Why I would get an Apple iPad

Back in May 2009 I wrote a post about how I would like to consume information from the internet from the perspective of what devices I would want to have. In that post I said I had a mobile phone and laptop which covers the two ends of the spectrum of devices, but that the middle was not filled. I had mentioned a tablet would be perfect and that I hoped that Apple would eventually produce one. Well, they are and it's called the iPad.

As with anything Apple announces, there has been a ton of online commentary as to why the iPad is (not) worth the minimum US$500 price tag. From what I can tell, most of the complaints against it are coming from the perspective that it does not fulfill all the needs one has from a laptop. Fair enough as Apple did make a direct comparison between the iPad and netbooks as the niche they were trying to fill. Complaints tend to be about things such as no USB port to connect external devices or the inability to do some heavy work like programming on it. All of these shortcomings are coming at the iPad from the perspective of comparing it to a netbook.

Since the iPad it meant to fill a niche it is important to be upfront about what that niche is. If you view the history of computer and mobile devices, originally people had a desktop and then a laptop for those times they needed portability. As the power of laptops have increased it has now become commonplace to find people have entirely filled their desktop needs with their laptops, leading to the desktop no longer being something people own at home. Netbooks have now come along to fill in the position that laptops once held: a computer that is more portable than one's primary machine -- the laptop -- but still able to perform all of the same functions if you are willing to do it more slowly. And then we have the mobile phone filling in the extreme end for those times where you want to do some task but didn't explicitly expect to need a computer. But with mobile phones at the absolute end of portability and power, one can only move up from there to try to fill in that gap between mobile phone and laptop. And moving up from the mobile phone is how the iPad is trying to take that gap between mobile phone laptop. It's a different approach from the netbook and thus serves a different purpose.

For me, I don't need a netbook. My MacBook weighs under 5 lbs which is light enough for me. Plus I have it set up nicely to fit my workflow for anything I need to do that's heavy duty. Having a netbook would require managing a second computer which I am not interested in. Plus my 13" screen is already at my limit for screen size for doing coding work. And I have big hands so I cannot afford to having anything less than a full-size keyboard (plus I can type damn fast so I am not about to want to give up that just for some weight and an extra hour of battery). So the netbook does not fit a niche for me by virtue of being a smaller laptop.

But what about all of those times I don't need a laptop but still want some form of a computer? At the moment I have used my mobile phone or my iPod touch. I don't know about the rest of you, but I spend plenty of time simply browsing the web; my nightly regime is to check Gmail for any new emails that came in since the morning, check Twitter and Facebook, and then go through my feeds in Google Reader, and maybe clear out some entries from Instapaper. Heck, in the morning before I roll out of bed I check my inbox on my mobile phone to help me wake up. Notice how none of those uses require anything that a mobile phone does not already provide? I simply end up wanting a bigger screen to make reading easier and to have a little bit better response to web sites and apps.

It's these situations where my mobile phone would suffice but I would like to have more that I think the iPad was designed for. There is a reason people were expecting (and got) an iPod touch XXL; it's the netbook/laptop connection in reverse for mobile phones. And I can think of two definite scenarios right now where I would love to have the iPad and where a netbook is just not needed.

The first one is my nightly browsing. This has become especially acute for me thanks to my girlfriend. Since my laptop is nicer than hers she has left her laptop at her place. That means when she is over she inevitably wants to borrow my laptop to check her email, follow friends on Facebook, and to do her homework. That means my laptop ends up being occupied. In those situations I either read on my Kindle or I pull out my mobile phone and do my usual routine on there. In the instances I use my mobile phone I inevitably wish for a larger screen and that's it. I browser mobile versions of web pages so performance is not a problem. I simply want more screen real estate to make navigation easier and to make the text larger to read. Nothing fancy. I definitely don't need a full keyboard as I don't do much more than maybe log into some service or jot down some Twitter-length comment. And getting to hold my mobile phone with one hand is somewhat freeing as I don't have to make sure to sit in such a way as to fit it on my lap like I would need to with a netbook.

My second scenario where an iPad would work well is travelling. In a typical year I take at least five trips; vacation, visit my mom, visit my dad, PyCon, and some conference. Once I graduate and have a full-time job I don't really expect that number to drop as the conference trip will be replaced with more vacations or filled in with visiting my brother. In all honesty I expect the number of trips I take to only go up once I have the money to afford to take more vacations, even if they are only for the weekend.

Traveling that frequently for multi-hour trips where I am not actively driving means I have needed to learn how to entertain myself for several continuous hours while away from home. And not only am I away from home, but I am most likely in an awkward chair (you try being 6'6" and sit on an airplane) where you are not near a power adapter for several hours (think five hours or more). At the moment I entertain myself on these trips in XXX ways: reading physical magazines (during the device blackout on flights), read a book on my Kindle (when I want to be thinking), podcasts on my iPod touch (assuming I have any to listen to at that moment), or watching a movie on my iPod touch (when I simply do not want to think enough to read). Once again, notice that none of this requires a laptop. The only devices I use are my Kindle and iPod touch. Both of these devices could be replaced by an iPad if I wanted to, although I don't expect to ditch my Kindle since I suspect for intense reading for hours on end it will still be easier to read than an LCD. But my iPod touch could definitely be dropped for an iPad's longer battery life and larger screen for movies.

But there is more to traveling than getting there. If I am traveling to give a talk I really don't need to have a laptop. When I am at a conference (other than PyCon) I am typically there to give a presentation and socialize. I really should not have so much time on my hands as to be sitting around coding. At worst I would need to make last-minute changes to a presentation, but since the iPad will have Keynote, which I already use, then I don't need to have my laptop with me. Granted a netbook could work in this situation if I used presentation software that could run on one, but it is not critical. Plus the idea of getting to use the iPad's touch screen over a laser pointer and such for dynamic markup of slides while presenting is intriguing.

The critical aspect, though, for wanting an iPad for travel is the fact that you cannot do everything on it. I have to admit I love to code, and I probably do it sometimes when I should instead be out relaxing. My girlfriend on more than one occasion has flat-out said that I cannot take my laptop with me on trips to make sure I don't get sucked into coding instead of enjoying my vacation. In fact I didn't pull out my laptop once on my last vacation with I took with just my girlfriend; I only used my mobile phone to check emails and get directions to places. When I visit my father, if I don't watch myself I very easily get wrapped up in a coding project instead of just relaxing and enjoying the break. If I only had an iPad I would simply not have the option to code (Mozilla Bespin withstanding), and that's a good thing. It even works well for visiting the family and sharing photos I have taken without having to bring the laptop.

I could also see the iPad competing with my Kindle as the thing I toss in my bag when I am going out to a coffee shop or any other place with WiFi where I will have some known downtime (although w/o paying for the 3G version, which I don't plan on doing, the Kindle still wins for sitting on a park bench). I could also seeing adding to my morning regime to reading the New York Times or Google News in bed in the morning as I wake up. Or you knows those quickie checks you do on your laptop or mobile phone (e.g. IMDb checks while watching a movie)? The iPad would be great for those situations (and the Chrome OS developers have found netbooks handy for those situations as well, but I would prefer the tablet form factor).

In other words I already have several compelling use-cases in my life for the iPad where a netbook would at best a comparable solution. Now the question is whether I can wrangle together the US$500 to buy the thing. I think I could get away with not syncing my entire music collection on it (want to do that on my mobile phone instead), so I shouldn't need more than the 16GB version for podcasts, movies, apps, and maybe keeping my favorite photos on it. Maybe an iPad can be a gift to myself when I graduate or something.

Paper accepted for the WWW2010 conference

My latest research has been accepted as a research paper to presented at WWW2010! This is a big deal for me as it get me a publication covering the second half of my thesis work (the first half was published at AOSD 2009 earlier this year). Having both halves of my thesis published alleviates a good amount of burden for my thesis as I don't have to work quite as hard to prove it has good ideas to my thesis committee; other peers have already said the work is good. So I will be graduating some time this year once my thesis is finished!

CS papers need to stop publishing in the two-column format

Ever since receiving my Kindle for Xmas and uploading a PDF of a computer science paper I have realized that the way that CS papers are currently being formatted and published needs to change. In the world of CS academia papers are traditionally formatted in a two-column format. This format compared to a one-column format works out well as it fits more per page.

But is reading a CS conference paper on actual paper the future? At AOSD 2009 where I presented my paper I received the conference proceedings on a USB driver. Even though I had to go through pre-print, meet a stringent formatting guideline designed for print, and work with a pre-print service, I didn't get my paper in a physical format (I actually can't get an official hard copy of my paper so I am going to have to find a printer in Vancouver to do it so I can have an archival copy for myself). If we are not even going to receive a paper copy why worry about how it will look on the printed page?

And this brings up to the second problem of how two-column PDFs look on a digital screen. If you read a two-column PDF on an LCD it is a real pain because you typically have zoomed in enough to make the text readable that an entire column will not fit on the screen at any one time. That means to read a single page you must start at the top of the first column, scroll down to finish that column, go back up the page to start the second column, and then scroll down again to finish that second column. As more papers are read on computers it makes less and less sense to format papers this way.

But what really makes the two-column format bad is PDFs inability to reflow its text on e-readers. If you put a PDF on an e-reader that is not the actual size of a sheet of paper the PDF must either be resized to fit entirely on the screen or software has to try to figure out how to reflow the text which can lead to bad results. On my Kindle I have to turn to landscape mode in order to read a two-column PDF, but that simply zooms enough to fit the width of the page on the reader which still leads to small text.

If CS papers switched to a one-column format these issues of reading on electronic devices would simply go away. PDFs would be readable on a computer screen as you would simply scroll in one direction: down. As for e-readers, I think honestly the best solution in all of this is to write text with reflow in mind and then have a standard way of converting from EPUB to PDF. This would be easy if people simply didn't embed table, charts, etc. directly in the paper but instead put them in an appendix and had links to the images. But even if they are inline, making papers simply one-column goes a long way as long as no one is doing crazy typography (which is typically frowned upon in conference papers thanks to length restrictions).

Luckily I am not the only person thinking about this. The journal Cell has begun developing a new paper format. While currently aimed at displaying better in the browser, that requirement should lead to easy packaging in EPUB for e-readers.

The security of your money in your wallet

[edit 2010-01-02: see this Chicago Tribune article on debit vs. credit card security for purchases]

My girlfriend had her debit card number skimmed, which led to me thinking about exactly how secure the money we have in our wallets (cash, debit, and credit cards) truly is.

Take your credit card. It is vulnerable to having its number skimmed by a false card reader at a store. You could also end up with its number written down by a waiter who takes it to be swiped. And you know those portable card readers that are getting used more and more? They use Bluetooth for wireless communication which has no inherent security mechanism, leaving your number as vulnerable as the card reader manufacturer decides to leave it vulnerable (which means "very vulnerable" since good security costs money to implement). And if you make purchases online then your card is as vulnerable as the weakest web site you used (which is to say "very vulnerable" again since most people don't take the time or money to heavily secure where they store your credit card).

Your debit card is exposed to the same extent as your credit card, except for web sites (as long as you don't use your debit card's credit card feature to make payments with it). Your PIN can still be intercepted by a skimming card reader. And a waiter can still get your number and just watch you punch in your PIN.

As for cash, its only vulnerability is from you being robbed. Otherwise no one is going to forge your money and try to use it to pay for something like a card. And if you get robbed any of your cards can be used for quick purchases.

With all of this in mind, why would you choose way of paying over another?

For cash, it can only be taken if you are robbed. According to the Department of Justice in the US, you have a %0.2 (or 2 out of 1000) chance of being robbed these days. The problem with having your cash stolen, is that if it's gone, it's gone. Unless the police recover your money you have no way of retrieving it again. That would suggest that if you prefer cash over other types of purchases then you should minimize how much you carry around at any time to prevent losing your entire paycheck or something.

Cash does have two perks to it. One is that you are being nice to vendors as cash has no overhead cost. Using either a debit or credit card carries a transaction fee that merchants must pay which cash does not have. Cash also helps you manage your money by limiting you to what you have on hand. If you can't control your spending well, restricting yourself to only the cash you have on you is a good way to make sure you stick to a budget.

Although cash does make it harder to track one's budget. Thanks to web sites for your credit and debit accounts it is easy to log on and look at where you money is going. But in the instance of cash, you have to do that bookkeeping and analysis manually. If you are not good about that it can nullify the budget-restricting power that cash holds over credit and debit cards.

For credit/debit card fraud, I can't find any solid numbers in terms of victimization. Best I could find is that roughly $0.07 of fraud is done per $100 in transactions. But considering everyone I know has had a credit card or debit card number stolen but not been mugged, I think the chances are much higher than having your cash taken from you.

But what are the repercussions of having your cards stolen? In the case of credit cards, you report the bad charge, wait for a few weeks for them to figure out what happened, and potentially wait for a new card to be overnighted to you. For debit cards you go in to the bank personally, get your money back on the spot, and receive a new card. Obviously the speed of response is different between credit and debit cards as one gives you a temporary loan why the other is your actual, physical money. But in both instances you end up getting the fraudulent charges removed and have no loss of money short of inconvenience and stress. Plus credit and debit cards let you manage your finances easily with online reports of your expenditures.

What it seems to come down to is a tradeoff between the inevitable inconvenience of when your credit and debit card numbers are stolen compared to the possibility of being robbed of your cash. If you are fine with dealing with your bank or credit card company when your card number gets stolen then I would say use your credit card for everything. That way any issues won't directly affect you if for some reason the bank drags their feet. Plus you get perks typically with your credit card (cashback, frequent flier miles, etc.) that you don't get with a debit card. Otherwise use your debit card if you feel you can't trust yourself with a credit card. I would only use cash if you feel bad for merchants being charged fees by the credit card companies or you have real issues with someone knowing what you have bought.

Replacing FriendFeed

[edit 2009-08-12: Google Reader now provides a page of feeds based on your Google profile, solving my first two issues]

It was announced today that Facebook bought FriendFeed. This is unfortunate to me as this puts FriendFeed's future in doubt as Facebook bought the company for the developers and their tech, not the site itself. While I totally understand why the FriendFeed guys sold the company, it does mean I need to come up with an alternative to FriendFeed as I don't trust Facebook to keep the site up and open to my liking.

FriendFeed provided me three services. One was aggregating my online content into a single account online -- my lifestream online. To fix this I have created a Google Reader lifestream bundle for myself. There you will find an aggregate feed (that works in any feed reader) for my two blogs, my photos, and my Yelp reviews. I am also giving twitterfeed a try to update Twitter directly from this bundle. If you want ALL of my content, including things that are extremely noisy , go to my Google profile and subscribe to what you want.

The second service FriendFeed provided was getting shared stuff from various people online. This is picked up by Google Reader shared items. Many things I liked that I found from FriendFeed came from people and their Google Reader shared items, so this service replacement works.

The third service was as a microblogging service and Twitter backup. I always preferred how FriendFeed handled comments, and I had enough people following me that I could post there and on occasion get a response. But the really handy thing was FriendFeed as a backup when Twitter was acting up. Posting a message to FriendFeed meant it would at least be up on FriendFeed immediately and eventually get to Twitter once the service stopped having whatever trouble it had. Plus FriendFeed has an IM and email interface that I would use on occasion. Replacing the backup I can do through identi.ca, but the alternative interfaces will take more work. And Google Reader's shared thoughts features is definitely not there yet.

I think most of the reasons I used FriendFeed I have found a replacement, albeit not quite as slick as what FriendFeed has provided me.

Vodka, slurpees, a waterfight, and a stripper pole

There is a web site out there that lets you review local businesses; it's called Yelp (Canadian and UK versions are available). While I was interning at Google, Guido joined the site and told me that when he signed up the founders added him as friends since they use Python. As I had been looking for a site to post restaurant reviews in Vancouver and Yelp had the best listing of restaurants (most sites lacked a large portion of restaurant listings), I joined as well.

I then subsequently began to post reviews. While in SF I posted a couple, but didn't make it a habit. But upon returning to Vancouver I made an effort to post a review every time I ate at a restaurant. I caught the eye of someone named Crystal who was active in the local Yelp community here in Vancouver. She's so active, in fact, she became the new community manager for Yelp in Metro Vancouver two months ago. And when Crystal became community manager, Vancouver gained a Yelp Elite Squad, which I became a member of early last month just before the group's first event.

The great thing about being a part of the Yelp Elite is your local community manager organizes some free event every month. This month it was to attend the flash mob waterfight in Stanley Park. I went to this the first year it was held in Vancouver two years ago and had a blast, so I didn't pass up my opportunity to go again this year (I missed last year for some reason).

It started with us being picked up by a party bus right off the Burrard Bridge. We were then taken to three different 7-Elevens for free mini slurpees with vodka tossed in for those who desired it. My first slurpee was lime with vodka, the second one was a virgin orange. But I only partially got through my second slurpee because the vodka and sugar did not do great things to my stomach. Luckily someone thought to buy some chips that help settle my stomach.

We then hit the waterfight, and like the first year I went I just ran in guns blazing! I of course got soaked head to toe, all while having great fun. Couple hundred people turned out and all behaved themselves when it came to innocent bystanders. Did that for about half an hour and then headed back to the beach on the party bus.

But on the way back we made sure we took full advantage of our party bus. If you follow the link above for the bus you will notice that there is a stripper pole at the back of it. On the drive out of the park, Crystal tried to get the two other guys on the bus to dance on the pole as they were already sitting there with their shirts off. They said they were going to go for it, but didn't commit, so I said, "you pussies", and hopped on the pole and did a little dance. Now having all of our stuff sitting back there on top of my being taller than one could stand, it wasn't too much of a show, but it was enough to get me a Yelp shot glass full of vanilla vodka. After I broke the ice one of the guys finally went up. We then had two girls go at it together twice. That pair then had me join them and then later another girl on the bus. And when we finally stopped at our final destination I attempted one stripper pole move which I pulled off, and one I couldn't attempt because of a lack of upper body strength and general ceiling clearance. I actually did the one I could do twice because I got requests for photos, but that's when I learned why men typically don't pole dance.

Afterwards we went to Burrard Bridge for drinks. And from there I came home, showered, and took a nap. Overall it was a great day! And before anyone asks for photos, plenty were taken and will end up on the Yelp Vancouver Flickr collection sometime in the near future.

Reaching PhD candidacy and what it means

In case you have not heard through phone, email, IM, FriendFeed, or Twitter, I have reached PhD candidacy for my doctorate. But since a bunch of people have asked me exactly what that means I figured I would explain it along with the overall steps needed to get a PhD from UBC in computer science (CS).

When I first arrived at UBC, the first thing I did was take courses. All other departments at UBC have comprehensive exams, which are exhaustive tests to make sure your breadth of knowledge is wide enough for someone who will have a PhD. This is done to make sure you are well-rounded as an individual for your field since your PhD thesis makes you an expert in such a narrow field it would otherwise be very easy to get your degree without knowing some core fundamentals.

Luckily for me the CS department at UBC is special. We don't have comprehensive exams, but instead an eight course breadth requirement. By making sure you take courses in some broad areas the department with an acceptable grade (I believe it is a B or better) the department makes sure you are in general a computer scientist. My first year was spent taking three courses to meet this requirement.

You also need to find a supervisor. The definition of the role varies from supervisor to supervisor, but in general that should help make sure you stay on the right path to graduate. I lucked out that my masters supervisor is friends with my now PhD supervisor. So I managed to get a supervisor within a couple of months of arriving at UBC. But apparently most people arrive knowing who they want to work this. I suspect this is partially because in Canada a masters degree is a separate step from your PhD, unlike in the States where typically you skip your masters if you go for the PhD.

Then you start hunting for a thesis topic. For me this was a long, arduous process. The ideas I came up with either were either not scientific enough (not enough research and so more like a big masters thesis) or too big (requiring multiple PhDs and years of work). But I did finally find one.

Once you have a topic you need a committee. You can add people because they would make a good recommendation later on when you apply for a professorship. You can ask someone who fills in a knowledge gap you might have involving related work. Or you can ask someone who you think won't cause you much grief. Either way you need a committee. At UBC you need three, although one of the members is almost always your supervisor, so you really only need to hunt down two more people.

With a topic chosen and your committee selected, you need to defend your thesis topic proposal. A defense (at least at UBC) consists of a half hour presentation, a round of questions from your committee, questions from the audience, and then more questions from the committee. The purpose in doing this is to make sure you are not going to waste time on a topic that will not lead to you getting a PhD. In other words, if you successfully defend your thesis topic the department has said it will grant you a PhD if you do what you said you would do. This is what I just did.

The last step is actually writing your thesis and defending that. The defense is just like the one you do for your proposal. The reason I am now labeled a PhD candidate is I am now a candidate to defend a thesis. Up to this point the university would not let me consider defending a thesis as I had other requirements to complete. But with all but one checkbox out of the way I am allowed to defend a thesis. Some universities also call the state I am in All But Dissertation (ABD).

Now obviously there is more to a PhD then what I have said here (primarily the actual research and getting publications). But the primary steps of courses/exams, supervisor, topic, committee, proposal defense, and finally thesis defense are what you need to go through to get a PhD. For me I now have a flag at the finish line that is visible from where I stand; I just can't tell how far away the flag is.

How I would like to interact with the Internet from a physical perspective

Don't ask me why, but lately I have been thinking about how I would like to physically interact with the Internet, both in terms of producing and consuming content. With the proliferation of Internet access I think people will begin to come across more and more ways to access the Internet in their daily lives. Just a few years ago no one had unlimited data plans on their cell phones or netbooks that cost hardly anything. But now we can carry the Internet around in our pocket or backpacks without issue. But just because we can carry the Internet around in our pocket does not mean it is the best form-factor to actually interact with the Internet.

To begin, I think online content needs to be classified in small and large sizes. Small content is things like posts to Twitter, typical emails, or blog posts. Another way to think of it is it is no longer than two screens full of text on your typical smartphone. It takes no effort to scroll from top to bottom on a cell phone such that if you have to reference something at the top of what you are reading you won't think twice about scrolling back to the top. Everything else is large content.

For small content I think reading it on your cell phone is fine. The content is short enough that you will not be staring at the small screen for very long. Plus small content tends to be very timely and thus consuming it while out on the town makes sense as the longer it is until you get to it the less relevant it will be.

As for producing small content, your cell phone can also be fine, albeit only for really small content. I have no problem writing a paragraph or so on my cell, but I wouldn't want to go past that.

The next step up from cell phones is a tablet. If Apple were to create a tablet, it would be great for consuming all online content regardless of size. Something about 9" in diameter would be large enough to display text at a comfortable size for long-term reading. But it would also be small enough to easily carry around to any place where you might want to read such as the living room, bedroom, the local coffee shop, some bench outside, etc.

But I would not want to use the tablet to produce large content. While the on-screen keyboard would most likely be large enough that I could type several paragraphs without many errors, I would most likely get frustrated by how slow it would be compared to a physical keyboard (I am a fast typist). And so the tablet only slightly alleviates the content creation limitation of a cell phone, but it greatly improves the consumption experience.

This leaves us with laptop for consuming and creating all content. While it is not as convenient as a phone or tablet, it is still portable enough to carry around as long as you are not going hiking.

So, I want my cell phone for reading and writing emails along with reading short blog posts. I want a tablet for writing short blog posts but reading anything online. And I want my laptop for creating large content. Here is to hoping the Apple tablet rumor is true so I can actually start browsing the web on a tablet instead of having to always pull my laptop out.

Why I am so critical of women and their sunglasses

I have come to realize something about myself when I judge women on how they look. Having figured this out it puts into perspective why I have been so harsh towards women on certain things and not on others. Certainly it is why I absolute abhor poorly chosen sunglasses. What is this realization? I am very picky about what accessories women choose to wear.

When it comes to one's clothing, we all have days where we just don't necessarily have the options we want for that day (my mother and her expansive closet withstanding). I know I have had those days where I just had not gotten around to doing laundry and so my clothing options were rather limited. And one cannot go out in public without a shirt and pants. So I can understand a woman choosing a top or pair of pants one day that are not what I would have chosen for them.

This understanding even extends to shoes. I currently have my casual shoes sitting in my entry hall waiting to be taken to a cobbler as the soles are coming loose. Because of this I only have sneakers and my shoes I reserve for slacks or days I want to take it up a notch. Typically, if I think the nicer shoes might be too much I dress it down with the sneakers. So I can understand a woman making a bad choice in footwear.

But sunglasses? I don't care how sunny of a day it is, you don't have to wear sunglasses like pants. This is especially true in Vancouver where the sun is typically not out even when people are wearing their sunglasses. When you put on your sunglasses you are choosing to wear them. That means you are choosing to look how you do with those sunglasses. So if you look bad in them it says to me you made that conscious choice to look like that. Thus I judge much more harshly on that choice.

Same goes for other accessories such as earrings, any form of piercing, tattoos, etc. This helps explain why I react why I do to nose and lip piercing; you choose to look like that voluntarily and I really don't go for that sort of thing.

Now admittedly I have never had a conversation with a women with a nose piercing where I was saying to myself, "this person is amazing, but I can't ask her out because I simply cannot stand her nose piercing". But when I walk down the street or sit on the bus and I am judging women on how they look, those that choose to wear accessories that don't look good definitely get judged more harshly than others.

The two types of clapping

During my orientation at Cal Poly SLO orientation for my masters we had an ice breaker where you walked around the room trying to fill in a grid with names of people who have met some criteria (e.g. born outside of California). In the end completed grids were entered into a raffle and a winner was chosen. Once the name was pulled people clapped. I wondered why people were clapping, though, for someone who simply was lucky. Even if you assume it took some skill to fill in the grid (it didn't) people still clap when people when entirely random drawings that required nothing more than being present for the drawing.

I have asked people over the years why they thought people clapped to ackknowledge someone who has done nothing requiring skill. This question has actually been used by me to suss out whether someone actually thinking creatively about random crap like me or would rather shrug their shoulders at the question or ridicule me for asking "stupid" questions.

But regardless of the answers I have received I have never stopped thinking about it. But I believe I have finally reached an answer that I am happy with, and that is there is two different situations that cause people to clap. One instance is from the appreciation of someone's skill at something. When you see a performance that you consider great you will clap to let the person know how you feel.

The other instance is when you clap to let someone know you are happy for them. This is why we clap at weddings, when someone wins a prize that required no skill, etc. and this is what I witnessed all those years ago at Cal Poly.

Now I can't think of any actual difference between how we clap for the various instances of why we clap. People don't seem to use a different style or holler in one instance and not the other. It just simply happens to be two different reasons why we clap.

Which brings up an interesting point about clapping when you are happy for someone. What if you are not truly happy for them? What if you wanted to be the one who won the prize? You might begrudge the other person for winning, but you are not necessarily happy they won over you either. And yet we still clap. I think this is when people do the typical five lackluster claps and don't bother stretching out the applause. They don't want to come off as cold-hearted, but they don't really want to lie and say they are really that happy for you either.

This is exactly the type of stuff I contemplate when I stare out my window or go for a walk. How could I possibly still be single? =)