---o0o---
Monday, May 20, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Poem: Resurrection
By Jack Brummet
He
was ready to live again
Even if living just meant running
To keep ahead of the ghosts.
---o0o---Even if living just meant running
To keep ahead of the ghosts.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Five Poems: The Golden Rule; The Glass Is Not Half-Full; It's Getting Crowded; Limits; Surviving
By Jack Brummet
Listen to the songbirds
Trill
But keep an eye
On the buzzard section.
----o0o----
The
glass is not half-full
As our steps
Bisect old steps.
---o0o---
We like to believe
We could endure anything for five minutes
But that theory, cooked up
In your hermetic study or bedroom,
Comes apart at the seams
When you imagine being on fire
Or having crows feast
Upon your eyes.
---o0o---
Salvation lies
In remaining unblinded
The enemy without,
The
Golden Rule
Trill
But keep an eye
On the buzzard section.
----o0o----
I
saw our dreams
Disappear
Like a white pony
Over
A low grassy hill. ---o0o---
Disappear
Like a white pony
Over
A low grassy hill. ---o0o---
It's
Getting Crowded
We
cover the earth
With Venn Diagrams
With Venn Diagrams
As our steps
Bisect old steps.
---o0o---
Limits
We like to believe
We could endure anything for five minutes
But that theory, cooked up
In your hermetic study or bedroom,
Comes apart at the seams
When you imagine being on fire
Or having crows feast
Upon your eyes.
---o0o---
Surviving
Salvation lies
In remaining unblinded
To
the treachery
Massing
around you:
The enemy without,
Calculating
your fall
And
the traitor within,
Beating in your chest.
---o0o---Beating in your chest.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Donald Baechler's faces mural at Caravaggio restaurant in NYC and Jack's Faces No. 111
By Jack Brummet
We're working on more or less parallel paths.
We're working on more or less parallel paths.
click to enlarge
My earlier drawings (2007), Faces No. 111.
---o0o---
ATIT Reheated: Eat your own dog food!
By Jack Brummet, Games and Software Ed.
Actor Lorne Greene used to flack the dogfood Alpo on TV, saying "it's so good I feed it to my own dogs." It gained currency during the dot-com craze, and the phrase is still used most commonly in technology companies. I believe it is one of the central tenets of quality assurance (as opposed to QA's subdiscipline, testing).
"Eating your own dog food" means that you use the software you create, or play the games you make. In other businesses, you might actually eat the food you serve, watch the TV shows you make, or use the product you manufacture. This can be taken to extremes, of course, as in the Not Invented Here syndrome, where you not only eat your own dogfood, but you also won't touch anyone else's [1].
Ben Hamper, writing about life as a shoprat at General Motors in his book Rivethead, tells how anyone foolish enough to drive a foreign car into the employee parking lot would find their car keyed, tagged with spray paint, mirrors ripped off, and possibly rammed by a one-ton pickup. That is an extreme punishment for not eating your own dogfood.
Why should you eat your own dogfood? You actually get to know the product you are making. By knowing it, you may get some ideas about how to increase its goodness. In the case of games and software, problems, bugs and deficencies become apparent often only after extended use by a variety of people. Eating your own dogfood shows you believe in your own product. If you work at a brewery, a game company, or bakery, it probably works pretty well for you, if you manufacture cod liver oil, syrup of ipecac, chastity belts, or experimental aircraft. . .well, not so much.
[1] "Not Invented Here," describes a company that will use nothing developed by "outsiders." In many cases companies don't know a solution already exists. But even more often, the organization believes they can produce a superior product. Apple Computer, from System 1 through OS9 did not include many U.I. innovations (from, say, Windows) because they were not accounted for in Apple's human interface guidelines (a great document, by the way).
Apple rejected any change they did not invent...which, of course, ignores the fact that Apple cribbed most of this stuff from innovations at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the first place. In the open source world, at any time, there are several groups working on different projects that all do the same thing.
Large corporations like Microsoft reject all use of open source software...because they feel the source sharing requirements are too onerous. Therefore they must come up with all these tools in house, no matter how much it costs and no matter how poorly the tool emulates what is already available for free.
Actor Lorne Greene used to flack the dogfood Alpo on TV, saying "it's so good I feed it to my own dogs." It gained currency during the dot-com craze, and the phrase is still used most commonly in technology companies. I believe it is one of the central tenets of quality assurance (as opposed to QA's subdiscipline, testing).
"Eating your own dog food" means that you use the software you create, or play the games you make. In other businesses, you might actually eat the food you serve, watch the TV shows you make, or use the product you manufacture. This can be taken to extremes, of course, as in the Not Invented Here syndrome, where you not only eat your own dogfood, but you also won't touch anyone else's [1].
Ben Hamper, writing about life as a shoprat at General Motors in his book Rivethead, tells how anyone foolish enough to drive a foreign car into the employee parking lot would find their car keyed, tagged with spray paint, mirrors ripped off, and possibly rammed by a one-ton pickup. That is an extreme punishment for not eating your own dogfood.
Why should you eat your own dogfood? You actually get to know the product you are making. By knowing it, you may get some ideas about how to increase its goodness. In the case of games and software, problems, bugs and deficencies become apparent often only after extended use by a variety of people. Eating your own dogfood shows you believe in your own product. If you work at a brewery, a game company, or bakery, it probably works pretty well for you, if you manufacture cod liver oil, syrup of ipecac, chastity belts, or experimental aircraft. . .well, not so much.
[1] "Not Invented Here," describes a company that will use nothing developed by "outsiders." In many cases companies don't know a solution already exists. But even more often, the organization believes they can produce a superior product. Apple Computer, from System 1 through OS9 did not include many U.I. innovations (from, say, Windows) because they were not accounted for in Apple's human interface guidelines (a great document, by the way).
Apple rejected any change they did not invent...which, of course, ignores the fact that Apple cribbed most of this stuff from innovations at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the first place. In the open source world, at any time, there are several groups working on different projects that all do the same thing.
Large corporations like Microsoft reject all use of open source software...because they feel the source sharing requirements are too onerous. Therefore they must come up with all these tools in house, no matter how much it costs and no matter how poorly the tool emulates what is already available for free.
---o0o---
Thursday, May 16, 2013
President Obama talks about "going Bulworth"
By Jack Brummet
Thanks to Jeff Clinton for passing this along. We can dream can't we? Bulworth refers to Warren Beatty's great movie about a Senator who goes completely off the rails.
Thanks to Jeff Clinton for passing this along. We can dream can't we? Bulworth refers to Warren Beatty's great movie about a Senator who goes completely off the rails.
---o0o---
Poem: Stackabones (for Claire)
By Jack Brummet
This is a poem I wrote a couple of days before my daughter Claire was born.
This is a poem I wrote a couple of days before my daughter Claire was born.
Stackabones
for Claire
"What is it?," you'll ask, and I'll hedge.
Things with no title aren't,
So make a name. Our dreams have no lexicon.
We'll look at wildflowers
In the chaparral and fill the silence
Around the blossoms with a name.
Waiting on you to be,
I try to remember not to forget.
In a dusty corner of my head
I've opened files with Websters of words,
Waiting on you to be.
We'll cover the earth with Venn Diagrams
Of our steps bisecting the old steps.
We'll breach the barricades
And walk circles from here to here.
The wheel itself rolls flat
And you can't slow it down;
With each spin of the ball it grows flatter,
But still rolls up and down the hill.
The list of whom the bucket was kicked by
Grows longer every day
And that bucket fills with tears.
Our job is to stay off that roster.
Back to the story.
God, gets the fire going
As She spins us back into the sun
To warm us up in the morning.
The sun didn't rise today,
But the sun doesn't rise.
The last cricket falls asleep,
And the birds begin their rounds.
Earth rolls over like a dog,
And the light
Floods in.
---o0o---
for Claire
"What is it?," you'll ask, and I'll hedge.
Things with no title aren't,
So make a name. Our dreams have no lexicon.
We'll look at wildflowers
In the chaparral and fill the silence
Around the blossoms with a name.
Waiting on you to be,
I try to remember not to forget.
In a dusty corner of my head
I've opened files with Websters of words,
Waiting on you to be.
We'll cover the earth with Venn Diagrams
Of our steps bisecting the old steps.
We'll breach the barricades
And walk circles from here to here.
The wheel itself rolls flat
And you can't slow it down;
With each spin of the ball it grows flatter,
But still rolls up and down the hill.
The list of whom the bucket was kicked by
Grows longer every day
And that bucket fills with tears.
Our job is to stay off that roster.
Back to the story.
God, gets the fire going
As She spins us back into the sun
To warm us up in the morning.
The sun didn't rise today,
But the sun doesn't rise.
The last cricket falls asleep,
And the birds begin their rounds.
Earth rolls over like a dog,
And the light
Floods in.
---o0o---
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
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