I heard Steve Wozniak, the founder of Apple alongside Steve Jobs, speak today.
Something interesting happened when I returned to my college room: I was explaining something about ideas, passion, and creation to two suitemates and realized I was really trying to speak to myself. I proposed the idea that perhaps it isn't good to go from the idea to the desire to create and learn the tools, like programming. Maybe it isn't good to (1) have an idea and then because of that idea, (2) be inspired to learn programming languages and tools and whatever technical things. (These words were perhaps directed at myself.) Yet this is why I took up engineering. Because I cared more about the realization of ideas... but maybe that's not conducive to good growth.
It might be better to care about the activity. So many of the truly great builders, like Steve Wozniak, this kid on my floor - they're passionate about building, not necessarily any specific idea. They're enthralled by many ideas, and they go from one to the next, building things because they love building. I bet Mark Zuckerberg is similar - he just loves building things. It wasn't a pursuit for that one idea, a social network, that drove him; he had been building things for ages, and he had probably run through tons of ideas. That floormate, Steve, and Mark are all similar in this way, perhaps.
But me? I cared about specific ideas, and that has driven me to learn all these tools.
What do I learn from this? It goes to the passion of what. You get all this advice about "you have to be passionate about something" but you don't hear what category that something should fall into.
I've become passionate about understanding life's mysterious sequence of events, but this is a noun, a specific idea. Building, creation, playing piano - these are verbs, and they seem to be much more fulfilling. They provide avenues to do things, and you can create a lot from them.
*Is it better to have a passion about a platform (which can be used to create and express in many ways) - such as writing, programming, building, or playing music - than to have a passion about a specific dream, like being able to experience anyone else's life, a computer program that does X, or a device that allows teleportation?
Maybe so. A platform, which allows expression all the time, means you can feel the joy of your passion all the time, regardless of what you're actually creating with it or how skilled you are at it. Maybe this is a key idea I've been missing for so long.
Maybe I should not be so lost in a pursuit for a specific dream, but instead embrace a platform - an activity, a verb - that I can wholly enjoy all the time.
(This isn't to say that we shouldn't have passion for an idea. Passion for an activity just provides so much more happiness and fulfillment.)
...
Friday, April 20, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Making connections: piano octaves
It's interesting how the mind works - particularly how difficult it can be for people of different ages to make connections.
Example: a five-year-old who (on the piano) can play the C-scale up and down one octave if she starts on middle C, but who cannot if her hands simply start one octave higher.
Example: a five-year-old who (on the piano) can play the C-scale up and down one octave if she starts on middle C, but who cannot if her hands simply start one octave higher.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Debugging a Qt app with gdb
(On Mac OS X Lion)
How do you debug a Qt app with gdb?
A little advice from http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/debug.html#command-line-options-recognized-by-qt...
...and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8949956/build-qt-project-in-debug-mode-from-command-line-aka-bash-script-in-linux helped bring me to this solution:
First pass CONFIG+=debug to your typical qmake -project command.
qmake -project CONFIG+=debug
Then:
qmake -spec macx-g++
(This is the proper qmake command on mac. It might just be "qmake" for other systems.)
Next:
make
Now let's say your app is called "Game":
gdb ./Game.app/Contents/MacOS/Game
(For Mac, the executable is here for whatever reason. Also, note the . in ./)
If you're not on Mac, then just do
gdb ./yourGameExecutable
or wherever your game executable is.
How do you debug a Qt app with gdb?
A little advice from http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/debug.html#command-line-options-recognized-by-qt...
Without Frameworks:
When you tell qmake to generate a Makefile with the debug config, it will link against the _debug version of the libraries and generate debug symbols for the app. Running this program in GDB will then work like running GDB on other platforms, and you will be able to trace inside Qt.
...and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8949956/build-qt-project-in-debug-mode-from-command-line-aka-bash-script-in-linux helped bring me to this solution:
First pass CONFIG+=debug to your typical qmake -project command.
qmake -project CONFIG+=debug
Then:
qmake -spec macx-g++
(This is the proper qmake command on mac. It might just be "qmake" for other systems.)
Next:
make
Now let's say your app is called "Game":
gdb ./Game.app/Contents/MacOS/Game
(For Mac, the executable is here for whatever reason. Also, note the . in ./)
If you're not on Mac, then just do
gdb ./yourGameExecutable
or wherever your game executable is.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Another me?
This blog has been largely my technical side - a place for me to ramble about technical things I've discovered that might help people. It's sort of "geeky."
There's more than that to me, though, so I thought to have a separate blog for my profound and artistic self: dazedpeace.tumblr.com
There's more than that to me, though, so I thought to have a separate blog for my profound and artistic self: dazedpeace.tumblr.com
Friday, November 11, 2011
Mind blown: Storytelling, Language, Technology, the Future
My mind is blown right now. I just returned from a colloquium session at Viterbi Engineering in which Bran Ferren, Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Applied Minds spoke about some of the most shocking things ever. I only hope that I can articulate the sheer meaning and impact of what he said.
Let's start with a deceptively simple question:
What is the most important invention of mankind?
Some people said the wheel, fire (which is more a discovery), harnessing of electricity for light, tools... but according to Ferren, it is something else:
Language.
Before language, humans were herd animals. We hunted for food and lived with little organized communication with others. We could not advance our thinking, we could not grow out of our minds - we could not even begin to unleash what we were capable of.
But then language gradually took shape. It went from grunts and gestures to pictures and carvings. Soon we developed an alphabet... and over the centuries we began to unify languages on a larger and larger scale. Symbols and pictograms transformed - evolved - into what we have now.
Language became a brilliant means of storytelling, and storytelling is one of the most powerful qualities of humanity. But before we get into that, we should continue to examine history.
Every time we reinvented language in some way, a fundamental shift occurred in the way humans behave. Oral storytelling was an old means of perpetuating knowledge. What came next? Reading and writing. The invention of the printing press (which was not by Gutenberg, by the way; as Ferren says, a Chinese man invented it, but Gutenberg invented the movable metal type, and the mere fact that Gutenberg was a white European male assisted recorded history's common mistake of crediting him with printing) drastically altered the way we communicate. Now, Gutenberg died penniless because the Church and other forces discouraged literacy, and the cost of a single book from a printing machine was the equivalent of $100,000 today. Moreover, nobody in his time could grasp the implications of what he had done. However, once we could print text ubiquitously, newspapers, magazines, novels, and so many other mediums of communication emerged, and humanity faced an enormous shift in daily life.
Then came the telephone. Did you know that when the telephone first came out, people, upon picking up the telephone, would not speak into it? After all, it was an alienating technology, and there's nothing in the human genome that programs our minds to speak into the phone after picking it up. In fact, this is why we originally had operators: not to regulate interaction if there's no one on the other line, but to just get the conversation started! Thus the phone business encouraged people to get into using phones this way (otherwise you'd just have two people picking up their respective telephones and then not speaking into them...). People could not grasp the significance of this change in communication. The larger idea is that the phone, like the printing press, altered our means of communication and behavior fundamentally. It enabled humans to grow even more - to be able to envision communication without being physically present.
Both the printing press and the telephone captured storytelling in a new form. We've always been storytelling; it's hardwired into our minds. Our parents tell stories, and the most engaging ones remain with us for the rest of our lives. Cavemen and people from millennia ago told stories. And enabling new means of storytelling - or capturing language in a new way, has historically always led to a drastic change in the world. This applies to one of the most fundamental aspects of life in the early 21st century: The Internet.
The Internet, like the printing press and the phone, captured storytelling in a new form like no other. And Ferren believes that the Internet is the next most important invention of man after language. Further, he asserts some of the most astounding and mind-boggling things related to this and the whole idea of language... perhaps most notably the following few:
It's so difficult to even begin to grasp the implications of these ideas.
What does this all mean? What is going on? Ferren believes that to invent something that profoundly impacts humanity means (1) nobody in your time is going to follow the significance of what you are doing and (2) a change in how we tell stories is critical. This is a rudimentary explanation of the larger picture, but I just found what he said beyond stimulating. There's more... (at this point, I'm just trying to get down my jumbled thoughts into words):
1) There are "big idea people" and "requirements process" people. They usually do not get along. However, they must get along for any big idea to become real.
2) We must take seriously our education - and not just for ourselves, but for future generations. The ability to pass on knowledge to future generations is essential to not only humanity's advancement, but also humanity's survival.
3) To make something real, you need...
a. Vision
b. Trust
c. Simplicity
Regarding simplicity, he explained to all the engineers there that engineers tend to make things more complicated then they should be. He cited an example with space and writing. Someone thought that pens wouldn't work in outer space because pens depend on gravity for the ink to come down. So, companies poured millions into developing a pressurized pen that would work in space. They did it alright. And the pen was (and is) pretty cool; it works. But Russia just used pencils. Seriously - keep things simple...
Everything I wrote boils down to the key ideas that storytelling is critical, that already we should see that the usage of words - writing, reading - will eventually be outdated, and that future changes in the mediums for storytelling will be drastic and world-altering. We should expect some new technology to allow our minds to communicate by some other means... words can't begin to capture true expression.
Yeah. That's clearly the case in the mess of words I wrote above.
[Aside]
He mentioned one possible, simple idea of changing the medium of language that is writing. Colored words could indicate emotions... like red for anger. I thought of simple universal symbols along with writing to indicate emotions...
He also mentioned that we naturally envision things in 3D space. The idea that a picture is a thousand words is useful, as words take forever to describe things, but a 3D experience of something captures things even more...
Hmm... I seemed to have left out the impact of Steve Jobs and the iPhone. Ferren mentioned this. The iPhone essentially reinvented a medium of storytelling by placing a screen on a phone. Not a big deal when people are used to it, but imagine the shock when it first came out... and imagine the shock of the next new medium of storytelling...
Let's start with a deceptively simple question:
What is the most important invention of mankind?
Some people said the wheel, fire (which is more a discovery), harnessing of electricity for light, tools... but according to Ferren, it is something else:
Language.
Before language, humans were herd animals. We hunted for food and lived with little organized communication with others. We could not advance our thinking, we could not grow out of our minds - we could not even begin to unleash what we were capable of.
But then language gradually took shape. It went from grunts and gestures to pictures and carvings. Soon we developed an alphabet... and over the centuries we began to unify languages on a larger and larger scale. Symbols and pictograms transformed - evolved - into what we have now.
Language became a brilliant means of storytelling, and storytelling is one of the most powerful qualities of humanity. But before we get into that, we should continue to examine history.
Every time we reinvented language in some way, a fundamental shift occurred in the way humans behave. Oral storytelling was an old means of perpetuating knowledge. What came next? Reading and writing. The invention of the printing press (which was not by Gutenberg, by the way; as Ferren says, a Chinese man invented it, but Gutenberg invented the movable metal type, and the mere fact that Gutenberg was a white European male assisted recorded history's common mistake of crediting him with printing) drastically altered the way we communicate. Now, Gutenberg died penniless because the Church and other forces discouraged literacy, and the cost of a single book from a printing machine was the equivalent of $100,000 today. Moreover, nobody in his time could grasp the implications of what he had done. However, once we could print text ubiquitously, newspapers, magazines, novels, and so many other mediums of communication emerged, and humanity faced an enormous shift in daily life.
Then came the telephone. Did you know that when the telephone first came out, people, upon picking up the telephone, would not speak into it? After all, it was an alienating technology, and there's nothing in the human genome that programs our minds to speak into the phone after picking it up. In fact, this is why we originally had operators: not to regulate interaction if there's no one on the other line, but to just get the conversation started! Thus the phone business encouraged people to get into using phones this way (otherwise you'd just have two people picking up their respective telephones and then not speaking into them...). People could not grasp the significance of this change in communication. The larger idea is that the phone, like the printing press, altered our means of communication and behavior fundamentally. It enabled humans to grow even more - to be able to envision communication without being physically present.
Both the printing press and the telephone captured storytelling in a new form. We've always been storytelling; it's hardwired into our minds. Our parents tell stories, and the most engaging ones remain with us for the rest of our lives. Cavemen and people from millennia ago told stories. And enabling new means of storytelling - or capturing language in a new way, has historically always led to a drastic change in the world. This applies to one of the most fundamental aspects of life in the early 21st century: The Internet.
The Internet, like the printing press and the phone, captured storytelling in a new form like no other. And Ferren believes that the Internet is the next most important invention of man after language. Further, he asserts some of the most astounding and mind-boggling things related to this and the whole idea of language... perhaps most notably the following few:
The computer revolution has not started yet.
Reading and writing are just abstractions that will eventually be nonexistent.
Whenever we rethought language, a fundamental shift in humanity occurred.
During the times when we did reinvent language, nobody could grasp the significance of what was going on.
Reading and writing are just abstractions that will eventually be nonexistent.
Whenever we rethought language, a fundamental shift in humanity occurred.
During the times when we did reinvent language, nobody could grasp the significance of what was going on.
It's so difficult to even begin to grasp the implications of these ideas.
What does this all mean? What is going on? Ferren believes that to invent something that profoundly impacts humanity means (1) nobody in your time is going to follow the significance of what you are doing and (2) a change in how we tell stories is critical. This is a rudimentary explanation of the larger picture, but I just found what he said beyond stimulating. There's more... (at this point, I'm just trying to get down my jumbled thoughts into words):
1) There are "big idea people" and "requirements process" people. They usually do not get along. However, they must get along for any big idea to become real.
2) We must take seriously our education - and not just for ourselves, but for future generations. The ability to pass on knowledge to future generations is essential to not only humanity's advancement, but also humanity's survival.
3) To make something real, you need...
a. Vision
b. Trust
c. Simplicity
Regarding simplicity, he explained to all the engineers there that engineers tend to make things more complicated then they should be. He cited an example with space and writing. Someone thought that pens wouldn't work in outer space because pens depend on gravity for the ink to come down. So, companies poured millions into developing a pressurized pen that would work in space. They did it alright. And the pen was (and is) pretty cool; it works. But Russia just used pencils. Seriously - keep things simple...
Everything I wrote boils down to the key ideas that storytelling is critical, that already we should see that the usage of words - writing, reading - will eventually be outdated, and that future changes in the mediums for storytelling will be drastic and world-altering. We should expect some new technology to allow our minds to communicate by some other means... words can't begin to capture true expression.
Yeah. That's clearly the case in the mess of words I wrote above.
[Aside]
He mentioned one possible, simple idea of changing the medium of language that is writing. Colored words could indicate emotions... like red for anger. I thought of simple universal symbols along with writing to indicate emotions...
He also mentioned that we naturally envision things in 3D space. The idea that a picture is a thousand words is useful, as words take forever to describe things, but a 3D experience of something captures things even more...
Hmm... I seemed to have left out the impact of Steve Jobs and the iPhone. Ferren mentioned this. The iPhone essentially reinvented a medium of storytelling by placing a screen on a phone. Not a big deal when people are used to it, but imagine the shock when it first came out... and imagine the shock of the next new medium of storytelling...
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