ATTENTION

Greetings billfish anglers! Please complete the attached Billfish Angler Survey for 2006 and return as soon as possible. The results will be summarized for the next issue of the Billfish Newsletter which is currently being compiled.

[yada yada yada this is how you fill out a form butthead yada yada yada]

Thank you for your support.

Smooth seas and good fishing,

Jane Doe, Fisheries Biologist
John Doe, Computer Specialist

The most curious thing about this document? I've never gone billfishing.

The next-most curious thing? I got the Pacific-Indian Ocean Survey, and I live on the Atlantic.

Meme

Okay, I'm going to be honest, here. I don't really understand these Meme things. But Sween seems to like them and had the grace of "tagging" me with this one. I don't really know what these things are...as best I can tell it's an excuse to write stuff. Which I guess kind of fits into the whole blog thing. But still, I've been dreading the day when I'd be asked to do one of these things. I will, however, at least honour the request of whomever sent it my way by doing my best to respond.

I guess if I'm to do this right, I better do some research. It turns out that the term Meme (pronounced "meem") is "a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another". The term was invented by the acclaimed science writer Richard Dawkins who has written books including The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow. It's an interesting idea, and I think I've heard it talked about in seminars about different pods of whales exhibiting different cultural behaviour.

The general idea is that memes are things like paintbrushes or catchy jingles or new ways of making tires...basically the social/technological equivalent to genes. I'm not sure if the meat of this document counts as cultural information about me that will be passed on, thereby making the world a different place.

Okay, I'm done dragging my feet. Let's get this over with.

6 things that you probably didn't know about me, but won't change your life now that you do

I was once given a wooden eggplant as a gift during a courtship. It worked.

I have only had one concussion in my life. In happened while playing pool. It did not involve a ball flying off the table, as people usually expect. Rather, it involved a ceiling fan and a pool cue. It basically happened like this: four of us were playing pool. We had invented a never-ending game that we dubbed "doubles pool". It requires four players, two teams, and two tables. If you're playing solids, your partner is playing stripes on the other table. Every time you sink a ball, it goes onto the other table. The goal is to clear all the balls of your table and sink the 8-ball but in order to do that, your opponent on the other table must be unable to sink one of fifteen balls on the other table, hence a never-ending game.

Anyway, my opponent and I were waiting for a round on the other table to finish, when I got smacked on the head and fell to the ground. I tried to get up and couldn't. It took me three tries before I successfully climbed back up to onto my feet. After trying to figure out what happened, I theorized that my friend's pool cue got into a ceiling fan, flew down and hit me in the head, and bounced back up. All that happened without my friend noticing. It happened without anybody noticing! My friend thought he almost lost a grip on his cue but there was no way it could have hit me on the head like that. Nobody at the table believed me until my friend checked the end of his cue and saw a 2 mm dent in its side that wasn't there before.

Nothing annoys me like a pen that doesn't have a cap. Not even a cap that doesn't have a pen. After years of training, I've learned not to let this govern my life, in fact I've learned to ignore it most of the time, but it's been difficult.

On a related note, I have four sharpened pencils on my desk so that if I'm scribbling something in the heat of the moment and my pencil gets too dull, I don't have to take the time to sharpen it right away.

I recently thanked somebody for giving me an excuse to read an applied mathematics textbook.

I love olives, except for canned olives. Canned olives are to me what garlic is to a vampire. I absolutely loath them. If I was given the choice of eating one cup of canned olives or one cup of dry flour, I'd pick the flour.

I have never met another oceanographer that gets nearly as seasick as me. I am fine on small boats, but on ships I suffer near-constant nausea. Everyone else seems to get over seasickness after a couple of days (if they get sick at all). I was once at sea for three weeks and didn't get over being sick. When I wasn't working, I was lying in my bed. When I was working, I was dry-heaving. Drinking liquid on an empty stomach would make me throw up, so to stay hydrated, I ate fruit between meals. Until we ran out of fruit. Then it was cucumbers. Then carrots. Then lettuce. Then olives. Canned Olives.

Despite this weakness, I still love being at sea.

Happy New Year!

One way to spell relief

As some of you may know, the house where Allie and I live was put up for sale some time ago. We were given this information by our landlady about 1 day before the sign went up and about 1 month after resigning the lease. She had kicked out the tenants below when their lease expired but kept us on without telling us to make the property more sell-able. The thing that had us most worried was that the lease we signed is set to expire the day before our wedding. Suddenly we thought that maybe we were going to end up married but without a home.

Well, last week the house sold. And yesterday we met our new landlord and were invited to his housewarming. We totally lucked out. He doesn't want us to leave, he doesn't want to raise the rent, and he wants to do some much-needed improvements to the house.

In addition to being a nice guy that sounds like he'll be conscientious of the folks living upstairs, his brother is married to somebody I played ultimate with in Vancouver! His brother and sister-in-law weren't at the housewarming, because they're in Kauai for the winter (poor suckers). But his mother is flying to Kauai today and is all excited that we know her other son. So we basically went from being complete strangers to practically friends of the family in, oh, I'd say about 5 minutes.

Phew.