“Fox TV and the Apollo Moon Hoax”

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I was born in 1970, the year after the first moon landing. Throughout my entire life, every reference I heard about it silently reinforced the assumption that mankind had been to the moon. So when I heard that some people thought that it was a hoax made in a movie studio, I was perplexed. I wanted to know what evidence they had for it.

Well, I finally found it — and a site that discusses and debunks each point. I don’t understand some of them, like this one…

The lunar dust has a peculiar property: it tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came. So if you were to stand on the Moon and shine a flashlight at the surface, you would see a very bright spot where the light hits the ground, but, oddly, someone standing a bit to the side would hardly see it at all. The light is preferentially reflected back toward the flashlight (and therefore you), and not the person on the side.

…but overall, they make perfect sense.

Sorry, conspiracy theorists, but I’m still convinced that we’ve been to the moon, and that the footage provided from the first Apollo mission is authentic. You’ll just have to try harder. 🙂

Know Thyself: Enthusiasm

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This week, after more than six years of effort, I finally solved what seems to be the last theoretical problem to Project X. I have the entire high-level design now. Parts of it may still need some tweaks, but the whole thing hangs together remarkably well. It’s both a lot simpler overall, and a lot more complex in the details, than I originally expected.

And I find myself utterly indifferent to it.

I’m sure this is simply a reaction to how long I’ve been working on it, and the number of times that I’ve previously been on a promising track, only to have one or another of the thorny little pieces of the problem derail everything and send me back to square one. My conscious mind knows that the hardest part of it is finished at long last, but the rest of me is still tiredly slogging along, humoring me and hoping that I’ll finally give up soon.

GoddessJ and I are going to go see a movie tonight, a ridiculous but amusing-looking piece of fluff. Maybe I’ll take a day or two away from the computer entirely, and see if my enthusiasm returns after that. But come Monday morning, enthusiastic or not, I’m going to start writing code.

Wish me luck. 🙂

“Nobody Hates Software More Than Software Developers”

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Ploni Almoni sent me this link recently. I read it, amused and agreeing with almost everything — until I got to the end:

In short, I hate software — most of all and especially my own — because I know how hard it is to get it right. It may sound strange, but it’s a natural and healthy attitude for a software developer. It’s a bond, a rite of passage that you’ll find all competent programmers share.

In fact, I think you can tell a competent software developer from an incompetent one with a single interview question:

What’s the worst code you’ve seen recently?

If their answer isn’t immediately and without any hesitation these two words:

My own.

Then you should end the interview immediately. Sorry, pal. You don’t hate software enough yet. Maybe in a few more years. If you keep at it.

That test works for people who are skilled enough to recognize their own lack of skill — a major step forward, and one that it took me five or six years to achieve. But it would exclude those of us who have actually become competent at it, which takes a lot longer. Apparently Jeff hasn’t reached that stage yet.

I see far worse code than my own on a weekly basis, so I’d fail Jeff’s “competent software developer” test, despite being a lot more competent than most professional developers I know. While I may not always be completely happy with my own software, I certainly don’t “hate” it. In fact, I trust and prefer my own software to anyone else’s, because by the time I finish writing it, I know it like the back of my hand, and I know that it’s good and solid code. If it isn’t, then it isn’t ready to be used by anyone, including and especially myself.

It’s a truism that a programmer usually can’t accurately judge whether another programmer is better than himself, only whether he’s worse. Maybe in a few more years, Jeff. If you keep at it. 😉

“Neatolicious Fun Facts: Chess”

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I’ve been working on my chess game lately, in an attempt to improve my logic skills. It has apparently worked… previously, any computer chess game would mop the floor with me on any but the absolute lowest skill setting (and sometimes even then). Now I can beat the Caissa Chess program on my iPod Touch at level two most of the time (though level three still beats me easily), and I’ve made some large strides on Project X as well. 🙂

But that isn’t the purpose of this post, which is to point out this page of fun facts about chess that I stumbled onto recently.

Plasma Drive Now a Reality!

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Chang Díaz believes that VASIMR could usefully glean its electric power from solar panels if it was operating close to the sun (Mars would be the extreme outer limit) or from onboard nuclear reactors further away. He calculates that a nuclear VASIMR craft could get to Mars in just 39 days, as opposed to the many months a chemical-rocket ship would take.

If I recall correctly, the fictional “Lyle Drive” mentioned in Stranger In A Strange Land required only twelve days for an Earth-to-Mars trip, but this is still one heck of a lot better than current technology. 🙂

A test version is going to be installed on the International Space Station, “where it would use solar power to maintain the ISS’ orbit without the need for frequent, expensive resupplies of chemical rocket fuel.”