Niall's Blog

I've written a little bit about Nassim Nicholas Taleb before. In particular, I posted a short snippet to implement Monte Carlo simulation in Python. Anyway, I've lately been reading Wittgenstein's On Certainty. In this book, published after his death, he writes about the connections between human language and logic - and the nature of knowledge itself. Especially these days, with absurdly complicated financial crises and so on taking place, and with seemingly no good understanding of the situation, the field of epistemology (theory of knowledge) seems quite practical and relevant indeed. Of course, Taleb has written extensively about epistemology applied to finance, in particular with his black swan "theory". In this context, its very interesting to take note of Wittgenstein's writing in On Certainty. For example: 80. The truth of my statements is the test of my understanding of these statements. 81. That is to say: if I make certain false statements, it becomes uncertain whether I understand them. It would seem to me that many people have forgotten these rather fundamental ideas. Why are we still paying any attention to people like Henry Paulson and 'Helicopter' Ben Bernanke? An English translation of On Certainty is freely available on the web.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

I'm a big fan of Baudelaire's poetry. I am particularly fond of his interest in conveying beauty through typically repulsive imagery - e.g. Une Charogne which features vivid description of a decomposing human body. While I enjoy reading the original French, I've recently discovered a fantastic online resource - http://fleursdumal.org/. This site not only includes the original French, but also numerous English translations. Not being a French native speaker, I find it illuminating to compare the various styles of translations - poetic and literal - with my own understanding of the French material. Certainly one for the bookmarks, to be enjoyed on a rainy November night in San Francisco.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

This week I had the pleasure of reading a very recent short story by Roddy Doyle called Sleep. Roddy Doyle is very well-known in my hometown of Dublin, but I suppose not so familiar over here in the USA. I like the story - having grown up in the city in which it is set, I think it speaks accurately of the grimness of Dublin while also highlighting the quest for the absolute universal to the human condition, and the joy which such beauty, when found and appreciated, can cast over even the ugliest of situations. While Roddy Doyle is known for having criticised Joyce - and I would be sympathetic to some of his criticisms, particularly of the "Joyce industry" - I could not help but think of Dubliners. Dubliners is an excellent book to be sure, but I'm not so interested in talking about its excellence per se here, rather about the connections with Roddy Doyle's story. What I find most amazing is that, although Roddy Doyle's piece was written more than a hundred years after Joyce's collection - a hundred years of incredibly fast change. The independence of Ireland from the British Empire, various social and political struggles, and most recently a period of the greatest economic prosperity the country had ever known. Yet despite all this, Joyce's Dublin and Doyle's Dublin both have the same tones of deprivation, poverty and grimness - of ugliness and inequality. On one level, I find this almost shocking. But given further thought, you could probably take fiction of a certain vain set in a particular city but a hundred or so years apart, and find these sorts of similarities too. That would be an interesting thing to do, in fact.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

After a year of Association for Computing Machinery "professional-level" membership ($200 / year) I've decided not to renew. Why not? A number of things really rubbed me up the wrong way about the ACM. First of all, I had been looking forward to having an @acm.org email alias which I could use as a neutral and professional contact address on personal cards. Unfortunately, the ACM gave me a completely useless address which included an apostrophe in it! Yes, RFC 821 allows this, but such an alias is horribly prone to mis-typing and is difficult to remember. It simply wouldn't work on a business card. There was no way, as far as I could see, to change the alias. I could have called them up and shouted at them to change it I suppose, but I really didn't have time to bother with that sort of thing. Secondly, they had the nerve to mail me ads for dental insurance. I assumed since I had received a letter from the ACM - a supposedly serious and useful professional organisation - that it would be something of actual value - such as perhaps an invitation to a conference or something of that nature. Nope - they are trying to sell me dental insurance. I already had dental insurance, and even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have appreciated the spam from an organisation which is supposed to be helping my career as a computer scientist, not flogging on insurance. I found it incredibly cheeky that after paying them $200, they would send me such garbage. Thirdly, their publications are terrible. "Communications of the ACM" literally makes me nauseous. Its chocked full of industry advertisements and vapid, content-free articles. For a publication which is supposed to be of practical value, its pages are surprisingly full of utter trash - titles straight out of some Sokal hoax paper such as "amoeba-based neurocomputing with chaotic dynamics". Come on. Their other magazine, "Queue" is similarly full of rubbish, but of a slightly different nature. Its articles are criticism-free, glorified adverts for various large computer vendors. Vendors get to trot out all sorts of insane new technologies, sure to be "the next big thing" while puppy-dog like interviewers stare wide-eyed. Overall, the ACM reeks of an organisation which was once probably authentic, and useful, but has now utterly sold out to industry and become effectively an advertising racket specifically targetting professionals in computer-related fields. Not only do they provide very little content (beyond their digital library, which can be accessed from various public libraries for free in any case) but they are over-priced and actively engage in cheeky, rude maneuvers like trying to sell on insurance. Sorry ACM, but you won't be getting any more of my money.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

On our boat, cold, in the midst of a particularly lonely sea. Clouds sitting overhead, fat fearsome and lazy, refused to let any sun filter through. Biscoe was standing on the deck, eyes dulled by the frozen wind, struggling for a matchstick to set his meagre smoke alight. Both hands were in pockets, clenched against the heartless temperature - he knew one must be sacrificed to the elements, in order that the smoke be lit. But the hiss was overwhelming, that primitive engine spewing forth steady clouds of smoke, chuffing on and on through the endless swathes of water, wasted and useless. Now and then a great clanging would come, as the hull punched through some nonsensical underwater ice pack. He resigned to his fate, removing one hand - his left - first from the pocket, then from its own tender glove. Steam rose up from that now-empty glove hole in a childish imitation of the grand machine's chimney stack. Vapours are at the essence of our construction, much the same as any good boat, Biscoe thought, as he inhaled the product of the cigarette's own combustion. "Lad!" Biscoe shouted through the unfriendly air. "Lad! What do you make of that". He pointed the lad toward what he had been regarding. It looked like a very vague dash in the sea at the horizon. A dirty smudge on an otherwise flawless daguerreotype. The lad peered and peered, trembling terribly through his too-thin clothes, until he, too, saw the smudge. "Could it be real, sir?" said the lad, "could it be land?". Biscoe took another drag through his lips, holding the warm smoke in his own lungs for a long moment, before spewing forth another cloud of smoke. "Yes, lad, its land. I'd say its Enderby Land". At that very moment, a great cachalot breached by the aft of the boat.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.