Matt's Homepage

“Always leave a little room in your life for when what you’re waiting for arrives – or you’ll miss it.”

When we are overly busy and constantly running, it squeezes everything else out except the needs of the immediate. When this becomes chronic, we wake up years later to realize the deeper things that give us meaning have passed us by. The test to see if you have any extra room in your life is if there is time to be curious and try/learn new things or build relationships with new people.

Perhaps you just upgraded your Google Analytics plugin on WordPress, and then anytime anyone tries to load your site, they’re greeted with one of the following errors:
Fatal error: Can’t use function return value in write context in /home2/gkmoney/public_html/wp-content/plugins/googleanalytics/class/Ga_Admin.php on line 106
or
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in wp-content/plugins/googleanalytics/class/Ga_Admin.php on line 480
What’s great is that you can no longer even get to your WordPress Admin page to disable the plugin. Meanwhile, your site is completely down.

Solution:

Use FTP or your hosting control panel and delete the directory:

<wordpress root>/wp-content/plugins/googleanalytics/

After that, WordPress should load normally for the published and admin pages

 

Followup:

Report your errors/look for other solutions here:
https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/googleanalytics

Here’s another thread with help on the problem:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/causing-fatal-error-after-updating/

The Malbolge is the 8th / second deepest circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. It’s also a programming language that recently appeared in the TV show Elementary:

For Dante, Malbolge was a funneled pit with 10 different ditches that contained the different people guilty of fraud: seducers, fraudulent lenders, forgers, alchemists, sowers of discord, perjurers, impersonators, false counselors, and the like.

Malbolge is also a programming language designed by Ben Olmstead in 1998 to be a nearly impossible language to use. It takes previous ridiculous languages like Brainfuck and the like, and then combines the ideas with base 3 arithmetic, self-altering code, encryption, and other esoteric computer science topics.

It turns out the code above is actually valid, and prints “Hello World”.

Reminds me of these guys. After years of seeing people horribly butcher computers, they decided to make sure everything appearing on screen was valid and correct.

We are in unprecidented times. Trump is running for presidency on a platform unlike any other in modern history. The Democratic party is in shambles. Putin has rattled sabers with small invasions of neighboring countries. ISIS is spreading terror into Europe. Brexit vote passed despite being predicted to fail. We sit on the precipice of…something very different.

An excellent read by a historian looking at our current situation.

 

View at Medium.com

I went for a hike up Tom, Dick, and Harry trail up by Mount Hood.  One of the best views of the mountain in my humble opinion.

Watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi last night during the $5 cheap showings at Living Room Theaters.  Pretty darn good movie and enjoyable to watch.

Synopsis:
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the story of 85 year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef. He is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant located in a Tokyo subway station. Despite its humble location, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious 3 star Michelin review. Sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar.  

My take:
A fascinating tale.  A few interesting tidbits that come out:

• Jiro left (an apparently unhappy home) at age 9 and started working in a sushi restaurant.  He was told by his parents that he could not come back if he left.  He never went back and has made sushi ever since.  He is now 85.
• You must book at least a month in advance for a seat (either lunch or dinner).  Some book up to a year in advance.
• There are only 10 seats in Sukiyabashi Jiro, and the bathroom is actually outside the restaurant.
• It was the first sushi restaurant ever to get a 3-star Michelin award.
• A seat with the standard course sushi set starts at 30,000 yen (~$370 USD by Apr 2012 rates)
• You get ~15 pieces of sushi in 20 minutes for that price.  That breaks down to $26/piece, or $18.50/minute.
• Apprentices work at least 10 years in training before he’ll let them make actually make sushi.
• He found experts in each type of fish and rice he uses and only buys the best from them.
• He worked long hours so much that he rarely saw his children awake.  When he had actually had a day off and slept in, his own children came running to their mother in the morning exclaiming there was a strange man sleeping on the couch.  They didn’t recognize him.

Jiro is a great living example of the Japanese style of striving for perfection, or Shokunin.  The best definition for Shokunin I could find was:

“The Japanese word shokunin is defined by both Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries as ‘craftsman’ or ‘artisan,’ but such a literal description does not fully express the deeper meaning. The Japanese apprentice is taught that shokunin means not only having technical skills, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness. … The shokunin has a social obligation to work his/her best for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material, in that no matter what it is, the shokunin’s responsibility is to fulfill the requirement.” – Tasio Odate

You can see the delight in his eyes and peace of heart he has achieved.  Here’s a great quote from Jiro that sums him up:

“All I want to do is make sushi.  I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit.  There is always a yearning to achieve more.  I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top…but no one knows where the top is.  Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I’ve achieved perfection.  But I feel ecstatic all day.  I love making sushi.  That is the spirit of Shokunin.  When to quit?  The job you’ve worked so hard for?  I’ve never once hated this job.  I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it.  Even though I’m 85, I don’t feel like retiring.  That’s how I feel.”

It’s the story of a life seeking perfection.  A giving of your life to a higher purpose than yourself. It’s success, not as we do it today using flashy-showy marketing and constant shifting to chase after the latest/greatest new thing, but by real technical accomplishment and finely honed skill in your craft earned from a lifetime of practice and experimentation.  His philosophy consists of several key elements:

• A life-long desire to always improve.
• Repetition that strives to get a little bit more perfect each time.
• Dedication of long hours and years to your practice

This reminds me of a talk given by a fellow at the Game Developer’s Conference.  He said that success was not found when you strive for recognition, publication, awards, etc.  Those things do not actually make your company/game successful in the marketplace.  What makes you successful is long, grueling hours in your seat working again and again on your game/code.  It’s a very counter-cultural message as we live in times which seek instant success, fame, and wealth.  Jiro harkens to a different philosophy where you dedicated your life to your craft and seek to find yourself in it; not the other way around.  It is a very Zen approach; and resounds with many similar beliefs found in monastic Christianity; but this philosophy could be applied to any walk of life.  In fact, it made me want to sit down and do some coding!  His striving for perfection was infectious.

There is also an side theme in this movie about his relationship with his sons that is very interesting – and very Japanese.

The only fault I see is that the film makers get a little bit wrapped up in the craft of telling the tale (i.e. I would have loved it if the film makers actually talked with him about how he went about getting better with each step.  How he experimented, what went wrong, how he came up with other ideas to try, etc.)  but this flaw doesn’t detract too much from the story.  Still, you can see them fall into their own trap by using lots of long shots of Jiro serving his sushi – while Jiro himself admitting that all the real work happens in the kitchen.  The actual serving part is just show.

So, the movie was good and worth a watch to see such an artisan at work.  Recommend.

A final note.  One of my favorite quotes from Jiro was about raising kids:
“Kids now want lots of free time and pleasure.  Many parents stupidly tell their kids they can come home if it doesn’t work out for them.  That’s idiocy.  How do you expect them to really get great like that?  I told my kids they could not come back when they left.  But I knew they would succeed because I trained them well.  I just gave them the push out the door.”

Despite some great fun working with these guys; but because we’re no longer delivering Larrabee – Project Offset has closed up shop at Intel.  I’m still in touch with a few of the original guys that have moved on to other pastures – and wish them the best.  A really great group of smart folks.

Here’s a link to some of the videos that were publicly released.  I worked a long time using that big, ugly giant doing animation optimizations/rewrites – I’ll sure miss him. 🙂

I’m always a sucker for ‘stuff I’ve learned’ sites.  Here’s a great blog: “Stuff No One Told Me” where the artist draws cartoons of things he’s learned – and they’re quite informative.