Posts published in “The Currents”

[twenty twenty-four day one five six]: ugh and not so ugh

Published June 4, 2024 by centaur

So the broken door lock was indeed not a problem either power tool girl or I could have easily handled - it took the locksmith almost forty five minutes to lever, chisel and snip the latch assembly out of the door, using quite a bit of specialized equipment -air pumps and such - to try to create space before finally giving up and applying judicious elbow grease, a wrench and a hammer. When he finally got it out, pieces abruptly tumbled out in a tiny little rain of already-broken parts from deep within the latch assembly.

But the repair itself was cheap, and the same guy offered a great rate to re-key our other locks as well. So we now have easy access to my office again, and a plan for fixing some of the dead old locks around this rambling home. One ugh problem may just have made another ugh problem go away - which suggests that when you're facing a lot of problems, you should just dig in and try to fix them, one by one, until hopefully all those problems go away, leaving you with new problems for a new day.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Downtown Greenville's Falls Park, which is a beautiful place for a walk. Since, in the intervening hour since my last post, I haven't fixed the backend of the blog. Another ugh ...

Blogging every day: Today's exercise was thirty push ups, and probably a walk later, maybe or maybe not at Falls Park. Yesterday's exercise, which I didn't blog, was sixty pushups and an excursion in the attic. Yesterday's read was Neal Asher's PRADOR MOON, which I quite liked; today will be packing for the Nebulas. Yesterday's editing was Dakota Frost #4, SPECTRAL IRON; probably also that today. Drawing is up to one five five, so I need to work in a drawing today, ideally two so I don't have to worry about it while traveling.

[twenty twenty-four day one five five]: late post for you

Published June 4, 2024 by centaur

Last night was date night, but we also had to climb up into the attic to see what's up with this "leaky" roof. But it's bone dry up there, despite the recent rains, and even though it looks like there might be some damage, it doesn't seem like it can be causing what we're seeing with the drywall damage in the ceiling.

SO: The good news is, we likely don't need to get the whole roof replaced.

BUT: The bad news is, we don't know what's going on, and now need to seek new causes.

It's really easy to catastrophize: we were worried that we'd find a nest of mold up there and need to replace the whole roof. That isn't the problem, so that bullet is dodged. But now we've got a deeper mystery: we have what looks like water damage in an area that is - apparently - dry, with no explanation. And that's the thing about science: one thing can look like another, and causes can be hidden - so you need to take out the time to collect the observations and do the experiments and carefully check your work.

Especially if it can cost you a whole roof.

-the Centaur

Pictured: One from the archives - snow, likely from two years ago, as that frost killed most of that vine.

[twenty twenty-four day one four nine]: master of all he surveys, redux

Published May 28, 2024 by centaur

Our big butch cat - Loki is 16+ pounds of fur and muscle, with relatively little flab - is actually a little scaredy guy. I mean, I might be a scaredy guy too if the situation was reversed: I'm approximately 6 times taller and 11 times heaver than Loki, and I'd be freaked to live in a world where 35-foot-tall, one-ton creatures felt like picking me up at random times for no discernible reason.

But he's scared of other things too, like his shadow. And I think that happened because once, when he tried to go outside, a baby rat snake was coiling by the door. He ran to the nearby French doors to be let out, but the rat snake had also fled - to the same doors! And then, both of them again fled to the next door down. He was pretty freaked, and a little more cautious going over thresholds since then. Not this guy, though:

Regardless, Loki frequently gets animated, starts looking outside or in the yard to see what's going on, and stares at it for a long time, before settling down and chilling out. Even when something is really there, though, it doesn't mean that the cause is always actionable. Sometimes things are just passing through, and worrying about them or doing something about them can only lead to more disruption.

I'm not saying to ignore real problems, of course; seeing the fox requires different reactions than the deer.

But how often do we stress out about things which will ultimately pass us by?

-the Centaur

Pictured: Loki, the snek, and the deer. Fox was not available for comment.

[twenty twenty-four day eleven]: where water falls from the sky

Published January 11, 2024 by centaur

When we decided to live in a place where water falls from the sky, we didn't realize how much we meant it.

The good news is that there's more places to go swimming. The bad news is that you can swim in only one direction, much like a muddy simulation of the interior of a black hole.

Honey, I hope you didn't need anything at the store.

-the Centaur

Free at Last

Published April 1, 2023 by centaur

SO! After 17 years at the Google, my last day - finally, my actual last day - was yesterday, March 31st, 2023. They cut off my access January 20th, but out of respect for their employees (and the media, and the law) they gave us a generous +60 day notice period, which ran out yesterday.

I don't regret the time I spent at Google - well, at least not most of it. I learned so much and made so many friends and did so many things - and, frankly speaking, the pay, food and healthcare were quite good. On the one hand, I do think I probably should have taken that job as director of search at a startup back in ~2010; it would have forced me to grow and challenged my assumptions and given me a lot of leadership experience which would have helped my career. But, if I'd done that, I wouldn't have transitioned over to robotics, which is now my principal career; so perhaps it's good I didn't pull on the thread of that tapestry.

But I do regret not being able to code on my own. Virtually everything I could have worked on was technically owned by Google, and if I wanted to open source it, I would need to submit it for invention review - with the chance that they would say no. For a while, you couldn't even work on a game at all if you worked at Google, as Google saw this as a threat to their business model of, ya know, not making games; eventually they realized that was silly, but still, I couldn't take the risk of pouring my heart into something that then Google would claim ownership of.

So no code for you. Or me either.

I know people who built successful businesses as side hustles. While that's efficient, it isn't effective: it leaves you vulnerable to being sued by your employer, or fired by your employer, or both. You can do it, of course, but you're reducing your chance of success in exchange for speed; whereas I like to maximize the chance of success - which requires speed, of course, but not so much you're taking on unnecessary risk. So, for maximum cleanliness, it's best to do things fresh from first principles after you leave.

Which is what I'm going to do now. I don't precisely know what I am going to do, but I do think one useful exercise would be to download all the social navigation benchmarks I've been researching for the Principles and Guidelines benchmark paper, and see how they work and what they can do. Some of the software has ... ahem ... gone stale, but this will be a good exercise for me to test my debugging chops, honed at Google, on external software outside of the "Google3" environment.

Wish me luck!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Fulfilling a missing install for the package gym-collision-avoidance; given that I'd done a lot of command line development recently for a Stanford class, I think the issue here might have been some missing setup step when I moved to my new laptop, as I'm sure this would have come up before.

It’s my birthday and I’ll read if I want to …

Published February 11, 2023 by centaur

SO! I just turned *AHEM* a year older and decided to go to my favorite restaurant, Nola, in Palo Alto. Nola and I go way back - logically speaking, I must have first gone there in something like summer of 1997, near the end of my internship at SRI (formerly, the Stanford Research Institute) on hierarchical planning. Nola was the first place I ever got "drunk", or more honestly, slightly buzzed from a very powerful margarita, the first on-the-rocks margarita I had ever had. I had even ordered it by accident; normally, at the time, I was drinking the equivalent of watered-down alcohol slushies, and ordered on-the-rocks on accident. My tastes in drink have ... considerably evolved ... since then, though I still stick to the one-drink-per-day limit.

Nola's a truly magical place. I'd put it in a novel ... if I hadn't already. (LIQUID FIRE, as the vampire-friendly restaurant our heroes retreat to after a nasty dustup with some evil firespinners). Look at their decorations for Mardi Gras! Beautiful.

Welp! One more spin around the sun. Plan to keep doing those as long as I am able ...

-the Centaur

Ripping Off the Bandaid

Published February 10, 2023 by centaur

After almost seventeen years at Google, I've made the difficult decision to get laid off with no warning. :-) Working with Google was an amazing experience, from search to robotics to 3D objects and back to robotics again. We did amazing things and I am proud of all my great colleagues and what we accomplished together.

However, my work in robotics is not done, and I will still be pushing for better robot navigation, large language model planning, and especially social robot navigation and embodied AI. I'm spinning up an independent consulting business and will announce more details on this as it evolves - feel free to reach out directly though!

-the Centaur

P.S. Sorry for the delay - this has been up on my Linkedin forever. But for some reason I just wasn't ready to post this here. Avoidance behavior, however, has gone on long enough. Time to move on.

Pictured: me and Ryan at Sports Page, the traditional hangout you go to on your last day at Google. It was a blast seeing all the friends, thank you for coming!

Remember January 6th

Published January 7, 2022 by centaur

Recall to memory the Sixth of January,
Riot, insurrection and plot
For no justification should the January Insurrection
Ever be forgot

A little over one year ago today, lame-duck President Donald Trump directed an unruly band of his followers to "fight like hell" to overturn the election of Joe Biden, in the hope of disenfranchising me and the 81 million other Americans who voted to bring to an end Trump's dyscivic reign.

"Dyscivic" means "antagonistic to civilization." It's a word coined by alt-right pundit Vox Day to disparage the aspirations of "social justice warriors" like myself. I am a writer, and I hereby confiscate "dyscivic" and repurpose it to mean "antagonistic to the civic structures of our society" - which Donald Trump was.

Of my good friends who voted for Donald Trump, at least two voted for him precisely because they expected he would be disruptive to our existing system. One specifically said, "I voted for Donald Trump because I hoped he would blow up the Republican Party, and I'm waiting for the Democrats to go next."

Keep waiting. Even though progressives like AOC and moderates like myself don't always get along, we recognize that we share the same end goals, that our principles are compatible, and they're worth fighting for together, even if we might disagree on methods.

I don't get the same sense from my most right-wing friends, who viciously lambast politicians from their own party for not "getting on the Trump train" in every possible respect - even when those politicians have multi-decade records voting for precisely the positions my friends loudly advocate for.

Reliance on trust is toxic to any organization. It encourages dependence on personal relationships - even friendships - developed over years or decades, and makes the organization resistant to new information delivered by new people. When that trust is in leadership, it becomes loyalty ... which is deeply dyscivic.

The purpose of government is to put the use of force under rational control. To prevent one man from using that force to execute their own personal will, we create civic structures that corral the use of power. We loan power, not grant it; and when you loan power to someone, you watch them.

Over four years, we watched Donald Trump demand loyalty on an unprecedented scale in American politics - from his followers, from fellow politicians, from the machinery of government. He turned on his appointees when their understanding of their civic duties conflicted with his own petty desires.

And when the American people had had enough - when even some of my Trumpian friends switched parties because they could not abide what he was doing to our political system - Trump spat on those of us who dared to vote against him, and then tried to pretend to his followers that we did not exist.

Well, sir, our voices were heard. And we won't be silent. We know that you and your followers are going to try again - I remember watching your suppoprters meeting in the dark in the months leading up to the insurrection (holding 10pm rallies in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store). We'll be watching.

For I'm not the only one. Here's a few quotes from my fellow Americans around the web:

http://wilwheaton.net/2022/01/one-year-later/
We all know how that turned out. All but seven Republican Senators — forty-three of fifty members in the upper chamber — protected him and embraced his Big Lie. In the year since, they have doubled down on it, and they have not stopped insisting that we did not see what we saw one year ago today with our own eyes.

And:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/01/06/january-6-one-year-on/
And yet, after perhaps 48 hours of unrehearsed shock, the Republican party rallied around this traitor to the republic and the constitution, and tried to rebrand an actual coup attempt into overexuberant tourism.

And not about January 6th, but important all the same:

https://angrystaffofficer.com/2022/01/03/american-war-and-american-memory/
Why is this important? Because as we look ahead into another year at the beginning of a new decade of a constantly changing world, America needs to take a hard look at herself and ask whether we are remembering or forgetting the right things. This is not only vital to our collective consciousness as to who we are as a nation, but to the success of future military operations.

I assert that remembering the right things isn't just vital to our success in military endeavors, but to each of us personally, in the aggregate, as a nation, and as a civilization. If we don't remember the true story - good and bad and ugly - then those who make up stories for their own convenience will rule the day.

Remember, the Big Lie was the foundation for the Final Solution.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen here.

-the Centaur

Site and Life Maintenance

Published July 31, 2021 by centaur

It's not that I've not been drawing every day. But my marriage is more important than drawing every day, and my job is more important than my posting every day, and just from the perspective of posting, while we're on that subject, site maintenance is more important than all of that, since I couldn't post.

However, taking a shotgun to all of my plugins (except the Classic Editor, which WordPress Gutenberg can pry out of my COLD DEAD HANDS) and running all available updates got the site back to life. Still not sure what precisely went wrong here, as the failure wasn't correlated with any detectable change.

SO anyway, drawing hasn't stopped, but posting of them will resume when I get the huge box of stereo wires detangled so the site is smooth again. Pictured: me, having a drink with my wife, spending a wonderful afternoon and evening together, most of which did NOT involve any form of drawing.

-the Centaur

UPDATE: The problem was the Jetpack plugin, and it persists even if the plugin is reinstalled from scratch. This has some precedent, as I see other users with the same problem, though I haven't dug deeply enough to understand what is going on in my case.

Day 134

Published May 8, 2021 by centaur

Tired, could stay up later to finish a full drawing, but then, I've been having trouble getting to sleep once in bed when I do that, and I don't want to have another bout of awake-till-6am insomnia. Here's a quick sketch to tide you over - with a brush pen, since I seem to have exhausted all my Sharpies.

What I did instead this evening was art related: I hung some of my wife's paintings in the new place:

Now that's art. As for me, I'm still drawing every day.

-the Centaur

Day 3, Vaccine 2, Drawing 133

Published May 7, 2021 by centaur

Mostly vaccine recovered, but didn't sleep well. Pretty tired, crashing out early. Drawing every day. -the Centaur

Day 2, Vaccine 2

Published May 6, 2021 by centaur

Also Drawing Every Day #132, but you probably guessed that.

Go, immune system, go! Back to bed.

-the Centaur

Instead of a $1000 Monitor, Try a $12 Cable

Published April 13, 2021 by centaur

So, I have this particular type of multi-monitor setup I prefer - with a laptop screen abutting two other monitors, one horizontal, one vertical - but I couldn't quite do that here on my personal setup, at least not at first, because I didn't want to buy any more monitors after buying that Wacom behemoth, and eventually, the perfectly good ones from the old house will get shipped. But I had a couple of spare old monitors from previous computers, long since retired - so old that only the DVI ports work, though one of them has an HDMI port I don't think I got to work. After lots of flickering, the oldest one of them finally gave up the ghost, but the other was able to slot into the same place. (It's on the left, above, with Roger Moore's mug from my Drawing Every Day session on it.) While can't rotate vertically like the other, it worked, at least, and I could use it. Then it started flickering too. Now, three or four things could be happening here. First, it could be a flaky old monitor screen, natch. Second, it could be a problem with the monitor's plug, since jiggling the software cable often fixed it; on the same grounds, I ruled out a device driver issue. Third, since it happened to two monitors attached to the same laptop with the same cable into the same port, it could be the laptop itself giving up the ghost. So, after putting up with this for weeks, if not months, I finally started to look into new monitors. Apparently, the monitor I want costs roughly a thousand dollars with shipping, but I know I want that monitor because I have one in California waiting to be shipped here. Then I thought back to my diagnosis. Two monitors, plugged into the same laptop on the same port ... with the same cable. Now, for various reasons, I can't swap the ports around much (the Wacom is SUPER finicky about what it wants it's 15,000 cables to attach to, and if you LOOK at it funny the stylus stops working) and I couldn't try a different cable because, THANK YOU, Apple and the rest of the computer industry, for changing the ports on all your laptops so my box of cables from previous setups is now virtually USELESS. But I could order a $12 dollar USB-C to DVI cable off Amazon. It arrived today. I plugged it in an hour or so ago. The ten-year-old monitor? Working just fine. Moral of the story: make sure to vary all of your variables when you are debugging, or you'll possibly trick yourself into the moral equivalent of spending a lot of unnecessary cash. -the Centaur

VAC-CI-NATE! (and Drawing Every Day #103, and Camp Nano …)

Published April 8, 2021 by centaur

So! I got my first shot today, and other than a little arm soreness, a headache which may or may not be related, and some tiredness which may just be because it's 3:21am, I have not yet had any ill effects. I was totally lied to by my album covers though, and have not been able to hack into Bill Gates' secret global network through the tiny implanted computer chip in the vaccine, maybe because neither exists. centaur, vaccine 1

Ouch. First picture failed for some reason, so we get this charming shot of the needle coming OUT rather than going in. But it didn't really hurt at all, maybe because I was fiddling with my camera. Our Dalek friend below is proud that he was able to contribute his catchphrase to our cause: dalek toy

~500 words on Camp Nano, still behind, but I am too wiped to write more. Drawing, writing, being a good citizen every day. -the Centaur

Viiictory … and 1.5 Million Words

Published November 27, 2020 by centaur

So it's that time of year once again: I've won Nanowrimo, again, by writing 50,000 words in the month of November; by my records, this is 28 straight wins (counting Camp Nano in April and July in the mix) for a total of ... holy cow ... 1.5 million words in successful Nano challenges. Welp, I'm calling it: Nano is the most successful technique I've ever used to to boost my writing output --- more than morning pages, more than writing workshops, more than the Artist's Way --- with the possible exception of Write to the End, with which Nano is intimately intertwined (for me). Now I hear my editor calling: How about boosting that editing output, Francis? I hear you. Writing I don't seem to have much trouble with, but between robots and the zombie apocalypse I've found it hard to get the necessary brain juice to edit the 7, no 8 manuscripts I have in the queue. Come to think of it, why couldn't we have had the zombie apocalypse while I was writing about a zombie apocalypse? Covid would have been really thematically appropriate when I was working on BOT NET (Facebook zombies) or SPIRITUAL GOLD (actual zombie zombies). But that was not to be. I don't know about you, but I find the whole zombie apocalypse thing wearing, not to mention the whole election thing. Add to that serious realignments at work, which meant basically reinventing everything I'd been doing to come back to the same place, and 2020 has been a full on freight train of suck. Not that everything's been bad. I finished the bulk of a novel, JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE MACHINERY OF THE APOCALYPSE, back in April, and I'm halfway through Dakota Frost #7, SPIRAL NEEDLE. We finished our patio here ...

... and started a grand new vegan cooking adventure together ...

And we even found and bought a new house, a very nice new place (it has turkeys) ...

... with a great space for my library and my wife's art studio, which we're in the middle of a slow motion move to while we renovate the old pad. These have been bright lights in an otherwise bad year. By you know how it's been: so stressful that - well, you've seen how much I've been blogging. I feel like this should be the best time ever in my life, yet 2020 has left me feeling a lot like this:

But, we have traditions which can help us through, like Thanksgiving ... oh, dangit Covid! So, ANYWAY, other traditions that do not involve Covid or Zoom, Nano traditions: the stats, and the excerpt. What did this month look like, Nano-wise?

This wasn't the hardest Nano I've handled ... I think the worst was being over 21,000 words behind in 2016 for PHANTOM SILVER, though briefly LIQUID FIRE in 2009 got almost that bad. Nor was it record-breakingly productive, like the astounding 25,000 words ahead finish on BOT NET 2017. This was a middle-of-the-road Nano, helped by really pouring on 12,000 words last weekend:

That was on purpose, so I could coast into Thanksgiving having finished, and spend a very nice dinner with my wife. (We had vegan muffulletas with authentic olive salad filling shipped direct from Central Grocery in New Orleans, which I highly, highly, highly recommend). That left November's work on SPIRAL NEEDLE comfortably in the middle of my previous efforts:a And so, now, an excerpt ...

Too late, I realized the thickening arms of the octopus mist echoed the ghostly glow of the streetlights. “Teleporter! We’ve got to find a weakness!” I cried, flicking and snapping my wrist to loose a crossbow bolt, a feather from my origami peacock—an analysis spell. The feather flitted out, replicating itself in the flood of magic, its unfolding structure revealing an intricate, oh so intricate pattern embedded in the misty galaxy. Unfortunately, Nyissa, far older and faster than me, had fired her own analysis glyph. Our spells collided in a flash of sparks and feathers. “Damnit,” I cried, flinching. “Only one of us needed to do that—” “Sorry, was reacting to your idea, not your action,” Nyissa said. “I—” A long black shaft lanced out—and with a terrific report, blasted Nyissa in the face. Nyissa flew back. Her mask shattered. It would have been so romantic to scream her name and lunge my hand toward her—but both of us had been in fights so many times before, and I instinctively swung the Waystaff up, its spine catching bayonet and flipping the long gun upwards. The hooked beak hissed, striped cloak flapping, and I saw the thing whole. Towering. Raptor-beaked. Cloaked in tattered striped cloth, draped over a flaring dark greatcoat. Black leather straps bound a tortuously lean torso seemingly rippled with twitching muscle. But the clawed arms fighting mine held what looked like a musket, the striped cloak looked like the ruins of a flag, and atop the thing’s plague doctor mask was a tricorn hat. “What are you?” I yelled, shoving against the musket with the Waystaff. The thing screamed at me, foul smoke erupting from its beak, and I flinched and gagged. It wailed at me with its musket, alternately clubbing aside the Waystaff and jabbing at me with the bayonet, as sparking smoke roiled into what I assumed was the musket’s flintlock—it was preparing to fire! I leapt backward, spinning through a knight’s move version of the Dance of Five and Two, hastily pulling together a spell: “Spirit of flame, act as my shield!” The plague knight screeched and dropped a grimy black ball into its musket—just as my Dragon tattoo uncoiled from my skin and looped around me in a helix of Technicolor scales and feathers. The plague knight fired with a clap of thunder—met by a gout of flame.

Wow! Excitement! Adventure! Tattoo magic versus magical monsters! And while we didn't get to see that much of the costumes in this excerpt, we've got cute vampires wearing sexy clothes fighting alongside our heroine in her long black vest / trenchcoat. What's not to like? That is all for now. Until next time, please enjoy this picture of a cat.

-the Centaur

Renovation in Process

Published October 2, 2019 by centaur

Renovation in Process

So you may have noticed the blog theme and settings changing recently; that's because I'm trying to get some kind of slider or visual image above the fold. I love the look of the blog with the big banner image, but I'm concerned that people just won't scroll down to see what's in the blog if there's nothing on the first page which says what I do. So I'll be experimenting. Stay tuned! -the Centaur Pictured: Yeah, this isn't the only renovation going on.

The Saturday Currents, OR: Why Care?

Published March 31, 2018 by centaur

I prefer pictures of food to pictures of myself, but, since my phone stopped charging and started shocking people (along with emitting a lovely BURNING smell) you get old stock footage or Photo Booth for the time being. And now, the currents:

Currently Reading: Merida, Chasing Magic (because I want to understand children's books better, and I like the drawing of Merida's awesome red hair which is an inspiration for my drawings of Serendipity) and The Cognitive Neurosciences, Fifth Edition (because I am working on a project on the engineering applications of consciousness research, and research on the neural correlates of consciousness has exploded in the last twenty years).
Currently Rereading: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (because Lent), Planning Algorithms by Lavalle and Reinforcement Learning by Sutton and Barto (because my robot navigation research is heating up and I want to understand the connections of reinforcement learning and classical planning, both of which have related but different ideas of value iteration; also because I'm planning on coding a small toy DQN to help me better understand the larger machinery I use at work).
Currently Dreading: Finishing my taxes, and finishing my edits on Shattered Sky by David Colby. Both so late! Sorry.
Currently Missing: My wife, on a business trip; my cats, at home waiting for me to finish up lunch, shift gears, and go home to go through The Tax Pile.

Why do these things matter? Why should you care? I know some people could care less about the incessant Facebook updates by people saying where they are and what they are doing. Some people I know even call sharing updates humblebragging as a way of shitshaming people into shutting up. (Hey guys! You know who you are. Message from me to you: Fuck off, kthanksbai.) Not me. I like seeing people say what they're up to; I like the birthday wishes on Facebook or the posts by famous writers saying, "ugh, I can has no brain today, here is a picture of a cat". I still remember after my Aunt Kitty died sharing on Facebook my last picture of her, and all the people I knew who showed up at the funeral only because I had posted it. It's human and natural to share with each other what we are doing. It lets each of us know that we aren't alone dealing with the good or bad. If status updates aren't the thing you're into, get off Facebook or Twitter. There's nothing wrong with that: I know many people have done it and have felt better for doing so. For me, there are so many people I only stay connected to because we have that instant means of connection. And (ssh: between you and me) there's always my ulterior motive: the more I write, the better I get at writing, and the more I discover and perfect my own voice. And just about everyone I know who does that just gets more interesting the longer that they do it. That's why I'm currently ... blogging. Hit save, then publish. -the Centaur