The Amphitheatre and the Orb

Many years ago, when I was hiking through a forest alone, I happened upon an amphitheatre nestled in a natural bowl in the landscape. It was mere luck that guided my footsteps to the site…

The amphitheatre was ancient, centuries old. Its concentric stone benches had been worn to a velvet comfort by the gentle hands of time, and it was a euphoric experience to sit in quiet contemplation, absorbing the essences of ancient luminaries that had, I was sure, ruminated on the same seat.

An orb was cradled on a stone dais at the amphitheatre’s hub. The orb was approximately three meters in diameter, but its contours were only discernible as a subtle distortion of light. It was only at certain angles of perception that an elusive luminescence — a golden-green aura — was visible around its confines. I sensed rare perfumes seeping from the orb; exotic incenses from ethereal realms.

The orb also emitted a field; a palpable essence that rippled through the amphitheatre. The orb’s aura — the field — produced a sensation that is indescribable, indelible, and soothing, but I could advance no closer than a few meters from the orb, where a moderate, yet firm, resistance was felt (alike the force of magnetic opposition). The field was gentle, but its full power could be sensed. I endeavoured to break through the field — by anchoring my shoes in the soil and pressing enthusiastically with a shoulder — but I remained delightfully frustrated.

I sat quietly in the amphitheatre until twilight threatened and I was forced to retreat out of the forest. I removed my red tee-shirt, which I tore into strips to tie onto branches, to mark the way back.

The next day I retraced my steps, guided by the strips of cloth. A perplexing anxiety pervaded my being as I drew close to the site, as if I was about to lose something dear: but I pressed on, anticipation overcoming apprehension.

My heart sank when I entered the clearing.

There was no amphitheatre, no orb; instead, there was a dilapidated shack beside a pond that was fed by a meandering brook. Inside the shack there were signs of vagrants, rat droppings, and the poignant calling-card of skunk.

Had it been a dream, hallucination, or parallel world? There was no telling. Perhaps it was a unique experience, a gift to be appreciated, but let go, swept away with yesterday’s dust.

It had been a mistake, I decided, to try to return. I walked out of the forest, untying my rags from the trees as I went. A spiritual calm enveloped me.

I’ve never attempted to go back to the amphitheatre in the waking world, but I often visit in my dreams; and, when I do, I awake with new perspective; nothing tangible, but a feeling, an inner knowledge — a liberation— that guides me through the day.

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The QWERTY Keyboard

From the top left hand corner of the keyboard, the first six letters are almost invariably QWERTY.  Why is that, and how did the QWERTY keyboard become so popular?

Sholes and Glidden 1874

In 1868, an American Mechanical Engineer, Christopher Latham Sholes, produced a type-writer that had letters arranged in alphabetical order; unfortunately, among the design problems was the fact that if a typist worked too quickly, keys would jam together and slow the typist down (for those unfamiliar with the mechanical type-writer, it has arms, called keybars, with letters on the end. The keybars were raised to strike the printing surface when the corresponding key was pressed. The keybars became tangled if a typist hit two adjacent keys in quick succession). Sholes, with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé (and probably educator Amos Densmore, who studied letter-pair frequency), redesigned the type-writer with the current QWERTY layout that survives today (it is a common misconception that the QWERTY design was meant to slow down typists so the ‘jams’ would not occur; rather, it was an attempt to prevent jams and accelerate a typist’s speed).  

Sholes was not an efficient businessman, or marketer, and sold the rights to the invention to James Densmore, a banker (and brother of Amos Densmore). James Densmore partnered with Philo Remington (of rifle manufacturing fame) to market and manufacture the type-writer. In 1877, the very first Sholes & Glidden Typewriter was available to the market, but it took engineers at Remington a few years to create a design that appealed to the masses; after the engineer’s tweeks, sales increased dramatically.  

There were competitors, with different layout configurations, but Remington had an ace up their sleeve…

They had an ace typist, Frank McGurrin, probably the first touch typist. He won several crucial typing contests, which were commonplace competitions in the late 1880s. In particular, McGurrin won a prestigious Cincinnati typing contest in 1888. The New York Times declared that the victory made it clear that the Remington machine was superior. And so the age of the QWERTY keyboard began…

Since then, there has been opposition to the QWERTY design, most notably due to the research of Frank Gilbreth, which eventually led to August Dvorak’s design. In the 1920s, Gilbreth, an Industrial Engineer, carried out time and motion studies and declared that alternate design layouts could not only increase speed, but reduce errors and fatigue. In the 1930s, Dvorak (along with colleagues at the University of Washington) designed a new keyboard layout, based on Gilbreth’s research; and, in 1936, the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard was patented, and Dvorak claimed it provided a scientifically proven, enhanced performance over the QWERTY design. Dvorak’s scientific methods have been seriously questioned, but he managed to convince the US Navy to order thousands of typewriters; regrettably (for Dvorak), the Treasury Department refused to complete the transaction (there was a Navy study that demonstrated the superiority of the Dvorak machine, but the experimental set-up and statistical analysis was unsound; furthermore, it was later revealed (by Sholes biographer, Arthur Foulke) that the author of the report was none other than Lieutenant Commander August Dvorak).

There have been some studies that indicate that Dvorak’s design may increase typing speed, but the layout hasn’t gained much momentum in the modern world.

 The ubiquity of the QWERTY keyboard, and the infrastructure surrounding the design (instruction infrastructure (instructors, facilities, books, software…), touch-typists already trained, manufacturing facility set-up, etcetera) dictate that the QWERTY keyboard will survive, unchallenged, until keyboards are replaced with an alternate technology (voice recognition, gesture recognition and motion sensing technology, or others (thought recognition?)).

 Long live QWERTY!

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For more information:

The Fable of the Keys, by S.J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis

QWERTY at Wikipedia

CBC Radio Spark

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The Algebraist, a book review

Iain M. Banks is one of the more literate authors to take on science fiction (he also writes mainstream literary fiction, as Iain Banks (without the ‘M.’)). I find his science fiction novels highly enjoyable, but he does have tendencies that can be obtrusive; in particular, he invariably includes horrific scenes, he often incorporates overtly evil villains, and his novels tend to be overstuffed with extraneous information (i.e.: they’d make a serviceable doorstop. For pure geek enjoyment this is a good thing, but it is ponderous at times).

I enjoyed The Algebraist, but struggled with a few sections. The villain is so over-the-top that I can picture him twirling the ends of a Snidely Whiplash moustache, and I faithfully slogged through the middle of the novel while feeling as if the book had entered into the ‘slow time’ of the main character, Fassin Taak (a Slow Seer, who delves the depths of a gas giant planet to converse with Dwellers, creatures that can live for billions of years and prefer to cogitate at a slower speed than humans).

The story is presented as an ‘epic’, huge in scope; and yet, it is really quite simple when divested of its accouterments. I enjoyed the first third of the book, aged faster than normal in the middle, enjoyed the build up to the ending, and found the summing-up satisfying (I was especially buoyed by the hopeful statement embodied in the final sentence).

I appreciate Iain M. Banks’ writing style; he can be quite humorous (even his morbid scenes can be comical), he creates interesting characters, and he usually includes enough imaginative ideas for several novels.

I didn’t think this was one of his better books; nevertheless, it was well worth the time invested in reading it.

Sadly, Iain Banks has been diagnosed with gall bladder cancer and is not expected to live more than a year. His final book, a work of literary fiction, The Quarry, is due for publication later this year. He has posted a personal message on his website, and there is a guestbook on his site that is set up for fans and friends to leave messages.

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The 77th Masters

I used to think golf was boring, but I can now appreciate the drama: the sport is a psychological, internal chess-match that often develops into an intense finish between competitors.

Each year, The Masters is the first of golf’s four major tournaments. The venue — Augusta National Golf Club, Georgia — was founded and designed by legendary golfer Bobby Jones (with Cliff Roberts (co-founder) and Alister MacKenzie (co-designer)): Jones never turned professional — he was a lawyer and only played part-time — but won thirteen major championships.

Augusta was built on former flowering plant (Indigofera) orchards, and the course is stunning; unfortunately, the historic prejudice inherent in the club’s membership policies has lowered my esteem for this tournament below that of The Open, and maybe even the U.S Open. It wasn’t until 1990 that Augusta admitted black members, and in 2012 they finally admitted two female members.

Anyway, as to the tournament itself…

Will Eldrick Tont ‘Tiger’ Woods inch closer to Jack Nicklaus’ record of eighteen majors? (Nicklaus also finished second in majors an astounding nineteen times!). Tiger has fourteen major victories, and counting.

I’m old-fashioned, I suppose: I’d like to see Nicklaus’ record stand; I’m sure The Golden Bear was a driven man, difficult to get along with at times, but he remained an excellent role-model in the quagmire of mass-media, something that cannot be said of Mr. Woods. Nevertheless, if Tiger breaks the record, I’ll still applaud his ability.

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Some other (non-Tiger-related) stories:

Will Rory McIlroy round into form?

Will Phil Mickelson’s ‘Phrankenwood’ (a driver that is bigger than a 3-wood, but noticeably smaller than the drivers he normally uses).

Will somebody from Australia break the curse and finally win?

Will it take another Bubba-shot to win in a playoff?

Will an unexpected winner emerge?

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My daughters will mock me, but I’ll be glued to the television…

 

Update: Adam Scott won: the first Australian to win the Masters..

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The Immense Journey, by Loren Eiseley

I was rearranging some bookshelves and — in a dusty back corner, behind a framed Buddha —  I found a small paperback copy of The Immense Journey, by Loren Eiseley. I read the book over twenty years ago and I remember enjoying it, but haven’t seen it since.

When I opened the book, it became obvious that it was published before acid-free paper: the pages looked frangible, with yellow-brown discoloration at the outer edges.

I’ve always been a compulsive note-jotter, and there were quite a few passages marked in the book, including the author’s thoughts about a theoretical ancestor of Homo sapiens…

“It began as such things always begin — in the ooze of unnoticed swamps, in the darkness of eclipsed moons. It began with a strangled gasping for air.

The pond was a place of reek and corruption, of fetid smells and oxygen-starved fish breathing through laboring gills. At times the slowly contracting circle of the water left little windrows of minnows who skittered desperately to escape the sun, but who died, nevertheless, in the fat, warm mud. It was a place of low life. In it the human brain began.

There were strange snouts in those waters, strange barbels nuzzling the bottom ooze, and there was time — three hundred million years of it — but mostly, I think, it was the ooze. By day the temperature in the world outside the pond rose to a frightful intensity; at night the sun went down in smoking red. Dust storms marched in incessant progression across a wilderness whose plants were the plants of long ago. Leafless and weird and stiff they lingered by the water, while over vast areas of grassless uplands the winds blew until red stones took on the polish of reflecting mirrors. There was nothing to hold the land in place. Winds howled, dust clouds rolled, and brief erratic torrents choked with silt ran down to the sea. It was a time of dizzying contrasts, a time of change.

On the oily surface of the pond, from time to time a snout thrust upward, took in air with a queer grunting inspiration, and swirled back to the bottom. The pond was doomed, the water was foul, and the oxygen almost gone, but the creature would not die. It could breathe air direct through a little accessory lung, and it could walk. In all that weird and lifeless landscape, it was the only thing that could. It walked rarely and under protest, but that was not surprising. The creature was a fish.

In the passage of days, the pond became a puddle, but the Snout survived. There was dew one dark night and a coolness in the empty stream bed. When the sun rose next morning the pond was an empty place of cracked mud, but the Snout did not lie there. He had gone. Down stream there were other ponds. He breathed air for a few hours and hobbled slowly along on the stumps of heavy fins.

It was an uncanny business if there had been anyone there to see. It was a journey best not observed in daylight, it was something that needed swamps and shadows and the touch of the night dew. It was a monstrous penetration of a forbidden element, and the Snout kept his face from the light. It was just as well, though the face should not be mocked. In three hundred million years it would be our own.”

from The Snout, in The Immense Journey (p.49 – 51)

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The Teleportation Accident; a book review

In retrospect, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, a mixture of : Douglas Adams; Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint; David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas; Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five; and something undeniably new (I now feel the need to read Ned Beauman‘s first novel, Boxer, Beetle).

After I’d finished the first hundred pages (maybe a bit more) I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it; nevertheless, I kept reading because every once in a while there was a nugget, and I didn’t want to miss one: below are a few that I marked as I read (there are lots more):

“A short-wave radio hummed jazz as if it had forgotten the tune.” (p.133)

“There was enough ice in her voice for a serviceable daiquiri.” (p.149)

“…the sort of moustache that could beat you in an arm-wrestling contest.” (p.163)

“…a tall, gaunt man with small narrow eyes set deep in his skull like two old sisters trying to spy out of the windows of their house without being noticed.”(p.197)

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It takes quite some time for this novel’s plot to warm up, but there is more going on than I suspected at first (and a whirlwind of threads converge near the end of the book, which has four endings).

The novel begins in Berlin, 1931.

There are quite a few threads introduced at various points, for example:

• Set designer Adriano Lavicini’s Extraordinary Mechanism for the Almost Instantaneous Transport of Persons from Place to Place, which caused an infamous disaster, with echoes far into the future.

• Evolved dinosaurs: the Troondonians.

• Adele Hitler (no relation), who evokes a strong infatuation from the main character, Egon Loeser.

• A one-sided romance (see previous point).

• A murder mystery with noir elements.

• A scientist attempting to harness the energy of ghosts to provide electricity for the USA.

• A man who cannot tell pictures from the real thing (he suffers from ontological agnosia).

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The main character, Egon Loeser, is difficult to like; however, I find my reaction to be similar to another character in the novel — Rupert Rackenham — who decided that “…in spite of everything, he liked Loeser.” (p.352)

Highly recommended; but be patient, and be aware that this is an odd book…

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Television and the speed of our travel through space

Sometimes I have a nervous energy that makes it impossible to sit still. It bothered me until I looked up a few facts on movement that made it obvious that it’s not my fault:

Where I live, the Earth rotates on its axis and spins me at almost eleven-hundred kilometers per hour (about three kilometers per second), the Earth rotates around the sun at slightly over one-hundred thousand kilometers per hour (over two hundred and fifty kilometers per second), our sun moves around the galaxy at a speed of almost eight hundred thousand kilometers per hour (over two thousand kilometers per second), and our galaxy is travelling through the universe at over two million kilometers per hour (almost six thousand kilometers per second).

To counteract the above, I suppose the Earth could be seen as a stationary object and the universe, the galaxy, and the sun could be moving relative to me. But that just makes me dizzy.

When I start to think about stuff like this I usually sit on my sofa, turn on the TV, and let my brain soak up the inanity; a constant source of brainless comfort, and an absurd escape from reality…occasionally, if I suddenly realize I’m squandering time, I decide to turn the TV off, sit still, and meditate…

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“If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it”

http://www.ifixit.com

I happened upon an interesting website called iFixit that provides user manuals for repairing household appliances and electronic devices (this post’s title is from their Self-Repair Manifesto).

The next time something breaks (or, before you buy a gadget and want to know how easy it is to repair it or replace its battery) check out the site: it’s free, and there are step-by-step instructions and photos to guide you through the repair process. If something breaks, instead of buying a new one, try repairing your old one!

And, if you possess specific knowledge about repairing a device, you can share your expertise through the site.

The goal of Luke and Kyle (the website’s creators) is to help ‘fix the world’ by providing repair manuals for any hardware you can think of.

What an excellent idea!

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The God of Small Things, a book review

The God of Small Things has all the ingredients that I love in a novel; poetic writing, intriguing metaphors, language calisthenics, a character driven narrative, a dream-like sensibility, and metaphysical elements. And I did enjoy many sections; unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly fond of the novel as a whole. But that’s just my opinion; others thought very highly of it indeed: it won the Booker Prize, and garnered many glowing reviews. I just wasn’t drawn into the characters as I should have been.

The idiosyncrasies of the author’s prose style that likely helped win her the Booker Prize didn’t quite work for me. Ms. Roy used an inordinate amount of ink to foray into trivialities; not necessarily detrimental, but in this novel they felt forced at times and intruded on the story. I also began to weary of the interminable metaphors and the circling, echoing cadence as the novel turned about the event that shapes the lives of the characters.

The author, Arundhati Roy, has previously written two screenplays for films, and I do think the book would make an excellent movie: the story is quite moving.

Much of the writing is rich, luxurious, and brutally rhythmic: the novel reminded me of the many jazz songs that I couldn’t quite connect with: a song in which I could detect the brilliance in a phrase here, a bar there; but, overall, it just didn’t work for me. Occasionally, I can revisit one of these jazz tunes at a later date and the brilliance coalesces in my mind.

I probably won’t re-read this small, attractive book that I truly wish I could have appreciated more, as it no doubt deserves.

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Another school memory…

It’s curious how memories burble up from the depths. I think characters in  two books I read recently — Sarasati in Blindsight and Bucolac in The Scar — caused the release of this one…

In high school I didn’t fit with any group — the grease-balls, the burnouts, the jocks, the geeks, or the nerds — but I was comfortable with all groups, and was able to communicate freely with any of them (which came in handy occasionally, such as the time Spencer (thanks buddy, wherever you are!) told the three rather largish young gentlemen — who were about to bounce their knuckles off my head and body — that I was ‘all right’, and I was able to walk away without causing undue damage to anybody’s hands). I suppose I had an easy road: I was athletic, which opened doors denied to many.

I couldn’t understand why there were all those separate groups in school, or why some types were harassed because they were ‘different’ (after all, by that time I’d figured out that I was different too).

When I was planning my course-load for grade ten, a close friend — let’s call him Saul — and I decided to sign up for a special ‘shop’ class (my memory is shaky on details, but I think it had something to do with engines, and I recall one project when we took apart a Briggs and Stratton engine, put it back together, and worked on it until we could get it started up again).

When Saul and I settled into the class on the first day the instructor separated us, paired us up with other students. I can’t recall who Saul was paired with, but I was paired with ‘Freddie’ because his last name was the closest to mine alphabetically. Freddie was generally referred to as a ‘geek’. After that first class Saul wondered, aloud (within Freddie’s hearing) why “such a geek would take a class like this”; to my shame, I just shrugged and continued on with my day.

The weeks passed, and Freddie and I worked about as well as any pair of inexperienced ‘mechanics’ would.

At the beginning of a class late in the semester the teacher announced that we could choose our own partners for the final project.

I turned to Freddie and said, “Do you want to pair up with me for the final project?” And he accepted the partnership.

At the end of the class, Saul walked up and asked me to be his partner for the final project. “Can’t,” I said; “Freddie and I are partners already.”

Saul looked at me like I was stupid, shook his head, and said, “No.” He glanced obliquely at Freddie, barked out a deprecating laugh, looked back at me, and said, “We can choose who to work with on the final project!”

“I know. I asked Freddie already. Sorry.”

Saul rearranged his face into a look of disgust, and he said, “But he’s a geek; he looks like a freaking vampire!”

It was a difficult moment for me; again, I had no reply for Saul’s offensive words: I shrugged and walked away.

My friendship with Saul was pretty much over after that (our relationship had probably been disintegrating for quite some time). Wherever he is, I wish him the best.

I don’t know what happened to Freddie after that class (we never travelled in the same circles), but I wish him the best too. I must admit, he did look like a vampire, but nowadays that might make him a popular dude.

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