Stuff I'm Not Good At

So I recently read an interesting blog entry by a power user at stackoverflow.com. If you are not familiar with it, stackoverflow is a website designed to help people with programming questions. People submit questions and othe users submit answers where the answers get voted on and, supposedly, the best answer rises to the top. Each use has a certain “reputation” score that they improve by giving good answers. Actually, they improve it by getting more votes.

Stackoverflow isn’t terribly unique, reddit.com  and digg.com are both examples of websites that give users a score for how well they perform. Instead of relying on moderators like many on line communities, these websites use algorithms and input from the community to determine how well a user is doing. Many times users get extra priveliges or status for having done well.

Like any system though with well defined rules it has become a game to many users to literally game the system. The administrators can control the algorithms behind calculating a users score but they can’t control the input provided by the community and this is where some users find sport. One learns the algorithm, learns the “personality” of the community, and then manipulates the community to improve their score.

This isn’t entirely bad. Most of the algorithms on these websites are designed well enough that even behavior associated with “gaming” the system is not completely negative. Neither is it typically good though. Instead of encouraging growth or improvement there is more of a race to the mean which can often drown out the few truely altruistic users that are trying to help make the place better.

Which brings me back to the original paragraph and the stackoverflow power user… His blog entry was entirely about how to game the system and get as many reputation points as possible. Remembering that the purpose of stackoverflow is to answer programming questions, he would submit valid answers but would manipulate the timing of his submission, the formating, and questions that he answered so as to maximize his score.

These users are not doing anything wrong, they are just playing the game the that the site programmers created. But this leads me to some questions I have been asking myself lately. Can we create a framework that encourages an open egalitarian online community to grow and work towards a semi-common goal?

The problem, I think, is to much carrot and not enough stick. In the past, way back in the day, you get the idea, most online communities had moderators. These moderators had the job of banning the accounts of people who missbehaved too much and more often simply acting as a threat. This is terribly labor intensive, unreliable, and subject to the whims of the person moderating. A good moderator can create a great community, but he can quit or get bored.

Partly in response to this and the growing popularity of crowd-sourcing websites have starting allowing users to moderate. YouTube is an example of this, users can now vote on comments and theoretically the best comments rise to the top. It is a great idea, no longer is simply being the first to post enough, your comment has to appeal to other users to be seen. Unfortunately what usually rises to the top is some kind of humor, not discussion. Again, the system is doing its job, humor rarely offends enough to be down voted, is quick to “consume”, and makes the viewer happy. Having such comments rise to the top does maximize enjoyment.

Fortunately or unfortunately thats what most voting systems do, they maximize enjoyment. And, since most voting systems are binary, they maximize quantity of enjoyment, not quality. That is true of simple systems, but even more complex ones like reddit or stackoverflow fall prey to the same effect. These more complex systems use the voting to create a carrot of sorts by allowing user’s to accumulate points.

The carrot helps, but I believe that we need a return to the stick. Part of the problem is that these are profit making websites (or at least they are trying to be) and can’t afford to turn away users. So, I am proposing several ideas:

1. Your ability to participate in the community is directly related to the communities acceptance of you.
2. While a public score is hard to avoid, tie the user’s return from the site to their score. Do this in a continuous fashion, with diminishing returns as scores get higher.
3. As a corollary to #2, make sure users who participate in the site get some kind of return on their investment. And, make sure that return is more then just “status in the community”.
4. Give users the opportunity to provide more then just a yes/no input into the system.

1, 2, and 3 are really all related and can probably be summerized better but in the end they represent something unique, I think.

Hey. So I will be starting to write my prelim in about a month or so and I need to get back into the habit of writing. As it was right about the time of my masters, blogging will be my creative outlet. So, read on if you want, but don’t be disapointed if there is little of merit!

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I get the feeling sometimes that I enjoy surreal experiences more then I should. More, in any case, then others do. I love the feeling in my gut that this is not right. I don’t mean something like pigs flying, though that would not be right. What I love to experience are juxtapositions of what I’m sensing, thinking, and feeling. I suppose an example is more appropriate.

I’ve started walking to work in an effort to toughen up my feet. It takes me a little over an hour so my mp3 player has become much more important in my life. I dug it out of my electronics box to play to books on tape but there is music on it still and I have found I am listening to it far more then I thought. Better yet, some of the music is not my own. Ok, so maybe it is but don’t judge me.

Ace of Base, All that she wants: I started my player up as I left my office and realized I needed a pit stop before starting the journey home. I walk into the restroom, start doing my thing, and suddenly realize that I am in a restroom, standing in front of a urinal, and grooving to All That She Wants. I start imagining the lead singer walking out of one of the stalls, the door to the handicap stall opening up to reveal the drummer, and the camera drawing back from behind my head and panning across the room as I zip up and walk over to the sinks. This at least, is what my brain is thinking. My eyes though are seeing the same tile wall and chrome fixtures, my body is going through the same actions and motions. And yet despite being the same it is new. Very cool.

Music has a wonderful ability to trigger these experiences because it is such an emotionally charged medium. Something as boring and routine as urinating suddenly has this emotional component that your, well, my brain just doesn’t know how to deal with. Emotion is the key I think. Kind of like a person with Capgras Delusion, my brain rejects reality and assumes its some play put on for my benefit.

It happens with more then just music though. A week ago I was reading something I had written about 4 years ago when I realized I actually liked it. I liked something I had written! And then I remembered writing it and I sat there, reading, remembering writing, and enjoying the piece when my brain literally took a step back for a moment. It was as though my brain was saying “I’m not going to mark this down as real but lets still see where this goes.”

Maybe the closest feeling is lucid dreaming. I used to have this dream all the time where I would be standing on a cliff overlooking a large oak-like tree that was missing all of it’s leaves. I’d then step off the cliff, cross my legs indian style and proceed to glide back and forth and around the tree. It wasn’t scary (I’m terrified of heights) and it wasn’t terribly exciting it just was and at the same time wasn’t. My mind decided to dip its toe in the situation but not to jump in head first.

When I was in Yosemite with some friends from college last year we took a break for lunch after hiking out to the North Dome. Words can’t convey the magisty of the place. It felt like I could walk off dome, cross my legs, and ride the wind.. To sit there eating lunch and shooting the shit with my best friends from college with the half dome on our left and all of Yosemite Valley laid out before us felt, I guess, surreal.

I’ve

Lately I have had a problem. I am essentially working two jobs, I am doing research for my RA and research for what I would like my thesis topic to be about. As a result any hobbies that I usually indulge in, such as blogging, have taken a back seat. A ver.

In anycase, I am going to some selling today and what I would like to sell you is Python. I have been using Python for all my scientific computing for about 2 months now and I thought I would write about the experience.

First, why did I even start using Python? Well, like most engineers I know I “grew up” using MATLab as my programming language of choice for first any assignments I had and eventually my research. I realized recently that I had built up quite a bit of legacy code that would be worthless if I were ever to leave a university environment. So really it comes down to the fact that to use my code I would have to spend money and there is a part of me that deeply fears that. So, about to embark on a new coding project, I decided to jump the matlab ship and try a more open language.

Why Python? I would have chosen Lisp if I thought I could get anything done quickly enough. Python had, as far as I could tell, a no nonsense reputation, a good amount of online support, and well publicized numerical , scientific , and plotting packages.

First I would like to say that for the most part Python is like MATLab. There are small differences like that arrays are zero indexed and other syntax differences but the feel is much the same. Whats more important is that unlike Java you can program much the same way as you do in MATLab. While everything is an object in python you don’t have to declare it as such so you can write small data analysis scripts with a minimum of fuss. I will give you an example of this. Lately I have been running quite a few molecular dynamics simulations and I have had to analyze the data. Reading in these data files consists of 4 lines of code:

fileID = open(‘fileName’, ‘r’)

for line in fileID:

dummyString = line.split()

This iterates through the file, loads each line as a string into the variable “line” and the splits it into an array according to whitespace and stores that into dummyString. From here it is a piece of cake to convert into a floating point and more importantly figure out what each line is and what to do with it.

In MATlab this would have taken at least twice as many lines and would have involved twice as many variables. Ya, I could have gotten it done but the important part is how easy it is to spot mistakes when there is less code. My projects get done faster because debugging is faster.

And, that is the main thing I like about Python, I get things done faster. For example the Array data type in NumPy must be declared a fixed length. Usually though I build my arrays as lists first using the .append() function to simply add stuff onto the end of the list. Then, when I finally need to do something to the array or matrix the built in matrix functions in NumPy or SciPy automatically turn the list into an array (as long as the dimensions are conducive to an array, one can make some pretty funky convoluted lists of one tries). Again, this saves me time because I am not trying to hunt through code to find the point where I screwed up two indices’s in a multiply nested for loop.

Lastly, Pylab is amazing. Not only does it make it really easy to plot data, it looks good. Better in my opinion then MATlab by far. I also am not aware of the existence of such a robust plotting package in any other language. I would be interested in hearing of one though!

So I have become somewhat obsessed with bread lately. I chalk it up to my engineering need to understand why just throwing yeast, water, flour, and salt into a bowl doesn’t result in the artisan bread you see at the store. So, I am going to try to write down what I have learned and at the end I will give two recipes: one for a fairly flavorful stretchy bread and another for flat bread (pita).

Just a disclaimer: This is the understanding that I have come to and it may in no way represent reality!

Lesson 1: Less is more. The less kneading you do the better. The less yeast you can use, the better.

Why less kneading? Well artesian bread is inhomogenious. You can see it the second you cut it open! Small holes, big holes, medium holes… all kinds of sizes and shapes and this gives the bread a great and somewhat complex texture. What does mixing do? it homogenizes the bread resulting in all holes that are the same size (usually very small). This is why the bread you get from the supermarket looks like a sponge. It is far easier to over mix and ensure every batch is the same on an industrial scale then it is to mix just enough. We shall see later how to get the gluten links that give us stretchy dough without mixing!

Why less yeast? We like the byproducts of yeast growth for flavor but we don’t necessarily like the yeast itself. If you can start off with alot less yeast, let it ferment for a while, and then use it in your bread that is better. This is called using a “starter” and there are many different kinds of starters that condition the yeast to produce certain byproducts. For instance a wet starter will produce a different flavor then a dry one and the same goes for hot vs. cold.

Wetter is Better: In general your dough should be wetter then you think.

Alot of people (myself included) when they make a dough like to add flour until the dough forms a nice round ball that they can handle with ease. Sticky dough is just a pain to work with! However sticky dough is moist dough and you are about to throw it into a 425 degree oven. And just like Arizona, that is a dry heat! The amount of water in the dough varies alot for different recipes but in general, wetter is better.

Autolysing, who’d a thought? Add water to flour without salt and yeast and gluten forms in abundance.

Some guy in France developed this so props to them! Basically, if you mix the flour and water and lit it sit without the salt and yeast a tremendous amount of gluten can form. It turns out that both salt and yeast inhibit its formation. Ask me why and I won’t be able to tell you. Although, I do know that salt can cause some proteins to “salt out” of solution. In anycase, this gives us a route around the mixing problem. If we autolyse the dough we can get by with less kneading.

Now on to the recipe:

“Somewhat Artisan Bread”

Ingredients:

4 c. Flour (I highly recommend “King Arthur’s All Purpose Baking Flour”)
1 1/2 c. Water (Vary Warm)
Several Pinches of Salt
2 tsp. Yeast

Note: I just got a kitchen scale for Christmas! Stay tuned as I am going to work out the weight proportions of flour and water so that I can do it much more quickly in my food processor.

Ok, take 1/2 c. warm water and mix it with 1/2 c. of flour. This is going to form a kind of pre-ferment. Once they are well mixed together (it will be very soupy) mix in the yeast and let set for 20 min – 30 min. Once that is done take the remaining water and add slightly less then 2 c. of flour to it in a large bowl. Here it is important to not have too firm of dough. If it isn’t sticky add alittle more water. If it is to firm then it will make the next part pretty tedious. Let this also sit for 20 min – 30 min. Less if your kitchen is warm and more if you keep your house freezing like I do!

Once the pre-ferment mixture has at least doubled in size we are ready to mix both parts together. This won’t be easy as the flour water mixture has become very stretchy. I recommend either getting your hands dirty and squirting the dough between your fingers or using a fork to kind of chop up the dough and quicken the process. If this is too difficult make a mental note to add less flour to the flour water mixture next time. Once the two are mixed you can start adding flour and folding it into the dough. There is no set amount of flour to add, I usually just add alittle at a time until the dough is just not sticky enough that it seems pleasant to work with. Then I stop and put the dough back in the bowl and cover it in plastic wrap.

Wait about an hour.

Sprinkle a little flour on the top of the dough and a little on the table. Turn the dough out on the table and fold it. We are not punching it down because we want to preserve the air in it. Rather at this stage we are trying to massage the dough to encourage gluten formation and to form a skin. This is how we form a skin: massage the dough out flat on the table, fold in in half left to right, massage again, fold top down, massage, fold right to left, massage, fold bottom up. Thats about it. You will notice that the side facing the table never changed. This will eventually be the “skin” of the dough. Place back into the bowl skin side up and recover.

Wait 2-3 more hours depending on how forgetfull you are and how warm your kitchen is. Next we are going to form the dough. Turn it out onto the table like we did before. Cut it into two pieces with a very sharp knife. We want to preserve the skin so for both pieces place the skin side on the table and then very gently fold the dough so that the newly exposed sticky part is back inside the dough and the skin has been stretched to cover the cut. Let this set for about 10 minutes to rest covered in plastic wrap so that we can form it later. After the dough has rested fold it again in half short ways so that now we should have a stumpy rectangle. Gently roll this with the palm of your hands into a longer loaf like shape. Once you are done place on a well corn mealed cookie sheet and recover with plastic wrap.

Wait 30 min – 1 hour depending on temperature of kitchen.

Once the loafs have risen again by about 50% (i.e. we don’t want them to double in size just to increase in size by 150%. You can put them in the oven preheated to about 425 F. At this point I usually spray water into the oven with a spray bottle to help humidify the air and prevent a crust that is too dry and thick.

Wait about 30 – 45 min based on the temp of oven and size of loafs.

Once the outside is nice and golden brown you can take out and place on a cooling rack, uncovered! Let cool completely before trying! (Ok, it can still be alittle warm 🙂 )Remember we made a very moist dough so it needs to cool down and firm up before it can support being cut into by a knife.

Flat bread/ Pita.

Note: This bread is much more forgiving of heavier flours like whole wheat flours. It doesn’t change the recipe at all except for you want the dough a little drier then usual after you are done mixing it.

This is done much the same way only after the dough has risen for 2-3 hours we cut the dough into about 8 – 10 pieces. Form each piece into a small ball, again trying to preserve the skin and let rest covered for about 10 minutes. We don’t strictly need to do this sense the process of cooking on the skillet takes care of the skin but it helps tremendously in
handling the dough. During this time oil a skillet (preferably cast iron) and warm it over medium/low heat. You will have to play with the heat as it is different for each type of burner.

Flatten out a piece of dough using as much flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Once the dough is between a 1/4 and 1/8 inch thick you simply place it on the skillet. Wait about 20 seconds or until you start seeing little lumps appear. Flip it over and do another 20 – 30 seconds on the other side.

If your skillet temperature is too hot then you will have already browned both sides at this point and we still have about a minute of cooking left! If it is too low then the next step, where we cause the pocket of steam to form, wont work. On my electric stove it is about 2.75 on a dial that goes from 1 – 10. If I do 3 it is too hot and 2.5 is too low. Yes, it is that sensitive!!!

After the second side has had its 20 – 30 seconds flip it back over to the original side and press down on the pita with your spatula. We want real good heat transfer to make alot of steam very quickly. After about 10 seconds or even as long as 20 to 30 seconds of this when you pick up the spatula you should start to notice the pita poof up a little. Encourage this by pushing on the bubble and trying to get it to spread.

After the bubble has spread completely I usually flip the pita over again and press down with the pita to brown this side as well. If the bubble doesn’t spread completely it isn’t a huge loss, just flip it over before it burns. The pita will still taste great!! Each pita does not cook for very long and if you do it right you should barely have enough time to roll out the next one during each 20 – 30 second waiting period.

I have heard of people doing this on a stove with a pizza stone. It is supposedly more reliable and you can do more then one at once but I have never had much luck.

Chuck leaped from the platform. Not, of course, because he had to but because leaping is one of the many Chuck does. At times he likes to think that it impresses the ladies. Other times it is simply for the pure joy of it.

So, as I said, Chuck leaped from the platform and then continued walking. Not that this made him stand out any less for he had the particularly nasty habit where his head was not pointed where his body would soon follow. If he was in a larger city or more important planet he might have passed for a naive tourist but this was neither.

No, Chucks planet was functional at best and haphazardly strewn about at worst. One could not call it dirty since mankind had long since learned the virtues of staying out of mother natures way. But it was not clean. Cleanliness entails order and purpose and it is clear that no coherent thought, ideology, or force had shaped this city.

Walking was one of the things that made Chuck happy and it was something he did fairly frequently. He had, what could be called, the luxury of rich yet deceased parents and this afforded him liberties not available to many of the people he passed by. Some might find it ironic that one so well born might find comfort in the vary people this industrial planet seemed to use as fuel. Little nuggets born and brought up to maturity in order to be consumed and eventually exhausted back to the planet they came from.

He couldn’t articulate what it was that so attracted him to these people but it was clear to him that they were different from his kind and different was good. He made a hard left and 100 meters or so brought him to the entrance of a vast drainage pipe home to his favorite person in his world. He had only learned his name two weeks or so ago and it still brought him delight.

“Stop grinning, you look like a fool.” said Yip

“Sorry, I was just thinking of your name and how much I am sure that dog I saw just 5 minutes ago would love to say it.” he said, is grin widening.

Yip only grunted and turned to go into his makeshift home. As he did so it was clear again that he did not belong here. If one were to glance at him no doubt they would see his uncut hair and the ragged edged hole where his right ear ought to be and dismiss him as senile. But his posture, bearing, face were of a man who had experienced far more then a hermits struggle for existence.

At this cold greeting Chuck faultered, as he always did, and asked if this was a bad time.

“For Hiesens sake get inside,” Yip spat then muttering “and grow a spine”.

Yip shuffled back into his house with Chuck following still trying to absorb as much as he could from the environment.

When Yip had finished the ancient practice of brewing tea for a guest the two settled down into the makeshift chairs and sat in silence. Each would sip their tea, content to be lost in the thin whisps of steam curling upward from their cups. Truth be told, despite having chosen this drain pipe as his home 15 years ago for its lack of neighbors, he enjoyed these visits nearly as much as Chuck did.

“Tell me about the Great Expansion.” Chuck finally said.

Yip snorted and went back to his tea. Several small bits of leaves had settled to the bottom of his cup and he concentrated on them.

Chuck though had played this game before and simply waited.

Slowly, he began “They no doubt taught you the structure of hyperdimensional space. Polititions and aristocrats must be capable of conjuring up this image a will when interviewing for the news service.”

Chuck ignored this reference and mearly nodded.

“Then what they told you is true. They don’t capture the majesty of it all though. The shear arrogance required…” at this he chuckeled to himself.

“Never mind that. For as long as we have understood gravity it has been fun to think about falling through a planet to reach the other side. It is an fluke, or by design if you will, that if you dug a hole straight from you to anywhere else on the surface of the planet it would take the same amount of time to fall through that hole and pop out at your destination. This is true no matter if the other point is straight dead opposite of you or somewhere off to the side. “

Maybe this was why he enjoyed Chucks visits. Sometimes it isn’t so much companionship that people need but an audience. The urge to talk about his passion returned though and he continued. Or at least tried. Chuck though took the break as an opportunity for interruption.

“Yes, but wouldn’t banging against the sides and such slow you down quite enough so that you wouldn’t make it?”