Sat, May 28, 2005
Collaborative Technologies Conference (CTC 2005), June 19-24 in NY #
The first Collaborative Technologies Conference (CTC 2005) will be held next month, June 19-24, at Pier Sixty at ChelseaPiers in NewYork. The lineup looks great, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on the advisory board. (ISE)
I'll be giving a talk entitled, "Patterns of High-Performance Collaboration (or How to Collaborate Without Really Trying)." I'll also be moderating two panels: one on lightweight tools and one on open source tools. While there's overlap between the two, they're certainly not equivalent concepts, and I think folks will be surprised by one participant on the lightweight panel in particular. (ISF)
I'll have more to say on the conference in the next few weeks. In the meantime, check out ArieannaFoley's very flattering interview with me on the conference blog. Also, if you're planning to register for the conference, feel free to use the BlueOxenAssociates discount code: MLBYCN01. Hope to see you all in NewYork next month! (ISG)
/events | Posted at 11:53am
Quality Korean Barbecue in Los Angeles #
I'm about to wax poetic about Korean barbecue, but first, I need to clear up a misconception. There is much, much more to Korean food than barbecue. The reason there are so many Korean barbecue restaurants in this country is that Americans, not Koreans, are obsessed with meat. (IS0)
Those of you who have read my previous entries about food may be surprised to hear me complain about this, because I clearly love meat. True enough. But I love food in general, and I find this narrow view of this widely varied cuisine annoying. That said, I also know that Korean food is an acquired taste for most Americans -- we eat lots of spicy, salty, fermented, fishy foods -- and that when folks ask for restaurant recommendations, they usually want barbecue. (IS1)
For the most part, I'm ambivalent about recommending Korean barbecue places. The meat quality at most places is about the same, so I tend to differentiate them by the marinade (which I find too sweet at most restaurants), the quality of the banchan (the small appetizer plates that come with the meal) and other items on the menu, and the service. I, like many others, enjoy Brother's in SanFrancisco for its wood-fired grills and friendly service, but I'm not blown away by the food there. (IS2)
When folks ask me to recommend good Korean restaurants in LosAngeles, my hometown, I'm usually stumped. Unlike the BayArea, Korean restaurants abound down south. Nevertheless, the same thing holds true: The quality at most of these places is about the same. (IS3)
Thankfully, I'm stumped no more. Last night, my parents took me to ChoSun Galbee, located in the heart of KoreaTown in LosAngeles. The food there is good. Damn good. (IS4)
I knew my experience there would be different as soon as they brought out the raw meat, which looked amazingly fresh and beautifully marbled. Most restaurants marinate their meat overnight, which is actually overkill, because the meat is sliced very thin. The chef at ChoSun Galbee marinates the meat immediately, which has the added benefit of showcasing the quality of the meat. This is only a good thing, of course, if the quality of the meat is worth showcasing, which is probably why most restaurants don't do it. (IS5)
The shorter marination time did nothing to decrease the melding of the flavors, which was less sweet and slightly more complex than most restaurants. I was especially impressed by the daeji bulgogi -- spicy pork -- where I detected strong hints of ginger and cinnamon, in addition to the usual garlic, soy sauce, and gochoo chang (hot pepper paste). (IS6)
In addition to the daeji bulgogi, we had bulgogi (thinly sliced beef) and galbee (shortribs), both of which were excellent. I thought they skimped on the galbee portions, but "skimping" is relative. I was so full, I could barely walk out of the place. (IS7)
We also had the mul naengmyun -- chewy noodles in a cold broth -- which was okay, but not overwhelmingly good. As with the meat, the quality of the ingredients tasted high, which is usually as much as I can ask for when ordering naengmyun. (I'm a naengmyun snob, so take my review with a grain of salt. If anyone knows of a good place to get bibim naengmyun in the BayArea, let me know.) Same went for the banchan -- good, obviously made with decent ingredients, but not extraordinary. (IS8)
(One reason naengmyun tends to be mediocre at most places is that it's actually a North Korean specialty. As you can imagine, the recipes and techniques for making it well have not been widely disseminated. That said, it's not impossible to find a decent bowl in LosAngeles, which is more than I can say for the BayArea. It's an absolute travesty.) (IS9)
Apparently, I'm not the first to sing ChoSun Galbee's praises. It's a big restaurant with a beautiful patio area, and the place was packed. If you find yourself in LosAngeles, and you're looking for good Korean barbecue, ChoSun Galbee is the place to be. It's slightly more expensive than your average Korean restaurant, but the quality makes it well worth it. (ISA)
/food | Posted at 10:34am
Tue, May 24, 2005
May's Field #
When not saving the world, AllenGunn is working to save that beautiful ballpark by the Bay from the naming whims of flaky telephone companies. He and several others have begun an initiative to rename the park, "May's Field," after the Say-Hey kid himself. As far as I can tell, the movement involves drinking beer and cheering for the Giants. Sadly, as the proud owner of both a TommyLasorda and a SteveGarvey bobblehead doll, I'm incapable of performing the latter. Nevertheless, I support this initiative wholeheartedly and hope you will as well. Follow their blog and subscribe to their mailing list for more information. (IRM)
/personal | Posted at 8:57pm
Taking Over the World #
UlisesAliMejias wrote about various projects that support his vision of "distributed textual discourse." One of the projects he mentioned was PurpleNumbers. One of Ulises comments caught my eye: (IRF)
While the approach is relatively simple, I guess it was not widely adopted. (IRG)
It was an interesting comment to make, especially as he didn't make it about any of the other projects. Perhaps he was surprised by this? (IRH)
As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. My goal is for the ideas to take over the world, not for particular manifestations of the idea to win. I want tool builders to realize the importance of GranularAddressability and to incorporate it into their tools, whether or not they're purple in the end. And there's still plenty of time for that to happen. (IRI)
/tech/purple | Posted at 8:48pm
Purple Numbers: Optimized for Synthesis #
ChrisDent has been having some good exchanges about PurpleNumbers with AdinaLevin and PhilJones. I don't have much to add, as I think Chris is spot on. Two comments struck me, though. (IQV)
First, Phil claims that PurpleNumbers are optimized for reading at the expense of writing. His point is that PurpleNumbers, as currently implemented, add overhead to the writing process, whereas the pay-off comes for the reader. I emphasize as currently implemented, because we just haven't gotten around to making them mostly transparent in the writing process. Hacking one of the WYSIWYG JavaScript text editors to support PurpleNumbers should do the trick. (IQW)
However, I really liked Chris's response: (IQX)
Yes, purple numbers do try to favor the reader and the act of reading, but not just for reading. They favor the reader so the reader may more easily do more writing. The whole point is for purple numbers and tools like it to be a generative force in the synthesis of new understandings. (IQY)
Phil can write all he wants, and I can read all I want, but until I write down something that builds on what Phil says, while making chains of reference back through the many layers of context, there's been no synthesis, at least not any that is available outside the confines of my own mind. (IQZ)
GranularAddressability enables synthesis. Wanna know what makes blogs conversational? PermaLinks, which are a form of GranularAddressability. (IR0)
A lot of people don't get this. I read TheSportsGuy over at ESPN.com all the time (despite the fact that I hate all Boston sports teams with a passion), and at the past two Super Bowls, he wrote what ESPN.com called a "blog." It sure looked like a blog, but in reality, it was just one-way publishing. Folks couldn't comment on his entries, because they couldn't link to any of them. I see this all the time with other major media outlets trying to jump on the blog bandwagon. (IR1)
Which brings me to the second comment that jumped out at me. In his response to Adina, Chris wrote: (IR2)
Clearly I am in far too deep with purple stuff: I need a translator. The above can be so much meaningless noise and I find little time to make things cogent. (IR3)
I'm not the best proselytizer of PurpleNumbers, not because I'm not proud of them (I am), not because I don't value them (I do), and not because I can't explain their value clearly (I can). There's a tremendous amount of deep thinking underlying these little purple critters, and the implications are fascinating. But before you can understand any of this, you've got to care. And unless you're one of those strange individuals who just gets it, you've got to try them before you'll buy them. (IR4)
A lot of folks think I invented PurpleNumbers. Not true at all. I was one of those folks who didn't care, one of the first in fact. PurpleNumbers are an HTML manifestation of Augment's granular addressability scheme, invented by DougEngelbart and made purple years later by his daughter, ChristinaEngelbart. When I first started working with Doug, he kept insisting that all of our knowledge products on the Web have PurpleNumbers. I didn't think it was a priority, but I knew I could easily whip up a tool to generate them, so I wrote Purple to humor him. Then a funny thing happened. Once I had them, I used them, simply because they were there. Then I started missing them when they weren't there. Then it dawned on me: These little purple thingies sure were darn useful. And I started thinking about why. (IR5)
The point of my story is this: I'm perfectly happy to have a deep, convoluted discussion about some esoteric aspect of PurpleNumbers. If you don't believe me, try me. Or read my blog entries on the matter. But if you really want to understand why they're so important, just give them a try for a month, then try living without them. (IR6)
/tech/purple | Posted at 8:30pm
Tue, May 17, 2005
yet another distributed identity system (yadis) #
Spotted on the blosxom mailing list: yadis stands for "yet another distributed identity system" and is the brainchild of BradFitzpatrick, lead developer of LiveJournal. It's simple and clever, and at minimum, it's going to force others to state clearly why their more complicated systems are better. Here's my first take. (IPO)
Not surprisingly, the yadis spec is very similar to the IdentityCommons single sign-on protocol (which will eventually be replaced by a SAML profile), except instead of XRIs and XDI, yadis uses URIs and FOAF. With IdentityCommons, you log in with an i-name, which is a valid XRI. That XRI gets resolved, then points to your identity broker (what folks in the SAML world call an "identity provider"). With yadis, you log in with a URI (likely your blog URI, sans the protocol prefix). The application queries the URI for a FOAF file that contains the URI to your identity provider. The backchannel authentication is almost identical for both systems. (IPP)
yadis is compelling because it's simple and highly bootstrapped. You need very little additional infrastructure to get it working. IdentityCommons relies on a global XRI infrastructure that is barely in its infancy, and it uses XDI for data sharing, which doesn't even exist as a draft spec yet. (It's far from vaporware, though, as some docs and code do exist.) (IPQ)
Why the complexity? Is it just that =eekim seems more aesthetically pleasing as a username than www.eekim.com/blog/? Absolutely not. (IPR)
This is not a trust system. Trust requires identity first. (IPT)
The i-name infrastructure addresses both the identity problem and the trust problem. (IPU)
First, i-names are designed to be long-lived, whereas URIs are not. What happens when you get married, you change your name, and you decide to get a new domain name to reflect that? Will the new URI work with all your old accounts, or will you have to change them manually? Or, what do all the folks without a personal web site or blog (and no desire for either) use? (IPV)
Second, XDI is designed with data contracts in mind. You can attach contracts to any piece of your profile data, and you can have different contracts for every entity with whom you deal. This is the biggest problem with FOAF. (IPW)
That said, I think yadis is a very important development for two reasons. First, it may be an excellent intermediate step to i-name adoption. In other words, it solves an immediate problem easily, then has a natural evolution path to i-names once (or if) its inadequacies become a problem. Second, it's a great reality check for the techies in the IdentityCommons community. We still don't have clear explanations of i-names or XDI, and the adoption path is still too high. I don't think there are easy answers to these problems, but it's important that we remain focused on these issues. (IPX)
Finally, there's a very good technical observation in the docs that is worth noting: SAML is not Ajax-friendly. (IPY)
/collaboration/idcommons | Posted at 2:10am
Schneier on REAL ID #
BruceSchneier wrote a scathing assessment of REAL ID in the latest issue of his Crypto-Gram newsletter. Regarding European countries with national IDs, Schneier wrote: (IPI)
(Those who point to European countries with national IDs need to pay attention to this point. European countries have a strong legal framework for data privacy and protection. This is why the American experience will be very different than the European experience, and a much more serious danger to society.) (IPJ)
Lots of folks pay lip service to the social framework that needs to complement technology in order for a system to work, but few are actually doing anything about it. It's why IdentityCommons is so important, although even that group is more reactive than proactive, focusing initially on technology rather than on social agreements. That's probably just the reality of the life-cycle of progress (says the optimistic Heideggerian in me). (IPK)
That said, it's no accident that folks in the identity space are starting to take IdentityCommons so seriously these days. There were at least 10 folks from the IdentityCommons community (myself included) actively participating in the various "Identity Gang" gatherings last week. (IPL)
/collaboration/idcommons | Posted at 1:20am
Mon, May 16, 2005
My Nephew and His Frog #
To satiate those who have demanded visual evidence that my nephew, ElliottMarcellusWatras, truly exists and to appease those who prefer juicy personal tidbits rather than boring diatribes on collaboration, here's a picture of my nephew and his mom, SujeanKim: (IP9)
My other sister, JessicaKim, trekked to Cincinnati a few weeks ago to visit, and she delivered a stuffed frog I bought for Elliott. The frog was accompanied by the following instructions: (IPB)
Elliott got the message and improved on it: (IPD)
As you can see, the kid has looks and brains. (IPF)
/personal | Posted at 5:20pm
Big Unit Strikes Out #
I love baseball, but I wasn't so excited about going to the A's/Yankees game yesterday afternoon. Both teams are doing poorly this year, and I was exhausted from the cumulative effects of late night fun and sun exposure. So when I saw my friend, JustinLin, at the gate of the Coliseum, all he got from me was a perfunctory grunt hello. Justin grunted back, we walked towards our seats, then he turned to me and said, "RandyJohnson's pitching today." (IP0)
My mood changed instantly. I love watching the greats pitch, and I had never seen the Big Unit in action live. Who wouldn't get hyped over seeing a six foot nine future Hall of Famer throw 100 mph heaters at cowering opponents? Every time Johnson pitches, there's a chance you'll see something historic. (IP1)
Well, the Unit made history alright. It was the first game in his twenty year career that he did not strike anybody out (six innings or longer). (IP2)
The game wasn't a total loss. I don't mind seeing that kind of history; it's part of baseball's charm. I also got the opportunity to use my new camera phone for the first time, as the game was interrupted twice by streakers. Yet another example of technology improving humanity. Now if I could only figure out how to download those pictures.... (IP3)
/personal | Posted at 10:27am
Wed, May 11, 2005
Foxtrot on Wikipedia #
Spotted by JessicaKim, my little sister, who like Foxtrot creator, BillAmend, went to Amherst and who has heard me talk about Wikis way more than any sibling should. (IOW)
/tech/wiki | Posted at 4:57pm
