There seem to be certain stories that get to me more than others. I've also noticed that my wife usually doesn't even like these movies and it started me wondering, 'What exactly is it that causes such strong emotions in me?'

It seems to me that each of us has a slightly different emotional resonance when it comes to movies, books and other types of stories. It seems that the story hits on all cylinders and builds every step of the way until it hits the perfect ending. It's like two tuning forks brought together, vibrating at the same frequency.

Most of the time that this has happened to me, I don't even know why it's happening. There are certain movies that just hit me just so and I really can't put my finger on what it is that gets me.

I've been studying it though, thinking that if I can figure out what my emotional resonance is, I can start applying that to my writing. It seems to me that if I know what my emotional triggers are, the more I get that into my work, the more real and emotional it's going to be. It's the tuning fork idea again, but in reverse; instead of the work registering with my resonance, I'll use my resonance to enhance the work.

Here's some of the works that I've noticed do this with me:

• Metropolis (Anime)

  This is probably an Anime title that not many people have heard of, but I borrowed it from a friend way back when and fell in love with it. I ran out and bought it right away and I just seemed connected to it. I don't know why (need to get it out again) but it just seemed like the perfect story to me. In many ways it reminded me of Cowboy Bebop in the way the music and visuals seemed to be disjointed, yet fit perfectly together in their own off center way. It's a story that leaves you feeling melancholy, yet hopeful at the end. And it's based on a Osamu Tezuka manga, which should give you a feel of the overall theme of the movie.

• Lost in Translation

  This is a movie that seems to be very hit or miss among a lot of people, but it was a very big hit with me. Everything seemed to click in this movie for me and it's slow pace really helped build the emotional conflicts with in the film, most of them internal. It may be the best film of subtle internal conflicts I've ever seen and the nature of those conflicts really seems to resonate with me. But it also ended up being not all depressing too; there's a hopeful note at the end but it's hard to explain exactly where it comes from. I'm still trying to figure that out.

• Moonlight Sonata & Untitled

  Do songs really belong? I think they do. Moonlight Sonata has always been a song that, if I'm in the right mood, can really grip me. It's actually not totally depressing of a song, but it certainly ends that way. Another song that gets me is Untitled by The Crash Test Dummies. Just perfectly, well, melancholy. I'm starting to see a pattern here...

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

  I actually have a hard time condoning the addition of this item because, one, it's gotten a lot of buzz recently and I don't usually like adding to buzz and, two, I just saw it yesterday and that doesn't seem like enough time to add it to a list like this. But it did it. Those last 20 frames totally sold me on this project and hit me like a hammer, you might say. That last second put the whole work in a totally different light and made everything fit together so perfectly. You start watching the whole thing as a kind of fun little comedic romp and then it just hits you with, well, you'll just have to watch it. I've been thinking about this since we finished watching yesterday and it's a great piece of story telling. It's able to wrap you up and get you to care about the characters without know knowing about it. Then, like any good story, it kicks you when you're down, after you've invested so much it stabs you in the back in the most beautifully perfect way possible. Not because it wants to, but because it has to. If it didn't, you would just feel empty afterwards. (exhibit A: I Am Legend)

This isn't an exhaustive list, but I've only started thinking about this recently. I might write more on this as I work my way towards NaNoWriMo because I'd really like to use this in my next story. I need to study the above films and see; what is it that does this with me? What are my triggers? How can I project this into my work.

Anyway, what stories resonate with you? What movies do you seem to "get" that others don't?

Unchangeable String

One of the fundamental data types in Java is the String. In fact, it's used so often that most people don't even think much about what a String is or how it works. But a String Object works like no other object in Java in two important ways; immutability and internment.

You Can't Touch This

Immutability means that an object can't be changed. Ever. You can't modify any of it's values in any way.

While this might not sound very useful, it actually allows Java to optimize how it handles Strings -- which is important since they're used so much in the language -- and brings a sense of security to using Strings. As we saw last week, when Objects are changeable, weird side effects can pop up when one variable changes an Object and all the other variables see the change and don't know what happened.

Strings sidestep this issue by never allowing you to change a String in place. In programming parlance, this means Strings never have side effects. So in this operation:

String a = "hello";
String b = a;

b = b.toUpperCase();

a and b are now pointing to two different String Objects. a is pointing to the original String of "hello" while b is pointing to a copy that's all uppercase of "HELLO". Even though a and b were pointing to the same String originally, the method toUpperCase() makes a copy and assigns the copy to b. This leaves a untouched. [1]

This property allows Strings to do another cool trick. They can Intern.

Lowly Paid College Students?

Interning is a method where you cache objects in memory to speed up creation of those objects. What that means is, all String literals are interned, and if you define the same literal, it will actually be the same Object. A little illustration:

String a = "hello";
String b = "hello";

It looks like a and b are pointing to two different Objects, but they're not. Here's why.

When Java sees the "hello" for variable a, it creates a new String Object with the value and assigns the reference to a. It then saves that Object in a table in memory, also called interning.

Then Java sees that b is getting a String with the value "hello". It checks it's intern table and sees it already has that Object created. Since Strings can't be changed, it doesn't hurt to just give that Object reference to b too, and so it does. Even though the programmer didn't explicitly say so, a and b are now pointing to the same Object in memory.

In fact, Java is so good at this, it'll assign to same Object to these variables too:

String c = "hel" +
              "lo";
String d = "h" + "e" + "l" + "l" + "o";

String is the only Class in Java that does interning in the JVM.

Next week we'll talk about how to use this knowledge to build better programs. (Hint: it has to do with memory management.)

[1]Strings aren't the only Objects that do this in Java. Can you think of any others?

This is the first draft of the intro for the Personal Data Protection book. Comments welcome.

---

Many people think that their computers are valuable. They know that if they lost their computer or if it was stolen, their life would be ruined. But it's not true. Computers are replaceable.

It's the data that's important.

Imagine we were standing by the side of the road and you had your computer in your hands. Now imagine you could take all of the data out of your computer and hold it in your hands. Now I say that if you throw that computer into oncoming traffic, I'll buy you a new one, a better one, the latest model you've been looking at. Most people would chuck that computer in an instant because you know you haven't lost anything. You can plug that data into your shiny new computer and go about your business.

Now imagine that computer is the only place that data lives. Would you still toss it for the shiny, new, fast computer, with no data on it at all? Different reaction now, isn't it? I know I couldn't do it.

If you don't protect the data on your computer right now, you're playing in traffic every day. That huge collection of music, priceless family photos, important tax information; all of this can be wiped away in an instant. It will get lost forever. Hard drives eventually fail, computers eventually stop working, fires happen and that can't be stopped. Computer's can, and will have to be, replaced but the data on those computer's can't be.

Also, what if I handed your computer to a complete stranger? Would you allow that? Laptops are easy to steal and if you are afraid of what would happen if someone got a hold of your laptop, you need to take steps to protect yourself. You may have a password on your log in account, but it's probably not strong enough and, even if it is, won't stop people from reading those files anyway. Most operating systems aren't set up to really protect any of your documents and a good identity thief knows how to get them out.

But the good news is, there are ways to protect your data from loss and theft. It requires a bit of set up and a small amount of money to do it, but it'll be worth it when something comes along that wipes your data out. Most of your data is priceless, but you can protect it for less than five dollars a month. And this book will show you how, step by step.

Our first step is to form a backup strategy. The great thing about digital files is that you can copy them multiple times and they never get "worn out". So the main idea behind a backup strategy is, If you have copies in multiple places, losing one won't matter. If you have a file on three computers and one computer fails, you still have the file.

The first step is to have all the files in your computer also on an external hard drive.

But if you have everything in one physical location and there's a fire, you've still lost everything, so If you have copies in multiple physical location, natural disasters won't matter. Step two is to have what's called offsite backup. This is easy to set up and won't cost an arm and leg either.

But now that you have data all over the place it'll be easier than ever to steal, right? That's why If your data is encrypted, getting it stolen won't matter. There are many ways to encrypt your data -- virtually locking it in a digital safe -- but many aren't very good and can cause a false sense of security. There are a couple easy ways to handle encryption though and it won't require an advanced degree in computer science to understand.

The above strategies combined will take a computer failure or theft from a million dollar loss -- or more if it includes priceless family photos and videos -- to just the loss of a $500 machine.

Your data is priceless, and I hope you find this book just as valuable.

I've been working on a new book project recently and I figured I'd finally announce it to anyone who cared.

There seems to be a gap in knowledge over how to protect your data. It seems people understand that their computers are somehow important, but don't do enough to protect the real asset; their data. Computers are replaceable, even for as little as $300. Data, however, is not.

If you lose your hard drive right now in a fire, what will you lose? And I mean lose forever. Family pictures? Home movies? Banking information? And how much data would be compromised if your computer was stolen? Just because you have a password on your computer does not mean your data is protected from prying eyes. In fact, I can almost guarantee it's not.

The crazy thing is, while it might take a little time to set up, you can have all your data secure, from loss and theft, for as little as $1 a month and spending as little as an hour a month keeping it up to date.

So that's my book idea, laying out how to do this in as practical a way as possible, and in a way that everyone should be able to understand and implement, not just the geeks among us.

I'll also try to post as much to the blog as possible. I plan on publishing as DRM-free ebooks and on lulu for those of us who still like viscous liquid on dry tree pulp.

Anyone have any special requests on topics I should cover?

I was recently asked by my company's communications department to give them a quick look at Wikipedia's culture. They were recently looking at their own entry on the site and saw that it was a bit anemic. In their view, this could cause problems in trying to hire younger workers, something that I would agree with since I always research companies online to and Wikipedia is always one of my stops.

And who better than them to update it. No one else is going to care as much (which is obvious by the little amount of editing that has happened already) and no knows more about the company then they do anyway. They also know, however, that editing this entry could open them up to ridicule by users of the site and wanted to avoid that as much as possible. The solution is verifiability. This is what I sent.

First and foremost, the editors of Wikipedia are interested in factual articles. Without this, no one would use Wikipedia. They want people to include references when editing so that everything can be fact checked.

If we are going to edit articles in the name of the company, we should be as transparent as possible with it. We should create a user that explicitly states in the profile that they are an employee of the company and that they are making factual corrections to the articles. If you include references to your assertions on the site (and not just to our Press Releases), the edits are more likely to be taken and kept on the site after future edits.

If you are worried about a particular article or it's contents, you can bring up a discussion on the discussion tab of the article. If you're looking at deleting a large chunk of the article, that will raise people's interest. Be sure to discuss it on the discussion tab before deleting anything and then, if there's no references to the information or talk about the topic, go ahead and delete it from the page. Just be aware that nothing is ever gone. The articles history will always be intact and can not be deleted.

While it might be easy for us to edit the English articles concerning the company, it will be much harder to edit the Spanish and French (and every other language) versions of the articles. They are not kept in sync with each other and are actually edited completely separately. C'est la vie.

Also, don't pay someone else to do your edits. It's frowned upon: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/25/microsofts-v-wikipedia-round-2/

Links:

Community site with good tips on how to work with Wikipedia.
Editing guidelines for Wikipedia.