Category: Speculation

Wild, and not so wild, guess about the future of things going on around us.

Got an ugly shock from Dell… it was Vista.

Went to buy a Dell system today, and all Dell offered was Vista. Order canceled. VISTA = Negative Value to end business consumers.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, thinks that we’re all excitedly ready to lap up Vista. Nothing could be further from the truth; Vista is a vinegar in software form, but what’s even sadder is they don’t understand why this is so.

I suspect the ones that will be hurting from it will be PC distributors, such as Dell.

Case in point, we we to order a new Dell computer this week, however the only choice for the operating system was Vista in it’s many, ugly, hydra-headed flavors. What would have been an instant no-questions purchase turned into a customer service call to see if it was possible to get the machine with either XP, or nothing.

We don’t want to deal with multiple versions, we don’t agree with the new lease-like licenses, we don’t want to support anything with the DRM, we don’t want to deal with the newness and immaturity, we don’t want to have to have a hulking machine, we don’t want to deal with Microsoft, we don’t want equipment phoning home, we don’t want to fret virtualization — and feature wise, Vista just doesn’t feel worth it. Don’t even get me started on the lameness of Zune. Already we’ve hit the point of frustration and cost that OpenOffice has actually become more than a viable solution, but a frequently used on. We no longer use Microsoft servers – no exchange, no more MS-SQL; we’re all Linux based now.

So pause and digest that: Vista is deemed as a negative-value item on a machine purchase.

Dell has to deal with human calls, and our developers are buying and bringing in Macs.

Basically the common wisdom goes that if you can get someone to adopt something, they stick with it, if not out of emotional familiarity, however if you piss ’em off and they cross the threshold enough to switch and find a new solution, especially one that works, that becomes the new norm.

I ponder. If Microsoft alienates itself from homes and schools, and prices itself out of the range of small businesses, then how long before new blood and new business growth turn into a long term predictive trend?

Steve, I think your missed projections are just the tip of things to come.

UPDATE 19-Feb-2007: Ballmer blames pirates for poor Vista sales! But wait, there’s a problem with that Steve… people would have to be using Vista if they pirated it.

The phone-home scheme of Vista would actually show people using it, but it doesn’t. But if Vista is suppose to be copy-protected, how is the average user base then thwarting it? Did Microsoft Genuine Advantage fail? Isn’t the operating system suppose to be unhackable and the kernel protected from modification, so secure to run life support? Are you actually implying it’s insecure and that it can be pirated? And, if the product is as amazing as you claim, how, since historical evidence shows pirating increases sales, wouldn’t that further suggest people aren’t pirating?

You can’t have it both ways, Steve — pirates and copy-protection, security and hacked. Face reality. People don’t want Vista, they don’t want to lease software, they don’t want cumbersome license agreements, they don’t want DRM, they don’t want applications or operating systems tied to physical hardware, they don’t want to be told they can’t run virtualization, and they don’t want to buy new machines.

Inside the Seven Dimensional Problem Space of Quality Assurance

Jeff Voas presents a compelling simple model in which to represent all programming problems, however upon exploring his seven dimensional model, something pretty amazing surfaced.

The other night I happened to happened to have dinner with an old friend, Jeff Voas. He was telling me about a new problem he was working on in which he hypothesizes there are only seven dimensions that describe all computing problem implementations.

While these dimensions are truly independent, and thus orthogonal to one another, it helps to visualize them in the following manner: you have software that runs on hardware which exists inside some environment, these three things are subject to threats; in addition there are non-functional requirements (such as performance and reliability), and everything is operated within a set of defined policies. All of these things are in respect to time.
Seven Dimensions of the Computing Problem Space
Jeff challenged me to come up with any problem that didn’t fit within this model. I could not.

Jeff also pointed out another interesting attribute of his model. That time and threat space could not be locked down. Everything else could be set into stone, frozen forever.

The implications of this, are fairly straight forward, and that is even if you don’t change anything, new threats can be discovered, resulting in your having to change at least one of the other dimension points to compensate. If one could quantify a baseline as a function of these seven attributes, it would become possible to measure changes as a whole. Even better, risk and change impacts can be better assessed and communicated.

What interested me, however, was the reason two of these dimensions could not be locked down, while the others could. I shared my thoughts with Jeff, who after hearing them, sadly pointed out it was a little too late to get this new insight into the IEEE paper.

Physical Three SpacePut aside the model we were working with and consider for just a moment the real physical world of three dimensional space that we live in. Those dimensions are up/down, left/right, in/out to keep things simple.

Clever sorts will blurt out “you forgot time, time is the fourth dimension.” They’d be wrong, because they’re jumping ahead of themselves. Time is not space, but is merely an aspect of where something is in space. Should one actually write it out as a tuple, yes, you get (X, Y, Z, time), and mathematically you can work such problems as having four variables, all independent, thus mathematically orthogonal, and treat them as if they were all dimensions. But, and this is key, I’m not using that definition for dimension. I mean it in the purer sense of the word, meaning that it is possible to move forwards and backwards along any dimensional axis.

Here’s the key: time is not a dimension, but a vector. It only goes in one direction.

Now, here’s a little puzzle for the brainiacs in the group. What other attribute of our physical real universe is also a vector and not a bidirectional dimension?

The answer happens to be entropy; the universe is slowly falling into a state of disorder, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Any amount of effort to reinstill order in one place just speeds up entropy somewhere else, even if it’s just consumption of energy or heat loss.

Turning back to Jeff’s model, I proposed that he actually only had five dimensions and two vectors. The reason time and threat space could not be locked was because they were vectors. He pondered and bought into that notion.

Then comes the zinger. If we only know of two vectors in the real world, and the model attempts to quantify real world problems, and there are two vectors in the model, then is it possible that the threat space is entropy?

There are few moments in life where you actually get to see the gears turn and smoke come out of the ears of a bright Ph.D., and I watched Jeff retreat into his own mind for a minute or so and then reemerge – he concluded with me that it was, and that it was a shame the IEEE article had already been submitted.

2008: The Year of the Mac

2008 … the year of the Mac. Apple’s long term strategy of using the iPhone to get OS X into the hands of naysayers and holdouts.

2006… Windows XP users see OS X as a toy operating system with pretty graphics, awaiting Vista eagerly. Microsoft rolls out Windows Genuine Advantage, breaking quite a number of systems. Apple provides fantastically cool environment tools with new version of OS X.

…mid 2006… Microsoft announces many promised features not happening in Vista. Vista getting loaded down with DRM. Hackers discover ways around WGA. Vista to have new phone-home mechanism for enterprise shops. Apple provides new features with free OS X update.

…late 2006… Hackers discover ways around beta Vista registration mechanisms; in the end honest users are sorely inconvenienced, pirates still pirate. Vista starts looking an awful lot like OS X with terrible loss of functionality. Apple provides new features with free OS X update; Apple announces more revolutionary advances for the next major release of OS X – withholds some feature set, disallowing Microsoft to copy features before they ship.

2007… Community announces Internet Explorer was vulnerable from unpatched zero-day bugs more of the prior year than it was safe. Apple announces revolutionary iPhone, its amazingly new (and highly patented) interface makes it the must-have geek gadget of 2007.

…early 2007… Microsoft ships Vista, followed soon by a sizable bug patch. Apple releases last free feature update for current version of OS X, though security updates supported on all prior versions.

…early mid 2007… First virus for Vista get into the wild; complaints about Vista performance surface. Apple reveals new top secret features of OS X, OS X available on Amazon for $99 when pre-ordered, a $30 savings.

…mid 2007… iPhone released to the public; there’s a rush on the store by geeks and early adopters. Complaints about Cingular surface, then fade. The next release of OS X comes out; it contains vector graphics, fantastic new file system, versioning. Apple starts releasing quad processor laptops. Adobe CS3 Universal arrives and totally screams on OS X.

…late mid 2007… iPhones are everywhere and everyone’s at least seen it. It syncs with OS X, it is a super video iPod, a camera, PDA, etc. Free OS X update released; Apple announces the XCode development environment which can produce desktop widgets, now can be uploaded to run on the iPhone. First iPhone hacks start to surface. Meanwhile, as Microsoft has been trying to make their desktop own the system and prohibiting dual boot, Apple has been encouraging running Windows and OS X on the same machine. Bootcamp, while included, is almost pointless, as Parallels now runs Windows apps on the OS X desktop. Microsoft users play with iPhone, love the interface, and realize that this is OS X — the light starts to come on as Apple’s long term strategy is revealed: The iPhone is a mechanism to get OS X into the hands of end users so they can see what they’re missing.

…late 2007… Vista turns out to be an expensive repeat of XP; some performance problems resolved due to hardware advances, but systems that run Vista well are beyond the price point of the average family with 2.5 kids. Wii remote hacked to work on Apple. Apple introduces a new model of the iPhone with more memory, and drops the price of the early iPhone. Apple releases another free version of OS X. Meanwhile developers discover the development environment on the Mac is incredible. Major gaming titles are appearing in time for Christmas. OpenOffice releases major update. Apple leaks it has been working with touch displays, based on the iPhone interface, and reveals a working MacTablet at CES.

2008. iPhone users start purchasing Apple computers in noticeable scale. Internet web statistics surprisingly start showing Safari use rising – a clear indicator that grandma has switch to the more affordable and easier to use solution. First major commercial game for iPhone released. Vista looks very old school.

…early 2008… Mono project gets more attention; .NET applications easily work on OS X, as do Windows applications. Major gaming titles are released for OS X. Corporations start switching to Macs as desktop systems.

..mid 2008… Mac Tablet released to public.

…late 2008… The first computer magazine reports 2008 is the year of the Mac.

The Roadhouse Asks Police For Lost Income Compensation?

The Texas Roadhouse Asking Police for Lost Income Compensation? Of course not; here’s what you can’t read in the papers.

Newspapers are carrying a story that the Texas Roadhouse has asked police to compensate them for lost income just after the funeral of fallen officers shut down the street for a few hours. That anyone would conceive of such a thing is totally gut wrenching, and a nationwide boycott of the Texas Roadhouse is happening. Problem is, the story is wrong.

Ever get the feeling that perhaps something is so amazingly off base that perhaps the media is showing only a distorted side? That perhaps the sensationalism of the story is what’s poopularizing it, not the accuracy. Perhaps the media thinks it has everything. I have no vested interest in either side, and certainly mourn the loss of the officers, but as a society that claims it wants the truth, it’s our responsiblity to go looking for it, not to pass ill-informed judgement without some fact checking. It took no effort to dig up more than the reporter.

Here’s some tidbits of what will eventually come to light… and I suspect get burried.

During the actual shooting, the Roadhouse DID send food to the officers, and apparently quite a bit, even as the lockdown was in progress. In fact, if one looks at the record of Roadhouse donations for food and cash, one sees that the Texas Roadhouse is a very involved and generous community member. Not to mention -very- supportive of the police.

A nationwise boycott simply dries up the donations and relief efforts. Nothing says the Roadhouse has to donate, and if there’s less to give, they can’t. If a community suffers a loss, from a fallen officer, to a broken levy, don’t be surprised if the Texas Roadhouse isn’t already on it. One merely has to look at past history as a metric of intent. The Roadhouse has a stellar history. So, invoicing for lost business is totally out of character.

You haven’t seen the actual email message either, have you? Hmmm. You’ve only been quoted pieces, huh. Turns out the phrases you’re seeing in print are out of context.

The email, it turns out, was sent to the fire department and had NOTHING to do with the police. One of the new owners was apparently going through the books and noticed there were a number of fines, and due to hardship wanted to know if there was any way get the fines reduced or forgiven. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, there’s a good chance if you’ve had a speeding ticket, you’ve asked a judge for a reduction. Often they’re granted if there’s demonstrated changes or proof of hardship. In this case, however, the enumeration of the hardships were listed and included everything from general construction of a local bypass to the sad day of the police shooting. The email wasn’t an invoice, nor was it addressed to the police. Nor did it belittle the terrible loss.

So how did the police get it?

As many people in corporate America do, they don’t read. They see a key phrase and extrapolate. And someone at the firehouse thought the email was asking something it wasn’t. They forwarded it to the police with their own take.

Then the media got involved because it sounded like good news, and apparently never got the actual letter, nor did they follow up with the author.

The police… the ones that get discounted dinners, and the ones that were given donations, the ones that were recepients of the outpouring of good will during their time of need …remained silent.

I suspect they’re still hurting over their fallen officers. A loss like that doesn’t heal easily. And the gunman that did it was dead. Problem is, with that much anger, there isn’t a good way to focus it or release it, and it seems the mis-perception that happened provided that release value.

The community was hurting too, so it wasn’t like this was going to go away, corporate silence didn’t end it, instead it ballooned. Problem is, in mass, the public is pretty stupid. And dangerous. Just like Agent ‘J’ from Men In Black says.

Kids. And I’m talking young highschool kids. Ones who had nothing to do with anything, who are only there to earn a little cash for college later, are being harassed and threatened for working at the Roadhouse now. Think about that for a second. A sixteen year old kid being assaulted for something they didn’t participate in to make the public feel better.

Meanwhile, damage control at corporate headquarters has seemingly gotten the focus off themselves. And the local community continues to punish the people and the tiny store, even though the focus of their disgruntledness isn’t there.

So, what can we expect to happen?

1. The email will eventually leak out, but few will care — facts just aren’t interesting, and people don’t like to admit they’re wrong.
2. Within six months the majority of community and country will totally forget about this anyhow.
3. The Texas Roadhouse, unless they take the higher ground, will be LESS inclined to make generous donations to the community and police.
4. Every person there has just learned an important lesson about the police force in general, and trust them less, respect them less, and help them less in the long term. That’s not what the police need — especially since donation to furture fallen officers and their families will get less support.
5. Every person there has just learned that a corporation won’t protect you, even if you’re falsely accused or misrepresented. It’s easier to make you go away.
6. Every person there has just learned that the media isn’t interested in accurate reporting. What other stories are false, misleading, or wrong?
7. And, most likely, some uninvolved kid will get physically hurt over something that didn’t happen, no one will care, labeling it justice.

But at this point, keep in mind, you’re now hearing this second hand. And this isn’t about the Roadhouse anyhow. It simply is a matter that if something sounds so outrageous, check the facts yourself. It isn’t that hard. You may be surprised to learn who you can trust, and who you can’t.

The price we pay for this kind of incident isn’t short term. The community as a whole now suffers. It’s one of those cases where each side will feel grossly wronged by the other, when there wasn’t an issue to start with. We see it all the time, and oddly enough, it’s the media fanning the flames. Maybe we should be boycotting the papers, and not the steakhouse, buying a dinner for an officer who’s putting their life on the line for us all.

Problems with Amazon’s Shipping Algorithm

I’ve been playing around with Amazon’s shipping algorithm by placing orders and seeing what happens. Here’s my speculative notes on what’s right, and what’s wrong, with Amazon’s shipping algorithm. More importantly, it’s how to get your books to you sooner.

Amazon has two modes for shipping. One is “send me what you can and soon as you can,” resulting in obnoxious shipping charges. The other is “send me my order when everything is available,” resulting in the minimum shipping order.

What makes Amazon really great, and by great, I mean what keeps me coming back to them, is the fact that if one orders enough stuff, you can usually get free shipping pretty easily. Or at least free shipping if you take the cheapest method of delivery option. But more importantly, even with free shipping, and the famous “send me my order when everything is available”, Amazon uses that as a guildline and often ships things in multiple shipments… especially if they are coming from different warehouse locations.

Under these conditions, you get your stuff in a timely fashion, reasonably soon, and often for free. Awesome.

However, there’s a bug in the algorithm. And it’s a bad one. And you need to be aware of it.

If any book in your list has not been published yet, meaning you preordered it, and you select “when everything is ready”, then your order will not ship. It sits in limbo. Even if you have hundreds of dollars worth pending. This is important to know, especially if you need something urgently.

This is really bad, because if you’re also ordered some rare books, or things with limited stock, they can suddenly become unavailable, even though you placed your order on time.

So, making sure you’re with me on this… if you order a preorder item, then you won’t get any of your order, meanwhile the availability of your items slowly disappears while you wait.

What Amazon ought to do is send you an email letting you know this is happening, or ship your partial order like they normally do, or offer to move the item back into your shopping cart for a later order. But they don’t. No explaination is given, no notice appears in your inbox, you just place an order and it sits there… and can sit there for months.

The hack solution from the customer side is simple: order pre-order items separately. Always. Or, if you’re made of money, ship as each item becomes available, though I doubt anyone on a non-corporate budget really wants to do that.

In fact, if you have an order in limbo, you can cancel that item (remember to move it back to your cart), and the moment you apply the changes, your order will instantly be ready to go.

I just finished conducting a test, where a placed a nearly $200 order a month ago, with one well picked pre-order item that was due out the middle of this month. The moment I removed the item, I got an email and things are now moving along again.

IBM and Microsoft you say? That’s interesting.

An Apple employee makes an interesting statement… their biggest purchaser of Apple systems is Microsoft.

We were at the Apple store purchasing more stuff… go figure.

During checkout we were asked, “Student?”

“No.”

“Government employee?”

“No.”

“IBM?”

“No.”

“Microsoft?”

“No. What’s with the questions?”

“Well, if you had answered yes,” (and could prove it), “you’d get a discount.”

“Wait… IBM and Microsoft? Using Apple?”

“Oh yes. Microsoft is one of our biggest purchasers. They don’t make it that public, but they are avid Apple users. Honestly, we don’t get it either.” She smiled. “You’d think we’d charge more for them.” We all laughed.

I guess this is expected. Her comments brought back memories of when I placed a MSDN support call and their crypto guys explained to me that they used Linux and SSLeay behind the scenes (they gave me a copy their Linux script); apparently they love Linux, but aren’t allowed to publically admit it, he explained — they had hundreds of Linux systems. Apparently it’s standard practice to use other systems and open source in order to development Microsoft products. Very interesting.

FYI, if you are a Home School Student / Teacher, the Apple Store says they honor those credentials for discounts.

Conspiracy or Coincidence

Within 48 hours I got five support incidents for Windows crashing hard… and by people who knew what they were doing. This is too much for coincidence in my mind. Oh, and do we remember, Walt doesn’t support Microsoft anymore. UPDATE: More weekend crashes reported. UPDATE: The problem appears to be real, and it’s getting ugly for users everywhere.

On Friday, I get a call from a friend — Microsoft has invalidated his server license without warning. He bought it from Dell, Dell installed the software, he has the paperwork, the receipt, and the hologram on the side of the machine.

Sunday, Tamara turns on her XP box and it blue screens at boot. She’s furious, and I know first hand she also has a legal copy from Dell. She has been nothing but diligent with anti-virus and spyware.

Monday, as we were repairing it, I got a call from my sister. Apparently her system rebooted and blue screened. As it’s a 2000 machine, and Microsoft isn’t supporting that anymore, this raises new problems. XP Home, of course, ends support at the end of this year. And Vista requires far more computing power than she can afford. We’re not sure what she’s going to do.

As that phone call was ending, I got a call from someone I used to do support for. Her system just locked up and won’t boot now.

While that was happening, and I swear I’m not making this up, my friend’s sister (she does IT for the government) called his cell phone — her XP system at home just crashed.

This is all on the heels of my dad’s machine blowing up so that he got a Macbook Pro.

…so five machines in 48 hours… something’s up. Has anyone else had a problem?

UPDATE 27-Jun-2006 6:36pm: So just as I’m talking myself out of tin-foil hat conspirancy, this hit the news wire: A Windows Kill Switch. Ok, now you’re forced into submission. But if Microsoft can pull the trigger, can a malicious hacker? I’d love to see MS’s response to someone else shutting off machines all over the world. :shudder:

UPDATE 28-Jun-2006 11:05am: Came into work, unprompted, my co-worker reported that his Windows box at home was blue screening at the login screen. It started doing it this weekend.

UPDATE 30-JUN-2006 2:18pm: TechDirt reports users are having problems, and Microsoft is being sued over WGA. GrokLaw explains.

UPDATE 26-JUL-2006 10:07am: Seems the WGA and Activation issues are real, and it’s getting out of hand. Microsoft’s response falls flat, assuming people are indeed pirates (or will put up with it), which is sending the technically savvy users off to switch desktops to Mac OS X or Linux.

UPDATE 28-JUL-2006 2:54am: More public outcry; there are now two lawsuits against Microsoft.

Network Solutions: Down

Network Solutions is down, and why this is a good thing. If, for example, you consider a wake up call to be a good thing.

I came in to work today and discovered that our corporate DNS, hosted by Network Solutions, is down today, meaning people can’t get to our site, nor can we access our mail servers. This appears to be the result of an attack on Verisign/Network Solutions that started somewhere around March 27th and seems to have escalated, according to articles at ComputerWorld. Calling Network Solutions’s support line directly yields a recorded message that they have technicians working on the problem and that it’s their top priority. Even www.networksolutions.com doesn’t respond.

This severe outage is a good thing.

Well, that is if you consider getting a rude wake-up call a good thing.

As end users, we tend to care more if our software and networks give the appearance of working, rather than being reliable and resilient.

Take spam, for instance. There’s no need that you should have to be plagued with it, but because no one wants to adopt to solutions that correct the problem because it will break existing backwards compatability with software, we just deal with it.

Take Windows, for instance. There’s no need that an operating system should crash or degrade in performance over time, but because no one wants to adopt to solutions that correct the problem because it will break existing backwards compatability with software, we just deal with it. I can still use Internet Explorer, right…?

Well now, take DNS for instance. There’s no need that it has to be susceptible to these kinds of attacks, but because no one wants to… wait, I can’t get my email? What happened? You mean we can’t go on ignoring problematic protocols and the crypto guys were right all this time?

Yes.

One of two things will happen. Either the bad guys will stop, or get caught, and we’ll go back to the way things were, being just as vunerable for the next time around.

Or, this will be the eye-opening event that declares that in order to combat against cyber terrorism and evil doers, we must take the next step forward and start using next generation protocols with our software that address the lessons learned of our past.

Yes, it’s painful now. I understand that. I don’t like it either. But I’d rather have it happen now, when we can do something about it, than later when it is really inconvenient.

UPDATE (10:10am): Network Solutions’s web page is now responding again.

The Brevity of Technology

Brief Tech.

Chris Fischer writes in his LiveJournal that he received an email where his boss, an educated man, sent him a terse four word email that looked like it had been composed on a cell phone.  Chris, a master at human observation, expounds on five thoughts relating to brevity.

Here I add my own observations, noting the technology has a greater influce over our habits than perhaps we first give it credit for.

In the latest book by O’Reilly press, Mind Performance Hacks, chapter 2 provides three tables in which, if you memorize and use, result in your ability to physically write, or type, faster.  The trick?  Use ‘c’ for “see”, ‘u’ for “you”, ‘t’ for “the”, and so forth.  This macro-based compression little language exists so that one doesn’t have to type out the full words while note taking.  But, let’s emphasize that last part: while note taking.  It isn’t intended for generic human consumption, just as shorthand is better transcribed back to English.

What I suspect we’re seeing is actually the bleeding of thought across media.  When I compose an email or a text message, I don’t think any differently.  However, I will alter my behavior patterns to address short comings of a device.

A cell phone represents a very clunky interface that is difficult to type on.  Additionally, the phone company seems to want to charge per character (keep messages short) or per message (maximize as much content into a small envelope = abbreviate).  Either way, the device conditions us to chuck vowels, trim letters, make clever substitutions, or toss words.

Another problem exists, and that’s at the opposite end of the scale.  A device can be too efficient.  Take a Palm Pilot for instance.  A capital ‘E’ turns from four discrete strokes into a single gesture that resembles a backwards three.  The problem is we spend so much time using the device that it usurps the correct behavior, conditioning us to do it in a manner more efficient for the device to process, and we’re rewarded by speed improvements and higher reliability of letter detection.
As such, watch an engineer write on a whiteboard, and almost always you can tell which ones own and heavily use PDAs.  The tool alters the way we work, and eventually our automatic behavior of what an ‘E’ should look like.

One might be able to argue that, just as a PDA alters our habitual representative alphabet, a cell phone alters our habitual semantical notations.  Because what we see corresponds to what we’re thinking, we don’t notice that the syntax might not be necessary, or even appropriate, for the medium being used.  In fact, medium has become so transparent to the end user, it wasn’t until just now that I realized I wasn’t writing with a feathered quill and India ink.

Cartooning: The Search for Step 3 1/2

I’ve been frustrated for quite some time at drawing books that go from scribbles to masterpiece in four steps. Here I talk about the ellusive step 3 1/2.

I’ve seen it, and you have too… the How to Draw books that teach illustration in four simple steps. It always starts off like this:

  1. Draw an oval.
  2. Fill in the body’s structure.
  3. Lightly sketch a little detail.
    >POOF!<
  4. A final crisp masterpiece glowing in perfection.

It’s like the cartoon of a huge scientific proof, with the most important step left out, labeled “Magic Happens Here.”

What’s problematic is that this step three-and-a-half is real, and I discovered it watching Dan Fahs try to show me how he drew his cartoon women. Since attending Art Klub, I see the magic happen when Jerry Carr and Kahlid Iszard draw their stuff. And no matter how slowly they go, it always happens.

The concept of step three and a half is based on an observation of perception that I stumbled upon years ago. As you’re going for a walk outside, pick an object in the distance that you’re eventually going to pass, say a tree or a telephone pole. Note to yourself that it is “far” away. Now approach it, and when it’s “near” come to a stop. Then back up just until it’s far. Then go forward until it’s near again. What you want to do is a kind of binary search, zeroing in on the exact point where your perception changes. On one side of the line, it’s far – on the other, it’s near. Surprisingly, there is a point and you can find it, and even stranger, a tag along observer will concur.

I suspect that the reason has something to do with the field of view, where said object hits some magical ration “filling the frame” or something.

But this effect can also be found in time when someone is drawing.

An experiment I’d like to formally conduct is to place an overhead video camera over an artist starting with a blank piece of paper and observe them going through a final illustration. Then using a computer, narrow in on the point where the picture goes from rough shapes anyone could crank out to the transformation of a wonderful illustration. It should be possible to identify the specific frame where this happens and then study the differences between the before and after set of frames. But even going this elaborate isn’t necessary.

From an observation standpoint, it seems that point where just enough detail exists to tip the scales so that the mind’s eye stops treating the basic shapes as basic shapes, but rather as a rough approximation of the actual subject. Further steps are simply a refinement.

And that’s my problem. Steps one and two of most how-to-draw books are too simple: place shapes down, then connect them. Step three gives a rough picture a child can do. And step four shows a completed picture with all refinements applied. The information that’s useful doesn’t seem to be written down, but resides smack between steps three and four.

Unfortunately, the artist may be the wrong person to ask. I don’t think they see it. Their perception is clouded by what’s in their head, not what’s actually on paper.

An experienced artist can conduct steps one and two in his head, and a really good artist is capable of doing step 3 in his head. All do the steps, but the masters have codified their illustratings to the point of complete internalization.

For instance, in my series of Napkin Comics, I don’t draw under pictures and skeltal structures. Rather, I fall back on little cheats I’ve invented for myself. The nose is the letter ‘C’, the face is a parenthesis ‘(‘, the wave of a girl’s hair might be a hidden square root symbol. Eventually these all become second nature, and I no longer think in terms of these artifical pen strokes. Obviously, I’m not going after realism, but even a simple cartoonist uses the same mechanisms.

My quest for the ellusive step 3.5 has taken me to examine sketch books of artists. I prefer pictures that aren’t complete and those that are paritally inked. Bud Plant has a wealth of sketch books where artists show unfinished sketches, doodles, and illustrations, many without the pencils or bluelines removed. Frank Cho has a brilliant set of sketchbooks, many featuring Brandy. Dean Yeagle has a fantastic set primarily featuring Mandy.

A good artists sketch book is far more valuable than a completed picture for the growing artist. First of all, by seeing all the “mistakes” and “discarded lines” it becomes clear that the talented artist build a scaffolding for their image and then later remove it; this is a wonderful confidence builder. Second, one sees that in initial cuts they’re not perfect, their circles and squiggles contain as many problems as the rest of ours; practice and determination do pay off. Finally, when the happy line finally happens, even if by accident, it visually stands out; the good artist finds it and draws (not traces) over it. Experienced artists that open their sketchbooks help us learn to see the world better and differentiate intermingled complexities.

Incomplete illustrations are like having access to the source code. With it, we get a greater sense of appreciation for the work, and those that want to learn to draw for themselves get to see the practical application — where theory and the real world part ways.

Often it’s not enough to know how an artist did something, but the why. And, I’m not talking about the symbolic meaning, I’m talking about seeing and undering what’s right, or wrong, about a particular pencil stroke, and more importantly, how to make it better.

At some point, it may come down to conducting an external analysis of various artist’s works — because if there’s a book out there on step 3 1/2, I haven’t seen it. Perhaps the only way to nail down the missing step, capturing it from the view of an outsider, is to actually write the book myself.