LordJeb Blogs

So you may have noticed that there is a link to the Bob Barr presidential campaign website on my blog now. The two big-government parties it seems will select Barack Obama and John McCain as their nominees. Regrettably, I think that neither of these individuals represents my viewpoints to any significant degree. I am currently registered as a Republican, but I will voting as a Libertarian in this case (and possibly in many others as well).

Former Congressman Barr seems to be the only candidate that is cognizant of the fact that as our government grows and tries to solve more problems, they actually CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS. His campaign is targeted at four main issues: cutting big spending, increasing individual liberty, securing our borders, and a strong national defense.

I cannot bring myself to vote for a candidate just because they are a NOT-DEMOCRAT. I am choosing to vote my conscience - to vote for someone who actually represents my ideals. I suspect that many of us have those same ideals, but are afraid to "throw our vote away." I have decided that the only true way to throw your vote away is to vote for someone you disagree with 80% of the time instead of the one you disagree with 90% of the time.

I hope that you will at least look at Barr's website and see what his stance is on some of the issues. If you like it better than McCain or Obama, then get on board and spread the message of Liberty.

I recently took a short vacation to go hiking and camping in the Havasupai Indian Reservation. It was a lot of fun, and we had a large group of people involved. We arrived at the trailhead late the night before and tried to sleep in the parking lot. This was a mistake, as there were people, cars, and buses coming in and out all night long. If I had to do it over again, I would stay at the nearest cheap hotel, and make an hour drive in the morning before hiking in. (Or I might choose to do what some of our group did and hike down in the middle of the night.)

In the morning we got up bright and early and started down into the canyon. For those unfamiliar with the area, it’s an offshoot of the Grand Canyon, so we were dropping down about 2000 feet from the trailhead to the village. (Easier than the typical 5000 feet of a Grand Canyon hike.) The first mile or so was pretty steep, but after that it was just a winding trail down the canyon. The hike was pretty and enjoyable, and my only problem with it would have to be the heat. (I don’t deal well with heat, and even the mild warmth of June in the morning was more than I would prefer.)

The hike in was about 8 miles to the village, and then another two to the campground. We stopped for breakfast at a café in the village, and then went to the Navajo Falls. Having opted to have our packs carried in by mules, we didn’t have our sandals and stuff with us yet. So I went barefoot across the rocks and into the falls and pools. It was absolutely beautiful here, seemingly a jungle right in the midst of the desert. We did some cliff jumping and playing for a few hours until we were ready to move on. Unfortunately, playing around on the rocks had taken its toll on my bare feet, and I now had some nice cuts and blisters that would make hiking a bit uncomfortable.

The second day we spent just playing around in the falls, mainly Havasu Falls, but with another trip up to Navajo Falls again. The cliff jumping at Havasu was fun, because you climb up behind the waterfall, and then jump out through the waterfall. I tried to swim out of the waterfall underwater, but was still surprised to be pounded by the falls when I surfaced. In one of the pools below the waterfall was a small tunnel where one pool would drain into another. You could climb down into the top pool, and let go allowing the current to sweep you through the tunnel into the lower pool – pretty cool.

The third day we hiked about 3 miles down canyon to Beaver Falls, including climbing down the cliffs at Mooney Falls on the way. A few of us decided to float the river through some sections rather than walk along the trail. I got some good cuts on the river rock traversing the pools, but we made it all the way down to the falls without having to hike too much.

The final day was the hike out. I got an early start since I am a slow hiker and made it the two miles to the village by about 7 am. Then we had to wait around for 4-5 hours for a helicopter ride to get out. The helicopter ride was my first, and it was really cool – they move a lot differently than airplanes.

I have posted some of my pictures from the trip on my photos page.

Well I have finally gotten around to implementing a photo album to start posting some of my pictures. It’s linked to off of the main website, but you can also reach it directly at www.lordjeb.com/photos. I’ve posted some extreme sledding and a few other random pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

I am in the midst of a course on the US Constitution right now, and just finished up a paper for the class. It's about the Seventeenth Amendment, which changed the US Senate from being elected by the state legislatures to being elected directly by the people.

For the purposes of the paper, I had to limit myself pretty narrowly to a small part of the topic. I think its a pretty decent paper for the amount of time I had to work on it (we are on a very short block schedule for this course). However, I think that there is a lot more information that could be visited on the topic.

The bottom line is that, I think the Seventeenth Amendment removed some of the critical checks and balances in our government. It has resulted in increased focus on special interests, and increased Federal government size and spending.

I think that we have come to revere the term "democracy" without really understanding what it means. In a strict democracy form of government, any majority rules. This will mean that the needs/desires of the 51% will be met at the expense of the other 49%.

I believe that a more desirable form of government in the representative republic, which is what our nation's Founders created originally. I believe that this form is more likely to result in a government where the needs that are common to a supermajority of people will be met on the national level, while issues that are less universal can be left to the more local governments (or to the individual).

Anyway, here is a link to the paper if you feel inclined to read a little bit more on the issue: Ochlocracy in the Senate

I have had the opportunity to work for a number of different software companies each of which has localized their product into different languages. These opportunities have led to me experience a number of different processes around localization, and a great deal of pain surrounding the whole issue. Localization sucks. However, I don't believe that it has to suck, and I think there are processes that if put in place can make this a relatively painless process.

I believe the biggest problem area that I have seen in localization is the interweaving of responsibilities. Let me describe the process from one company I have worked for. The developers create their resources in an english-only version, and the sources for these resources are checked into the source control. Then at some predetermined point, a developer packages up all the resource source files and sends them off to the localization team. They have some database which strings are loaded into, translated (often by an third party), and then new source files are generated for the various languages. The source files are then sent back to the developers who have to check them in and test them to make sure that they compile. Net result: days of turnaround time for even trivial localization changes, and hours of wasted time.

The root issue here is that you have developers who are involved in localization, which is not their primary responsibility, and localizers who are involved in development (by producing source files that have to be compiled). I think that we can resolve these issues and streamline the process by simply separating the functions more distinctly.

First, we need to have a method whereby localization can take place during the build process without any intervention. My first thoughts here are that we could create a program that is part of the build system that localizes an english source file into another language source file. The data that this program would consume is a translation database that would be checked into the source control system. The localization team is responsible simply for checking in a new copy of the database when they have updates. This system is a good improvement on the original, but it still leaves the problem that the files have to be compiled after the localization process changes them. One wrong string (with a misplaced quote character, etc.) and the build fails.

A better way to solve this problem is that the build system builds the initial binaries. Then the localization program is pointed at the binary file containing english resources. It edits this binary file and produces a copy of it with updated resources. In this way, we have isolated the localization process from the development process as much as possible.

The program that is responsible for performing the localization of binaries should also produce as part of its output a file that shows what resources are new or updated. This resources need further localization work. There needs now to be a tool that the localizers use to edit the localization database. It should be able to consume this build output product to import the new strings into their database. In this way the localizers never have to deal directly with the product. They only deal with the inputs to a tool that they own, and the outputs from a tool that they own.

Another side improvement to the general localization process is how to do a large degree of localization before any translation takes place. This process is what I have heard referred to as "pseudo-localization". The localizing tool should be capable of producing a "pseudo-localized" binary, that does not have ANY real strings. Rather, it should take all existing string resources, generate enough gibberish to pad the value and make it long enough to simulate a translated string. (Usually strings grow by something like 30% or so when translated to certain languages.) The product can then be installed and tested with these pseudo-localized strings to find spacing issues, etc. long before any translation work is done.