Greggman.com

Back to Baltimore

Today I went back to Baltimore. I hadn't been there in 23 years. I lived there at 19 when I ran away from college with my first girlfriend. I lived there 3 years from 84 to 86 and worked at M.U.S.E. and Microprose.

At the time I didn't have a camera nor did I have any idea that I should even take pictures to record my life and so I have no pictures at all. No pictures of my girlfriend at the time. No pictures of the 3 different apartments I lived in. No pictures of the various cars I drove or the places we went. No pictures of either of my jobs, offices or any of the people I worked with or became friends with. (Except one who is still a friend. Hi Dan!).

So, I was in New York for 9 days and I decided to take a train down to Baltimore just to see it again. I bought the train tickets and then tried to rent a car. That was the first disappointment. I couldn't rent a car. They only rent cars from the BWI airport. Downtown, Avis and Hertz have car rental offices in a couple of hotels but both were already sold out and both are only open just a few hours a day and you can't return the cars outside of those hours. No car meant no going to Hunts Valley or Cockeysville, the places I lived the last 1.5 years in the greater Baltimore area.

I'd already bought the train tickets so I thought I'll just at least go to the places I know downtown and check out the 2 downtown apartments I stayed in. As I remembered all these places and tried to look them up online I started to realized that 23 years is a REALLY LONG TIME and almost everything was gone.

There used to be a company called Ms. Desserts. They had a small location in the food building at Harborplace, the inner harbor touristy area in Baltimore. They made the absolute best cranberry muffins I've ever had. I still remember them to this day 23 years later. Totally yummy and totally moist all the way through. Well, they no longer exist. In fact Harborplace has mostly been taken over by chain stores. Hooters, Subway, Cheesecake Factory. Lame! What's interesting about going some place that has the same damn stores you can get your local city?

The entire food building had been re-arranged. It used to be that downstairs was like 16 smaller food stands almost like a farmers market and upstairs was like 20 or so fast food places. Places I remember were my first funnel cake store. Yum! A store that made large fries they served with Old Bay Seasoning and malt vinegar. They were great. There was also this place called "The Fudgery" that made fudge live on these giant marble tables. They'd pour the fudge from cauldron on the tables and then toss it 6-8 feet in the air with these giant broom size spatulas with this awesome chant about making fudge. It was always fun to watch.

Now it's not much different than your average mall food court. There's only about 8 food places upstairs and the downstairs is retail stores.

Walking down from Penn station (yea, both NYC and Baltimore have a Penn Station), I searched for the location of my first job. I wasn't sure I remembered exactly where it was but I managed to find the old location of M.U.S.E. at 317 St. Charles. M.U.S.E. is where the original Castle Wolfenstein was made for the Apple II. I was kind of hoping to find my favorite deli ever across the street. It was called Pickadeli and they made meatball sandwiches by cutting the loaf in half, pulling out the bread and stuffing in the meatballs from one end. They were gone as well. It basically felt like downtown Baltimore was dead. Even though it was lunch time on a weekday there was almost no one on the streets. Vastly different from 23 years ago when it was crazy busy.

I walked over to Lexington Market just because there isn't much else to seen in Baltimore. It was still there. In fact it's been there since like 1772 or something (yea, before the USA was the USA). It had changed too. It looked familiar on the inside but the part that used to be a "market" was now all fast food stands, no more produce, meat, etc. Actually there were still a couple of groceries stores left. It got me wondering if there is even a market left for produce, etc. Obviously there are in some places like San Francisco for example has lots of farmers markets all over the city several times a week but I can imagine in lots of cities, for lots of people, cooking is out, fast food is in. In fact it's often cheaper than cooking.

I went and checked out "The Block" to see how it had changed. The Block is a famous block long area of nothing but porn stores and strip clubs. It used to be pretty amazing. Lots of neat flashing signs, etc. It was like the perfect block of sleaze. You know if you watch some montage of a guy getting drunk and going to bad places in an old movie, that was The Block. Well, I guess the progression of VCR, DVD, Internet has not been kind to The Block. One side of the street is pretty much gone, changed to some government building. The remaining stores are just old and run down, nothing flashy anymore. Broadway in San Francisco is more impressive.

I headed out to 31st and St. Paul because I thought that's one of the places I used to live. It's near John's Hopkins University. That block had been completely rebuilt with new buildings and so I'm not 100% sure that's where I used to live. I guess I need to ask my mom to dig up some old letters or something to see if she has my address from back then. John Hopkins still looked the same but there was a block of stores on St. Paul from 30th to 31st and I think only 1 store is still there from 23 years ago. Eddie's Market.

I also tried to find my first apartment which I thought was at like 28th and Howard but I checked the map and it didn't look like the roads went the way I remembered them going. 25th seemed like it was the right shape but when I got to 25th it seemed way too large and busy to be the street I was on. I checked 21st through 26th but nothing looked familiar.

The final thing I could think of was going to Giant which is the local chain of supermarkets. In particular there used to be this cinnamon coffee cake thing that Giant made all wet with cinnamon and sugar that I used to crave...... No luck. They didn't make them anymore.

When I got to Giant I recognized the intersection of 33rd and Greenmount. This area is a town called Waverly and 23 years ago it was like a model of "old" America from the 40s or 50s. Now it was most closed stores or run down. A shell of it's former self.

I guess all that says that you can't go back. It's just not the same. 23 years is a long time. Hmmm, I guess that's not really true. I can visit Stanton California where I grew up and while there are a lot of changes there's still a ton that is still there, still familiar.

Maybe it's just Baltimore has changed more than most cities.

On the good side I am glad I went. I got to eat Herr's sour cream and onion potato chips. :-) Yea, I know they are from Pennsylvania but I remember them from my time in Maryland. Even though so much has changed there were lots of things here and there that I hadn't thought about in ages and seeing then again brought back lots of fond memories. It was still cool to see it because I really have no other reason to ever visit Baltimore.

Blogging Software

It's come time for me to do something about my blog because lately I've been getting a 15 to 1 comment spam. That means about for every 1 real comment get 15 comments that are spam. The really annoying thing is they are typed by live people who attempt to leave a comment that sounds relevant, but then they leave a link to some website that makes it clear it's not a real comment. That it's just spam.

Spam is a problem for every blog but most blogging software has some stuff to help. They have comment moderation, they have comment spam filtering, they may have the option to require registration to comment.

Mine does not. Why? Because I wrote mine blog software custom before all that other blogging software even existed. In relation to spam there are some benefits. Because there are so many blogs using wordpress and movabletype those blogs get the most spam. Spammers spend time trying to write automated scripts to spam those systems because if they succeed they get to spam thousands and thousands of systems. Mine on the other hand, being custom, just doesn't warrant the effort. On the other hand, I don't have comment spam filtering, comment moderation and while I used to have registration it's also custom. Most of those other systems use standard registration systems like OpenId or others.

Anyway, because of this and other issues I've often thought about switching. Unfortunately, as far as I know, none of the blogging software out there has the features that my custom software has. Those features are as follows.

Support for localized content:

If your browser is set to prefer Japanese content this blog will appear with a Japanese skin and every article *can* be written in more than one language and if that language is available it will be served in that language. If you want an example of this see my Hawaiian Food page. In Firefox go to Tools-> Options-> Content-> Language-> "Choose your preferred language for displaying pages". Add Japanese and move it to the top. Then go view that page again. As far as I know, no other blogging software does this.

Support for different templates per device:

This software can look at the ID of your browser and serve a different version of the page for that browser. For WebTV it serves a different simpler version. For Google yet another. For certain cellphones another. For netscape 4.7 yet another. As far as know, no other blogging software does this.

Support for Multiple-blogs:

This rules out wordpress. While there are hacks to get wordpress to support multiple blogs I don't want to use hacks as that only brings more problems.

Automatic large-small image linking

:
On this blog, if I put a link to an image like this it will notice that the image name ends with "-sm" and it will look for a corresponding image without the "-sm". If it finds it it will AUTOMATICALLY wrap the image in a link from the small image to the large image like this

Support for automatically skinning images:

If I add custom attributes to my img tag, this blog software will wrap the image.

produces this:

I'm sure there's a host of other features that may or may not be available in other blogging software. The icons that go with the posts. Embedded emoticons so :-P becomes :-P automatically. Automatic code coloring so

printf("Spams today %d", numSpams);

becomes$gatcode9[f]
So that brings up the question what to do. Given that the comment spam is getting too annoying I'm left with the following options

Turn off comments.

That's no fun. Comments are about the only concrete pleasure I get from this blog.

Switch anyway and forgo all the missing figures.

I don't think I could get myself to do forgo the language features.

Add comment filtering, comment moderation and a login system to my custom software.

The problem with that is the advantage to switching is other people continue to upgrade, add fixes and features instead of me. If a new ID system comes out someone else will make that work. If I do it myself then I continue having to add stuff every couple of years.

Rewrite this site's software completely.

This site started as my very first perl program. As such it's REALLY BAD PERL. Perl is also slow. The problem here is it's a friggen lot of work to re-write this and when I'm done nothing will have visibly changed. And it still leaves the previous problems.

shut off the site.

What to do!?

The Death of Radio

This might be obvious and maybe others have posted this but it's clear to me radio will be struggling to stay alive within 10 years just like newspaper is today.

It's already dead for me. Why? Because I bought an iPhone last year. Since that time, on the way to and from work I listen almost exclusively to either podcasts (This American Life, Radiolab, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History) or streaming music (Pandora, Shoutcast). I get a good enough connection that I can stream all the way to and from work.

If you ever read this article about the death of newspapers, it points out that the only reason newspapers exist is because getting the news out was expensive. Someone with enough money needed to pay for a very expensive printing press and also organize distributing the printed newspaper (trucks and paper boys). Before the internet that was how the news got distributed because it was basically the only way. Now though, anyone can post news and everyone in the world can read it. Of course there are the issues of good news and good reporting but the main barrier, the reason the newspaper was special, the expense of printing and distributing the news, has gone away.

Well, the same thing is happening in radio. I live in San Francisco now and our local NPR radio station is KQED. Like newspapers they exist in large part because until relatively recently they were the most efficient way to get certain programs to people in this area. That has changed though. I don't need KQED to give me This American Life, I can get it directly from the source. I don't need KQED to give me Radiolab, I can get that from the source. I don't need KQED to give me any program that is not locally produced which is probably over 50% of their content.

The same can be argued for music radio. It used to be the way to hear new music was to turn on the radio. Each radio station brought that new music to their local area because only they had the funding to run a broadcasting station and hire DJs. Well, I don't need that anymore, I can get exposed to new music through thousands of internet stations on Shoutcast, Pandora, Last FM, and similar systems, anyone who chooses to can start a radio station.

I understand that this death of radio isn't going to happen today but given that I personally was able to make the switch to internet radio even in my car 100% today, it's only a matter of time before the average person follows suit. In 1995 when mp3s first game out no one would have guessed 10 years later CDs would be dead and the music industry struggling to stay relevant. Today, pretty much every one has an mp3 player. This year I turned off my radio and started listening though my iPhone. My guess is within 10 years, either through iPhone, iPod or other cell phones or through car stereos or car navigation systems supporting internet directly radio will be on it's death bed.

What I've been working on

If you want to know what I've been working on, see this blog entry in the other part of my website.

Subtle Racism?

I'm sure this is going to come off to many as something to do about nothing and it certainly didn't offend me personally but....

I was at a food court the other day. Different sections of the food court had labels. There was the "Green" section which was the salad area, there was a "Drinks" section and a "Vegetarian" section for vegetarian friendly prepared foods. There was one area labeled "Home Cooking" and another labeled "International". The "home cooking" area had various chicken and beef dishes and things like string beans, zucchini, mashed potatoes. The international section had Chinese and Indian foods.

I really didn't think anything of it but then later this thought just wandered into my head. Isn't labeling one "home cooking" and the other "international" a subtle way of saying that if you grew up eating the kinds of foods seen at the "home cooking" station that you're a *real American* and if you grew up eating the kinds of foods seen at the "international" station you're a foreigner?

It might seem like nothing but is it really? I've often heard white or black looking Americans talk to Asian looking Americans as though they aren't really American. Whether they actually think that or not while they are saying it I have no idea but it crosses my mind, hey, that person IS an American, quit saying things that suggest they are not.

Who says Rice or Noodles or Fish or Curry for dinner is not "home cooking"? I grew up with rice every night, does that mean I wasn't eating home cooking? Does it mean I'm not really American?

Anyway, I'm sure some people will get this and others will think it's just a stupid non-issue but the more I thought about it the more I thought it's one of those things that when you *get it* you'll get a slightly better understanding of what people that get affected by this kind of stuff are really dealing with and how without thinking people often subtly exclude others.

Googling my life away

As of May 5th I started a job at Google in Mountain View. I can't say what I am working on as it is still top secret but I can say it REALLY REALLY wanted to work on it which is why I took the job.

What I can do is mention some things about Google. Most of the rumors are true. Google is a pretty awesome company. I've never worked at a large American company. The largest company I ever worked at in America was probably 80 people when I left. I did work at Sega and Sony in Japan which are both giant companies but since my Japanese is not nearly as good as my English I never really understood or dealt with anything outside my team. I didn't read the company news letters nor browse the company internal forums etc. I didn't look at the perks... So, this is really my first American big company experience.

What can I say? Well, so far it's not quite as fun as games. That assumes you want to make games I guess but I think at some point I'll go back to games once my current project is over. Of course that's probably 2 or 3 years out and who knows what will happen by then.

But, otherwise, Google is pretty much heaven for employees in general and for engineers in particular. It is run by Engineers, the 2 founders and the CEO are engineers and Google is trying to keep it 50%+ engineers.

For example, unlike pretty much every other company I've ever worked for, at Google if you need equipment you get it. Log in to the company webpage and you can order computers,　monitors, mice, keyboards, software and it will be delivered to you, sometimes in hours. If it's a smaller item, every other building or so has a "Hardware Depot" which is on office that looks like a mini radio shack. You walk in and say "I need a USB cable" or "I need a chat camera" and they hand you one. Compare this to the bullshit at my last company. We had a build computer and when its harddrive filled up it would make it so nobody could get any work done. It look literally 6 months to get that stupid company to by a bigger harddrive, total cost maybe $120 while they lost literally thousands in work. WTF! Google, being led by engineers knows that that kind of BS is a net loss. Penny wise, pound foolish as they say.

At my desk I have 1 30inch monitor and one 24 inch. If I want more just ask. They have 6 kinds of chairs and 6 kinds of keyboards and will order something else if you need it.

They day I arrived I showed up at the Nooglers orientation class and they had a notebook computer for each person all ready to go. None of the BS I've had at nearly every other company where you arrive ready to work and they don't have equipment for you yet. The notebooks are also setup with all the stuff you need to work from home if you want. A couple of people on my team work from home once or twice a week. I did it once while I was sick but personally I prefer to come in to the office, keep my work out of my house :-)

The campus is huge too. Of course Google has offices all over the world but the main campus is in Mountain View California and "campus" is the correct word. I believe there are around 20 buildings in all. Walking from one end to the other would probably take 20+ minutes. They have bikes to use to get from one building to another if you want.

I've heard other say this as well but being on the campus feels at like like being a college campus. With all the buildings there are sometimes meetings requiring you go to one of the other buildings. They had 2 weeks of orientation classes so for a couple of hours each day during my first 2 weeks I would have to walk over to this or that building for a class about how things work at google, some technical, some procedural.

But it's not just that, there are fliers everywhere just like the halls of a college. Fliers advertising various teams and classes they are giving about how to use their new software or service, fliers about lectures or guest speakers who's talks you can attend if you want to. Fliers about clubs like the movie club or Japanese speaking club or whatever.

Google has a TON of perks. I'm sure they've been discussed in other places but for the most part there is a cafe in every building. Over 19 of them. Each cafe serves breakfast and lunch and just under half also server dinner, all of it is free(*) and it's good quality food. Each cafe has a different menu and you can go to any one of them. You can even bring your family once a month if you want.

Each cafe also maintains "micro kitchens" in their building that they stock with drinks, sodas, teas, coffees, juices, fresh fruits, cookies, candies, energy bars, sandwiches. Since each cafe is different, each micro kitchen is different as well with at least a slightly different selection of items.

They told us at orientation that there is something called "the Google 15" which is the 15lbs everyone gains from working around so much food. So far though I've actually lost weight because I can take much smaller portions than I used to get when eating at restaurants.

All the cafes also generally have dessert. Some even have homemade ice cream but fortunately the portions are very small so I can have one guilt free :-D

They've got something like 3 gyms and these are not small gyms. The gyms have classes as well just like a regular gym. They've got a couple of endless swimming pools if your into that. They've got a volleyball court and a grassy area where I often see people playing soccer or softball.

They've got free shuttles from all over the bay area to work so if you want you can take the shuttles to work. One of them happens to stop just a 5 minute walk from my house so I've taken it a few times.

You can also bring your dog to work if you want. I wish I had a dog to bring. My boss's dog just had puppies so he's been bringing one of them in every few days. So cute! :-)

Otherwise, a few things that have been different for me in terms of actual work. They have coding standards, something most gaming companies don't have much of. I'm not yet totally convinced it's a worth while thing. Of course it could be that I just don't like the standards they picked :-p In the past though I mostly just lived with whatever people did.

Another is they have code review. Any code you write, someone else on your team has to review it before you can check it in. It can be annoying to have to wait for someone to review your code but overall I like it. It gives me confidence that at least 2 pairs of eyes looked at my code. It also helps keep things consistent. For example I might write something not knowing that there is already a function to accomplish that but the reviewer will point that out for me so I like that part. It helps spread the knowledge better than I think happens on teams without it.

To that end they have a system that integrates with their version control so that when you are ready for someone to review your latest changes you can type a single command and your changes get uploaded to an internal website where it's presented in a way that makes it really easy for the reviewer to see where and what you changed and to comment on individual lines. If you are curious they released an open source version of it here.

Well, anyway, that's what I'm up to. Working my butt off at Google. Hopefully in the not toooo distant future my project will get announced and I can talk about it.