Speaking of benchmarks

Well episode 13 season 4 of scrubs was interesting, the most interesting thing in it however was the statement that JD made - "You're the one who is supposed to struggle, not me", hmm why does that sound familiar to me. It seems interesting to me that those of us who work on performance of systems don't worry too much with respect to our own performance ? How do you benchmark a human being ? when do you start thinking that a human being is obsolete and should be left to the pasture - whether he is 21 or 89. I've been told that these thoughts are 'an emotional trap', 'ego problems' and 'crazy talk'. Maybe we all really should be made to watch scrubs, just to get life lessons from it.

On the subject of benchmarks I have a couple of the more - 'gooey' things in life - those things that can't be defined with quantitative numbers. This is garaunteed to satisfy that itch to arrange, sort, serialise and stack. I present the 'Harry Potter' bench mark for fantasy novels. When you haven't read it but have read one of the harry potter series do as follows - take two books you read that the person whom you are talking to has also read. Now ask him/her (Let's stick to him for convinience) to rate the books you spoke of with respect to the harry potter series compare where you've put them with where he's put them. Now do the same for the book being refered to you. This lets you judge a couple of things, do your tastes match his, and how much weightage should the book be given. The second benchmark is for relating to a person how well an author has done with the book. Take the book - distill it into it's basic essence that is create a rough outline of the universe created by him. Now, think of what the most awesome things you could have done with respect to the same universe, now modify the universe slightly and do the same thing, do it a couple of times. Grade all the changes you made now go tell the idea to a person who has roughly the same taste as per the harry potter benchmark as you, ask them to grade it on the harry potter bench mark. Do not insert any bias at all and do the same with all the iterations you had. If you start scoring below harry potter as your number of changes increase, then place the idea above harry potter. If the increasing modifications doesn't have any correlation to the position in the benchmark put it along side harry potter, and if it decreases then put it below harry potter. We call this it iterative variant of the harry potter benchmark.

We also present here some ideas on the anime. The basic underlying point of some successfull (pop culture not rabid-anime-fan-escaflowne-is-godlike-or-I-kill-you-variety) 'collecting items'. That's right, I've revealed the basis of almost every successfull anime here - you need to collect stuff. Alright, so I've made an oversimplification, the point is - during each episode you need a monster of the week type situation which ties in well with the over all story line. There are very few ways of doing this in a formuliac manner - the simplest is to collect stuff. Take Bleach for example - you collect new zanpaktu's - not literally of course, but each week or couple of weeks you get to see a new type of sword with new powers and a new cool name and a new cool 'slogan' associated with it. This means that each week you get that craving to find out what happens this week, they feed you as little as they can get away with, and then drag it on untill next week. A benchmark for anime has not been fully developed, the use of bleach and naruto instead of harry potter is suggested, naruto seems to be a more popular option. Note that manga and anime both may be benchmarked the same way.

Now I've spent some time listening to Norah Jones, I think people should. Her voice is incredibly awesome, and the piano suits it well. So here is a song that I like a lot.

Norah Jones - Don't Know Why I Didn't Come

I waited 'til I saw the sun
I don't know why I didn't come
I left you by the house of fun
I don't know why I didn't come
I don't know why I didn't come

When I saw the break of day
I wished that I could fly away
Instead of kneeling in the sand
Catching tear drops in my hand

My heart is drenched in wine
You'll be on my mind
Forever

Out across the endless sea
I would die in ecstasy
But I'll be a bag of bones
Driving down the road alone

My heart is drenched in wine
You'll be on my mind
Forever

Something has to make you run
I don't know why I didn't come
I feel as empty as a drum
I don't know why I didn't come
I don't know why I didn't come
I don't know why I didn't come