Can you hear me Major Tom? Chris Hadfield's Impact on Space Exploration

Earlier this week, International Space Station resident Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian citizen, came back to earth, but not without first creating a series of defining moments for modern space exploration. It was not because what he discovered while in his six month stay, but because he did what not many astronauts had done before: he made the ISS accessible to everyone, from the comfort of our earthly dwellings. He did a social media blitz of sorts. He would post daily pictures of fly-bys across the globe, short videos demoing how things we do on earth differ in space: how flame burns without gravity, how crying looks like in near-zero-G, how they sleep, how they use the bathroom, how they keep in shape and so forth. He did several social media live Q&A events, including a reddit AMA a few months ago.

With millions of followers across the major social media outlets, Chris Hadfield (and a small pre- and post-production team on earth), released his grand finalé, his Opus Major, if you will: a cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity, filmed and performed by Hadfield himself aboard the ISS.

To date, more than 13,500,000 unique viewers have watched the amazing video Hadfield and co. put together. And I sure hope, for the sake of awareness and education that the video continues to spread like a wildfire in a hay farm.

My description of the video, as I previously posted on Google+, goes as follows:

I don't think a music video has moved me so much as Commander +Chris Hadfield 's cover of +David Bowie 's Space Odddity. I've watched it no less than 6 or 7 times since it was first released. It really is perfect, insofar as transporting you there without actually being there. The conflict between sheer beauty of earthly backdrops with the desolate, sterile blackness of space. The human desire to reach and live in space, away from earth, in a parallel dimension unbound from gravity and other quotidian earth-bound forces. The conflicting feelings of enjoying the moment on the station while fully aware the clock is ticking and finally the bittersweet realization that time has come to re-join the human race.

Now, what really matters though, is Commander Hadfield's impact on public and political perception of space exploration. If his sharing his experience with millions on a daily basis persuaded the constituency and politicians that space exploration is a worthy expense, that it's not just for the multi-millionaire elite, or for the erudite, that tangible benefits can be drawn from the mere fact of being in space for extended periods of time, then Chris Hadfield's efforts will not be for naught. The U.S. space program is currently in a fairly poor shape, and I hope what Commander Hadfield has done is the right medicine needed to revivify it.

A Humble Open Letter to the Republican Party

Last night's electoral vote trounce has surely left you thinking, soul-searching and (of course) trying to find an escape goat. But don't look at Romney's campaign for an answer or someone to blame.

1. If you really want to know where the problem lies you need to look back at least four years back. Think how you collectively and myopically chose to fully embrace the "Tea Party" movement and all of its ilk for short-term congressional wins, disregarding the fact that such choice was sure to comeback and haunt you sooner or later. Not every conservative aligns him or herself with the "principles" and message of the Tea-Partiers, and as a matter of fact, some feel repulsed by them.

2. Your talking-heads and leaders have sent the party into a negative downward spiral. Yes, your dear Rush-baugh, Hannity, Boortz, and so forth have actually done more harm than good. Their venomous vitriol and rhetoric has accomplished nothing other than to push off your ship all center-right and independent-minded voters. I distinctly remember a Rush Limbaugh speech nearly four years ago in front of the who's-who of the Republican party spewing negative and abrasive rhetoric against the Democratic party. He being the proverbial 800 lbs. gorilla, he persuaded your far-right base to think of the Democratic party as "the enemy", to think that "we're not their friends, we're at war with them, and I hope Obama is a failure" (paraphrasing, of course. Text of said speech can be found here). How can you expect people to vote for your candidate when your have these "talk masters" name-calling, cussing, insulting and verbally demeaning any voter who isn't your constituent on the TV and radio on a daily basis? How can you expect to reach to the swing voters with such caustic and divisive tone?

3. For something more recent, you surely are aware that part of your constituents are Libertarian-leaning. You, as a party, spat and kicked dirt on their faces this election. You did everything you could to get Rep. Ron Paul off the map. You cast him out. You left him out. His integrity, impecable voting record, uncompromised principles and intelligence were apparently a threat too big to the Republican establishment. And then you are surprised when his supporters voted for someone else instead.

As a colleague mentioned today, your party is at a crux and, in my opinion, the possibilities range from healing the wounds with all constituents, bring the negative tone and venom of your talking heads down, expel the extreme and fringe elements, bridge and reach to the independents, the center-right and the youth factions to keep on the downward spiral you're in and risk becoming irrelevant in a few years time.

A Little South of Perfection: Idealism vs. Pragamatism

So, I woke up this morning musing about idealism vs. pragmatism in the field of software development -- but also applies elsewhere. Many of us at some point or another have had ideas, concepts, visions for a product, bug fix, enhancement and so forth. Whether due to nature or nurture, we tend to strive for perfection, but that’s a lofty (and often impossible) goal to attain and one that’s likely to discourage you somewhere along the way.

How many times have you started a project (be it software or any other kind), for some time you keep chiseling away your idea and then sometime later look at all the work needed to get from where you are at all the way to “perfection” and feel somewhat or completely discouraged (and possibly abandon the idea altogether)? I know I have, many times. So, is the mantra of “aim for the stars” actually a detriment or a self-defeating ideal? Well, I wouldn’t say that; not in and of itself. Aiming for perfection is a good and noble source of motivation, but shouldn’t be your main goal, in my opinion. So, you may ask, “what should my goals be?” Well, without know the specifics,all I can recommend is: a little south of perfection and a bit north of “good enough”.

In the software world perfection might come in the form of 100% test coverage, 100% feature-completeness, 100% automated deployments, properly styled every nook and cranny of your web app and so forth. But, in doing so we face a rather formidable law of nature (that Economists borrowed): the law of diminishing returns and increasing marginal cost. So, how much is it going to cost you to have 95% test coverage vs 91%? How much effort it will take to have your product to be 100% tested/deployed automatically as opposed to having all but two steps being manual steps? How much will it cost you to have your app 100% UI/UX reviewed/designed as opposed to having, say, the 75% most used parts of the UI UX reviewed/designed and the rest get “generic” treatment? In my opinion, even without knowing the process you use or the funding style the answer to all of the above is: too damn expensive. Perfection is expensive, very expensive.

Don’t mischaracterize what I’m positing here. I’m not making an argument for mediocrity and sloppy software. I’m putting forth the argument that a little better than “good enough” is the so-called sweet spot and that perfection, in as good and tantalizing as it sounds, is actually not a place you’d want to pay your journey to. If you want a more concrete example of the message I’m trying to convey, consider Google, for instance. Google strives for “really good”, not perfection. All their services are great (and many of them are right out mind blowing), but none of them is perfect. Their services may lack a few “featurettes”, might not enjoy perfect UI, might do unexpected things, have little bugs, etc. and yet they still are, by any measure, really good products.  For something smaller, consider turntable.fm. They’re far from perfect: they lack some key features that should be there for a social app, their phone and tablet apps have a somewhat clunky UI and yet people keep using the service. Why? because the service/app provides a lot of value and works great at its core while leaving the imperfections for “later.”

Just to reiterate, perfection is great as motivation, not as an end-goal. And don’t forget to head a little south of perfection and a little north of “good enough” if you really want to get things done.

Google Nexus Q: A product in search of a use case

Google is one of those companies that will innovate for innovation's sake. Sometimes they release products with no apparent market or demand and many times such "experiments" are only stepping stones toward bigger plans that aren't immediately palpable. Such is the case, IMO, with the Nexus Q. In spite of its sleek, modern and enigmatic design, in reality it's a device that lacks a clear use case. With no life of its own, the Q in its current form is playing the role of a middle man and a fairly useless at that.



Google decided to market it as a "social" media player. But I don't think it's a particular strong selling point. For one, there are several services out there that can help managing and hosting video/music parties and doesn't require people to have their content stored/hosted on Google services. Secondly, although this might improve later on, pairing and joining a Q party is not the most straight-forward process. And lastly, the device requires a big TV screen or stereo to be within reach of its output cables in order for the whole "social" aspect to work.

Also, as said above, the device has no life of its own, doesn't store the content (which is understandable given the copyright mess it would create otherwise), and generally speaking feels like noting more than an expensive hi-tech conversation piece. A Roku, for instance, although somewhat similar in functionality to that of the Q, has earned their place in the TV stand by providing streaming from different providers, very easy to use and setup and has a life of its own in that it doesn't depend on other devices to function.

So, I'm wondering what Google's ulterior motive is with the Nexus Q. Perhaps they want to start with the small scope of "social media player" and later use the Q as the platform for a home media hub? Given that it has the same chipset as the Galaxy Nexus (sans the GSM/CDMA/GPS radios) it would not be far fetched to think the player's OS and firmaware can be upgraded to add more functionality although it its current design it is somewhat limited in terms what can connect to it (1 Micro USB, 1 HDMI and WiFi), so there's a limit as to what they can do. Otherwise, I'm not really sure what they could be envisioning long term with Nexus Q, if anything.

Google Nexus 7: Android's first true market shaker

By now you've probably seen and read all the rave reviews, tear-downs, and all the media coverage surrounding Google's new offering in the tablet market: the Nexus 7.  As an attendee of Google I/O, this year I received one of these devices. I wasn't particularly excited about the device given my experience with the tablet they gave out last year, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 which seemed (and probably was) like a rushed product. The build quality was iffy, Android Honey Comb seemed like a stop-gap measure rather than a true well optimized operating system, soon thereafter a number of people started reporting hardware problems ranging from screen glitches to batteries not holding a charge and so forth. Then sometime late last summer, I bought a brand new Acer Iconia A500, which was OK for the most part, but still, in my opinion, it didn't seem like a worthy competitor against Apple's offerings. I also tried out Amazon's Kindle Fire which was OK, except it didn't really feel like an Android product. It seems like Amazon really went to great lengths to use the OS, but remove as many references to Google's services as possible (including, of course, Google Play).

So, I waited until my last day in San Francisco to take some time to Play with the Nexus 7 (partially, too, in case something was wrong with the device I could get direct help form the techs on-site). The first thing I noticed is the high-quality, sleek packaging which definitely shows the care Google put into this product. After taking all the protective plastic sleeves around the the device itself, I could tell this was not a rushed product, at all. It feels like a solid well-put-together hardware. It also looks stylish and "sexy". It only has two buttons, up/down volume combo and on/off switch. It has a 1/8'' jack output for headphones and a standard micro USB port  (a big omission on last year's Galaxy Tab) for charging and connecting to other devices. The screen is perfect: sharp, excellent colors, great brightness and contrast; it might not be technically a "Retina" display, but it surely feels that way. While some people might prefer the 10.1'' format, I personally prefer the compact 7'' form factor which is more portable and can be comfortable held in one hand (which is specially helpful for long reading sessions). The OS, though, is what makes the real difference. Android Jelly Bean is, what I think, the best Android OS to date. They have taken notice of all the gripes throughout the years and have fixed those and then some. The UI feels just right: consistent, stylish, and "buttery". The Android team finally realized that as far as the end-user is concerned, the UI/UX is the product and all other technical merits being secondary or non-existent, and they have applied this mantra to Jelly Bean to the extreme: everything seems to be where you expect it to, visual semantics remain the same throughout every nook and cranny of the system and out of the user's way. The device integration with Google Play is fantastic and adds a layer of "awesomeness" to the whole experience. Video playback is great: I watched Transformers: The Dark of The Moon" on high def and it was fantastic, I tried some of the free books on the Play store and they look handsome. Nice typography, excellent contrast and very "buttery" animations for flipping  pages and so forth. 

I could go on and on about the fantastic combination of software and hardware the Nexus 7 is, but I leave that to the plethora of reviews already out there. I prefer to close making the point that, in my opinion, Google Nexus 7, is hitherto the one true competitor against Apple's iPad, in spite of having a smaller screen size.

MacBook Pro with Retina Display: a week later

Last week, I wrote a "first impressions"-style of review of my new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. In it I said that I needed to use the laptop more so that I could give a more educated opinion about certain aspects. So, here we go:

Performance: the machine is very, very fast. Cold-boots in about 10 seconds (and this includes ~2 seconds of the grey bios screen). The SSD + fast ram + i7 Ivy Bridge processors combination works amazing. Anything that I've thrown at it hasn't slow it down. A VirtualBox instance + Adobe Lightroom 4 importing and pre-processing a few hundred RAW images, with a terminal having brew building several packages from source, all at the same time: no problem whatsoever. The computer was just as responsive as when I have a single browser instance open. You really can't tell the difference.

Retina Display: simply put, and to reiterate, it's amazing. Vibrant, rich, contrasty colors. Excellent shadows and blacks. The text looks awesome (specially with Retina-enabled applications). When the screen is off it gives the impression of being incredibly glare-y, but when it's on, even at half brightness, the glare is negligible. Watched a dozen or so "4K" videos and the colors and details were astounding.

Gaming: although gamers probably aren't the target audience of this machine, this machine is very competent in that regard. It played all the Humble Bundle games maxxed out @ 1080p resolution at very decent frame rates. When in boot camp mode, it played a few MMOs on High or Ultra High settings @ 40-50 FPS even on public instances and "hub" towns which is where frame rate drops dramatically on most MMOs. So the NVidia 650M definitely pulls its own weight.

Windows: although Mac purists might chide at the notion of installing Windows on such new machine alongside their revered OS X, truth is, there are some things -- at least for those of us who work in the development arena --  that play nice on Windows. Another issue is games, specially with older titles that don't have Mac versions or if you don't want to spend more money on software you already own. I tried Parallels and CrossOver, but neither gave me the gaming experience I was looking for and both of them have hefty license prices specially considering I can boot camp for free with a Win license I already own.

Boot Camp: The process was fast and flawless. I went from partition to fully installed windows in a matter of 20 minutes or so, no exaggeration. I then installed the Apple-supplied drivers and all was setup correctly: video, sound, trackpad, HDMI, etc.

* Noise: I forgot to mention about cooling fan noise. Apple made a big fuss out of this issue in their marketing campaign and thankfully I don't find noise to be a make or break sort of thing. The machine runs very quiet so long as the NVidia video card is not in use. As soon as the graphics are switched to the NVidia whether for games or anything requiring 3D rendering, the fan noise is very noticeable and I would say it's equally bad as any other laptop sporting a powerful graphics card.

So, after using for both work and fun, I have to say that I am very happy with the purchase. However, it's hard for me to issue a blanket statement whether I recommend it or not, mainly because it's quite pricey. So, all I can do is stand last week's opinion: it's a great machine that won't disappoint, and would definitely recommend it, if you can afford it and you are looking for a Mac.

* added after publishing

A brief rant about CAPTCHA's and ReCAPTCHAs

To me this is a good case study in and of itself, but since I'm neither an academician, nor do I get research money to do so, I'm going to briefly say why optical-obfuscation CAPTCHAs, in general, should be mercy-killed.

1. It's mainly an anti-OCR measure, but, the smarter OCR clients get, the more convoluted the challenge words get. Soon enough, it'll be so convoluted that a human won't be able to discern the characters.

2. It's a bad user experience if just about everywhere they go, they have to type CAPTCHA codes (specially if they're annoyingly obfuscated)

3. There HAS TO BE a much better way to tell humans and computers apart. I refuse to believe that OCR (for web UIs) is the most optimal solution to combat automatons. Humans have the emotional and cognitive abilities to be able to respond challenges that even sophisticated AIs cannot, so why not use that to develop a solid system that doesn't involve brute-force obfuscation of optical characters?

/rant

HTML5 value semantics: a pragmatic perspective.

In recent weeks there has been a healthy and lively debate about value semantics in the HTML5 spec. Divya Manian on her "Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value" opinion article decries and points out the problems that can arise if we give HTML5 semantics too much importance. A bit later, Jeremy Keith's riposte to Divya's article brought forth the reasons why semantics are important in HTML5.

I will begin by saying that, in my opinion, HTML5 value semantics are purely academic. I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, but rather, the people who ultimately matter (i.e. the end user) could not care less about how semantically correct the markup behind a web page is. Will a semantically correct HTML5 page make you a better designer or developer? Probably not. Will a semantically correct HTML5 pages bring more views to your website? No, by itself it won't. Will your end-users have an improved experience by having semantically correct HTML5 page(s)? In my opinion, no. Will your customer/client approve your work because it is semantically correct or because it looks good and works well? I think we know the answer.

Also to bear in mind is that these semantics are shallow shells. That is to say, behind the scenes, these semantic tags are converted to spans, divs, h1s or other "primitive" html elements by the rendering engine and once painted on the page, they are invisible to the user. So, in many ways, I have to agree with Divya: time spent on figuring out the correct semantics is pointless. Not to say that you shouldn't use them, but they should not be an excuse or an obstacle to your creativity. Semantic markup shouldn't be the basis for design decisions and certainly shouldn't be a reason to hold a meeting about.

In short, life's too short; don't sweat the markup semantics.