Mole End

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. A key difference in the Mole's opinion is that magic is impenetrable, impervious to reason; technology is not. In the case at hand, the Mole is certain he could learn the intricacies of b2evolution (and, if necessary, php). As he has not, however, the white screen of nothingness that presented itself after an attempt at a point-and-click site upgrade some months ago was quite daunting. The Mole thought he might have to immerse himself in the internals of blog engines.

Like the Sorceror's Apprentice, however, the Mole muttered incantations beyond his understanding (i.e., clicked the upgrade button again) and found his blog restored.

So the Mole is back in business, gamely scribbling inanities that the world can continue to ignore vigorously.

So last week the Mole attended the SDForum SAM SIG meeting to hear Ted Neward speak on "State Management: Shape and Storage:
object/relational (O/R) impedance mismatches for persisting
objects between transient & persistent states." This is a topic that has long fascinated the Mole, which, he discovered, is another way of saying that the Mole was not the target audience. Most of the talk was about the problem; the Mole was looking for new insights into the answer.

In the car on the way home, the Mole thought some more about the issues. One of the phrases that had come into his mind during the talk was "locality of reference". It seems to the Mole that the spectrum of distances from the processor core (registers -- cache -- RAM -- disk -- offsite tape) reflects a range of concerns from extremely process-centric to extremely data-centric. An object model is very useful for computing (duh: OO, by definition, couples data with behavior); a relational model is very useful for long-term data storage. One day the Mole will draw a picture and elaborate on this.

The Mole also recommended Fabian Pascal's writings (some of which are specifically relevant) to a couple of people attending the event. The Mole believes Santayana's dictum that "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

The Mole has started a list of Recommended Reading. The first few entries are books so wise, so famous, so well respected, and so widely accepted that the Mole cannot add anything useful by way of a new review. If you need more words on why to read any of them, use your favorite search engine and you will have no trouble finding dozens of hearty, wordy, recommendations.

The Mole will, however, send a jeering "Onion sauce!" in your direction if you knowingly choose not to read them.

After many years of having no visible presense on the web, I have decided it is time to get with the program.

Frankly, though, the image that comes to mind is that of the poet Avrillia in The Garden of the Plynck:

...[Sara] leaned over the balustrade and looked down into Nothing. It was very gray.

"Do you throw your poems down there?" she asked of Avrillia, in inexpressible wonder.

"Of course," said Avrillia. "I write them on rose-leaves, you know--"

"Oh, yes!" breathed Sara. She still thought she had never heard of anything that sounded lovelier than poems written on rose-leaves.

"Petals, I mean, of course," continued Avrillia, "all colors, but especially blue. And then I drop them over, and some day one of them may stick on the bottom--"

"But there isn't any bottom," said Sara, lifting eyes like black pansies for wonder.

"No, there's no real bottom," conceded Avrillia, patiently, "but there's an imaginary bottom. One might stick on that, you know. And then, with that to build to, if I drop them in very fast, I may be able to fill it up--"

"But there aren't any sides to it, either!" objected Sara, even more wonderingly.

Avrillia betrayed a faint exasperation (it showed a little around the edges, like a green petticoat under a black dress). "Oh, these literal people!" she said, half to herself. Then she continued, still more patiently, "Isn't it just as easy to imagine sides as a bottom? Well, as I was saying, if I write them fast enough to fill it up--I mean if one should stick, of course--somebody a hundred years from now may
come along and notice one of my poems; and then I shall be Immortal." And at that a lovely smile crossed Avrillia's face.