Friday, November 2, 2007

Coping with Diversity

Like the modeling community, orchids are extremely diverse. They represent the largest family of flowering plants, which might surprise you since they seem so exotic and rare. It surprises me that the modeling community has yielded no EclipseCon 2008 submissions yet! But I'm hopeful the community will soon produce some blossoms because, as if by good omen, my Cattleya just went into bloom the other day. Not only does it look lovely, it smells wonderful too!


There was a heavy frost last night, so that pretty much does in the last of the late bloomers. Come on modelers, don't be late bloomers like my Delphiniums.


You'll be frosted if you miss the November 19th deadline that's rapidly approaching!


And then, not unlike my Euonymus, you're likely to turn scarlet from embarrassment for being left out in the cold.


So be first and propose lots. It's a predatory world out there.


I was shocked to find a mink at my pond just a few hours ago! This sure explains a lot though. The missing koi, the dwindling frogs (note what's hanging out of her mouth), and the sparsity of this year's tadpole population. See the rock behind her? She just dove into the water and has her burrow in there!


Oh my goodness. I can't just send the dogs to chase her away like the heron either. I'm not sure what to do about her. At least she hasn't chewed a hole in the liner like that darned muskrat did a few years back.

Ah, diversity, it's a double edged sword...

27 comments:

Darin Swanson said...

Ahhh diversity.
Time to introduce some (more) mink predators: red fox, coyotes, or great horned owls :-)

Anonymous said...

just curious, what kind of camera you use, if it is not secret? -:)

Mark Melvin said...

Ed, do you have any web page or photo site dedicated to your garden? If so, let me know; I'd love to check it out!

Ed Merks said...

Darin, we do have red foxes! I hope the mink eats all the voles first---they're digging way too many tunnels---and then I hope the fox eats her up.

Anonymous, my camera is just a Cannon PowerShot SD900. It' very tiny and very simple to use. Point, click lots, and hope some turn out good. Because it's ten mega pixel, I can always crop later. I reduce the size when I upload them because the pictures are mostly huge otherwise.

Mark, I don't have a garden only blog. I've figured folks would start complaining about my garden pictures in the Eclipse blog at some point and then I'd have to stop. But so far everyone seems to like them; even my mom reads my blog so she can see how my garden is doing. Hi mom! I do try to suit the pictures to the technical themes though, but I've been told I stretch it a little far sometimes. Hi Mike! If you go back through the history, you'll pretty much get a summer full of gardening. This year we did some tours for gardening clubs. That was a lot of fun. You don't live so far away. Maybe you can come out next year...

Eugene Kuleshov said...

Ed, can you please move all the garden pictures to some blog category that won't show up on the Planet Eclipse aggregator? Behind all those pictures it is really hard to see how this stuff is related to Eclipse...

Mark Melvin said...

Are you joking, Eugene? I read Planet Eclipse every day and Ed's posts are always relevant. The pictures are a breath of fresh air.

Sorry, Ed. I didn't mean to...

Ed Merks said...

Mark, variety is the spice of life. I think everyone is entitled to their opinion and to express it, as are we. I particularly liked Carlos Sanchez's blog today with the pictures of China, a place I've never been.

Anonymous said...

Hey Eugene you should stop drinking so much Bitrex.....it isn't good for you....makes you too bitter.

I like the pictures and how they go with the bog and I notice from the comments going back years that so do other.

Keep it up Ed.

Anonymous said...

Hi Ed, I like your pics, those PowerShot SD cameras rock, I take it anywere with me in my pocket.

And yeah, what can I say, the eclipse planet needs some pics :D

Denis Roy said...

I *love* the garden pictures -- they slow my day down and give reason to reflect. Please keep them coming. Also, the parallels Ed draws between the garden and all things Eclipse are most insightful.

Chris Aniszczyk (zx) said...

Ed, in Texas we have guns for such things ;)

Eugene Kuleshov said...

Dudes, with all due respect, Planet Eclipse is not a flickr or other picture sharing service. It is really annoying to have to scroll half screen for every sentence, so please cut the crap.

I do like good pictures and have subscribed to few really nice photoblogs myself and highly recommend others to do so. But planet Eclipse is not a garden photoblog aggregator.

Ed Merks said...

Eugene, I respect that you are entitled to your opinion and you've had your chance to express it. My perception is that you do not represent the majority, nor even a significant minority. I also feel that your comments about "cut the crap" are only marginally less disrespectful than the bitrex comment.

I think you should accept that the planet feed serves a diverse community and that folks will express themselves in the manner they feel is appropriate. As long as there are no personal attacks in these blogs, I think pretty much anything goes. My blogs always contain Eclipse content and are intended to be eye catching.

So scroll past my blog or any other blog you judge to be uninteresting, and focus on providing exemplary fascinating content in your own blog. Perhaps more folks will imitate your style than mine as a result.

Anonymous said...

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS (it only encourages them).

Eugene Kuleshov said...

Ed, you are still missing the point. If you want people to scroll trough your blog, why bother to include it on planed eclipse? You can create separate category or even separate blog that your garden admirers and other anonymous trolls can subscribe to. I'd greasemonkeyed your feed, but you publish your pictures on blogger, so you can't say if they are from your blog, or actually somehow related to the eclipse content.

PS: You have to excuse not a native English speaker, I should have used "cut to the chase"
PPS: I have no clue what bitrex is, so it don't bother me as much as as stuff I know something about. If whoever said that meant to offend me, he failed

Doug Gaff said...

+1 for Ed's pictures. It's a great diversion on the planet, and he keeps it relevant.

Eugene, with all due respect, if you don't like the blog, don't read it. Is it really that inconvenient to scroll? (Are you really using the planet eclipse page to read instead of a feed reader?)

Eugene Kuleshov said...

Doug, I don't read Ed's blog and don't really care what he post there, however I do read Planet Eclipse and Ed's content is aggregated there. Yes, it is inconvenient and annoying to scroll.

Speaking of minorities, most of the people simply won't complain (even if they get annoyed) and they proceed with scroll as advised and I feel really sorry for them and for Ed, because he may actually have something relevant to say, but will be ignored because of that. "live spices" protecting garden pictures in the comments to this post are really the minority that can be simply ignored.

FYI. Google shows 680 subscribers to the Planet Eclipse rss feed, so we can talk again when you'll get anywhere close to that number with positive comments.

Anonymous said...

Ed, all I could say is keep publishing to planet-eclipse the way you choose. Who says we can not publish pictures here? I love the
way you explain and pertain to eclipse world.

Anonymous said...

Eugene,

You're not going to get anywhere telling Ed what and what not to include in his planet-syndicated blog entries.

Your speculation about the popularity of his blog relative to the 780 Planet Eclipse subscribers is irrelevant. The simple, demonstrable fact is that he has numerous regular readers who enjoy his posts and the photos they contain.

So, it's time to adjust to reality. Ed's just making bits available. Nobody is forcing the images down your throat. May I suggest using a feed reader that you can configure to not download images by default or, if you prefer, to simply skip Ed's postings altogether?

Anonymous said...

Amazing that a blog about diversity and tolerance is attacked.

Interesting news item in Scientific American a number of years ago showing the way people from different types of societies (democratic, autocratic, communist etc.)deal with others.

Would be interesting to know what type of 'society' Eugene came from....probably would explain his 'my way only' attitude.

Eugene Kuleshov said...

To all anonymous garden picture lovers: show your face, then we'll talk about regular readers. So, far you are just random anonymous lurkers who came almost two weeks after the beginning of discussion. I can't call it "regular".

If you didn't noticed, I haven't comment about the blog post (neither attacked it), but since you brought it up, I found this Ed's post pointless, especially because he is working for the IBM. In other words there won't be any diversity.

Bernd Kolb said...

Eugene,

Sorry, but I do not get your point here. What has this to do with IBM? It's Ed's personal blog. And as a committer in EMFT and a NOT-IBM-employee I highly value Ed's job for the Eclipse community. So come on! Stay fair!

nickb said...

+1 for the photos, the insights, and the humour.

+1 also for a followup post, "Coping with Irony." :)

Mik Kersten said...

Ed, speaking with my community hat on, this attack on you obviously makes no sense because you have both explicitly embraced diversity and work for a company that has been a key enabler for the diveristy in the Eclipse ecosystem. Note that this kind of bridging from logical or semi-logical argument to offensive claim, about being vendor biased or something of that sort, has been a common thread. I have had to deal with this a lot and in general find it best to respond once and then ignore the comments once the discussion gets non-technical. It's annoying because it means that sometimes the community can be left with an overly biased or just plain wrong impression:

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=207623#c9

Speaking as Mylyn Project Lead hat on, it pains me to think that anyone would attribute this kind of arrogance to the Mylyn project as a whole. We have very clear principles about the importance of respectful community communication that we documented a while back. Those principles are instrumental in helping us get input from users and collaboration from other projects.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Mylyn_Contributor_Reference#Communication

I'm not sure if you attributed this comment to a Mylyn committer because there is a blurry line between a community member and a project committer. But I believe that all committers have a responsibiltiy to the projects that we are affiliated with, and that these communication principles are critical to effectove open source collaboration. If you did interpret this as a comment from the Mylyn team, then I would be understanding if you felt the need to file an official complaint against the Mylyn project on this.

Eugene Kuleshov said...

To remove any confusion, all of my comments are my personal opinion which does have nothing to do with my committer status on Mylyn project. It is a simply a general opinion of the regular reader of the Planet Eclipse aggregator and I wasn't even referring to the context of given blog post but had a general comment that in my personal opinion it obstruct the point with meaningless pictures. That been actually confirmed by the first comments on this blog post that been focused on pictures rather then the diversity issue. I suppose I simply should go ahead and unsubscribe from the Planet Eclipse, so I won't have this frustration about aggregator turning into another "my spaces" web site.

PS: I don't think that my personal opinion and NOT an attack, does require a followup from a Mylyn project lead, who clearly recieved complains about those comments (how else one would describe his appearance here after two weeks). That makes even less sense because as it been pointed out this is Ed's personal blog and it is nowhere like an official communication. Anyways, if one have anything to say about my behavior, please do say that to me. It will be more useful then loading Mik with that.

Anonymous said...

Such a lot of effort to make one person's views paramount.

How pathetic and sad.

Ed Merks said...

Eugene, your opinion on the value of photos to illustrate concepts or simply to add color and spice to a posting is abundantly clear now. You are certainly entitled to this opinion and given that you've expressed it six times now, it's probably been stated enough times.

In a diverse community there will always be differences of opinion and I fully understand that anything I do will be disliked by some. The fact that so many people commented on the photos seems to demonstrate the photos are in and of themselves interesting rather than merely annoying. Perhaps you'd like to think of that as distracting, and perhaps they are, but that's fine with me, because I suspect that a pretty picture might well make folks stop and take notice. In any case, I would suggest listening carefully to the opinions of everyone and reflect on the fact that they too are entitled to an opinion different from your own. Perhaps there is room for more valid opinions than just your own.

It was noted that there is irony in the fact that a blog posting about diversity should generate comments about conformance to one individual's perceptions of proper blogging standards. It does strike me as very ironic that you've dismissed every single opinion contrary to your own as effectively valueless. That's very much contrary to the principles of diversity.

And since you asked for direct opinions about your behavior let me make it clear that your comments about IBM are particularly offensive and are simply beneath the standard of conduct I would expect from an Eclipse committer. I notice your location is in Toronto and I think you'll agree that Canada is a diverse multi cultural society where we show respect for cultures different from our own. I do not expect to be judged by whether I am a Dutch immigrant or a native Canadian just as I do not expect to be judged by whether I work for IBM or not. I'm Canadian nevertheless and expect to be treated that way and I am an Eclipse community member and I expect to be treated with respect rather than being frowned upon as an IBMer not entitled to speak on the subject of diversity.

Please reflect carefully on the perception that your behavior has digressed into being abusive and intolerant. I'm sorry some folks have flamed you with abusive comments but don't allow the low standards of others to become your own.