On Bots and Rodents

Okay – I’ve been surfing the Wave for a bit now, and I have to admit that my love for it endures.  I’ve bombed around the public Waves, and I’ve taken a good long look at what the Wave has to offer, what it lacks, and what other people think it lacks.  From what I’ve seen, most of the early adopters seem to feel that Wave offers too little in terms of control.  The fact that anyone can edit anyone else’s words seems to scare the bejesus out of people.  What they don’t seem to be getting is that this is one of the strengths of Wave.  Wave is like a conversation you have in a room with real live people – you can (and will) be interrupted, people will put words in your mouth, and you will constantly have to deal with the fact people always hear what they think you said, rather than the actual words that came out of your mouth.

To me, these ‘complaints’ are precisely what set Wave apart from other apps.  It makes it closer to real interactions with real humans than any other so-called ’social’ application.  To me, this is what makes it so much fun (even the fact that someone else can screw up and totally destroy your Wave.  Again – just like dealing with other people in the real world).  What I’ve found is that the changes most Wave surfers would like to see implemented would only serve to make Wave into something they’re more familiar (read: comfortable) with.  Most (maybe all, come to think of it) of the ‘Wish List’ items I see talked about on various Waves basically boil down to desires to see it behave more like E-Mail, or instant messaging, or texting, or Twitter, or Facebook, or what have you.  Personally, I like the fact that Wave exists in its own space.  There are, however, a couple of gaping holes in the Wave that I would like to see addressed.

The Wave is being billed as a collaboration tool.  This is all well and good but thus far I haven’t seen much about it that would make it especially suited to – well – collaboration.  The general concept is there, but the necessary building blocks are (thus far) absent.  For example, there is a distinct lack of integration with other Google products that would be particularly suited for collaboration.  Google Docs, for instance.  And GCal.  Throw in Maps, Earth and Voice for the complete package.  There is some integration, but it is clumsy and not suited to the non-Dork.  I have managed to embed a collaborative document in a Wave, but the interface is not particularly elegant. I have seen some integration of Maps, but I have also watched while someone tried in vain to embed a map created with Google’s own My Maps feature.

There is, however, one Google property that has good Wave integration.  Of course, it would be YouTube, the Google property least suited to actual collaboration.  The integration is nice, though – just paste a YouTube URL into a Wave, and a helpful light bulb pops into existence, asking if you’d like to embed the video.  Pretty slick.

The Wave sloshed around the developer world for a while before it hit the public.  Because of this, there are already a fair number of Wave-specific tools floating around out there.  I have seen a fair amount of these tools.  Some are fun, some are useful, some are just plain silly.  Blessed few of them are actually useful for collaboration (the few that I have seen tend to be specifically geared toward scientific communities – mostly tools that allow researchers to communicate with each other using the proper arcane symbology).  I have seen Wave bots that will talk to you so that you don’t feel lonely.  I have seen bots that will turn a colon and a parenthesis into an actual graphic smiley face.  What I haven’t seen are any tools that allow for Wave organization.  Waves, by their nature, tend to get slapped together rather haphazardly.  It would be nice to be able to apply some sort of order to a Wave after the fact.  Thus far, I haven’t seen anything that allows for this (outside of doing it manually in the form of a new Wave).  A simple table of contents would be helpful (I hear that there used to be such a tool, but it doesn’t work in the newer versions of Wave).  Throw in the ability to hotlink to another location within a Wave (something I have searched in vain for), and we’d really be in business.  Update: There is one extension that shows a great deal of promise:  The Mediawiki Wave Extension, although it thus far only exists in theory.  I fully expect it to come into being, though, and expect it to answer many of my organizational complaints.  I don’t, however, expect it to address any of my integration complaints.

The upside is that there are a lot of Geeks involved, and Wave is designed to be open and extensible, so I can hope that someone will come along and develop the tools I’d like to see (or, failing that, I could make them myself, although this is not an option for the average user).  The downside is that the Geeks involved are – well – Geeks, and they’ve already shown us where their priorities lie.  Which is why we have good YouTube integration, but no real Docs integration.  And why we have bots for smiley faces but not organization.

It’s a Brave New World, folks, and it’s full of smileys and dramatic squirrels.

Next Level Shit

“Alright, I’m in. ‘Cause there’s some next level shit going on and I’m OK with that.”

- Will Smith, Men In Black -

I have seen the future, and it is Google Wave.  That having been said, I have also seen the present, and it is using Google Wave.  Allow me to explain:

I’ve been riding the Wave for about a week now, and I have to say that my first impression was: WOW!  So were my second, third and fourth impressions.  Wave pretty much takes everything I like about the internet and puts it together in one convenient package.  I am – frankly – astounded at the things it allows me to do.  This is (as Will Smith so succinctly put it) next level shit.  Wave is billed as a collaboration tool and it certainly fills that bill (although I have to admit that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to use it as such – so far I’ve just been playing).  It also works well as a replacement for E-Mail, instant messaging and just about any other variety of social media you care to name.  I’m not making this up – Google Wave rocks.  And it is the future of online communication.  This is not to say that the big ‘G’ will be the provider of said future, no more than Outlook personifies E-Mail (despite the fact that many people actually believe this to be the case).  It’s not Wave that’s the future, but rather what Wave represents.  And what it will become.

Unfortunately, the internet is – in a nutshell – a network that exists to connect people.  And, in case you haven’t noticed, people are pretty stupid (in general, not individually.  You are very smart).  This means that many of the people currently using Google Wave (probably the majority of them) aren’t really getting it.  And this is where the present comes in.  The sad fact is that we have an incredible wealth of technology at our disposal, yet most people only use it to send sideways smiley faces to each other.  So most of the people riding the Wave (that I have been exposed to) are basically just treating it as though it’s a chat room with bells and whistles.  I say this to illuminate, not to denigrate.  My Darling Wife initially shied away from the Wave, viewing it as being too complicated to readily adopt.  She changed her tune after I pointed her attention to two things:  1)  E-Mail is a complicated unknown when we’re first exposed to it, and 2) You can use Wave without knowing how to access all of its functionality (or any of it, for that matter).  At first glance, Google Wave looks very much like an online forum or the comment threads on any of a number of web sites.  And this is where I feel a need to warn the average user:  Google Wave is NOT anonymous.

Let me repeat that.  Wave is NOT anonymous.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Wave requires you to have a Google account (which is your Gmail account).  Your Wave address and your Gmail address are functionally the same (@googlewave vs. @gmail).  This means that anyone you talk to in Wave has access to your E-Mail address.  Is this a problem?  If it is, you should stay away from the Wave.  If it isn’t, you’re probably the kind of person I’d like to include in my Waves.

Like I said:  Next level shit.  And that means you have to take personal responsibility for it.  Welcome to the new millennium.

On Blue Birds and The Force

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now.  I’m not a die-hard convert, and I’m probably only connected for an hour or so a day.  On most days, I don’t Tweet at all.  Truth be told, I’ve only been dabbling in it for two reasons:  the first is that I’m thrilled by the 140 character limit.  I’m a big fan of any device that forces people to get to the point.  The second reason is that I want to see the purpose Twitter eventually finds for itself.  As a medium, it’s still pretty young, and it hasn’t yet found its purpose.

I know there are many of you out there that will tell me that Twitter is a Great Business Tool.  In response, I’m inclined to say:  Crap.  ‘It’s a great business tool’ is one of the Two Great Technological Justifications.  The other is ‘It has many educational applications’.  Again, crap.  These are things we say when we’re afraid to say that we like something simply because it’s cool.  And make no mistake – technology is cool.  The ‘wow’ factor is probably the second most powerful force behind technological development (the first, of course, being money).

But I must admit that there is some merit to the Twitter-as-business-tool argument.  As a Map Dork, I follow many other Map Dorks on Twitter, and I often learn pertinent, valuable and (above all) timely tidbits of information about the goings-on in the Map Dork world (Mapocron Dorkia IV).  To be honest, though, I read far more about food and booze than I do about maps.  But maybe that applies to all disciplines, on one level or another.

There is one particular area, though, where Twitter can really shine as a business tool.  On two separate occasions, I have tweeted my frustration over my failure to use an application in the manner that suited my fancy.  On both of those occasions, my tweet generated an unsolicited response from one of the people closely associated with the application in question.  Both scenarios happened out of the blue, and both led to a protracted session of tech support, supplied courtesy of Twitter.

Twitter happens in near-realtime, and its API makes it possible to track any subject being tweeted about (yes, folks – I hear about it every time you talk about me).  In both of these situations, the people I talked to took advantage of these aspects of Twitter to provide swift and active (I loathe the so-called word ‘proactive’.  It’s jargon, pure and simple, and it’s almost always used to mean ‘active’) support for a product.  Granted – in one of these cases the support was supplied for love of the applications and out of simple common decency (thanks, Steve), but that just serves to make it more valuable and appreciated.

So this is where I think Twitter really can be a Great Business Tool.  The ability to supply customer support BEFORE IT’S EVEN ASKED FOR is the kind of public relations that can move mountains.  It’s like having Jedi Knights arrive to lend a hand just because they felt a disturbance in the Force.

It’s a Friggin’ Planet

Update:  The boy and I just watched Interplanet Janet, from Schoolhouse Rock.  She considers Pluto to be a planet.  Who are we to argue?

Okay – here’s the deal.  I’m getting a little tired of this Pluto’s-Not-A-Planet crap.  Why, I ask, would Pluto be considered to be anything other than a planet?  ‘Why?’  The answer goes, ‘Because it doesn’t fit the definition of “planet”‘.

Huh?  When did this happen?

2006.  That was when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided (for whatever reasons) to write a new definition of ‘planet’.  Their definition is as follows:

1)  Have an orbit around a sun.

2)  Have enough mass to assume a (mostly) round shape.

3)  Have cleared the neighborhood in its orbit.

The third is the one Pluto falls short on, and for this reason they’re now referring to it as a ‘dwarf’ planet.  There are some in the profession fighting this (mostly because expecting Pluto to clear out the neighborhood is unreasonable, due to the enormity of its orbit), but so far they have been unsuccessful.  My take on this is that the IAU is going at this ass-backwards.

Years ago, the archaeological world had a list of criteria they used to define a ‘civilization’ (much like our planet-defining list above).  If I remember correctly (and I usually do), there were 5 items on the list, the pertinent one being possession of the wheel.  It was thought that a group of humans couldn’t reach the lofty heights of true civilization without first developing the wheel.  Then one guy, who had spent his life studying the Inca, raised his hand and said: “But – the Inca never developed the wheel”.  He was told that the Inca, having failed to measure up to the definition, couldn’t have been a ‘civilization’.   “But,”  he argued, “They Built Machu Picchu.  They had a trade network that spanned a continent.  They had suspension bridges, for Christ’s sake!”

“Hmmm,” said his colleagues, “Maybe we should re-think our definition.”

This, my friends, is how science is supposed to be done.  A good scientist does not look up on a overcast day and say:  “It’s not blue, therefore it cannot be the sky”.

Pluto has enough of a gravitational influence on our solar system that it’s presence was known decades before anyone actually ’saw’ it.  It has three moons (that we know of), putting it ahead of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.  Most importantly, in the decades during which Pluto’s existence was known but it had not yet been ’seen’, it was known as “Planet X”.  This alone gives it more celestial street cred than all the other so-called planets combined.

It’s a friggin’ planet.  Just fix the definition, already.

Besides, we don’t really want to piss off the god of the underworld, do we?

Rules of Engagement

“An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

No it isn’t.”

The other day, I found myself once again engaging in an argument with some random internet bonehead.  This seems to happen to me with ridiculous frequency, and I think I may be starting to understand why.  This particular bonehead tried to tell me that ad tracking leads to ‘identity theft’ (the quotes are to illustrate my general disdain for the term.  What is commonly referred to as ‘identity theft’ is most usually simply credit card fraud.  Nobody ever showed any interest in buying insurance against credit card fraud, though).

Anyway, when I first encountered this idea, I did what I usually do when I come across an idea that seems a little odd to me – I researched it a bit.  I discovered some interesting things: that ‘identity theft’ has actually been on the decline (at least as of 2007, the latest figures I could easily find), that slightly less than 12% of ‘identity theft’ occurs online, and that law enforcement agencies recommend conducting business online as a means to prevent ‘identity theft’.  I explained to bonehead that I didn’t share his fears regarding ad tracking, and he basically told me that I’m wallowing in my own ignorance and that if I could achieve the lofty heights of his superior knowledge, I would be quaking in fear just as he was.  This time, I pointed him to the information I had learned earlier, asked him to explain it, and asked him to point me to one single documented case of ‘identity theft’ that had been attributed to ad tracking.  His response?  Once again, I’m accused of idiocy based solely on the fact that I will not accept whatever he says at face value.  Did he actually attempt – in any way – to back up his statements?  Nope.  So I called him on it.  His response to this was the best of the lot.  Told me he wouldn’t ‘pander to my demands’ (really – he used the word ‘pander’), told me that I should go out and find his proof for him (I’m not making this up), that I was calling him a liar unless he offered up some proof (I called him no such thing.  I didn’t call him a bonehead, either.  I just think he is one) and, finally, that he was wasting his time by discussing something with a person who calls him arrogant (yup, I did call him that.  Call me crazy.  I can’t help but think a guy who tells me to do the necessary research to back up his idea is just a wee bit arrogant).

Anyway, this latest encounter with an internet pundit got me to thinking.  Specifically, about the nature of argument.  As I always seem to be doing these days, I spent a fair amount of time thinking it through with an eye toward it being A Discussion I Will Have With My Son.

I am not, by nature, an argumentative kind of guy.  I do, however, like a good argument.  These two statements are not contradictory.  They only conflict with each other if you don’t understand the nature of arguments.  Michael Palin (quoted above) quoted the definition of argument, virtually word-for-word, from the OED.  In a nutshell, an argument is much the same as any other form of discourse between humans:  it’s simply an exchange of ideas.  The problem some people have (and the place where misunderstanding creeps into the mix) is that, in the case of arguments, the ideas being exchanged are opposing and often seemingly contradictory.  I say ’seemingly’ because it is difficult for some people to wrap their brain around the idea that opposing points of view can be (and quite often are) equally valid, equally ‘right’, and equally ‘correct’ (or ‘incorrect’, if your worldview demands it).  An argument is not a competition (when competition is added to an argument, it becomes a debate), nor is it a conflict.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop people from thinking that an argument is something that you ‘win’.  So far too many ‘arguments’  get treated as some sort of conflict, a conflict that needs to be ‘won’ by proving one’s own point of view to be the ‘right’ point of view.  Sadly, insecurity often drives people to believe that the only way to be proven ‘right’ is by pointing to someone else as being ‘wrong’ (this often becomes intertwined with the irrational fear that admitting to your own mistakes causes your penis to fall off).  Those who are subject to this confusion usually collect what they perceive to be the Holy Grail of arguments:  the endgame.  The verbal equivalent of checkmate.  The Statement With Which There Is No Arguing.  Sometimes, they’re quite effective (“You’re not a woman, so you can’t possibly understand”), but usually they’re just sad and transparent (“I’m not going to pander to your demands of sourcing information on such cases”).  In any case, they all just indicate that someone has either run out of ideas, or they have realized that their position is indefensible but find themselves emotionally unable to abandon it.  Some people have a very hard time letting go of an idea once they have embraced it.

One of my favorite Professors at college explained scientific theory thusly:  “Start with an idea.  Then do everything in your power to punch holes in that idea.  If it stands up to that onslaught, hand the idea to all your colleagues and have them do everything in their power to punch holes in it.  If your idea also stands up to that onslaught, then you might – just might – be on to something.”  I took that explanation to heart, and I apply it to every new idea that comes my way.  Upon first encountering an idea, I scrutinize it and decide whether to embrace or reject it.  Now – if you are the person who happened to present that idea to me, and if you (for whatever reason) wish for me to re-examine my initial decision about the idea, then you would be well advised to give me a reason to do so.  If you are unwilling (or unable) to bring anything to the table aside from your initial idea, don’t be surprised when I fail to take either you or your ideas seriously.  I do not – and will not – apologize for this behavior on my part.  I feel that it is every thinking being’s right and duty to question ideas.  Unquestioned ideas are dangerous.  They are the stuff of which tyranny is made.  Even – especially – tyranny of the self-imposed variety.

When I attended Oxford, a classmate and friend of mine took a class on Parliamentary Debate.  The class divided in half and debated a variety of issues, and they opened up a couple of their debates to the general public.  I attended these public debates, and they were vastly entertaining and informative.  The topics of debate were chosen carefully, so that there would be as little ‘right vs. wrong’ as possible.  The idea was to teach a set of skills, not to prove a point.  Debate is pretty much just formal argument.  It is a competition, with a winner and a loser.  A debate is not won, however, by proving oneself  ‘right’ or ‘correct’, nor by proving one’s opponent ‘wrong’ or ‘incorrect’.  Either of these, given the nature of debate, is impossible to do.  The way a debate is won is by presenting your own case more effectively than your opponents present their case.  An argument is ‘won’ (if there absolutely has to be winning involved) the same way.  It is not ‘won’ by mindlessly repeating your initial statement.  It is not ‘won’ by mindlessly contradicting the statements of those who disagree with you.  It is not ‘won’ by asking someone else to back up your statements for you.  And it is definitely not ‘won’ by failing to present a case at all.

Locating Atlantis

Like most people, I have a ridiculously large collection of bookmarks saved in my browser of choice (Firefox, if you care).  To be honest, a noteworthy amount of them are sites that are rarely visited (some only once), but that contain something that is just too damned interesting and/or useful.

Among my large collection, however, there are a number that compose my Usual Haunts.  You know – the half-dozen or so sites that I visit pretty much every day.  Strange Maps (always entertaining and informative) is one such site, and I suggest you add it to your list of usual haunts (if it isn’t already on it).  Anyway, today I visited Strange Maps and encountered this post, about Athanasius Kircher, and a map he drew of Atlantis:

(Do visit the post linked above.  It includes the original image, depicting the entirety of the page from which this map was clipped.  It’s in Latin, but a translation can be found in the comments.  The comments at Strange Maps are always worth reading.)

You’ll notice that Kircher’s map is ‘upside-down’ by today’s standards.  This is a relative thing, of course.  The convention of upward=northward is a fairly young one.

Anyway, I had some time on my hands (a very rare commodity these days), so I thought I’d have some fun.  Using GIMP, I clipped and rotated Kircher’s map, then laid it over an image saved from Google Earth, just to see what I would see:

Holy crap!  I found Atlantis!

Alright.  But still – it looks cool.  And if any adventurous divers find anything in the area, I’d appreciate a nominal finder’s fee (the undersea landforms in the southern peninsula look especially promising for vast treasures and ancient mysteries).

I think the most remarkable thing about this map, though, is what it tells us about Kircher’s geographic awareness and cartographic skill.  Look closely, and you’ll see that he did a fine job of placing Mount Pico.  His knowledge of landforms west of Atlantis needed some work, but I’m willing to forgive him.  It was the 17th century, after all.

From Stump to Stove

We eat rather well around our house.  And by that I mean good, organic, healthy food.  We buy a share in a local farm every year, which provides all of our vegetables (in season).  We get our meat through a share at another local farm.  We buy our milk (raw) and eggs from small farms a few miles up the road.  The overwhelming majority of the balance of our diet comes from one of the nearby co-ops or farmers’ markets.

Now, it should not be thought that we have gone completely earthy-crunchy.  I drink soda.  We eat ice cream.  We eat junk food, and we drink cheap booze.  For the most part, though, our diet is a healthy one.  Not because we are fanatics about it, but simply because it’s a good thing to do (also, because we’re lucky enough to live in an area where this can be done at a reasonable cost).  Our boy is growing up healthy and strong, we all feel pretty good these days, and we know that our consumption is provided for without undue hardship for the planet.

My wife and I are both firm believers in the idea of minimizing the number of steps from ground to table.  The idea is that minimizing the steps also minimizes the actual consumptive cost of whatever you eat.  For example, the bulk of our food (in volume as well as variety) takes 3 steps from ground to table.  A local farmer harvests/slaughters/collects/milks it, they hand it directly to us, and we put it on the table.  The only way we could lessen our impact on the planet would be to grow our food ourselves.  My wife has dreams of this.  Personally, I don’t think it’ll ever happen, but you don’t need to hear that argument.

Now compare this with food we get from a supermarket (we do get some).  We’re probably talking about a minimum of 5 steps here, upward to 30 steps or more.  And the more processed the food gets, the more steps it takes.  The distance it must travel affects this, also.  And the problem with this is that each step costs something.  Usually energy.  Usually in the form of petroleum consumption.  This is why minimizing the steps is important.  It’s just plain good for everyone and everything.  So the phrase ‘From Ground to Table’ comes up a lot in these parts.

This all came up in a discussion I had this afternoon with a logger I know (Jake).  With the economy being in the shape it is, Jake has shifted a portion of his time and energy into firewood production.  It wouldn’t be his first choice (there’s more money in cutting large trees for sawmills) but it pays the bills and it’s virtually recession-proof.  As an added bonus, the process is good for the forest.  And, in much the same way that procuring local food minimizes our impact on the planet, procuring local fuel is just plain good for all of us.  Just think about all the energy that has to get consumed to get oil to our houses just so that we can consume energy.  Even if you think you’re doing your part: my sister-in-law has a pellet stove – I wonder how many steps are needed to get those pellets to her stove?  If you get your cordwood from Jake (or your own local equivalent), though, we get back to 3 steps.

They say that a cord of firewood produces the same amount of heat as 100-150 gallons of heating oil (the 50-gallon range is due to many variables, not least of which is the particular wood being burned).  Jake told me today that his total petroleum consumption to produce a cord of firewood (including his drive to the woods from his house in the morning, as well as the drive to deliver the cordwood) is about 5 gallons, give or take.  Looked at in the worst possible light, he’d still be producing more than 10 times the energy he’s consuming.  And what Jake’s doing is 100% sustainable.

The phrase ‘From Ground to Table’, while literal in many cases, need not always be so in order to make a meaningful point.  The idea is that living according to that simple rule makes everybody’s life better (especially your own).  This is why it gets talked about so much these days.  To complement it, I’d like to see the phrase ‘From Stump to Stove’ get added to the lexicon.  Again, not to mean simply buying wood from Jake (although that would be a good thing to do), but to be smarter and more thoughtful about our energy consumption.  Do we really need that extra 2 degrees on the thermostat?  Would that windmill farm really be so much worse to look at?  Should we really be investing in drilling for more oil, or should we be building a smart grid instead?  Should we be running nuclear power plants?  What about biomass plants?

Which brings me nicely to a close.  There’s a proposal out there to build a biomass plant here in our town.  The arguments are getting heated (no pun intended), but I’ll save that discussion for a future post.

The Wave

Just spent a remarkable amount of time (more than an hour) watching the video describing Google’s new idea-soon-to-be-released,  Google Wave.  It’s fascinating to watch – well worth the investment of your time.  If Google really pays off on this concept (and there’s no real reason to believe that they won’t), it’s going to seriously change the online landscape.   Par for the course for Google, I suppose.

Anyway, watch the video, if you have the time:

The Shape of Files to Come

Part 1:  How Our Thinking Shapes The File (or Why Still Use A Relational Database?)

Every now and again, the GIS conversation turns to the subject of shapefiles  (more quickly after a few drinks – see here, here, here, here, here, here and especially here),  and it always arrives at the same question:  What next?

Make no mistake – the shapefile is a goner.  The reasons for this are many and various.  And valid.  The shapefile no longer suits the needs of the GIS community (this was not always the case.  The shapefile – much like the horse and buggy and the Apple IIe – once got the job done with some aplomb).

The burning question, though, is:  Where to from here?  Put another way, the shapefile cannot simply be erased – it needs to be replaced.  And the question is:  Replaced with what?

Let me begin by making it perfectly clear – beyond doubt – that I cannot answer this question.  As a matter of fact, I am so far away from the answer to this question that I won’t even make up an answer (although it is tempting).   I have heard compelling arguments for a number of ideas, and I have to admit that I’m leaning toward databases as the next logical evolutionary step.  I would explain my feelings on this matter to you, but I have not yet reached the point where I have carved my opinion in stone, so I feel compelled to remain uncommitted.  I will, however, elucidate the two strongest of my personal pet peeves in regard to shapefiles (the first today.  The next in Part 2).  I think you’ll see why I’m leaning toward databases.

Let’s face it, folks – as a species, we’re pretty two-dimensional thinkers.  When we attempt to wrap our brains around an idea, our initial step is usually an attempt to flatten it as much as we can.  Those of us in the mapping world are especially prone to this, both because maps are traditionally two-dimensional, but also because we like our ideas in a form we can fold up and stick in our pocket.   So when it came time to attach a database to a map, it stood to reason that the database so attached would be relational.  Relational databases are about as 2D as you can get – hell, they’re practically nothing more than spreadsheets.  Nothing but columns and rows.  X and Y.  Picture it something like this:

Nice and simple.  Label the rows and the columns, and we can then populate a grid like this with pertinent data.  If we wanted to represent a surface, we could populate the grid with z-values, or elevation, resulting in something like this:

Again – nice and simple.  And – apparently – three-dimensional.  But only apparently.  A surface like this (alternately, a terrain) is, actually, what we often refer as 2.5D.  A cute way of saying faux-3D.

Now – don’t get me wrong.  There’s a time and a place for faux-3D.  A drawing of a cube is a good example.  A 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional object.  Easy to produce, easy to understand, and you can fold it up and stick it in your pocket.  As an added bonus, we map dorks really get the concept of representing 3D in 2D – it’s what mapping’s all about.  Or – more accurately – it’s what mapping was all about up until fairly recently.

But now we have computers that are perfectly capable of representing three dimensions in three dimensions (or more).  So why are we still using a two-dimensional file system?  Instead of simply draping a terrain on a surface, why not represent the entirety of the area in question, in three dimensions:

Or, to put it with prettier pictures, why use our data to produce something like this:

When we could instead produce something like this:

The same 2D space, now fully represented in a 3^rd dimension.  I hope I don’t have to enumerate the reasons why this would be a good thing to do.

Now, I know that relational databases can simulate a three-dimensional dataset (joins and relates, anyone?).  But on their best day they can only simulate three dimensions, they can’t accurately represent them.  And since we live in a world in which multi-dimensional databases are not only possible but accessible, I ask again:  Why Still Use A Relational Database?

Next:  Part 2:  How The File Shapes Our Thinking.

Pixel City

While wading through the interwebs on my Google machine earlier this evening, I stumbled across a multi-part (15, I think) blog post by a guy named Shamus Young.  The posts describe his creation of a cityscape built of code.  The end result is a Windows screensaver that builds a city from scratch every time it runs, then tours you around the city.

I have to admit that I was riveted to the posts (here’s the first entry).  The process is fascinating, and Shamus’ writing is rather entertaining.  I give him 50 bonus points for using the phrase “cutting-edge Luddite”.  Well worth the read.

And, of course, I have already installed the screensaver in my Vista machine.  It’s the first time in years that I’ve actually used a screensaver.

Here’s a YouTube video Shamus put together: