Tag Archives: ruminations

What’s the documentation for?

There are, it seems to me, two purposes to which documentation is put.

Most people consulting the documentation are attempting to fix something that’s broken, or otherwise get something to work. This is the “tell me how to do it” variety.

A smaller number of people consult documentation in order to gain a deeper understanding of how things work, and why. The motivation for this is varied, of course, but it’s a different goal than simply getting something working.

The former way of looking at docs is very short term, immediate, crisis. The latter is more long-term. Generally, if one reads the docs and understands how things work, and why, they tend to have fewer of the crisis situations in which they need to get something working.

There’s a documentation bug about the Order directive which is grounded in this very difference. The Order syntax is annoying and unintuitive, if you don’t understand how it works, and why. Most people don’t want, or need, to understand why. And, in this case, the “why” is not particularly simple. Folks just want to know how to get their allow and deny directives working. And the docs currently don’t really help them do that. At least, not right now. Hopefully they will in a few days.

My goal in documentation is generally to first address the “how do I fix it” question, because that’s the most frequent use of the docs. I don’t necessarily think that folks *should* have to understand the inner workings of the configuration directory-scope merging mechanism in order to keep the nasty spammer out of their content.

However, most of the technical documentation that I encounter is of the “how does it work” variety, and a great deal of it doesn’t even do a good job of that.

I’m just rambling, and observing. I don’t know what the solution is. There’s certainly a lot of “howto”‘s out there, and so many of them are either very specific to a particular scenario, or just plain wrong. These are a well-meaning approach to the problem, but often go astray.

Don’t make it bad

… and finally …

This one is actually related to the song. I don’t know what high school music teachers usually use as their songs to teach with. Mine used Beatles songs. And, as very few of us had heard any of these songs, he also took the opportunity to tell long pointless stories about the various chemicals under whose influence he had initially experienced these songs.

Na na na na-na-na na, na-na-na na,
Hey Jude!

Mostly, that brings to mind interminable hours spent trying to sing Hey Jude just right so that he would be satisfied. He never was.

Who has come to slay the dragon?

… continued

Who’s come to slay the dragon?
Come to watch him fall?
Making arrows out of pointed words
Giant killers at the call?
Too much fuss and bother
Too much contradiction and confusion
Peel away the mystery
Here’s a clue to some real motivation

All there really is
The two of us
And we both know why we’ve come along
Nothing to explain
It’s a part of us
To be found within a song

(Different Strings, Rush)

In highschool, I played the role of Nicola in a production of Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw. It’s a story which asks the question of whether there really can be heroes in a war, and who those heroes really are. Nicola is the servant of the house, who believes that he will marry Louka, who is a servant girl. Louka was played by Yvonne, who, although I wouldn’t say was my first girlfriend, was certainly the first girl I kissed.

NICOLA. Be warned in time, Louka: mend your manners. I know the
mistress. She is so grand that she never dreams that any servant
could dare to be disrespectful to her; but if she once suspects
that you are defying her, out you go.

LOUKA. I do defy her. I will defy her. What do I care for her?

NICOLA. If you quarrel with the family, I never can marry you.
It’s the same as if you quarrelled with me!

LOUKA. You take her part against me, do you?

I can still see the fire in her eyes when she said that. I, the humble, subservient servant, content, even happy with my place. She, the much younger, feisty servant girl, but with dreams of being something more.

Louka, in turn, is in love with Sergius. And Sergius is pledged to marry Raina. Sergius is the great war hero, come back from the war with great gallant stories of leading a charge into the teeth of the enemy. Or, if we believe the tale of another man who was at the charge, his horse got spooked and charged, while Sergius tried unsuccessfully to stop its charge.

MAN. You never saw a cavalry charge, did you?

RAINA. How could I?

MAN. Ah, perhaps not–of course. Well, it’s a funny sight. It’s like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes; then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump.

RAINA (her eyes dilating as she raises her clasped hands ecstatically). Yes, first One!–the bravest of the brave!

MAN (prosaically). Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse.

RAINA. Why should he pull at his horse?

MAN (impatient of so stupid a question). It’s running away with him, of course: do you suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be killed?

Sergius was played by Modupe, who went on to join his country’s army, and, as far as I can gather, served at least bravely enough to make some dangerous enemies.

We would sit back stage between scenes, and this was the song that was playing. How we could completely ignore the play when we were not on, I’m not quite sure. We would sit on the mats which were on the little side-stage, off stage right, and whisper and joke while the show went on, on the main stage.

I liked the soft boot so much that I wore them much of that school term, even when not in practice. They were soft black leather boots, with soft soles. Very comfortable. And one day, Ms. Bakhda caught Modupe and me wearing our boots, rather than shoes which she considered more appropriate for school uniform, and gave us quite a talking to. Modupe was never one to take gently to being told off, and was more than a little disgruntled at this treatment. I wonder where he is, and what he’s doing now.

I don’t remember who played ‘The Man’. He, of course, ends up winning Raina’s heart, and Sergius marries Louka. Poor Nikola.

What happened to our innocence
Did it go out of style?
Along with our naivete
No longer a child
Different eyes see different things
Different hearts beat on different strings
But there are times
For you and me, when all such things agree

One down, one to go

Certain songs take me very powerfully to times in the past, and I’ve had opportunity to experience this a number of times in the last few weeks. Usually, the song itself has nothing whatever to do with the incidents that it reminds me of, but merely binds to that incident in my mind by virtue of having been being played at the time.

I can feel no sense of measure
No illusion as we take
Refuge in young man’s pleasure
Breaking down the dreams we make
Real

The entirety of the album 90125, but most particularly “Leave it”, take me back to 1988 or thereabouts. Well, actually, not 1988, but the Pliocene Era. That’s right, the era which went from roughly 5 million to 2 million years ago. Because 90125 was the sound track when I was reading Julian May’s books “The Saga of Pliocene Exile”. It was a trilogy, although more recently he’s added a fourth book.

I laid on my bed for hours at a time, reading these books, while 90125 played again and again. Hey, there was precious little to do, and my music collection was rather limited. It was pretty much either that, Led Zeppelin, or Rush.

And so, now, whenever I hear the opening notes of “Leave It”, I am drawn to thoughts of The Many Coloured Land, and the tourists being drawn through the portal to the prehistoric time, unexpectedly inhabited by aliens with golden torcs.

If they ever make a movie of these books, they’ve *got* to use 90125 as the sound track.

New tunes and old thoughts

I’ve been listening to “How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” from U2 pretty much since it was released. As usually happens with a new album, it seems very strange at first, then slowly grows on me. And along the way I start picking up on the lyrics and picking out the various songs that I like and those that I don’t.

This album, strangely, reminds me more of “War” and “October” than it does of more recent stuff, although it is certainly a more mature sound, and less of the raw unpolished energy that was in “War”.

When I’ve not yet read the lyrics, little snips jump out at me, making me wonder about the rest. I hear the phrase “The girl with crimson nails has Jesus around her neck,” and that then becomes:

They know that they can’t dance
At least they know
I can’t stand the beats
I’m asking for the cheque
The girl with crimson nails
Has Jesus around her neck
Swinging to the music
Swinging to the music
oh oh oh

(From Vertigo)

Looking back to college and beyond, I remember a lot of girls with crimson nails and Jesus around their neck. It’s the sort of verbal picture that immediately makes a lot of sense to me, but which would be rather complicated to explain.

U2 always reminds me of a particularly embarassing incident in 10th grade. Sitting on the bus, next to a girl that, if the truth be told, I had a crush on. She’s listening to some music. I ask what it is. She give me the headphones, and I listen to a little bit of Joshua Tree. And, in the inevitable lull in general conversation, I exclaim loudly, “I *love* U2!” This is followed by dead silence, and the girl blushes deeply and doesn’t speak to me for a week.

Speaking of having Jesus around your neck, I had an interesting experience this week. I went to a “Christian” bookstore, in search of a liturgical calendar. For those of you who do not have a Christian background, or who have a Christian background that was, shall we say, light on the historical aspects of the faith, a liturgical calendar is a calendar which lists the seasons and feasts of the church, including the saints’ days from the various Christian traditions. If you didn’t know that, you’re excused. You probably have good reasons. However, the boostore staff is not excused. When I asked for a liturgical calendar, or a calendar of the church year, they didn’t know what I meant. The owner/manager said that he had never heard of such a thing, and then led me over to leather-bound planner books for pastors, complete with inspirational saying from prominent authors and politicians. When I more carefully explained what I was looking for, and having received the wrinkled-nose-we-don’t-talk-about-that look when I mentioned “Saints”, I was assured that they didn’t carry anything like *that*.

Wandering around the store afterwards, I was wholely unable to find anything particularly Christian about the store. Sure, they had Bibles. I gotta give them that. They also had inspirational books by Chuck Norris, and seemed to be pushing a lot of Bushy republican political books. Oh, yeah, and a bunch of Precious-Moments-y cherubic figurines. Most of the stuff there was wholesome values trashy novels (yes, there are “Christian” romance novels, God help us) and materials for entertaining sunday school classes. Apart from the Bible, I didn’t see any printed volume published prior to the Kennedy administration. Last time I checked, Christianity is a religion of tradition and history, and of prolific writers, and it seems very odd a Christian bookstore would be devoid of any of these writings. Christian writings from the last 50 years form little more than the foam on the cappucino. Or, I suppose Martin Luther would say, the foam on the beer. 😉 Unfortunately, I’m reasonably sure that the folks running that particular store would not catch that allusion.

Pass around the coffee and the chapatis

Yesterday I had thanksgiving dinner with a very international crowd. Most of them were Kenyans, but there was also a Swede, several USAians, and a Bolivian. We had the traditional Thanksgiving meal of empanadas, samosas, chapatis, and, of course, turkey. Before dinner we sang “Umwema,” and Moses prayed in Swahili and English. We sat around the table for perhaps 4 hours, talking, laughing, joking in various languages, and reminiscing.

My parents were out of town yesterday, and got back at about 1 this morning (Just in time to get in the line of shoppers outside of Target! … Just kidding.) so we’re going to have Thanksgiving dinner again, this time with more of our family, tomorrow.

I do, indeed, have much to be thankful for.

The Walmartization of our stores

I just realized an unfortunate side effect of the Walmartization of our grocery stores. Well, one of many. Tomorrow is officially “Avoid Shopping Venues Like The Plague Day.” However, since my grocery store is now also the general store, I can’t go grocery shopping without encountering 478,000 crazed pre-pre-Christmas shoppers intent on killing one another in the name of holiday cheer.

On roughly the same note, I got a frightening piece of spam yesterday. Technically, it wasn’t spam, because it was from a vendor from whom I occasionally buy services, so I suppose they have legitimate reason to contact me. The subject was “This Christmas, Shop Like A Pro.” The only possible interpretation I can come up with for that sentiment is that they want me to spend as much money as possible, but they’re attempting to phrase it in such a way that it will make me feel like that is a great accomplishment.

It’s no wonder people get stressed out about “the holidays.”

And so, I wish you a blessed day of giving thanks, and a joyous Advent. I find that ignoring “The Holidays” is a healthy approach, since “The Holidays” is purely a creation of folks that want you to spend money you don’t have for things you don’t need. Give thanks, enjoy the anticipation of Advent, and tell your mother you love her.

Separation of Church and State

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about the notion of the separation of Church and State, and the related issue of separation of belief and life. It is clear to me that “separation of church and state” doesn’t mean the same thing to us today as it did in 1776.

Aside: The “Founding Fathers” were not infallible, and recognized this themselves by making provisions for altering the constitution. However, we must respect the traditions of our nation because they come out of a long history of making wise decisions, while these days our decisions seem to be very crisis-driven and without a great deal of thought.

Separation of Church and State refers to the principle that the state should not tinker in the affairs of religion, nor should there be a state religion. What is perverted is the notion that our political opinions, and, indeed, our daily actions, should be without influence from our beliefs and convictions. That’s just wrong. If your system of beliefs, or your religion, does not influence your daily life, then it is a complete sham. Separation of Church and State does *NOT* mean that one is obliged to check one’s morals at the door when entering the voting booth or the Senate floor.

And, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that those folks who claim that this is the meaning of the term are the folks that are trying to keep a particular religious principle out of policy. In other words, they themselves are bringing their principles to the debate, but are denying their opposition the right to do the same.

When we elected John Kennedy, there was national debate about whether he could, or should, honor his Catholic convictions when he made policy. He stated that he must follow his principles, but would not violate the laws of the land. (Whether he did either is a matter of history and opinion. Let’s not go there.) We elect officials, for the most part, because we think that they stand for certain principles. And those of us whose principles are informed by one holy book or another tend to think that the principles learned from those books are at least as important as those learned from Thomas Jefferson and the Holy Stock Market.

So it seems to me that those who preach a freedom from religion are really missing something fundamental about the nature of our nation. We formed as a nation because we believed some things that our rulers did not believe. The religion of Voltaire (that stuff about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) is a fundamental creed of our nation. We surely don’t leave that behind when we enter the floor of the Congress. Also, our belief that we should not covet the goods of our neighbor, nor steal his cows, nor kill him, should be part of that political process.

What the government should *NOT* do, clearly, is mandate particularly religious beliefs on its citizens. This is, then, a very fine balance, and one that necessarily creates division, as people on one side or the other of a particular belief are bound to claim that their opponent is crossing the line.

In particular, there’s the folks that feel strongly about a particular issue, and try to get government to impose that belief upon the general populace. In many cases, that becomes a crossing of the right and proper separation of Church and State. However, this comes to rest rather heavily upon one’s definition of Church. Folks of the Church of PETA, for example, or perhaps the Church of the NRA, feel perfectly sanguine in trying to impose their beliefs of the general populace via the vehicle of government. But, since the term Church seems to have a very narrow definition, those folks are freed from such restrictions.

Again, perhaps I ramble, so I’ll try to restate what was, to me, the most important point. If you have a belief – whether that be in the teachings of Jesus Christ, or that monkeys should be treated with dignity – and that belief has no impact on how you life day to day, and on how you make your decisions, then that belief is a sham, and you are masquerading, yet fooling nobody but yourself. And perhaps the other folks like you who want to be fooled so that they can continue to fool themselves.

Home again, Home again

I’m a little grumbly here, because I was almost done writing this posting when Firefox crashed. Bah.

Anyways, as I was saying …

I am pleased to announce, after extensive testing, the results of my survey. Nobody in the world makes coffee as good as I can make it right here at home. Except, just maybe, my dad. I’m not sure what’s so hard about grinding up a few beans and pouring water over them, but every time I travel, I’m better off just foregoing the coffee, since everything I get served is swill fit only for watering the daisys. Poor daisys.

It is really good to be home.

I still enjoy travelling. (Ok, I have come to hate the actual travelling part. Thanks, TSA.) I like being other places and seeing new things. But, increasingly, I just want to get back home, after a few days away. I suppose I’m just getting old and settled, and, I think, that’s probably OK with me. (Inner voice: OLD MAN! OLD MAN!)

So, it was a week of Apache training. I learned quite a few things, and have a lot of changes that I need to make to my class notes and to my book. I wonder if I will be able to keep up the drive to do so this time. Generally, the urge dies out after a few days. I’ll try harder.

The network at the training site was somewhat restrictive, so I was off IRC for almost the whole week. On Friday, Eddie reminded me how to tunnel IRC (or anything, I suppose) over an ssh connection to anywhere. You open an ssh connection to wherever you can ssh to, and then you can tunnel any other protocol over the top of that, so that you can use your preferred IRC client (xchat, or whatever) to connect over that tunnel to anywhere else. I suppose it’s just as well that I didn’t remember earlier in the week.

ssh -C rbowen@wooga.frumble.com -L 8081:irc.freenode.org:6667

Then point your IRC client at localhost, port 8081.

Most evenings while on my trip, I went out somewhere, saw a thing or two, but was back in my room by 7 or 8. I read a lot of stuff during those 2 or 3 hours before going to bed. Here’s some of it.

In the Presence of Fear by Wendell Berry. Avoid this book if you are content to be fat, happy, and complacent in your current view of your consumer life. This is a collection of essays about how the world has changed in the last several presidential administrations, and, particularly, how it has changed since the incident in 2001 when we realized that we didn’t live in an isolated bubble. Very good stuff. Whatever your political leanings tend to be, Berry gives a lot of plain common sense to some issues that we tend to over-politicize.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. A murder mystery of sorts. Written from the perspective of a young autistic man who finds a dead dog in his neighbor’s (I suppose I should say neighbour’s. He’s british.) yard, and who sets out to find out how it died. Funny, sad, and eye-opening. Highly recommended. It was recommended to me by someone in blog-space. I don’t rember who. Get this book.

The Gift Moves by Steve Lyon. Steve is the organist/pianist at my church. He’s also the husband of the well-known children’s author George Ella Lyon. The book was shelved (mistakenly, I think) in the children’s section of the book store. Yes, it’s a book about some kids. Sort of. It’s also a book about a culture (seems post-apocalyptic, but hard to say) where the economy is based on gifts, rather than on money or barter. It’s about how we relate to one another. Or, I suppose, you could read it as a shiny happy kid’s story. Presumably that’s where the store thought it would sell better. After all, who wants to think? Recommended. Frankly, I didn’t expect to enjoy it, largely because of where it was shelved. But I like to read books by people I know, and I was pleasantly surprised.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. I keep thinking that the Discworld books will get tired and boring. And perhaps that’s happening just a little bit. But this book was funny I suppose it gets a “2” on the measure on the “laughed out loud in public” scale. The story was good, the characters were interesting, and the conclusion was unexpected. I recommend this if you’ve read any of the other Discworld books. If you haven’t, I recommend that you read The Colour of Magic first. Try to get a British edition of you can find it. Apparently they tried to Americanize it for the US printing, whatever that means. Silly publishers. And if you’re in this area, I’m sure that Ken would be willing to loan you a copy. I don’t seem to have a copy any more.

And I suppose I should mention that I picked up a new printing of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. This is a Barnes&Noble printing. A little pocket-sized edition of ACC as well as The Chimes and Cricket on the Hearth. Nice binding and size, so I could hardly pass it up, now, could I?

Oh, and one more thing. While in Palm Beach I ate at a place called City Cellar. Twice, in fact. I had two of the best meals I’ve had so far this year. The first night, I had crab-encrusted chilean sea bass. It was positively heavenly. The next night I had mahi in a tamarind sauce, which was almost as good. It was … *ahem* … somewhat pricey. The bass, at least, was worth every penny. The mahi was more expensive and less wonderful, but only marginally so.

Ok, there. Finished with no crashes, and crammed more topics into a single post than is my usual habit. Deal with it. I write for me and not for you anyway. 🙂