www.donaldmarino.com

It’s cool that when I bought my mac, they threw in a little 8-track studio for free. I hadn’t really been playing my guitars in a few years. You have to give it to Apple on that one. I’ve never bought a Windows machine that made me want to play music and record little jams. There’s some truth in their advertising campaign on this front. It’s a fun way to kill two hours or so. Here’s todays jam from the little garageband studio in my iMac.

8_23_06.mp3 (aka “When you get the urge to finger-tap, don’t.”)

D

Hi.
Since I’m utterly obsessed, I believe I’ll share a pitcure of my favorite machine of all time.

Also, so everyone can see what kinds of things this bike is capable of, I’m posting a video of an FZ1 racing at the track called Grattan near Grand Rapids, MI. Note that this rider is a total bad ass. I couldn’t possibly go anything like this fast on my FZ1. The vehicle chasing with the camera is a 2000 R6, the guy with the yellow vest is on a 2003 FZ1. Keep in mind this is a standard bike with a handle bar, not some clip-on bearing race replica. He’s absolutely killing it. Watch him walk away from the R6 whenever it straightens out, he also throws a few power wheelies in. Sick.

FZ1 Grattan Video

This is sort of about work, but not really, so I’ll allow it.

ITT Visual Solutions (link) (formerly Research Systems, also formerly owned by Kodak), a Boulder company, was a late seventies startup by a CU researcher named David Stern. His product was a scientific data analysis environment and programming language called IDL. IDL stands for Interactive Data Language, not Interface Definition Language, as commonly used in web services work. During my time in the satellite imagery business, I became very proficient in IDL and delivered some applications written in IDL. I also maintained some legacy IDL stuff and generally evangelized IDL use there. I was far from the best IDL programmer there, but I probably enjoyed IDL more than a lot of the guys. To me, IDL prgramming is just fun. IDL is gear for fun applications. Want to visualize a 3-D model of a brain, IDL’s your guy. Need to model a spacecraft orbit? IDL. Need to analyze a massive astronomy star database? IDL’s for you. Need to build a photogrammetric imaging model? Got a hyperspectral data cube to slice up? Need to statisticially analyze MRI images? You guessed it. IDL can do it all and more. IDL programming is fun because people use it to solve interesting problems. I met Dr. Oakes, who runs a brain imaging lab at a university at IDL training. He had developed this IDL visualization tool for imaging activiy within patient’s brains. I worked a bit with the calibration engineers at digitalglobe, who used IDL to calibrate the imaging sensor on the spacecraft. People use IDL to model thunderstorms and bad weather. Hang out in the Java/.Net lounge long enough and you’ll be super-skippy on how to persist sales line item transactions across n-Tier architectures using enterprise services. Umm.. not quite the same is it? I miss IDL.

There is a small market of IDL programming work helping scientists to code their stuff. Scientists are routinely brilliant, but they aren’t always good programmers. So sometimes they a need a pro programmer to help them do their IDL implementations. I was able to help some of the imaging scientists at the satellite shop in this way. That was always a lot of fun and you get some exposure to their scientific domain at the same time, a big plus. Most of this work is absorbed by ITT’s consulting wing themselves (well, and this guy). It’s not a big market after all, and if you’re solo like me, you need $10,000 worth of licenses just to get started.

IDL is hard to learn. Especially if you’re not really an experienced programmer, which I was (am?) at the time I undertook it. It’s a steep, steep learning curve, which is why a decent amount of the money made on IDL is made from training classes. I had no such help until way late in the game, but did attend the Advanced IDL class over at Research Systems eventually. But, the point being, this is a hard-earned skillset. You really have to want to learn IDL or you’ll never get through it. So, all the more sad that I haven’t practiced my IDL skills in more than a year. Oh, the rust. It bothers me to be losing such a difficult skill to pick up, but there’s really not a whole lot I can do about it at the moment. The problem is that IDL isn’t available for free. In fact it’s absurdly expensive. I think the least expensive version starts around $3000, and the one you really need is over $10,000. So, goodbye IDL skills, I’ll really miss you. I’ve never worked in a programming environment where it was easier to visualize solutions and create such fast, elegant code with such incredible visualization power. The answers were always wasy to find in IDL. We used it for everything from pointing the satellite at the dark parts of space to doing satellite image QC to switching someones home-video MPEGs from portrait to lanscape.

I’m hoping that some of the beer-free IDL (PDL, PyDL, octave, etc.) clones become mature sometime soon, but really, I don’t expect that to happen, which is too bad. So few languages give real joy to programmers. IDL is one of them. Ruby is one of them. Maybe one day I’ll create the IDL-Ruby bridge and that will be that.

Well, since the last album review was so well received, I’ll have to share another nugget with you all.

Sonic Youth’s latest album, Rather Ripped is, quite suprisingly, one of their very best efforts. I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to Sonic Youth since the Goo days. My distinct impression was that their newer stuff wasn’t nearly as good as the old classics. Well, that may have been true until now, but Rather Ripped is a kick-ass record. I really don’t have any insight as to why they made such a good record seemingly out of the blue (they did kick the 5th member out before this record), but there it is all the same.

I give this one a 4 & 1/2 star rating. This record is as good as Goo, not as good as Daydream Nation (one of the greatest rock records of all time). It’s better than Sister (another fave) or any of the other ones, though. Really, I was quite suprised. Play this record through a few times, and I’m betting you’ll agree. Rather Ripped is a great rock record and deserves its place among Sonic Youth’s best work.

Sonic Youth Home

So, we’ve all heard about the recent phenomenon of ‘digital dirt’. That is, some folks found it expedient at some point over the last few years or so to post unflattering content about themselves on the internet. Potential employers Google your name (every single one of them does this as far as I can tell), and pop! there you are, shirtless, drunk as piss and vomiting underneath the “Psi Alpha Psi” fraternity sign at Kent State or some other foolish thing. As your resume hits the trash can, the hiring manager thinks “What a jackass!” Usually, this takes one of two forms: 1- the compromising photo/youtube clip/myspace profile and 2- the unsavory rant.

Now, I can guarantee you there are no incredibly compromising photos of myself on the internet, and I made sure to register an empty profile under my name on myspace (so no other donald marino puts embarrasing crap there - I want a monopoly on ruining that name), but I have ranted a bit here and there. Now, my stuff’s really very mild, I usually am whining about how mainstream technologies suck or some other annoyance of a developer’s life. Real ‘digital dirt’ would be someone’s racist tirade or childish insult stream or just plain dumb-as-hell statements. You won’t ever find me being racist, but I do say dumb things from time-to-time. Not as dumb as Virginia Sen. George Allen (at least learn how to pronounce ‘macaque’ before using it as a racial slur, you f*%&$g boob), but that’s setting the bar pretty high.

I do have to say I’ve found it amusing on a few occasions to have a hiring manager blurt out “I read your blog!” with a flourish and a twinkle, as if they were the only one who ever googled my name and put 1 and 1 together to make two. (Hello, potential future employers! I know you all are reading this. I’m really a nice guy and a hard worker :-))

So, the question is: do you speak your mind online ever, or do you milquetoast it? Do you just give up and say nothing? Anyone that knows me personally knows I have strong opinions and that I like to speak my mind. Most see this as a positive, some cannot stand it. I appreceiate a direct style and a well-defended position, many feel threatened by that. A blog is somewhat different, though. First of all it never goes away (thanks to the internet wayback machine), second - it’s quite voluntary. No one makes you blog. No one asked your opinion, you just decided to post it up for the world’s edu-tainment. I hope that people read this blog and at least think that I have some critical thinking skills and can express myself reasonably well. Some people will not, though, I am sure. I personally think it’s a mistake to read too much into someone’s blog posts, but people will hold you to every word you say in your blog as if it were a court deposition. Which, really, is a shame. Because it’s fun to rant in your blog. It’s fun to say something incindiary once in a while. It’s fun to say what you think and see people react, especially if you have a strong or unusual opinion. But now that we will seemingly be harshly judged for anything edgy we say, perhaps this medium is dying faster than we think. Or maybe, you can feel free to say what you want still, as long as you don’t need to find a job soon.

I’m not sure. But I did delete every one of my technology posts. I won’t write about work here again. I need to maintain a professionally neutral web presence until I have a secure job again (pause as we note the new more conservative stylesheet). I love working and I love to argue the merits of different technologies, designs, and approaches. I’ll have to resign myself to doing this in person from now on, since it’s so much harder to be misunderstood in person. This blog is now merely here to illustrate that I love motorcycles, the NY Jets, baseball and my girlfriend, and that I make fairly bad sounding amateur music from time-to-time. Nice and low-calorie, a light snack of a blog as it were. Use the wayback machine if you really need to see me at my internet worst. Or just come ask me my opinion about the state of “Enterprise Development”

courtesy of Botlove dot com aka my brother Andrew

Does anyone else think this is weird? I hope that’s a photochop.

The Silversun Pickups record Carnavas is out.

I give the seldom used five gold stars rating. Instant Classic?

Basically you need to go get this record now. Yes, right now.

Sliversun Pickups home

I’m one of those borderline-obsessive football fans who actually pays attention to training camp and all the offseason activity. I’m they guy they made NFL Network for. I’m an absolute slave to their programming. I’ll watch almost anything they put on. Really, it’s quite brilliant. Coupled with the feed of the daily press conference from Coach Mangini and extensive NY media coverage, one can get practically minute-by-minute coverage of the team.

For a long suffering Jets fan, the news out of Jets Camp is suprisingly positive this year. First year coach Eric Mangini is reported to be running a tough, old-school camp where 100 degree two-a-days are the norm. All positions on the team are open for competition, no veteran is guaranteed a job. Practices are full pads and full contact, something few teams regularly employ anymore. The venerable Curtis Martin is still sitting out practices, but other than that no one has been spared. There has been an unusual four man competition for the starting quarterback position that continues on. Reportedly Chad Pennington has by far looked the best and the 1-2 rotation is very likely to be Pennington and Ramsey, in that order.

The question of Brooks Bollinger remains. Here’s a fourth year pro who started 9 NFL games last year and played to a 79 QB rating. At times he actually looked pretty good out there. At times it was rough going (I was there in person when Denver’s Al Wilson knocked Bollinger unconscious). I’m guessing that he’s a better backup QB than a lot of teams backups. Hopefully we’ll get something for him and he’ll go somewhere to be a #2. I’d hate to see him on the practice squad just so we can keep the prized rookie QB. Brooks deserves better that that.

By all accounts this Jets team will be tougher, better conditioned and more fundamentally sound than the Edwards era teams. The clock management gaffes are likely a thing of the past. It’s comforting to know that the team should be more disciplined and tough, although Herm Edwards Jet teams were among the least penalized during his entre tenure. Everyone has had to win their jobs again under the new coach, which makes for a healthy team dynamic, I think. The team should be better, but at this point, I’d say 8-8 is an optimistic outlook. Look out for 2007, though. i like where this team is heading.