Everything is Cool

Some time ago I read about a study of people's perception of Coolness in Scientific American.  It turns out that people differ as to how people perceive things as cool, according to brain scans.  Some people consider coolness to be the lack of uncool things.  Others see coolness as something different which remains cool even if a few uncool things are mixed in.

Being a professional programmer, however, one has to accept that whatever the client wants or needs is cool.  Criticism at the level of what they want, what they think they need, is likely unhelpful (unless…see below).  So the best one can do is provide the second of coolness, to add some coolness in.  That's natural for me because I'm a second kind of coolness guy.  Though it may not be natural for everyone.

The exception may be if you are large enough.  Both IBM in their early mainframe heyday (50's to 70's) and Apple are large enough and influential enough that they can make their Cool the only Cool.  Any presence of inferior coolness throws the whole game.  So you get the complete IBM or Apple package…don't try to mix in other people's products (like Corel Wordperfect) because they don't get it like we do.

So there we see the madness to the method.  The first kind of coolness is useful if you have a monopoly on the truth.  And it gives such shakers the ability to monopolize a market.  And that usually requires sufficient clout: bigness, intellectual presence, chutzpah.  IBM and Apple could get away with it and make more truth, etc.

Joe Programmer shouldn't try--he hasn't got the resources.  But many have tried, backed by the latest words from IBM, Apple, or Wirth.

There are still a lot of lack-of-coolness buzzwords in programming.  For example, Fortran is old fashioned (actually, Fortran is cool in many ways, and the newest Fortran standards continue to be updated), command line interfaces are uncool (actually, they are now pretty universally recognized as the best interfaces for certain activities…especially technical ones like programming and also science…GUI interfaces turn out to be comparatively inflexible and unadaptable as well as the long standing criticism that they don't shortcut or script as well).

And then there's the never ending war of computer languages.  Face it, every computer language is cool in some way…  The very idea of a programming language is mighty cool.

Scuse Me

Having dealt with a lot of power strips and laboratory grade equipment, I've dealt with a lot of big AC plugs.  This little 8 outlet strip (my electrician suggested a more typical "bathroom & kitchen" strip with plugs every 8 inches--sorry but that does nothing for me i want my 8 plugs right by the sink for all my specialized lavatory equipment) is the perfect form factor for me, with a few exceptions.  One of them is the 10 foot cord (it seems like 16 feet) when I only need about 6 inches (I'm going to cut the cord and use a Marinco hospital grade plug) and the other is this rather unfriendly plug.  It can't not be deliberate that the plug is designed in such a way as you are NOT going to plug in another big plug.  It's as if this plug is saying, "I'm taking over here, you can't add another big one to this box."

This diagonal plug is a good way since it doesn't or doesn't necessarily block the use of a smaller plug.  Maybe I could plug my water pick in there.  But the plan was to plug in my hair dryer straight to the wall.  It too comes with a massive plug, with built-in GFCI (redundant--my entire bathroom circuit is GFCI, as is every outlet in the kitchen, outdoors, and Bedroom 3), and is perfect for plugging in to the lower outlet.  BTW, I'm sure the hair dryer instructions say to plug straight into the wall, and the maximum draw might exceed the breaker of some power strips.

But Tripp Lite has decided to block anything big from the other outlet, despite my plan to use the strip only for the smaller stuff that I keep plugged in like my Shaver/Cleaner and rechargeable toothbrush.

I rather resent this.  It's certainly Tripp Light being my mother.  Or maybe it's even required by UL or ETI.

Anyway, I guess I've got to do more of which I have strenuously avoided.  Changing plugs.  At least by this I know never to do anything half assed.  But my previous strategy, of never changing plugs, was easier, and avoided leaving me explicit things to worry about.

BTW, it's also funny how if you attach this Tripp Lite to the wall, and if you want the plugs going the normal way with ground on the bottom, you must have the Tripp Lite name and all the lettering upside down.  Mom wants the plugs upside down too!  (Do you have a better explanation?)  I'm well beyond caring if things like factory lettering on an outlet strip are upside down.  I use whatever however.  For quite a long time I used a large chunk of abandoned sidewalk as my turntable seismic base.  Now I use a nicer looking state block…which was likely originally cut to be sold for a tomb stone but never engraved.

Actually, I can jam in the hair dryer just well enough for it to work, and that's what I've been doing so far.  That does not seem good to me at all.  But I bet that's what some people keep on doing.

So a bypassed safety trick becomes a safety issue.

It also looks like in order to plug the hair dryer (which I only use on low or medium heat) into the outlet strip I'll need to have 3 free bottom plugs.  The plugs are spaced sufficiently closely and next to the switch on one side that you can't plug in a big plug even next to a small plug or the switch.

Why didn't I just get a straight outlet box, all I really need?  I do try to get the simplest things possible, but after two days of searching I couldn't find any simple outlet box with 8 outlets in a small space like the Tripp Lite Isobar.  But it could be a tad larger for the plugs (and less for the switch and logo) so as to give the plugs themselves more space for larger plugs and wall warts.  The whole reason I outgrew my previous "solution" (two 1-3 outlet adapters) was not because I literally ran out of plugs but because I had to space out the 4 plugs and even then there wasn't enough room for the hair dryer.

All that surge suppression is become redundant.  I've had whole house surge suppression since 2009.

WaterPik?

Waterpik is now a mandatory thing once a day in my oral hygiene, following a long brushing and flossing.

My old Waterpik Ultra (WP-100W) became unusable due to sticking wand button.  They do that after a couple of years IMO from the typical level of minerals in my tap water.  I could eliminate the problem…using RO water I have now?  I might try that with the new one.

But before going out to Tarshay  (my standard place) to get a new one, I tried to re-use the old one I gave to a friend (she gave it back and said she wanted battery powered model…which I later got for her) that was just one model down from the top, the WP-60W.  (That may generally be one to avoid it would seem now.)  And the wand button was almost impossible to press.  I can't say the device was in new condition (it looked new) but still badly designed.  Did they try to use it?  One often asks that question in using software…it generally seems less a problem with uncomputerized hardware.

It was impossible for me to use.  The water level control was on the wand, it was hard to get a good grip without nudging it slightly, and slightly meant the difference between water pick and water torch.  It seemed dangerous anyway.  I barely made it through one session and decided to add it to my power washing kit.

Along with RO water, with the WP-100, which I can safely adjust on the base, I should remember to wear safety glasses, just in case, when using a Waterpik.  I also try to maintain perfect control of the the wand and point away from me at the first opportunity.  I was using level 4 on the old one (seemed less than level 3 on the WP-60) and even that seems pretty intense.

ActiveSnot

It was a great day.  I finally, just before midnight, figured out how to get PPM to install Perl/Tk, and finally the old client application was running.  I was praising ActiveState for having made this so easy.  ActiveState is the answer, I was going to tell my client.  When I got home, I installed Active Perl and all the other modules on my personal Mac, and showed the client application ran under a newer version of Mac OS X also.  What had originally taken all day I was now able to do in 15 minutes.  This was wonderful!

Next morning, I found an unpleasant email in my inbox from ActiveState:

A Moderator has reviewed your recent submission to ActiveState Community   Site. 
The content was deemed inappropriate. The submission has been deleted from   the pre-publication queue, and your account has been blocked from further   posting.

I had posted two questions to the Forum the night before in my attempt to get Perl/Tk loaded into Active Perl.  It turned out that my problem was quite simple, and I was meaning to post it to the forum the next day.  But as it was happening, my best guess was that ActiveState did not allow the PPM to install Perl/Tk.  The only Tk which seemed to be available was Tkx.  That was little help to me in getting an old application using Perl/Tk--a very popular package--to work.  So I posted the question like this, to a 3 message threat comparing Tke and Perl/Tk, which was the most recent thread I could find even mentioning Perl/Tk.  I can't remember the original posting (and will correct the below if I can get at it somehow, but it was just letters I typed on a hypertext page and I don't think I have any copy--another thing worth complaining about as it happens so often that long messages typed into webpages get lost into the great bitbucket in the sky).

     The approach taken by Tke seems to be what Perl/Tk should have been from the beginning…just a thin layer on top of Tk.  But Perl/Tk has been around a long time and is popular.  [A previous poster said Tkx was more actively supported now.]  Actually the latest version of Perl/Tk is from January 2015 and the latest Tkx is from 2010.
     How can I get the ActiveState ppm to even install Perl/Tk?  It only seems to allow me to install Tkx.  Is this a partisan thing?  I need Perl/Tk specifically to run an old client application.

Well, this thread was kind of old, perhaps 2008.  But as I said, this was (or seemed to be) the most recent thread even mentioning Tk.

Maybe I erred in posting to such an old thread.  But my idea is that likely simply using the word "partisan" or suggesting that the selection of packages for ppm might be biased in some way…that was just too much.  "Flaming!"  (Yes this is flaming, I admit in retrospect.  But I think it is very very gentle, and was intended to be quickly retracted and replaced with praise if things went well.)

Perhaps, and possibly quite likely, it was entirely a mechanical thing, though nowhere do I see that "partisan" is a bannable word.  Mentioning Perl/Tk at all ???

Anyway, I think the moderation, in simply dismissing my message and banning me forever without comment as if I had posted pornography--is cruel and stupid.  It ruined my day, and will forever mean that I will not go out of my way to speak well of ActiveState, to praise them as I had been intending to do.  I will generally speak no ill either, except where on my own website where I can vent and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as is required in any kind of accusation.

I now have, possibly long overdue, just gotten a similar feeling about Candians in general.  Candians are not necessarily the nice people I mainly had in my imagination until today.  Canadians are pursuing tar sands oil, and pressuring the U.S. Government to build a pipeline carrying oil solids dissolved in solvents through a pipeline across the USA, much to the further global disaster of global heating.  Previously Canada successfully sued for billions in losses when California banned a gasoline additive made in Canada (because of it's effects, not because it was made in Canada).  They have had a "conservative" government for some time, one very beholden to oil interests.  Canada is a leading petro state.

ActiveState happens to be in British Columbia.  Actually, British Columbia is banning a tar sands pipeline, interestingly enough, and kudos to them.

I think it's bad to treat anyone as ActiveState forum moderation treated me.  It's bad all around.  It does them no good, me no good.  As far as explaining why, they are apparently legendary for not responding to questions, bug reports, whatever.  No response whatever.  Not even, "sorry, we don't answer questions unless you buy our support service."  I suppose that's correct for the free products.  Free means no support, no reply, nada.  Some claim it works the same even if you have their paid service, but I suspect that some who claim that may not actually know.

They could at least tell me why I'm being banned.  "Political discussions are not allowed."  Well, that wasn't what I meant by partisan, but anyway.  I suppose this is a pipe dream.  Nobody tells you why.  I suppose if you're fine if many people hate you, that's a perfectly acceptable strategy.  Telling you why implicitly allows you to say something like "that isn't what I meant" and so forth.  No reply means you have no recourse…and one might expect that is intended.

That said, ActiveState is providing a useful product to me, something that saved me a great deal of time, and I appreciate that.  So perhaps I should be grateful, and never say an ill word.

No, I'll simply try to be honest as I can in telling the story, that is what this website is about, and not in a way to directly affect my clients work.  I'll try not to let my ego get involved.  If ActiveState has the active solution, I go with that, swallow my pride, I don't have much anyway.  I can well imagine others might not be so sanguine, though, and that is one of many Critical points here.

I'll go to other forums when I need help.  I won't say anything bad about ActiveState, unless in response to a question which permits no other honest answer, like "what is their free support like?"

Meanwhile, the problem I was having, so trivial, and suitable criticism for this column as well.

On all the Mac's I've used, the ppm uses a dark grey to indicate the selected button.  That's confusing because grey also means not-selectable "greyed out".  And further, in the leftmost button, the all important "View All Packages" button, the all critical box in the center is also grey.  It looked to me for the first several hours that there was simply no way to select the "view all packages" button.  The only thing not grey is a tiny arrow in the center which I overlooked.  It seemed like for some reason I was being locked out.  Perhaps you only got to select from the full list of packages if you got the full support.  Especially on my work monitor, which has very unsaturated color.  The only thing which suggests that the View All Packages button has been selected

I also frequently made the mistake of showing the column in reverse alphabetical order, which puts Tkx on top and Tk on the very bottom, after dozens if not hundreds of other Tk* modules.

Another confusing thing, the "Available" button looks like the button for finding out what modules are available for download, but it's actually the the button for those packages Available for Upgrade.