I remember when back in my collegiate days we were given email accounts. This was a fairly big deal then (I only got one because I strayed for the lib. arts curriculum and took some Engineering classes), and all email (as well as most other things you could do on the computer) was sent and received through terminal access, with a wicked-awesome green on black text interface (yes, I'm that old). Some of my friends had PCs in their dorm rooms (blazing 286s! 1MB of RAM!), but those were few and far between, and there was certainly no ubiquitous network like there is now. Right -- blah blah -- old man -- had to dial up hill both ways to get a 2400 baud connection -- blah blah.

Anyway, when you would access Usenet (old-school discussion forums, still around but way superseded) from one of the terminals and go to post, it would pop up a warning message that said:

This program posts news articles to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.

Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? [y/n]

Ah, the good old days. You kids get off of my tubes!

Anyway, the whole point was to get to ye olde warning and contrast it with what I'm about to say:

The weather sucks.

(Your complaint about something as prosaic as the weather will cost the Internet hundreds if not thousands of dollars to distribute. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this [y/n])

Since we returned from South Carolina, it has rained every single day. In fact, Western Pennsylvania has received three and a half inches of rain, the average overall for the month of June, in just that last five days. Everything's damp. Woodworking and painting projects are all on hold. People whose basements have been dry forever have water. It just flat out sucks. (Note that flooding, real natural disasters are far worse than "suck," and this is in no way a comparison to those.)

But I just felt like whining to the Intehrnets about something that people have whined about for millenia.

Maddie got full braces on today, and of course it hurts. I've never had braces, but it doesn't mean I can't sympathize. straightTooth!Joy did have them, so she knows all about it. Hearing them commiserate with each other over the pain reminded me of a phenomenon that I've grow so used to these days that by the time it's done, I just forget about it.

For those who don't know, almost twenty years ago I snapped the tibia and fibula of my left leg in half. Yes, it was a very long time ago, but, as the doctor said at the time, "It will probably always bother you." He was right. Usually, it's not an issue, but every couple of weeks it gets weird. It happened once when I was driving on the way home from South Carolina this past weekend.

For a few moment, for whatever reason, all I can feel in my left leg is the break point. The flesh around it seems to be jello, just quivering around the bone. At the point of the break, it feels almost like there's a guillotine blade through it, and that the leg is just held together by the surface tension of the liquid inside it sitting against the metal. If I were to make a sudden move, the bottom half of the leg would just fall off. It's a horrible feeling, and if I'm not careful when it comes on, it can make me feel physically ill.

Studiously ignoring it (in a Zen-like fashion, i.e. actually not thinking about it, as opposed to concentrating on not thinking about which doesn't work and only makes it worse) makes the feeling fade away in a few minutes. And then, I forget about it.

Of course, that makes it the ideal kind of thing to write about, so if I never mention it to anyone, it won't be lost in the mists of time. So now you know way more about phantom trauma pain than you ever wanted to know!

Having just returned from a week on vacation, here is the ugly tourist's impression of each state we drove through.

South Carolina: Work Area Ahead? Uh oh. But wait! No lanes are blocked, the pylons are all to the side of the road, and the Work Area speed limit is 65 MPH. Rock on, South Carolina!

North Carolina: 70 MPH + no state troopers in sight = awesome.

Virginia: All the cops who weren't patrolling the roads in North and South Carolina and West Virginia had been rerouted here. The speed limit was 70 MPH, though, which was really plenty, so anyone who got nailed by the four score troopers we saw probably really deserved it. Also, really nice rest stops.

West Virginia: Oh the things you'll only see here. A 65 MPH highway around curves and over hills with stop lights every couple of miles. Pay phones along the highway. Pay phones?! Older female teen (with "MIKE" tattoo on shoulder!) making out with younger male teen in line at fast food joint, said male teen sporting a row of very missing front teeth. A cow riding in the back of a beaten up powder blue pickup truck. Full sized cow. Highway speeds. Wow.

Pennsylvania: Welcome home! Here's the first lane-blocking road construction you've encountered in your 1,500 miles of driving this week. Where are the workers? Don't know. So why are there miles of lane blocked off? Not sure. Are they torn up or something? Nope. So why can't I drive there? Bungholes.

At least I can stop at the grocery store and get a couple bottles of wine on my way home... oh wait. Can't do that either. Stay classy, Pennsylvania.

A strange and wonderful thing has happened to me, and I'm not sure why or how. For a period of time from around 1990 through 1995, I enjoyed extremely cold weather. I mean really cold, with high winds, etc. I liked being out in it. Not sure why. Over the next decade, though, the effect faded until the present, where I find myself ambivalent about cold weather. I can take it or leave it, although I've noticed that my tolerance for cooler indoor temperatures (60-65 F) is still broader than most folks, as in:

"Are you chilly?"
"Nope."
"I'm freaking freezing."
"Feels fine to me."

A little more history. The meteorological bane of my existence, like that of many people, is humidity. When it's really humid, I just can't stand it. Couple it with very warm temperatures (88+ F, don't laugh you people from Texas; that's "hot" to us Pennsylvanians), and it makes me miserable. The humidity makes me feel like I'm wearing a mask made of jello, and engenders the same need to surpress imminent violence that dealing with someone being purposefully ignorant and obstructive (or dealing with beauracrats, but I repeat myself) usually brings.

The wonderful thing, though, is that this summer, I seem to have been reborn without this aversion to heat and humidity. It has disappeared from my being. I first noticed it several weeks ago when Western Pennsylvnia went through a hot spell (high humidity and 90+ temps). I expected to be miserable. But, when I went outside I found it quite pleasant. I knew the forecast, and a part of me could tell that it was both very hot and very humid. I checked the thermometer outside the kitchen window just to be sure. It was, in fact, the dread combination. The feeling, however, was completely different.

It was nice out. I liked it. And for the last several weeks, the effect has persisted. I think it might be permanent.

What has brought this welcome change? Like I said before, I don't know how or why. It's probably physiological, which is just another way of saying I'm getting old. It might be time to get a condo in Florida and buy a golf cart to putt around in. Whatever the case, though, I figure that this gives me a good 20% more of the year that I can enjoy without hiding inside, so I've got that going for me.

I was thinking the other day about what it takes to be friends with someone, and consequently, what it takes for a person to become your enemy. There are a host of socio-economic and cultural factors at play (if you don't speak the same language it's not going to work too well), as well as the question of equivalent intelligence (the super smart just can't be bosom buddies with the colossally stoopid), but once you pass those basic deal breakers it falls into a continuum of "What makes you happy?" and "What makes you angry/sad?" And so, I present to you my extremely geeky chart about personal compatibility. Of course, it begs the question "Is it any wonder that someone who would create such a chart has no friends?"




The horizontal axis of the chart represents the sorts of things that make you happy. The vertical are things that make you angry and/or sad. The graph shows how much your list of happy/sad things correspond to those of another person. If there is a high correspondence, it pushes in the positive direction (right, up). A low or negative correspondence pushes it negative (left, down). So, to evaluate the chart and state the obvious, if you and another person have a high degree of correspondence between things that make you both happy and sad/angry, you have a great chance of becoming friends.

On the opposite end of the scale, you have someone who has essentially flipped lists with you: the things that make you sad or angry bring them pleasure, and the things that they enjoy disgust you. Taken to its extreme, they will become your mortal enemy a la Superman and Lex Luthor.

The two other quadrants could be classified in a variety of ways, but because I'm lazy and did the first thing that came to mind they turned out as Allies and Buds. You can spend time with someone who shares your dislikes when you are working to ameliorate the things that you don't like. For example, despite the fact that few of the people you or I work with share all of our likes, we all mutually dislike being poor and homeless and thus band together as allies in work, for the purpose of making money. This suggests that if you are looking for someone as an ally in a cause, it will be effective to look for and appeal to mutual negatives.

In the "Buds" category would be people who you can have fun with, sometimes. Sometimes they go too far (crossing items over from the good list to the bad list), or are into things that you just don't go for. But, while the conditions are right, you can have a good time hanging out. My gut tells me that as we get older, the amount of time we are willing to waste on people who fall in this category for us diminishes greatly, as we fill our lives instead with allies and, more importantly, friends who match us on both axes.

This chart might also be instructive for political analysis, especially with the recent focus on political candidates associates. Who do they call their friends? Who are their allies? Who are their enemies? Who are they just willing to hang out with, but don't let into their inner circle? You cannot trust what a politician says (which doesn't mean that everything they say is untrue, simply that you cannot evaluate its truth based on their say-so) about their own beliefs and stances. In fact, I would argue that as people who will wield some degree of power over the fates of others, it is our responsibility to not take them at their word.

So, look at the people they have called friends. What are their friends for and against? Most likely, the candidate will be as well. Look at their allies. You won't necessarily be able to infer anything about the likes, but you can certainly see the negative aspects that have brought them together. And, most instructive of all, who are their enemies? While we can be surface friends (call them "buds") with people from all walks of life, it is our true friends and those we have chosen as enemies that define us from an external perspective.

Not that I went anywhere. If you'll remember from last year, writing the first book effectively killed my blogging time. So, even though I managed the time way better on this book, The Hess Report was the first to suffer (I was also making a short animation and keeping up two other blogs). To show my good faith, I'm going to give you a threefur post: two brags, and one normal thing. First, the brags:

• The Essential Blender is the 3rd most popular book in Amazon.com's 3D category, despite its many reviews that point out the completely botched printing of the book. I'm still pissed about that, but what can you do? Once it's out of your hands, it's out of your hands. The top book in their 3D Graphics category is another Blender book (on which I was the technical editor), so that's cool all around and bodes well for the future.
• Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish now has its own page at Amazon and at the publisher (Focal Press). It should be out in September. The manuscript is done and turned over to Focal Press for editing and composition. The short animation that accompanies the book, The Beast, is in the process of final render and editing right now. I'm striving to get it done by next Monday.

And finally, the normal kind of Hess Report thing:

Phantom Buzz
I've noticed a strange phenomenon since I've begun to leave my cell phone on vibrate all the time. Personally, I hate hearing people's phones ring in public (to be honest, I hate it at home too), and so choose not to burden other people with my own ringing. That means putting the phone on vibrate and carrying it somewhere that I'll actually feel it, usually the front pants pocket or the breast pocket of an appropriate shirt. I know that a lot of guys carry it in a holster on their belts.

Maybe most dudes who do that (a lot of them) don't give it a second thought, but to me it seems like a substitute. It's like there's this vague notion that carrying technology on your hip grants you some kind of status or powers. Here's a hint: it can. You really want to be packing a .45 there. You know you do. A cell phone is a poor, pathetic substitute. Oh right, it's convenient to have it there. But guess what? It looks dumb. The only acceptable thing to carry on your hip in polite society is a sidearm. Period. Don't be a dork, guys. Man up. If you want something there, make it the real thing. Otherwise, keep it in your pocket like me. (Speaking of keeping it in your pocket, Kel-Tec makes a sweet little 9mm pocket gun.)

Back to the point, though. I've noticed that I often feel the phone buzzing, even when it isn't. I'll be walking along and feel the buzz in my pocket. I put my hand over the phone to confirm, and find that it was not ringing. Phantom buzz. Weird. I've talked to a couple of other people who have experienced the same thing.

My theory is that we have always felt sensations like this, probably for our whole lives. It's just part of the random goofiness of having a body made of flesh and controlled by electrical signals. But once we've been conditioned to recognize a certain buzzing sensation as significant, when our bodies do it normally/accidentally, we feel it as the phone ringing. That's weird.

I hope I grow out of it.

SMITH magazine does a contest called "Six Word Memoirs," in which you sum up your life pithily in six words only. Well, maybe pithily. I guess you're also supposed to assume that your life is over, otherwise, how is it a complete memoir?

Here's the link to this year's winners.

I'm guessing they're a hipster mag. Not really sure, as I've never read anything in it. Judging entirely superficially, though, I'd say that most stories in it are about how great it is to be Green, and how meeting someone really poor made you feel bad about your $100 shoes. Maybe I'll read something from there over the next week, just to see if I'm giving out bad info with no substantiation whatsoever.

Anyway, I saw the Six Word thing on slashdot, of all places, and of course, it made me try to think of mine.

Here it is:

"Want more of nothing but time."

I'd put it into their submission form, but I'm too busy burning oil and wishing destruction on my enemies today, and I think participating might give me a rash.

Wired magazine did the same thing but with general stories. I'm trying to think of a decent on of those.

The old saw of operant conditioning is: "Consistent Punishment/Random Reward".

When dealing with people, the punishment part seems to be fairly simple. If someone does something you would like to discourage, you need to make them regret it. Really though, that's not exactly the case. It's too much like vengeance. What you actually need to do is to make sure that they do no benefit from the behavior. That's a little trickier, as the benefit that someone -- child or adult -- receives from a certain behavior may not necessarily be what you would think. In order to effectively counter the behavior, you first have to determine what benefit the person receives from it.

The most immediate example I can think of is the child who is generally ignored by their parents. Positive behaviors only bring less attention. Negative behaviors, specifically dangerous or combative ones, will bring immediate and intense attention. In delivering this kind of attention (i.e. yelling in the grocery store, an extended rant, a backhand), the parent thinks they are dissuading the child from future behavior of the same type. They think that the kid is just being bad because they don't respect their authority enough/are a bad ass/whatever. In reality, the kid has been conditioned to understand that the only way they can receive the benefit of parental attention is through bad behavior. Which is what screws up kids like that so badly.

The point of the example, though, is that to deliver an effective deterrent, you need to determine what the benefit of the behavior is and remove it. It's not always easy to do.

On the other side of the equation is the reward, which is what got me thinking about this topic. I was wondering: at what frequency do rewards, even random ones, lose their effectiveness? Anything that is seen as a treat, by children or adults, can easily lose its "specialness" if had too often. Clearly, it is the law of diminishing returns in effect. Of course, it doesn't only apply to rewards and positive reinforcements. It applies to anything. And, there seems to be a kind of "refresh" button on the diminishing returns, allowing an enjoyment that has become passe to regain some of its former attraction if left alone for long enough.

This would make a great and very useful study for a post-grad student or department that deals with childhood development or adult behavior issues. The active question would be: "How often is too often?" For children at different developmental stages, what are the reward frequencies that will produce optimal outcomes and what are the frequencies that will produce a spoiled brat? The same holds true for adults: how often can we do something that feels "special" before it loses that fresh quality?

My guess is that it would fall along some kind of normal distribution, with most people in an age group clustering around a certain time value. I'm also going to guess that this will be fairly hard-wired, cutting through socioeconomic groups. Just a guess, though. I also wouldn't be surprised if a person's particular threshold for reward timing is linked to their ability to perceive patterns in data points. As soon as you are able to perceive the pattern in the reward structure, it becomes significantly less effective. Very small kids, say, two year olds, probably can't abstract the pattern even if a reward is given every other day. To them, it's still Surprise-o-Fun-Time when it happens. But kids just a few years older than that will begin abstract that to "it happens a couple times a week," and it loses it's glamor. Of course, this is going to vary with the scope of the reward, but that can be taken into account.

Really, once you get past the unintentional reward via the poorly thought out punishment, over-rewarding is the next biggest problem. The first grows adults that believe that they have to do wrong to get noticed. The second grows adults that believe that they are entitled to constant reward. Neither are really acceptable, and some concrete data on this would be a great tool for both parents and employers.