Google Play and My Latest Licensed Downloads (9/06/16)
I've probably written this personal anecdote once or twice in the past. My Dad was the breadwinner for an expanding young family as career enlisted Air Force; I had 4 younger siblings by early primary school. Somehow the folks made ends meet (this was before the voluntary military which upgraded pay and benefits for the enlisted ranks). There was a limited budget for entertainment (I remember a few drive-in movies), and I don't know how Mom and Dad had time for an occasional romantic night out. I remember an occasion or two of staying over a friend's house, but I do recall one evening with siblings at a day care center. What I remember then was my favorite part of the experience was not the toys, the games or even playing with the other kids but getting a blank sheet of copy paper to do whatever I wanted with. The possibilities of what I could draw or otherwise use that sheet of paper boggled my mind; I was thrilled. I once mentioned that to my middle brother years later, and he laughingly told the folks, "You know, you didn't have to shell out money to buy Ronald toys; he would have been thrilled with a ream of copy paper for Christmas." True enough.
To me, a natural writer, a blank sheet of paper or a new blog post screen is an ultimate expression of freedom. I don't have to color within someone else's lines. I don't think I've ever really had writer's block, but as I've mentioned before, there were times I wasn't sure what I would do with my liberty. I had no clue when I started my doctoral studies what I would research; I saw one of my favorite professors leave academia under the pressure of publish or perish. What's more, I had gravitated towards a research niche of human factors in IT, which was not mainstream at the time in my interdisciplinary academic discipline. What's even worse, I became more critical of research methodology in my field's literature as I reviewed the applied psychology literature. I was fortunate enough to have a supportive dissertation chair, and I found myself literally swimming in ideas for new research paper projects.
Some of them stemmed from past work experience, e.g., my early work as an APL programmer/analyst, having to maintain highly cryptic, largely undocumented computer code; our business model was based on selling expensive computer time running rapidly built application systems, so if there was a program bug, it had a direct impact on profits, since customers would not use broken systems. I was a highly talented programmer/analyst and could cope with adverse conditions and diagnose/fix problems beyond the scope of almost any other analyst, but I didn't want to be typecast as an expert maintenance programmer.
I think the ultimate anecdote to illustrate the point was on my last job as an APL timesharing programmer/analyst. (APL timesharing all but disappeared during the mid-80's PC boom, when I started my doctoral residency. (In fact, I gave my first guest lecture in a graduate decision support systems course: APL had been used by many early DSS efforts.)). My colleague Jeff came to me one day saying, "Ron, I had to do a fix on this code 2 weeks back, but I can't remember what I did. Could you read it for me?" I was able to figure out not only what the original problem was he encountered, but what he did, why he did what he did, and the limitations of his solution. A lot of what we did was firefighting; documentation was nice to have, but our boss was more focused on new revenue; documenting work was seen as more of a cost, and what documentation was available often reflected the programmer's preferences. So when I started looking at documentation from a research perspective, I didn't find a lot available (a huge opportunity), even though IT managers paid a lot of lip service to the need for documentation. I had also developed a serious interest in research measures and many used in my discipline's literature were questionable.
To give a sample inspiration, there is a often-cited article by a well-known professor on dimensionality of the concept of information. I never intended to critique the study; his article was one of hundreds I had read and analyzed as a doctoral student. But there was something odd about his derived factors which weren't consistent or coherent; I wouldn't say my observation was necessarily unique, but I hadn't run across anyone else discussing the point. It seemed that because the paper was published in a respected journal, nobody wanted to say the emperor was wearing no clothes. Now the author had used student subjects, and any first-semester doctoral student can discuss the boilerplate limitations of using student subjects. There were other issues as well: the number of student subjects, the reliability and validity of underlying measures, etc. But I wasn't interested in a phone-it-in critique of a research study; I was more focused on the confounded nature of a derived factor. So I designed a replication study that was designed to see if this factor could be confirmed. To this day, I love that little study (the short answer: his factor structure was not replicated, but the factors I derived from my data were logical and consistent). I presented my results at a national conference; I had no clue whether I would attract any attendees; to my surprise, I had a full room, and it was a great experience. When I discussed the original author's dismissive response to a relevant letter I had written while still a grad student, the audience knowingly laughed. To this day, that was one of my favorite moments in academia: it was like a Sally Field reaction to her Oscar. I didn't do the project with the expectation of acceptance; if anything, I was challenging a sacred cow in my discipline, which can be a death wish for a young academic; I also expected a cynical Elton John "grow some funk of your own" reaction from senior researchers. But the project was not a cheap shot at a senior professor; it was more motivated by a derived factor that wasn't coherent, and it was a persistent nagging doubt about the study and its methodology since I first read it, and I was puzzled why others didn't raise a similar concern but cited the results, chapter and verse.
What does this have to Google Play? Occasionally it will offer some wildcard promotions of the type, "download the album of your choice at half off", "buy a digital book at $5 off", "rent a movie online for 75% off". To me, this is like a blank piece of paper; it's not just a predicted promotion to hype the latest publications or recordings. I'm curious as to what other people might choose and their motivations. So in this segment, I'm explaining my choices to 2 such promotions.
I've licensed music from multiple online vendors (including Amazon and WalMart), including promotions of hit singles under $1. I was an early Netflix customer (in fact, around the turn of the century I did not subscribe to cable TV; I ran into service issues when I moved back to Illinois, and when I stopped my subscription, they did not handle things well with implicit threats to charge me list price for my last rentals which had been mailed back but not yet acknowledged as returned. I have occasionally licensed movies on an ad hoc basis; in fact, I have probably gone to one movie theater over the past decade. The last time I considered going to a theater was when "The Young Messiah" was in release while I lived in SC, but it had ended its run at the local theaters by the day I intended to see it.
I responded to 2 Google Play promotions over the Labor Day weekend: a movie purchase and a movie rental. I suspect my choices are probably idiosyncratic.
I licensed the above-cited "The Young Messiah". Like most Catholics/Christians, I am fascinated by little-known aspects of Jesus' younger years, not really discussed in the Gospels. This obscure rabbi suddenly emerged out of nowhere at the age of 30. In the decades that followed the end of His ministry, many unverified legends emerged, reflecting on early signs of His miraculous nature and destiny. Vampire novelist Anne Rice rediscovered her Catholic roots and wrote novels on the life of Christ, one of them titled "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt", focusing on Jesus around the age of 7, and father Joseph's relocation of the family from exile in Egypt back to Nazareth. Herod's son was now in power as the Roman puppet king of Israel but has been convinced the threat to his throne survived his late father's purge and is obsessed with finishing the job: he has heard about a boy in Egypt performing wonders. This is the context for the movie.
Cyrus and Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh were the creative force in adapting Rice's novel to the silver screen. Familiar readers to my blog know that I highly respect Cato Institute's immigration policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh, who happens to be the couple's son. He had promoted his folks' film in a couple of tweets.
Let me republish my review from a private email to Alex:
I'm sure thousands have seen "The Young Messiah" and I seriously doubt your folks would care about my feedback, of all who have seen it. I ran into all sorts of problems trying to buy it on Google Play around the time it was released, and I waited several weeks until this weekend to see it.
Granted, the underlying story is speculative because there is little known about Christ's early life from orthodox sources, but I thought the storytelling was compelling, the characters believable, the scenery brilliantly shot, and the soundtrack fit the movie like a glove. I don't have any expertise in the art of filmmaking, but this was the best, most enjoyable movie I've seen in years, and I appreciate the artistry of your parents' efforts.As for my rental choice. No, it wasn't "Batman vs. Superman"; one might also suspect the recent "Atlas Shrugged" series I've promoted in the blog. It was an award-winning documentary from the pro-liberty Acton Institute: "Poverty Inc." I found this compelling; the film largely centers on Haiti, Africa, and state sponsored/humanitarian efforts. I don't want to reprise the film but just to discuss one telling point: good intentions result in counterproductive results. For example, subsidized foreign rice undermined local producers; it's one thing to help people in the short term, e.g., local farms have a disastrous season due to catastrophic events, another thing to dominate the market for the upcoming season. Part of what the producers point out is that a free market, where, say, Haiti rice farmers are free to compete/trade on a fair basis, e.g., no quotas or subsidies corrupting American producers, would provide a context for Haiti's future economic growth. I also highly recommend this project.
Expanding Cheap Storage (9/9/16)
I've made my living as a computer database administrator (DBA) since 1993. What never ceases to amaze me is the progress in computer storage technology. I remember creating 40 GB marketing research databases, fully populated, in about 4 days in the mid-90s (at a time most DBA's were managing sub-1 GB databases), while our system administrator head had problems trying to purchase 4 GB Seagate BarraCuda drives. Today you can purchase 10 TB BarraCuda's, and I recently ordered a 256 GB flash drive, roughly in the low-to-mid $50's or so, enough to hold multiple notebook backups. I've administered databases over 10 TB in size, which would have seemed inconceivable when I took graduate school database courses in the mid-80's.
The Battle of the Bulge (9/9/16)
What has surprised me is that I've already managed to take off the 9 lbs. I seemed to pick up during a 2-week business trip to FL. I'm still a few pounds off my yearly low, but I hope to take that out soon. A long way to go to where I want to be, but the struggle goes on.
