CouchDB creator's story

Damien Katz said that one of the reasons for the path he took in making CouchDB was that it would make an interesting story, and I have to agree.

Today's XKCD

Just classic.

Dvorak keyboard myth busted

Found this article by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis by way of Slashdot. It debunks the myth of the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard layout. Gives me the chance to feel a little smug about never bothering to learn that keyboard. ;)

Tagging email

Summary

To enable effective, portable categorization of my email for searching and archiving purposes, I use Thunderbird 2/3 tagging with some modifications. I either don't touch the default five tags, or I delete them through the options dialogue. This removes a level of abstraction in the tags preserved in my email messages. I use MailTweaks to enable the import/export of tags to allow for viewing tags on my archived email from a different Thunderbird installation than that under which the emails were originally tagged. The tags are saved in the messages in the X-Mozilla-Keys message header. This allows me to use scripts to process the tags into some different format if my choice of email platform changes.

Detail

For a while, now, I've been mildly obsessed with effectively finding old work emails. I don't know whether it's an issue of excessive categorization on my part, or just too much email on too many varied topics. Being able to look back to dig up now-suddenly-relevant-again information, or being able to justify my decisions and actions when a huge cross-functional project enters into "find someone to blame" mode, requires an effective searchable email archive. Limitations: corporate workstation standard is Windows, email server is Exchange.

My first solution was to sort my emails into folders, whether by project, or client, or whatever other criteria. I eventually found myself with folders nested three deep, and not necessarily able to find a relevant email because it could reasonable have been filed into more than one possible folder. 

Around the time that I was getting really frustrated with this approach, I started trying to rely on search engines. The search built into Micrsoft Outlook was not quite fast enough or helpful enough. Google Desktop, when I first grabbed it, couldn't search Outlook mail files. Yahoo came out with a desktop search engine that could, and did acceptably. A bit better than Outlook. And then finally Google was able to search Outlook files. But I hit one fundamental problem with searches. Unless I knew precisely the keywords I was looking for, I might not find anything. Problem is that none of the search engines are smart enough to search for synonyms. The way my brain works, after a couple of years I might have a memory of discussing some issue, but while the meaning of the words in my head match the discussion, the precise choice of words doesn't. 

So, what to do now? I can't just remember keywords, I need a list of them that I can reliably scan quickly and pick the ones I need to search on. And I need to be able to use multiple keywords on a given email, because I might need to find a given email under different contexts, and I might need multiple keywords to narrow my search. Sounds a lot like the tags that are popular on the web now.

So, I dive into the use of tags. There is a nice tool for Outlook, Taglocity, that provides tagging for Outlook email, and even provides a tag cloud for tagging and searching your email. That problem solved. Cool.

But wait. Around that time, I also start getting concerned about access to my email should I no longer have access to Outlook, or my PST file gets a little corrupted, or what have you. 

So, what uses a more widely adopted mailbox storage format that can be accessible from multiple different mail clients? The format in this case is MBOX, which stores messages in their RFC 2822 format. This opens me up to a number of possibilities. The cross-platform choice for me is Thunderbird, a number of others I looked at were based on the same platform. I happily start using Thunderbird's tagging capability for a while. I redo my email filing structure to file emails by month, just so that no folder becomes too big in size, and for ease of archiving later. 

Secure in the knowledge that I had found my cross-platform, cross-application approach to being able to find and archive my email, one day I tried to bring up my email backup on my Linux box as a test. 

Sigh.

All my tags were gone. Now what? If I have to reinstall on another computer, all my tagging is gone, I have to go back to search engines to find old mail. 

Now, please pardon my ignorance at the next few steps, you Thunderbird wizards. Next approach was to use the TagTheBird addon to Thunderbird. Good, I get tags that go with the message, as the tags are added to the message header. Bad, I'm afraid the interface isn't very good. Trying to hit that tiny little pencil icon when I want to add tags is just a pain, and I'm afraid I haven't been willing to tackle the Mozilla extension learning curve with the limited time I have available. And the coup de grace, it's not supported in Thunderbird 3 yet. The reason that is an issue is that my co-workers have a penchant for emailing me 20MB documents that Thunderbird 2 chokes on.

Now, the ignorance I referred to before: because I "lost" my tags when I moved platforms, I had assumed that Thunderbird was storing all my tags in the mail summary file. I spent a happy few hours repurposing Jamie Zawinski's mork.pl to pull labels from the msf file and apply them as X-Tags to my mail messages, when I saw that in fact Thunderbird was saving the labels in the messages in the header X-Mozilla-Keys. Doh!

Last remaining challenge was that the first few tags in your Thunderbird config are saves as $label1 through $label5 in the message header. Not very portable if you have changed the first few labels from the default, which I had done. 

With a little bit of testing, I found that I could get rid of that level of abstraction by deleting the first five tags under Tools->Options->Display->Tags. Now my tags travel around with my email messages. The remaining step is visibility. With MailTweaks installed, I can export all my tags. As long as I export them to my email directory, the export file gets backed up automatically with all my email. And if, for some reason, I come across a spiffy new email client that does everything I want, I should be able to run a perl script on my mbox files to rename an X-Mozilla-Keys header to whatever header my new email client or Thunderbird plugin likes for tags.

The one thing remaining on my wish list, whether for Thunderbird, which I'm using for my work email, or Gmail, which I'm using for my personal email, is a tag cloud interface. Drop-down menus are not an interface I enjoy using frequently, and my tagging habits require heavy use of this interface.

Moral legislation?

The LA times reports on a last minute rule by the Bush administration allowing physicians to refuse to provide care they find morally objectionable. This assumes a mainstream Christian physician. What if a physician's moral position is against heroic measures to continue life, or against increasing population, what then? These 'moral' positions run counter to the 'morals' this rule has in mind.

Javascript and MVC

Interesting article called Blurring MVC lines. It's about MVC pattern in web development. His basic concern is having to program in Javascript, which he finds obtuse. Otherwise, he praises the idea of a rich client web interface, i.e., AJAX. I can paraphrase the article as "javascript sucks, here's how you can write AJAX apps without writing javascript". Mr. Leighton also fails the full disclosure test, being a "lead developer" on Pyjamas, one of the frameworks he touts. It smacks of a bit of condenscension, that Javascript is too hard for the average developer.

Attacks on Palin

There is a piece in the CS Monitor blogs where there is some concern expressed about the attacks on Sarah Palin as being sexist. I don't see it. I don't see the attacks on Palin as being any different than the attacks on another vice-presidential candidate that became Vice President, and appeared similarly qualified. Other than that VP happened to be a white anglo male.

Borrowing to gamble

Freakonomics blog has an interesting piece on how we got into this financial crisis. The oversimplified version is that too many people gambled on credit. As in, they borrowed money to place a bet, and lost the bet. The bet? That housing prices would continue to rise. Highly leveraged? To borrow an analogy, I put up my $1000 gold watch for collateral (i.e., creditor can take it if I default on my loan), the same single gold watch, for, say, 30 loans. After the first creditor takes the watch, what then? I suppose 'hung for $1000, hung for $30,000'.

Google Apps Annoyances

I made the mistake of installing Google Calendar Sync. Now, any time I try to create a new event, it complains that I have exceeded the number of edits I'm allowed. Funny how these productivity enhancing tools eat up more time than if I never bothered with them.

The other annoyance is Google Notebook. I guess they intended it for little snippets, because I often find that the note I'm editing loses focus in the middle of my typing.

Double-edge shaving update

In my move up to Washington, my Gillette Super Speed seems to have lost it's way. I didn't want to get another used rig, so I picked up a Merkur Classic. That has been working out splendidly, and I have been shaving with it exclusively now for about a month, now. Unlike the Gillette, it has no moving parts. A little bit more cumbersome to replace blades, but I have the assurance of no possible mechanical breakdown.

What defines organic food?

I was reading an article today about a new "green" pesticide that could be used on certified organic crops, and it set me to wondering. I used to use tobacco tea as a pesticide, but the recent onset of problems for honey bees made me reconsider the use of any wide spectrum pesticide. When I hear about "green" pesticides and "green" herbicides, I wonder about long term sustainability. I think we need another term, now. I think it would be more responsible to eat GM produce than that produced with wide spectrum pesticides, no matter how "green".

Corporate Shill

Andrew Keen seems to be a mouthpiece for the cable industry. In this post, he goes on about how broadband providers, who are already charging us exorbitant fees compared to other developed countries, apparently have the right to double dip as well, charging the consumer for access to the internet, and in addition charging content providers for tiered service. If I'm paying for 1.5Mbs, I expect to be able to access anything on the internet the same way, I shouldn't have to rely on Google also ponying up in order to do a search.

Note taking software, head to head

I've been trying to find satisfactory software for note taking, and more importantly, note finding. The contenders so far have been various wikis (TWiki, MoinMoin, Wikidpad, JamWiki, TiddlyWiki) and several apps specifically for notes, Google Notebook, Microsoft OneNote, and Evernote.

My requirements:

• The data needs to be internet accessible from all of my computers, which include Windows, Linux, and a smartphone.
• Notes must be taggable.
• Ability to format text.
• Ability to archive
• Free (to me)

Nice to have:

• Tag cloud
• Ability to paste in arbitrary content, like images
• Scriptable
• Ability to email a note for inclusion in the system

Starting with the various wikis, they have pretty much everything I want in the way of features. But I found two issues. One is hosting. There are several free wiki hosting services, but none of them made me feel comfortable enough to host my notes there. I could host it myself, but I'm not prepared to pay for either a hosted wiki, or a business level internet connection to my house, just for my personal notes.

OneNote is nice. I was able to organize and format my content any way I liked. I was literally able to paste in any content I wanted. Any application running locally and keeping data locally is easily archivable. However, my very first requirement rules out OneNote. (OneNote is effectively free to me, as we have a site license at work.) And I have a particular bone to pick with OneNote. A number of my coworkers have adopted it. When they want to share some of their notes in an email, if they don't carefully select just text, and instead select a whole text box, the resulting email is unreadable to recipients, even in Outlook. It's easy enough to work around this, but a point of friction any time there is a new adopter I am working with.

I have been also using Wikidpad on and off. I like the hierarchical tree view of notes. It is eminently scriptable. But it is a local solution. I can make it more ubiquitous for myself by carrying my wiki on a stick (a USB thumb drive), but that depends on either using all windows computers, or configuring all my linux hosts for this. Doable, but more trouble than it is worth to me. Also, it is minor annoyance, but I find I either want to do WYSIWYG editing, or hit an edit button, rather than switching views between edit and view mode.

That leaves me with Google Notebook and Evernote. Evernote is nice in having a offline and synchronization capability. But no formatting. Google Notebook has the formatting, but is not yet integrated with Google Gears. Both have tagging capability. In the end, I think I don't need the extra capabilities Evernote provides, and I am left with Google Notebook. I'm also already using a number of Google apps heavily, and the degree of integration between them is increasing, which also works in my favor.

(This has been edited since Jake's comment. No content removed, just added some point that I didn't think warranted an additional post.)

Where's the mouse

Clay Shirkey's got a great essay on us growing into our cognitive surplus. Of all the things I see so far that really makes me think that can happen is Google AppEngine.

The Two Body Problem

That phrase sums up the physicist's description of situating both husband and wife in desirable positions when they are both academics. For example, two physicists both looking for faculty positions. If one gets a good offer, what does the other one do?

The same problem now applies to senior professionals. I had a recruiter ask me if I knew anyone that would be a match for a pretty senior IT technical position in New York. The people I know that would do well are all married, and their spouses have pretty senior positions as well.

There was a time that the main challenge of relocating for a job was the loss of social connections. Now, there is no problem with the social connections (we are perhaps a little too connected, now), the problem is maintaining two careers.