Donald Ferguson Blog

I spent a little more time looking at Jupiter tonight. It is amazingly easy to find. The interactive sky charts on the Web give the direction and elevation. Once you know that, just look for a really, really bright star. The hardest part is finding Jupiter in the spotting telescope. It is awkward trying to line the telescope up with the target. I have to use branches and tree tops to orient it.

My kids and girlfriend also saw it through the telescope. They thought it was cool. Finally.

I could only see to the two main bands although my girlfriend thinks she saw five. I wonder if there is some weirdness due to the telescope focus and my contact lens prescription. I have a “monovision” prescription, and my right eye (dominant) is set for distance. I have trouble using the eyepiece with my left eye, which has a reading prescription.

The Barlow did not help. The 2X magnification results in a shimmer effect due to the atmosphere. The filters did not help either. I tried all of the color filters. I noticed that my eye seemed to get saturated at times. I tried looking a little to the side and also using the polarizing filter. Neither technique helped.

The four moons were clearly visible. They are much brighter than Saturn’s moons. We tend to carry around a solar system mental model based on the models we saw in school. These models show the planets evenly space, which is not realistic. A standard measure of distance is the “astronomical unit” AU. The Earth is 1 AU from the Sun. Jupiter is between 5 and 5.5 AUs from the Sun, and Saturn is between 9 AUs and 10.1 AUs. Assuming that the planets are all on the same side of the Sun and at their closest, it is 4 AUs to Jupiter and 8 AUs to Saturn, obviously twice as far. As an aside, the distance from Saturn’s orbit to Uranus’ orbit is about the same as the distance from the Sun to Saturn.

A good approximation of what I saw is http://donald-ferguson.net/Files/JupiterMoons7-25-2008-11-30-11%20PM.jpg. This is a good approximation of the positions of the moons as well as how Jupiter itself looked.

My father died last Saturday. He was quite a guy. His obit is below. My favorite role my father had in town was Tree Warden. We had the best behaved trees in all of New England.

http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x518443320/Donald-Ferguson-Hanson-official-and-retired-newsman-dies

Donald Francis Ferguson, 74, of Hanson, formerly of Rockland, died Sunday, July 20, 2008, at home after a short illness. A son of the late Angus and Sarah (McGonagle) Ferguson, he was born in Rockland, Jan. 12, 1934. He was a graduate of Rockland High School and Boston University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in the school of management. He was a member of Delta Sigma Pi. Mr. Ferguson had served in the U.S. Marine Corps and was discharged as a sergeant. Mr. Ferguson was a former president and CEO of Howard Tag Company, Ray Brothers, Inc., Douglas Print Company, Dexter Print Company and Brandjten and Kluge, a distributor of printing presses. He had been the Rockland correspondent for The Enterprise in Brockton for 29 years, the Hanson correspondent to The Enterprise for two years and the Rockland correspondent for the Associated newspapers. He had been the chairman of the Rockland Centennial Commission and the chairman of the Hanson Housing Authority for 25 years, where the community center bears his name. He was a Hanson town constable and special police officer and had been the Hanson Tree Warden, Cemetery Commissioner, a member of the Council on Elder Affairs, a member and former chairman of the Hanson Democratic Town Committee and a charter member of the Hanson Lions Club. He is survived by his wife, Barbara M. (Vradenburgh) Ferguson; five sons, Dr. Donald Ferguson of South Salem, N.Y., Robert Ferguson of Newburyport, Dr. Michael Ferguson of Ipswich, Roderick Ferguson of Hanover and Rev. Dr. Thomas Ferguson of Madison, Wis.; eight grandchildren, Alec, Chuck, Margaret, Kaitlin, Kristen, Evelyn, Catherine and Malcolm; one brother, Angus Stark Ferguson of Rockland; and three sisters, Joan Senecal of Somerset, Esther LaFamme of Rockland and Lauren Frame of Braintree. He was the brother of the late Elaine Angely.

I got my first look at Jupiter tonight. I was concerned about the sight lines at the new home. I thought that I would have to drive down to the north end of Lake Truesdale, about 1/4 of a mile away, to get a clear line. I saw the Moon when in Ridgefield picking up Chinese food. I had observed on the interactive charts that Jupiter tracked a couple of hours behind the Moon. I would be able to see Jupiter if I could see the Moon. It turns out that there are two clear sight lines from the front walkway. One is mostly SE and the other is SW. The Moon was clearly visible in the SE sight line at 8PM. This meant that Jupiter would be visible at 11:30 PM.

Finding Jupiter was easy. Jupiter was the only visible “star” in its area of the sky. The sky was not very dark; almost no stars were visible. There was Moon light and it seemed liked some reflection off of high clouds. The www.cleardarksky.com prediction was for completely clear sky, above average Transparency and average Seeing. There was supposed to be near total darkness at 11:30 PM.  This prediction did not seem to reflect what I actually saw.

I could see the two largest cloud bands. I could not see any colors. Jupiter was totally white like my observations of Saturn and Mars. None of the filters seemed to help. The Great Red Spot was not transiting until 1:15 AM and I decided not to stay up.

The moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were easily visible. I confirmed my observation with www.skyandtelescope.com, which has a JavaScipt plugin that plots the moons’ positions.

Tonight was my first attempt. I did not spend much time looking. I will try a more systematic use of filters, Barlow, etc and will diagram and save the JavaScipt utility images on later attempts.

I used the interactive sky chart at www.skyandtelescope.com to plot the Andromeda galaxy. I am dying to see a galaxy. I should be able to get clear views in August.

I thought that astronomy would be easier in the summer. The warmth is helpful. There seem to be many, many fewer clear nights. The long days and lingering light also hamper using my telescope.

I just moved from Somers to South Salem. We live in the Lake Truesdale area, which is very nice. I have turned into a bit of a wuss. The lake seems ikcy to me. I found a fish head and now call the lake “Lake Fish Head.”

I used to swim in lakes all the time. I was on a swim team when I was teenager. Our team swam in a lake but all other teams practiced in pools. When we had a home meet, we would take bread crumbs and lure fish from the Lilly pads into the swim lanes to freak the other team out.

We now live near Ridgefield, CT. Somers and Yorktown Heights tend to be a little homogeneous populations of people of European descent. These towns are Ellis Island compared to Ridgefield, however. I have seen one Asian, but it turn out she worked in a nail salon. If you are Hispanic and driving in Ridgefield, you are on lawnmower.

How do you know you have moved into a new house? Running the “Where would my girlfriend put ‘X’” algorithm works. This means that things are out of packing boxes and into their new homes. I managed to find a plate and cup last night but could not find the silverware. I finally had to ask where the silverware was. My girlfriend responded, “In the tin Dora the Explorer bucket under the glass witch’s ball.” Either my girlfriend has a really new algorithm for putting things away or we are not moved in.

I visited Tokyo last week and gave a keynote at the Japan Java User Group.  I have posted a copy of my presentation to my site. I tried to focus on the evolving world of WS-*, .NET, PHP, etc and Java (application servers). Comments are welcome.

The trip was interesting. It felt very much like I still worked for IBM. My host was the same colleague/friend that hosted me on all previous trips. He translated during my presentations and one-on-one meetings. I went out to dinner with my friends from IBM.

One IBMer told me that “He still considered me a friend, and hoped I felt the same way.” The answer is YES, and this is true for all of my friends from IBM and Microsoft. All I did was change jobs.

One IBMer also told me that his management told him not to list me as a reference in his promotion package. My endorsement would not be well received by management. I doubt and fervently hope this is not the case. I have written recommendation letters and been references for several promotion packages since I have left IBM.

The friend who hosted me and translated for me reminded of a funny story. I was presenting at an IBM SOA forum for customers and my friend was introducing me. Since the conference was a funded event for customers, IBM arranged a simultaneous translator. I had an earpiece to allow me to understand any questions from the audience.  But, this also meant that I could finally understand my friend’s introduction for me. He stated that “Don always looks mad but he really is not.”

I guess this is true. People ask me to smile. I tried it once. It is not everything it is cracked to be.

This entry does not have any end-to-end theme.

I was razzing my girlfriend this morning about Harry Potter. I asserted that Dumbledore’s bad experience with Berti Bots Every Flavor Beans was a foreshadowing of Rowling’s description in the final book of Dumbledore’s life. Dumbledore had a bad experience with the beans early in life. He swore off the beans but not off candy. He still liked and ate Acid Pops.

This foreshadows the revelation that Dumbledore sought power early in life. He swore off of executive power, for example becoming Minister of Magic, after his pursuit lead to the death of his sister. Dumbledore did achieve an alternate form of power by becoming Hogwart’s Headmaster.

My girlfriend told me that  I am an idiot (She is just figuring this out?). She said that my theory would get a C in any freshman English class. Perhaps it would, but what better way to start they day than an argument. Anything else I do today seems reasonable.

I am listening to the book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature  by StevePinker. I think that a constrained, structured human language would make an ideal approach to  enable business/model driven development. One of the key ideas from the book is Conceptual Metaphor. Conceptual Metaphor applies an observation in one domain to reason about another. The book that I studied in graduate school for VLSI was Introduction to VLSI Systems by Mead and Conway. The text provide a high level explanation of circuits through the analogy of water flowing through pips (Maybe the wacky senator from Alaska was right. The Internet is a set of pipes).

Another topic in Pinker’s book is patterns for how we create new words. There are many interesting examples. Analogy/metaphor is one. The creation of spam is an example, coming from the Monty Python skit about a restaurant serving “Spam, spam, lobster, spam, spam.” This analogy applies a set of mostly unpalatable things that also contains something palatable to mail inboxes. Inbox is another example of how words form. This pattern applies operators to words and syllables. In this case the “+” operator applied to two more basic concepts. There examples of the “cut” operator and the plus operator. An example is the recent word “preheritance,” which describes that act of giving money to heirs before death.

There are some more basic patterns. One example is creating a word based on a sound fragment. Snub and many others words come from the “snort” or looking down the nose at something.

I hypothesize that:

1. Various business domains can have a concise and precise business vocabulary.
2. Business rules and policies explain what could, cannot, must, etc happen using nouns and verbs.
3. Conceptual Metaphor templates, word formation operators, etc can define the policies.

I may pursue this if/when I retire from industry and teach.

Just some random diary entries today.

I like watching The National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, etc.  There has been an increase in the number of shows about future catastrophic natural disasters. This increase has occurred over the past couple of years. These disasters are going to wipe out humanity. Examples include a super volcano under Yellowstone National Park and the ever present threat of asteroids.  The interesting new twist is a recent set of shows on what the earth would be like “after humans.” I think the recent book “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman started this theme.

I have a few observations about this trend in television programming. First, why are some of these shows on The History Channel? The History Channel had evolved into “The Rampant Speculation Channel” and focused on wild speculation about what happened in the past, e.g. concepts in “The Da Vinci Code.” It is bad enough that The History Channel speculates about what probably did not happen. Does the HISTORY channel really need to speculate on what probably will not happen any time soon?

Second, these shows freak my kids out. The descriptions of how devastating the disasters will be are graphic and apocalyptic. I have to keep assuring my kids that the world is not going to end any time soon. The youngest points out that an asteroid did kill the dinosaurs and could kill us. How do you explain the concept that the event is unlikely to affect her if the average time between strikes is 50 million years?  If these TV channels are going to scare my kids, they can at least do something useful. End the show by stating that the only way to prevent an asteroid strike is to eat your vegetables.

Third, all of these shows on how the planet is trying to kill us have changed my perspective on global warming. My belief has changed to “The more global warming, the better.” The planet is trying to kill us. We need to get it first. The best defense is a good offense.

Finally, did the people who write these shows study any math at all? The shows state that asteroid strikes happen about once every N million years. The last one was approximately N million years ago. Therefore, we are all going to die tomorrow.  Thinking like this is how Las Vegas makes money. I need to keep rolling the dice because “I am due.”

I have a business trip to India at the end of May and am extremely excited. I went once before and loved India and the people. I have taken many trips during my career. I like to remember the trips by one funny incident or sentence that I say or hear. This makes recounting the trip much less boring than uncle Leo’s slide show to the family after Thanksgiving dinner. An example is “You can’t toast with crabapple juice. It will kill you.” Sometimes India is a bit surreal to Americans, or at least me. There were dozens of possible sentences. I thought that I had found the sentence on the first night.

My IBM colleagues and I arrive in New Delhi late at night. We were going to fly to Bangalore the following morning. We stayed in a hotel in Delhi the first night. The hotel was excellent. I wish I could remember the name so that I could recommend it. My inability to remember the name is probably irrelevant, however. The hotel is almost surely out of business due to me.

My colleagues and I had a quick meal in the 24 hour restaurant. The buffet and service was excellent. We went up to our rooms after dinner and some conversation. I was able to fall asleep for a while but woke up after about two hours. I could not get back to sleep. I was very tired and had vertigo from the long plane flight. My thinking was too woolly to due any work. (This statement must seem strange to people who know me. They think my thinking is terrible most of the time.)

I decide to watch TV. There were several shows in languages that I did not understand.  I found CNN International and watched it for a while. The stories started repeating after an hour. I decided to look for another channel. I found Discovery India, which was showing a leopard walking through a jungle. I like the Discovery channel and like shows on animals. I decided to watch Discovery India.

The show’s image then switched to an apartment building complex. This seemed odd. It turns out that leopards were killing and eating the residents. Adults were too big and the leopard was most killing CHILDREN. Leopards had kills and eaten 83 people in the Mumbai are in the previous year – 83 people in Mumbai alone.

I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing.  I am finding out about killer leopards on the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night. Imagine what would happen if bears were killing people outside of Chicago. CNN would be running “Bear CRISIS day 11.” There would be exploding graphics and loud music. I cannot even imagine what Stephen Colbert’s Threat Down would be like (www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=68809).

The authorities decided to do something about the leopard killing people. So far, so good. The authorities hire a hunter to kill the leopard. So far, so good. The hunter stakes out a goat in the courtyard and then perches in a balcony overlooking the courtyard. Excellent. The hunter gathers witnesses to the attacks. This seems a bit odd. Are they going to pick the leopard out of a lineup?

A leopard starts to cautiously creep into the courtyard and approach the goat. The witnesses start arguing about whether or not this is the leopard they saw kill the children. Is it the right size? Does it have the right spot pattern? You’ve got to be kidding me. I am American. My dad was a Marine. Dad felt that there was not problem that he could not solve with a rifle, shouting and perhaps properly sized explosives. I being talking to the TV. “Kill the leopard. Shoot the leopard! SHOOT THE %*^@% LEOPARD. IT’S EATING CHILDREN!” This went on for a while. The hunter eventually shot the leopard. The goat was pretty happy. It was the happiest goat I had ever seen.

I can only imagine what the guests in adjacent hotel rooms thought. One of my IBM colleagues tells a story about waking up to find rats in his room. IBMers did not stay that hotel again. I am sure that the IBMers told stories to their industry colleagues. This was bad for business for the hotel. I imagined a conversation at the water cooler that went something like this.

“India was great but you have to be careful about the hotel you choose. I had rats in my room.”

“Pff. That’s nothing. Leopards were killing and eating people in my hotel.”

 My hotel is probably out of business. My not being able to remember the name and recommend is probably the least of the hotel’s problems

My oldest daughter is in 6th grade, which starts to have health education. They are currently studying the negative health effects of smoking.  The recent homework was a two page summary of the dangers of smoking with blank spaces for terms taught in class. Basically, a “Health Class Mad-Libs.”

It was an interesting assignment. Some of the blank spaces were for terms like “bad breath” and “smelly clothes.” Other spaces were for “cilia” and “aveoli.”  I thought this was an interesting set of terms.

There were paragraphs on lung cancer, emphysema, etc. OK — so far, so good. Then it got weird. There was a sentence stating that “Some of the other adverse health effects of smoking are “bad breath,” “smelly clothes” and “death” (emphasis added).” You had to put the quoted terms in the blank spaces. I was a bit surprised that the school felt the need to tell my daughter that death is bad for your health.

Well, my daughter did something that indicated this might have been necessary. For some reason at that night’s dinner, she decided to

1. Scotch tape together two straws end-to-end.
2. Put one end of the straw into her soda bottle and the other end into her nose.
3. See what would happen if she sniffed.

 Maybe she needs some basic health education after all.

I had two other observations:

1. The homework stated that smoking is the number one cause of preventable death.  I think they meant premature death. I was not aware that death is preventable. Otherwise, I would start smoking and then stop to live forever.
2. The homework really could have been much shorter and simply stated, “If you start smoking your father will kill you to save us all a lot of future trouble.”

IBM SWG has a product divisioned named Rational. Please not how I phrased the previous sentence. If I were talking about WebSphere, I would have said “IBM SWG has a WebSphere division.” Saying that IBM SWG has a “Rational” division has strange connotations. I tried to use terms like “The chief architect of Rational” instead of the “Rational Chief Architect.” The latter would imply that the other chief architects were irrational. I am saying that this wasn’t the case, but using “chief architect from Rational” went over a little better with team.

CA has a brand named “Wily.” Now I work in a company where I have to avoid saying “the wily chief architect.” I cannot wait until my next job. I am going to look for a company with a “cunning” product line or a “inegnious” brand.