I spent yesterday on a beautiful little island chalet in Norther Ontario with Rachel, Saira, and Michael… (They'll post pictures I'm sure when they return; it's a radio phone there so I doubt they can get online). Weird thing is, once the glory of it all wore off, I found myself falling into a deep depression — I was really quite miserable. I was writing notes in my programming journal (I'll mention that shortly), and I had two thoughts about why I was upset:
ONE: Because I lead every day exactly the way I want to, going on vacation forces me to lead days in a way that I do not enjoy and that is contrary to my nature.TWO: If I can not say to myself at the end of the day that I have made the world a better place, at least a little, then that was not a satisfactory day.
I have a quick story to tell, but I'd like to introduce it by stating that I am a person unable to do anything in moderation. If I'm drinking, I drink hard. If I'm driving, I drive fast. If I have money, I spend it all and give the rest away. If I have time, I fill every moment with the most challenging work I can find. If I'm not doing this, I'm bored.
On my way back (driving Rachel's Porsche, which I have only driven for a few minutes before today), I was doing about 200 kph most of the way (I think that's about 125 MPH, so, fast, but not crazyfast). Anyway, I picked up a hitchhiker and gave him what I hope was a fun ride — how often do you get picked up and then barrel down an empty highway at breakneck speed in a high-end sports car? It passed the time and I think maybe I got a couple karma points.
After I dropped him off, I drove even faster. The road was hilly, so I should have slowed down; I couldn't see much ahead, and even if I did have a radar/laser detector it wouldn't work. I come flying over a hump in the road at two hundred and change and see a small fleet of highspeed police interceptors parked at the side of the road — which immediately light up of course when they see me.
For a moment I considered what would happen if I just kept going, but I think I did the right thing and pulled over about half a click down the road. Let me interject at this point that I was going about 100 kph over the limit, and 50 kph over the point where they can take your license on the spot. In addition, I have a driving record that tags me as a habitual speeder, along with a slew of other issues. Finally, I didn't have any insurance paperwork.
He didn't even do the “do you know how fast you were going” speech. He simply told me what he'd lasered me at, and all I could do was say “wow, that's really fast!”
I guess I pulled off the “nice guy” routine well enough, because even after all the points stacked against me, he reduced the charge to 49kph over the limit (meaning I don't have to go to court) and let me go with a $350 ticket — of course, this bumps me up into a very high risk category on my insurance (I lost four points just for this), so it's more like a $5000 ticket. Guess that's the end of my driving privledges on Rachel's superfast cars — keep in mind my dirty Corvette (which will smoke anything stoplight-to-stoplight) becomes airborne at 125 kph so I can't even speed if I want to.
Anyway, back to the work things, I had a moment of clarity while sitting on a rock overlooking the bay. I yelled code into the wind and the wind answered back with data structures; I have solved the size issues on IAM. IAM is currently locked to 12,000 users because that's the current performance limit…. Under the new database and search structures, the limit is about a million users, and even with a million users it will go at least ten times as fast as now.
I've also figured out how to link multiple communities on the same engine, so I might fire up my old kit car site again as a test in about six months; this will allow me to actually market IAM should I ever choose to (and I'm not sure if I emotionally want to). I've thought up a scheme for a dynamic spherical grid system to make geographic searches ultra fast, as well as a redesigned IAM to take advantage of the new (lack of) upload barriers; this means everything from integrated image uploading on diaries, video uploads, and audio uploads. As some of you know, my programming background is in voice-telephony, so there may well be an ALL VOICE version of IAM, designed for truckers to use over HAM and CB, or for people to update their page with the telephone while travelling. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
I also designed the IAM/BME tie-in (I'll be 100% merging the two engines over the next year), including massive automation of the submissions engine — I designed algorithyms that can tell the difference between a photo that's out of focus, and a closeup photo that was taken with macromode turned off… It's actually not as tricky as you'd think. It's based loosely on splitting the image up into a rough grid, and then running that data through a series of fourier transforms to measure sharpness (that should make it obvious to people who know about that kind of thing how it works).
Anyway… blah, blah, blah, right?
PS. For people who want t-shirts, do keep adding yourself to the RSVP list; the folks who signed by Monday are guaranteed to have a shirt/hoody/whatever waiting for them with their name on it. I'll do my best to get more for the people who requested them late, but don't expect to get a late-requested workshirt. I can definitely do t-shirts, and probably hoodies though.
PPS. Mini-news: Even if they sacrifice Ashcroft, I doubt anything will change (and Ashcroft has played this game for a long time, so don't underestimate his power). This is a brave and noble man. Finally, good luck.
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