Tag links (173)

depressing articles about football
Mood: bored
Posted on 2009-10-29 11:13:00
Tags: links
Words: 99

One in GQ, and one by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. Basically, it looks like many linemen in the NFL suffer from Chronic traumatic encephalopathy which has symptoms similar to Alzheimer's.

It sounds like the NFL is being very reluctant to investigate or make changes to the game to minimize the risks. Sure, players know the risks of getting injured, but it sounds like people don't realize the risk for CTE and that it seems to be so widespread, and it can ruin your life after you leave the NFL. Head injuries are nothing to mess around with.

0 comments

links...on friday
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2009-10-23 13:07:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 158

Why CDC says this year's flu season is "very sobering" - the graphs show way more people getting the flu so far than in previous years.

The Large Hadron Collider was completed last year, but there was a problem that required it to be shut down until around now. It's designed to try to find the elusive Higgs boson, which some physicists call the "God particle" because the current theory is that it's what gives all particles mass. The Superconducting Super Collider was a similar project that was canceled back in 1993. Some people have taken these facts and concluded that God or fate or something must be conspiring to keep us from finding the Higgs boson, which is crazy but also kind of neat.

Apparently New York Governor David Paterson is planning to push the same-sex marriage bill next week...hoping to turn NY green on the map soon!

A neat graphic of 50 years of space exploration.

1 comment

link friday
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2009-10-16 13:15:00
Tags: links
Words: 153

- The top 100 scifi/fantasy TV shows - obviously a lot of room for debate here but I was pretty happy with the top 20 or so. I've seen at least an episode of 26 of these, including 7 of the top 10. How about y'all?

- My mom was on a local TV show to talk about the swine...er, I mean H1N1 flu. Here's the video (second one down, episode 124). She was also interviewed on a different show (InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse - awesomely enough, the show was nominated for an Emmy and that episode is the one they went in!

- Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - interesting, slightly provocative.

- George Takei and his partner Brad Altman on The Newlywed Game - awww!

- Been playing around on Google Wave some, and everyone keeps asking me what it is, which is a hard question to answer. This article at least describes what it's good at!

2 comments

A few late Friday links
Mood: determined
Posted on 2009-10-09 15:45:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 116

Weekend here yet? No? OK:

- Play this game of driving while texting! I am 0.78 seconds slower while texting and missed 10% more gates, considerably worse than the average.

- Carl Sagan, autotuned

- New survey shows rising support for civil unions - 57% of Americans support civil unions, 39% support same-sex marriage. We're getting there! Surprisingly, 49% said "homosexual behavior" was "morally wrong", so I give credit to the at least 8% that said that but also support civil unions.

- Paul Krugman answers readers' questions - interesting stuff.

- Some people said some nice things about National Instruments.

- Anyone else on Google Wave? Haven't quite figured it out, but let me know and we can be wave buddies or something!

4 comments

at-work-early links
Mood: tired
Posted on 2009-09-22 08:37:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 210

A Bush speechwriter wrote a tell-all kinda book - an interesting excerpt:

For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married." (Of course, Bush ran his 2004 campaign telling that kid just that.)

0 comments

another day, another dollar
Mood: okay
Music: Jami Sieber - "Undercurrent" (from Braid soundtrack)
Posted on 2009-09-14 15:46:00
Tags: links
Words: 299

For some reason I tend to get depressed Sunday mornings when we go to church. I'm not sure if it's because the weekend's almost over (but Sunday afternoon depression would seem more likely) or what. I usually feel better by the end of church, though. It's weird.

Yesterday I played Braid for the first time (djedi finished it last week, I believe), and it's pretty cool although kinda tricky. (David helped me a lot, which I appreciated!) The art style and music are quite striking, and it turns out the creator of Braid licensed all of the music. You can buy it on Magnatune, or listen to it here with slightly annoying end of track speeches:



Music from Braid by Sieber, Kammen, Fulton and Schatz

Excellent mood music!

onefishclappin posted this interesting map of which cities have more single men than women and vice versa. I would love to see an explanation for why there are more single men than women on the West Coast, and vice versa on the East Coast.

Is Happiness Catching? The answer is maybe, as you might expect, but the article lists a bunch of examples of things that are socially contagious, like obesity and smoking. For example:

When a Framingham resident became obese, his or her friends were 57 percent more likely to become obese, too. Even more astonishing to Christakis and Fowler was the fact that the effect didn’t stop there. In fact, it appeared to skip links. A Framingham resident was roughly 20 percent more likely to become obese if the friend of a friend became obese — even if the connecting friend didn’t put on a single pound. Indeed, a person’s risk of obesity went up about 10 percent even if a friend of a friend of a friend gained weight.

5 comments

colorerorer
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2009-09-02 10:33:00
Tags: gay projects links
Words: 133

How many times have you had a log file with lots of pointer values and wanted to quickly see which values were equal, and even rename them with a meaningful name?

Wow. Really? Never? We lead very different lives.

Anyway, I wrote a little log colorer to do that, which has been helpful trying to track down a race condition. (and inserting a breakpoint tends to make it not happen) Also, colors!

Ben & Jerry's is celebrating that gay marriage is legal in Vermont effective yesterday (yay!) with Hubby Hubby ice cream.

In Maine, gay marriage is legal but it will be on the ballot in November. The Catholic Church, in a disappointing but not too surprising mood, is contributing $100,000 to try to repeal it even as they have to close local parishes.

0 comments

rolling along
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2009-08-27 13:37:00
Tags: links
Words: 141

This article on dirty coding tricks game developers have used to get to shipping is pretty cool. I particularly like one from the comments:

Back on Wing Commander 1 we were getting an exception from our EMM386 memory manager when we exited the game. We'd clear the screen and a single line would print out, something like "EMM386 Memory manager error. Blah blah blah." We had to ship ASAP. So I hex edited the error in the memory manager itself to read "Thank you for playing Wing Commander."

0 comments

still liking my Pre
Mood: confused
Music: Michael Giacchino - "Star Trek" soundtrack
Posted on 2009-08-20 14:17:00
Tags: palmpre programming politics links
Words: 131

Palm is now accepting submissions for the Pre App Catalog, so I went ahead and submitted PasswordHash. That one will be free but I'm thinking of charging $2 for my next one...

LabVIEW has a lot of handy keyboard shortcuts.

codepad.org is a neat place to quickly try out/share code in a bunch of different languages.

The latest in health care: maybe the Democrats are going to give up trying to compromise since the Republicans don't really seem interested, although Chuck Grassley may or may not be. Honestly, I've kinda given up trying to figure out what the hell is going on - I hope something good passes but hearing how laws that affect us actually get passed makes me sad.

The Longest Poem in the World made out of rhyming tweets.

0 comments

spilling links
Mood: nervous
Posted on 2009-08-17 09:52:00
Tags: pictures palmpre projects links
Words: 128

Pictures from New Mexico and Barbara & Alex's wedding are up. Note that the pictures from the wedding itself aren't that great...I did my best!

Published a Pre version of PasswordHash - it was relatively easy to port. A new feature (in the web and Firefox versions as well) lets you force a special character to appear in the password.

Apparently men who "strongly endorsed old-school notions of masculinity" were half as likely to get flu shots and other preventative medicine. Can't say I'm surprised.

Also, "for men, sexual boredom was correlated with variety in partners (or lack thereof), while for women, it was more related to variety in activity." Good to know? (the Coolidge effect description at Wikipedia is pretty funny)

Finally, an Obama protest I can get behind.

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link friday
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-08-14 13:26:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 97

A 3D animation of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field - pretty cool!

Someone diagrammed out a Choose Your Own Adventure. It turns out you're fairly likely to die!

If you like cuddly subatomic particles, you could do worse than the Particle Zoo. I would imagine it's Sheldon-approved.

Bill Clinton talks about Don't Ask Don't Tell and DOMA.

The American Conservative Union hit up FedEx for money for support on a bill, and when FedEx didn't bite, they recommended UPS instead. Shady!

An interview with Jim McGreevey, five years after he came out and resigned the New Jersey governorship.

0 comments

post-honeymoon link friday
Mood: cheerful
Music: Bobby McFerrin - "Wanna Be"
Posted on 2009-08-07 10:15:00
Tags: wedding politics links
Words: 138

If you haven't seen it, here's a time lapse version of our wedding.

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale in a neat way. Wow, he's looking old! I will always love him for his song on Square One.

These slides on Netflix's corporate culture are really really impressive.

Wal-Mart goes after the Girl Scouts - as is usual with Wal-Mart, theoretically good for its customers, bad for everyone else.

Rick Sanchez goes after a health care CEO who's against reform.

If you're interested in publishing your own games, TheGameCrafter.com is kinda like CafePress, but for games.

Spot the cyber-security tip that seems a bit out of place...

Speaking of Netflix, now that the Netflix Prize is over, their CEO says there will a Netflix Prize 2 coming soon. Cool! Perhaps I will be sucked back in...

8 comments

pre-wedding links
Mood: nervous
Posted on 2009-07-15 13:10:00
Tags: reviews gay books politics links
Words: 202

The Episcopal Church voted to start putting together same-sex blessing ceremonies, which, you know, would have been awfully convenient. But still awesome!

In news that should surprise no one, scientists are way more likely to be Democratic than Republican, like 55%-6%.

The sequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (my review here) has been announced: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters!

I recently bought a few comic books (or "graphic novels"?) after rewatching V for Vendetta and liking it. Quick thoughts, in the order I read them:

Batman: Year One - shorter than I expected but still pretty entertaining.

V for Vendetta - I was disappointed. The book is really long, and while there are some differences between the book and the movie, I mostly (horrors!) prefer what the movie did. I also found it somewhat difficult to tell what the hell was going on.

Batman: The Killing Joke - The artwork is really nice and I enjoyed the story. Wish it was longer (it was only 50some pages)

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Only halfway done (it's long!) but I'm enjoying it.

Anyway, after absolutely loving Watchmen my interest in comic books has kinda subsided - they're fun but not something I'm hugely interested in.

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link friday!
Mood: groggy
Posted on 2009-07-10 09:58:00
Tags: movies programming links
Words: 380

And since it's 8(!) days until the wedding, presumably my last one as a swinging bachelor.

This fascinating NY Times graphic shows the various business cycles and the recession we're in now. And maybe some hope that things will be better in 6 months.

A 60 foot Gundam robot has risen in Tokyo. I really really hope this is real.

Short article on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. Found this surprising:

In 1966, three years before Stonewall, Time, then the voice of middlebrow, middle-class respectability, published a long essay on “The Homosexual in America.” The magazine, while acknowledging that “homosexuals are present in every walk of life,” concluded that homosexuality

is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste—and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.

Despite all this, it still seems too early to cede America’s future to the Lone Star state. To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems. It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a “lost generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy. Now immigration is likely to reconvert Texas from Republican red to Democratic blue; Latinos may justly demand a bigger, more “Californian” state to educate them and provide them with decent health care.

2 comments

weekend, life update
Mood: okay
Music: Nine Inch Nails - "The Perfect Drug"
Posted on 2009-07-06 13:08:00
Tags: health wedding links
Words: 222

Thursday I went tubing with some people in New Braunfels. I'm generally not super excited about water activities, but it was fun and relaxing. It was also really, really hot. I didn't fully reapply suntan lotion while floating down the river (not really sure why I didn't, except that I didn't feel like I was burning) , and thus I ended up horribly sunburned on most of my chest, upper legs and feet.

I've been using some aloe lotiony stuff which helped a lot, but even still it's still sensitive and (worst of all) itchy, especially at night. Saturday night I took a Benadryl which successfully knocked me out, and last night I tried to get by with just some cortisone cream. Gave up on that after a while of itching and not sleeping and took the Benadryl, but it didn't work as well...got to sleep after about an hour and didn't sleep well. (neither did djedi, for unrelated reasons)

12 days until our wedding! Everything seems in order and we're keeping up with our todo list but I'm still generally stressed. Picked up honeymoon tickets, etc. today and I'm looking forward to that part :-)

A somewhat rambling but interesting talk by Stephen Fry about America's place in the world.

Propaganda posters for World War III. I think this one is my favorite.

2 comments

happy 9 years!
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2009-06-30 10:22:00
Tags: links
Words: 148

And on the same day of my 1000th LJ post! Clearly this is an auspicious day. Except for the fact that I broke a glass this morning :-(

Firefox 3.5 is out today! Looks like it's not automatically updating yet. I've been beta testing for a while and it's speedier and more responsive than Firefox 3. You can see some of the new features here.

I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with the Palm Pre - been reading reviews from Engadget and Gizmodo (here's the flash-heavy Sprint page) and I'm kinda excited about it, although I'm under contract with T-Mobile until March. I even signed up to develop an app for it - gonna try porting whereslunch.org to it and see how easy it is...

Sometimes I step back and marvel that I can buy 16 GB of storage that fits on my keychain for $35.

Internet is out at home until Friday.

1 comment

linky in spirit
Mood: cheerful
Music: Michael Jackson - "Black or White"
Posted on 2009-06-26 10:58:00
Tags: movies gay politics links
Words: 305

We watched Dial M for Murder last night. I had high hopes for it, having enjoyed Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" a few weeks ago, but this was even better! The opening 15 minutes or so were packed with tension, and although sometimes older movies don't hold up today since their twists have become terribly commonplace, this one holds up quite well. Highly recommended.

The Alamo Drafthouse had a tribute Michael Jackson singalong last night, and they say there will be more this weekend. I went to one of these in 2005 and it was a lot of fun.

Supreme Court rulings: strip-searching a 13 year old because you think they have Advil = very not OK (Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter), and crime laboratory technicians must testify to admit lab results into evidence, which sounds like it might be a fairly large change. That was a 5-4 ruling with an odd majority: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Scalia and Thomas.

If you're interested in the Supreme Court (and who isn't?), here's a chart of the justices' ideology over its history, which explains why seeing Stevens and Thomas agree on anything is pretty weird.

The DNC gay fundraiser I mentioned last week happened, and apparently Joe Biden gave a good speech and got a lot of applause. But it's hard to read this:

He said that gay and lesbian concerns will not be "delayed, put off or not end up on [Obama's] plate" because he is dealing with so many other issues.

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teh gays !<3 Obama
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2009-06-17 16:08:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 230

Last week the Department of Justice filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, DOMA is the law and the Justice Department is required to uphold the law (although apparently previous DoJ's have published opinions saying they thought laws were unconstitutional), but the brief itself is pretty terrible - saying DOMA is consistent with equal protection, comparing it to laws banning incest, saying the right to marry isn't fundamental when it comes to marrying someone of the same sex. And according to Robert Gibbs (the press secretary) Obama stands behind the brief

So. This pissed a lot of people off. There's been a lot of unhappiness already about the lack of movement on DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell, and even the HRC published a kinda mad letter. A lot of people are pulling out of a DNC gay fundraiser next week. People generally feel betrayed.

Presumably to address these issues, Obama announced the he would grant same-sex benefits to federal employees, which is great except that said benefits don't include health insurance. Although it does include relocation assistance. Which is, ahem, something.

Anyway! Rant over.

A story of homeless Sims in The Sims 3. The narrative is pretty touching.

GameFAQs recently ran a Best Game Ever bracket, which Zelda: Ocarina of Time won. I was happy I've actually played a lot of the games in the final bracket!

2 comments

better living through science
Mood: geeky
Music: that "Jai Ho" song
Posted on 2009-06-12 15:32:00
Tags: essay links
Words: 218

A while back I wrote a script to analyze our GnuCash account. A few months ago, I added a quick little feature to predict how much money we're going to spend this month - basically just taking the existing values and extrapolating to the end of the month, disregarding stuff that is largely the same like the mortgage payment and bills. So every time I run the script I get an updated projection of how much money we'll spend this month.

For something so simple, it's surprising how it's changed my behavior. I'm very much more conscious about spending money now, and last month we spent the least amount we have in a while. Of course, that's just one data point. It's similar as the idea behind the Google PowerMeter - if you can measure something well you're more likely to think about it more and conserve when you can.

In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal writes about not getting enough sleep and a device called the Zeo which tells you how well you slept the next morning. Again, the idea is that you can try out different things (cutting out caffeine longer before bedtime, etc.) and see how they affect your sleep patterns. Cool stuff! Yet another study shows that sleep is important and helps you learn.

2 comments

just this guy, you know?
Mood: busy
Posted on 2009-06-10 11:49:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 99

A new poll came out showing that 69% of Americans favor allowing openly gay people in the military - up from 64% 5 years ago...and even 58% conservatives support it! For a point of comparison, when Truman integrated the army only 13% of the population supported it. Stephen Colbert is doing his show from Iraq this week (in front of troops) and last night did a segment on Don't Ask, Don't Tell which was pretty ballsy.

25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips

Remember that long health care article? Turns out Obama read it too and is taking it pretty seriously.

1 comment

I'm in a hurry to get things done...
Mood: stressed
Music: Dave Matthews Band - "Funny the Way it is"
Posted on 2009-06-05 13:34:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 166

Obama gave a big speech in Cairo yesterday - here's the full text and the hour-long video. Pretty impressive and even-handed.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, and the Chinese government tried to block foreign reporters from recording by...using umbrellas.

New Hampshire passed a same-sex marriage bill into law this week, leaving Rhode Island as the only New England state that hasn't legalized it. Which is pretty crazy when I stop and think about it. The map is turning more green!

A long article about gay marriage from a Burkean conservative point of view.

Loving Day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court striking down anti-mixed race marriage laws, is this weekend.

Cool guys don't look at explosions (video).

A long "screenplay" about how hard it is to get security right - this really opened my eyes!

Pixar vs. the Rest, or "Pixar movies, they make a lot of money and people like them".

Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month - um, wow.

8 comments

other odds and ends
Mood: distracted
Posted on 2009-06-02 10:49:00
Tags: movies worldofwarcraft links
Words: 259

As a wedding present from djedi I got a new monitor! Whereas my old one could fit 4 xterms without overlapping, the new one can fit 9 (and 12 with just a little overlap). This makes a huge difference when I'm programming - being able to see larger sections of the file I'm working on (and having more xterms open in different directories, etc.) lets me get distracted less by switching between virtual desktops, etc. Also, the screensaver of pictures looks much more impressive :-)

We saw "Up" on Saturday (in 3D, no less). It was sweet - the first five or so minutes were really really great. I hope I can be Ellie to David's Carl. Or something. Overall I liked it but less than Wall-E and The Incredibles.

Last night we put in 10 or so attempts on Hodir and got him down to 23% or so. It's pretty overwhelming at first - I have to find the fire and stand near it, avoid icicles, dispel frost novas, heal like crazy through the frozen blows, and not screw up the flash freeze. I got pretty good by the end except at the avoiding icicles while healing through frozen blows. Maybe next time...

If you installed .NET framework 3.5 SP1, you probably got an unwanted silent installation of a Firefox addon that makes it less safe - the link has directions on how to remove it. That kinda sucks.


This whole post is really just an excuse to post this short video which I won't spoil. Also: 100 movie lines in 200 seconds.

2 comments

Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-06-01 11:53:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 145

May had some high points, but overall it kinda sucked, what with being stressed out with work stuff all the time. June looks to be somewhat better, but still stressful. July will be hectic for 17 days, then awesome, then more awesome. (August will be extremely stressful for about 4 days, then presumably back to normal) This would all be more managable if I hadn't been so moody. Hoping that goes away when the stress is gone.

This is a terrible, terrible attack on Sotomayor. Something tells me G. Gordon Liddy thinks women shouldn't hold any positions of power anywhere.

Bing is Microsoft's new search engine. It seems decent so far.

Nevada gets domestic partnerships (over the governor's veto) and Illinois's civil union bill makes it out of committee but not to the house floor although it's still possible it will in a special session.

1 comment

days go by and still I think of you
Mood: calm
Music: Dave Matthews Band - "Dive In"
Posted on 2009-05-29 10:13:00
Tags: music worldofwarcraft links
Words: 156

Had a nice relaxing week, apart from being sick Tuesday and Wednesday. Oh, and we downed a few new bosses in Ulduar-10 last night (Kologarn and Auriaya), although no loots for me.

Despite being sick most of the week I found some good links:

- Dave Matthews Band has a new album coming out next week, and you can stream the full thing at Pandora. So far it's pretty good!

- This article about health care in the New Yorker was both fascinating and a little depressing. It looks at why McAllen is the most expensive city for health care in the US, and basically the answer is because the culture for doctors there is to try to maximize revenue.

- How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks

- A rebuttal to those who claim that the new Star Trek movie threw away a bunch of continuity...short version, Star Trek has been throwing away continuity for quite a while now.

6 comments

in the merry month of may
Mood: distracted
Posted on 2009-05-22 14:12:00
Tags: gay projects links
Words: 155

My same-sex marriage map got some link love from Metafilter (thanks kernelm!) and somethingawful, oddly enough. And twitter, come to think of it. This added up to 225 hits over the past 3 days, which is a lot for me.

I'm not sure why it makes me so excited to see people linking to my stuff - there are no ads on the page, and presumably most people click on it, take a look, think "Neat!" (or "What a piece of crap!") and move on with their day. I guess it's a measure of fame or prominence, however slight.

The government just released data.gov which is a collection of parseable data from various government agencies. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of too interesting stuff there yet, but there is a a contest to write a cool app. (the first entrant is FBI Fugitive Concentration!)

The Dallas Cowboy's new stadium has the world's largest HD video screen.

0 comments

marriage: the gayening
Mood: chatty
Music: Michael Andrews -"Mad World (Alternate Version)"
Posted on 2009-05-20 14:54:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 189

The New Hampshire legislature narrowly didn't pass the gay marriage bill (amended as the governor requested), but sent it back to committee so it might come up for a vote again in two weeks. Of course, then who knows if the governor will sign it?

Supposedly the California Prop 8 lawsuit decision will be handed down tomorrow. If it overturns Prop 8 it's possible gay marriage will be legal in California again. Not having followed the proceedings at all I'd bet against it, though.

The Nevada legislature passed a domestic partner bill but the governor has said he'd veto it.

Gay Marriage Slow to Draw an Opposition in N.Y. - good?

All these things are keeping me on my toes updating the same-sex marriage map. Hoping to add a few small features later this week.

Non-gay marriage links:

You know how everyone says the divorce rate is 50%? Apparently that's not true if you look at it as how many people have ever been divorced.

Lost Season 5 recap with crazy crazy theories.

A review of "Glee" which we watched last night. I thought it was kinda (and surprisingly) good!

4 comments

rumsfeld flashbacks
Mood: okay
Music: "Star Trek" soundtrack
Posted on 2009-05-18 10:41:00
Tags: happiness politics links
Words: 575

Apparently the President's Worldwide Intelligence Updates (prepared by the Pentagon) often had verses from the Bible on the cover, which makes me a little queasy. I agree that, if you're religious, there's nothing wrong with looking to your religion/God for faith and guidance, but this seems more like "Hey, the Bible says this whole war thing is A-OK, carry on!" The accompanying article is full of new information about Rumsfeld, including

The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that morning and said, “You’re going to need several thousand troops.”

“Well, I disagree,” said the SecDef. “And I’m going to tell the president we don’t need any more than the National Guard.”

The problem was that the Guard deployment (which would eventually reach 15,000 troops) had not arrived—at least not in sufficient numbers, and not where it needed to be. And though much of the chaos was being overstated by the media, the very suggestion of a state of anarchy was enough to dissuade other relief workers from entering the city. Having only recently come to grips with the roiling disaster, Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning. According to several who were present, the president was agitated. Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked, “Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?”

Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would create “unity of command” issues. Visibly impatient, Bush turned away from Rumsfeld and began to direct his inquiries at Lieutenant General Honoré on the video screen. “From then on, it was a Bush-Honoré dialogue,” remembers another participant. “The president cut Rumsfeld to pieces. I just wish it had happened earlier in the week.”

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.

altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)

4 comments

hurried links
Mood: busy
Posted on 2009-05-15 14:34:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 198

Is it the end of May yet?

A Roomba's path (by taking a long exposure time picture) is pretty chaotic!

Yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation had a torture episode.

In The Fierce Urgency of Whenever, Andrew Sullivan is pretty pissed Obama hasn't done much for gays yet. I mostly agree, although I'm a bit more patient. It turns out Obama wrote a personal note saying he's "committed to changing our current policy" of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

The governor of New Hampshire says he'll sign the gay marriage bill if religious protections are added, which the legislature has indicated they'll do. Sweet! For the record, I have absolutely no problem with saying religions don't have to recognize gay marriages. (even though, to my understanding, they don't have to even without the wording he wants in the bill) After all these bills go into effect, Rhode Island will be the only state in New England without gay marriage. That is some craziness, folks.

With The 'Gay Tax,' Love Doesn't Come Cheap - why, despite the awesomeness that is states allowing gay marriage, the fact that it's not recognized at a federal level still costs couples a lot of money.

3 comments

flu marches on
Mood: bored
Posted on 2009-05-04 14:51:00
Tags: swineflu links
Words: 133

and apparently Travis County has its first confirmed case! That's exciting, I guess. Keep washing your hands, etc. Here's an article describing how schools decide when to close - it really makes a big difference in the spread of viruses if they close as soon as they see a few cases. Of course, then the virus doesn't spread and people complain about "overhyping" the threat and such...which is true, but if we hadn't taken it as seriously it would have been worse.

Car Warranty Racket Exposed on Today Show - I wonder if these are the jerks that keep calling me? I hate those guys.

Talking Gadget Theater II: The Kindle 2 and iPod Shuffle perform Wrath of Khan - their enunciation is pitch-perfect!

Space-racism is bad: And 17 other not-so-subtle lessons learned from Star Trek

1 comment

neat things
Mood: relieved
Posted on 2009-04-16 13:36:00
Tags: links
Words: 39

This giant poster of the 2009 budget is pretty darn awesome. (here's the full image)

Also good: This guide of things to invent if you travel back in time shirt and poster, courtesy of Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics!

0 comments

a cool toy and some anger
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-04-15 13:21:00
Tags: rant politics links
Words: 204

Cool toy: This ToneMatrix thingy. Note that if you right-click, you can copy and paste music in. My two quick compositions:
0,512,0,256,0,1024,0,0,0,17476,0,0,0,0,0,168
65536,32768,16384,8192,256,0,128,0,320,0,1056,0,4112,0,32776,0

The scale is a pentatonic one (do, re, mi, so, la) which means that basically any combination of notes sounds good. The lack of dissonance gets a little...creepy? after a while, but it's fun to play with. There's actually a real instrument called the tenori-on that does something similar, and an iPhone version. (as well as another iPhone version by Brian Eno that looks even cooler)

Now. Today is Tax Day, and some conservative-types are holding tea parties to protest government spending. (and presumably the deficit?) Let me just say this - if you disliked Bush's expansion of government spending (specifically the Iraq war, Medicare expansion, etc.) and you're protesting, at least you're consistent. If you just hate Obama and everything he stands for, well at least you're being honest. But if you cheerleaded everything Bush did and started worrying about government spending and the deficit on January 20th, then you're not being serious. If you have no suggestions for what you want to cut, you're not being serious. If you favor tax cuts and lower deficits, you're really really deluding yourself.

1 comment

Stuff I've been following: Time Warner, gay stuff, dentist
Mood: busy
Posted on 2009-04-10 10:03:00
Tags: health activism gay links
Words: 480

Time Warner

Gay stuff

Dentist

Finally, some links

7 comments

marriage in Iowa?
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2009-04-02 13:36:00
Tags: gay links
Words: 64

Andrew Sullivan notes the Iowa Supreme Court will hand down its ruling in a gay marriage case tomorrow. Really hoping I get to update my marriage map then!

If you haven't seen the Extreme Sheep LED Art, you really should. I saw it mentioned somewhere but wasn't that interested so I skipped it until today. But it's awesome!

Apparently Sweden voted for gay marriage!

6 comments

linksamillion
Mood: excited
Posted on 2009-03-31 13:14:00
Tags: links
Words: 236

- Texas Senate approves drunken-driving crackdowns - I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, a checkpoint where you stop everyone who's driving and make them take a sobriety test seems pretty authoritarian. Admittedly it's only allowed for four hours a day and there are loads of exceptions, but I was pretty surprised to learn it's legal in 39 other states. On the other hand, 1300 people die in Texas each year (well, in 2007 anyone) because of alcohol-related crashes.

- This Austin Energy power-generation game is pretty interesting. (although the sound is annoying and there's no way to turn it off) Drives home how expensive solar power is - yikes!

- On Square Miles - that's a pretty big difference. (and I remember djedi mentioning the editorial on Sunday...)

- GM's Problems are 50 Years in the Making - fivethirtyeight is still going strong! The important stat is that GM pays $7 billion a year (from 1993-2007) in retiree pension and health care. And GM has never made more than $10 billion profit in a year. This sounds almost like a Ponzi scheme - the company does great at the beginning because it's deferring all these costs (and so can pay its workers less), but boy does it suck for them now.

- Lead Blizzard Dev Outlines 9 WoW Quest Problems - interesting points. And I never do that stupid Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest unless djedi gathers the pages for me :-)

1 comment

fun times at the bank!
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2009-03-30 15:00:00
Tags: dollarcoins links
Words: 462

(these are only "fun" compared to normal times at the bank. You have been warned!)

Fun bank story #1: I wanted to stop by the bank today to deposit a check and get a new roll of $1 coins, since I'm almost out. Then I realized I'm actually wearing my $1 coin shirt today. I went ahead and did it anyway but felt pretty self-conscious about the whole thing.
Fun bank story #2: As I was leaving, the teller pointed out that I had a lot of money in my bank account and asked if I usually kept this much around, presumably to pitch a savings account or something. I said no, and that I was getting married in a few months, to which she said "Congratulations!" and quickly dropped it. Later I realized this might have come off as saying my new wife was going to spend all my money or something.

- This TinEye "reverse image search" is pretty neat. You can get a Firefox extension and then do a search any time you see an interesting image to find variations of that image.

- I'm gonna go ahead and excerpt this article because it makes a good point and maybe summarizes how I think I feel:

This may sound strange, but I don't consider myself a real abortion foe. I have friends and sparring partners who think abortions should be illegal or at least heavily restricted. To me, that's the chief dividing line in the debate. I don't feel comfortable crossing that line. I don't think a regime of abortion restrictions enacted in the name of life would make this world a better place. I think it would cause a mess—hypocrisy, deceit, interrogations, amateur home surgery, moral crudity backed by the force of law—as ugly as any war fought in the name of peace.

I don't equate abortion with murder. I don't even think it's the worst option available to a woman facing unintended pregnancy. Every abortion dilemma is different, because every situation is different. The person best situated to make the right decision is the pregnant woman. A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on this point.

So why do I keep bringing up abortion as a moral problem? Because it is a moral problem. It's the destruction of a developing human being. For that reason, the less we do it, the better. When I say abortion is bad, I'm not saying it's necessarily worse than bringing a child into the world in lousy circumstances. I'm saying it's worse than avoiding unintended pregnancy in the first place. That's why I keep pushing contraception. If you cause an unintended pregnancy and an abortion because you didn't want to wear a condom, you should be ashamed.

5 comments

A depressing thought followed by happy music
Mood: pleased
Posted on 2009-03-24 12:58:00
Tags: music links
Words: 35

Depressing thought: Apparently, for every 1% increase in unemployment, 47,000 more people die.

Happy music: thru-you is a set of mixed YouTube songs, which doesn't really do it justice. My favorites are #1 and #5!

0 comments

weighty thoughts
Mood: content
Posted on 2009-03-23 10:00:00
Tags: weight projects links
Words: 279

This weekend I was proud of myself as my weight hit its lowest level since I started tracking it this time. (since then it's bounced back up a little, but I'm going to ignore that for now) So I thought it would be a good time to look back at my previous attempts at weight loss to see how well I did.

And I had forgotten that (last very short attempt notwithstanding) I've done much better than this in the past. Right after college I was a full 15 pounds lighter than I am now, and even an attempt a few years later I got down to 5 pounds below my current weight. I really can't decide if this should be encouraging (it is possible for me to weigh less!) or discouraging (I've been trying for 2.5 months and only lost 7 pounds!).

On Friday I discovered that GnuCash (which we use to do our finances) stores its data in an XML format! So I wrote a script to generate a report on how much we spend on various categories each month (GnuCash has some builtin facilities to do this, but I couldn't quite get it to do what I wanted). The report looks pretty but I don't feel comfortable posting it to the web, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Related: I found this awesome ColorBrewer which helps you pick a set of colors for maps or graphs or whatever. This is great news since I suck at picking colors!

The British military put some of their troops on LSD to see how it would affect them. The results are amusing but not really surprising.

2 comments

link friday: the bunch-o-linkening
Mood: happy
Posted on 2009-03-20 15:45:00
Tags: links
Words: 77

- As has become a tradition, Paul Ford wrote six-word reviews of all the SxSW sample tracks released. Fun to browse through and listen to new music!

- More problems with Austin commuter rail - blah.

- Instead of rail, why not flying cars? The future has arrived!

- Medical marijuana is coming to Michigan next month - didn't realize it had spread outside of California.

- Today's weird link: savethewords.org - a bunch of neglected words beg for you to adopt them. With sound.

0 comments

hangin' on links!
Mood: tired
Posted on 2009-03-12 15:58:00
Tags: links
Words: 130

Couldn't sleep last night and had a 9 AM meeting this morning, so I'm slightly loopy!

- SIRC guide to flirting - this is an incredibly long article about social science and how you should flirt. Entertaining!

- Now-needy FDIC collected little in premiums - so let me get this straight. The FDIC (the "I" stands for "Insurance", remember) didn't collect money from most banks from 1996-2006 because

Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized - and that bank failures were so infrequent - that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade

0 comments

The Daily Show and Colbert Report firing on all cylinders
Mood: excited
Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning"
Posted on 2009-03-05 13:29:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 205

Last night was a prototypical example of these shows doing what they do best. Here's The Daily Show finding an assortment of clips from CNBC showing just how wrong they were (and why perhaps being self-righteous about homeowners who bought big houses is hypocritical):

0 comments

angry links!
Mood: angry
Posted on 2009-03-04 11:01:00
Tags: weight links
Words: 67

Ugh, even my links are disappearing!

Sign of the times - Austin layoff database

Updated my weight chart to show a rolling average of 5 days (in dark blue). The bottom graph is a graph of my body fat weight (weight * body fat percentage) - it's pretty noisy but trending downward, which is good.

There's now a free Kindle reader for the iPhone.

Jon Stewart on Limbaugh and Steele.

2 comments

links for everyone!
Mood: busy
Music: Official Lost Podcast
Posted on 2009-03-02 12:11:00
Tags: projects programming politics links
Words: 212

So I won the code bounty! I've really been enjoying writing Firefox extensions - it's easy to get started and fast to see results, and I'm starting to understand XUL better. Anyway, Kate (who offered the bounty) is going to polish it up and release it, at which point I might consider using it - it's convenient and is a better solution to passwords than a tiered password scheme.

I also got the $100 Amazon gift card, which I'm not sure what to do with. Is this good because I'm less materialistic or bad because I'm not excited about anything in particular at the moment?

Links!

- Happy Texas Independence Day!

- If you like crazy Obama theories, you'll like this Daily Show segment! Sometimes I wonder where they find these people...

- The government is bailing out AIG some more, but the real story is that AIG lost $62 billion in 3 months!

- In a recent study, only 29% of people supported gay marriage, but this number went up to 43% if assurances were made that no church would be required to perform gay marriages. Which is kind of weird, because no church is required to perform particular kinds of marriages today.

- Obama frames things as people versus corporations and industries rather than Republican versus Democrat.

4 comments

anti-gay monday!
Mood: amused
Posted on 2009-02-23 12:56:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 158

- Anti-gay ad in the Salt Lake Tribune - this is good wingnut territory. Takes a quote about "enhanced equal rights" and says that "Gays will have MORE RIGHTS than anyone else". I'll be sure to let you know when that happens, but equal rights would be just fine with me. Also apparently there was a Homosexual Declaration of War in 1987 where the gays want to sodomize your children? News to me.

Also, my word is this an ugly ad! Lots of random BOLDING and capitalization :-)

- Gay Snipers Attack Marriage In West Virginia Campaign Ad (VIDEO) - the gay snipers appear at :58 and it just gets better from there. (foreboding music! whooooo will think of the children?? religious liberty is losing to the gays!)

I certainly don't feel discriminated against on a daily basis, but it's good to remember that just because I'm lucky enough to live in Austin doesn't mean crap like this isn't going on other places.

7 comments

friday links
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-02-20 10:18:00
Tags: weight links
Words: 164

- If I were unhealthily obsessed with my weight, I would say I should get sick more often. But then I remembered I got my hair cut too! I should have kept it to weigh it and correct for growing hair weight...

- 25 reasons we love Austin - Salt Lick! cupcakes! breakfast! bookpeople! alamo drafthouse!

- The Clinton Economic Record and Rising Tides - that first graph was startling. The obvious point is that the poor did as well as the rich under Clinton whereas they did much worse under Reagan/Bush I/Bush II, but everyone did better under Clinton than they did under any of those.

- The Futile Pursuit of Happiness - long but interesting article. People generally underestimate their long-term emotional resilience; losing a partner/family member makes our "emotional immune system" kick in and we feel better faster than we think. The "immune system" doesn't kick in with chronic annoyances (that door that won't close, that aching ankle) and so they make us more unhappy than we predict.

0 comments

early morning links!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2009-02-17 07:31:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 256

I took quijax to the airport this morning and am now at work, so here are some links so I don't fall asleep!

- George Will writes a column saying global warming is bunk. (and then I had to check my nonexistent watch to ensure that it was still the year 2009) Nate Silver and Talking Points Memo point out the crazy inaccuracies.

- I was grabbing breakfast and caffeine at Starbucks this morning, and happened to see this story in The USA Today: Supreme Court case with the feel of a best seller. The lede:

In a small town, a local resident claims wrongdoing by a big corporation and wins a multimillion-dollar award after a jury trial. The corporation's CEO then pumps enough campaign money into a judicial election to get a new judge on the state supreme court. During an appeal, that judge casts a critical vote siding with the corporation — and reversing the resident's victory.

0 comments

*insert witticism here*
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-02-12 10:34:00
Tags: links
Words: 109

- Jon Stewart Nails O'Reilly on Right to Privacy - pwnt! That last clip is priceless.

- After watching last night's Lost episode (and really, all of Season 5 so far), this Time Travel for Dummies article was quite helpful. It was written before last night's episode, so no spoilers for that. Also, here are some Jackfaces.

- Is the world ready for an Asperger's sitcom? - article about "The Big Bang Theory" and how Sheldon demonstrates a lot of Asperger's characteristics. (although the show's writers deny that was the intention)

- 10 Take Aways From the Bush Years - living in reality is a good start. Also, Rumsfeld sure comes off as a jerk.

2 comments

a few links with no coherent theme
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-02-06 14:43:00
Tags: gay politics links
Words: 97

- The world gets its first gay head of state (although it's a little backdoor - the actual head of the party is taking a leave of absence).

- Obama Justice Department Re-Hires Attorney Fired By Goodling Because Of Lesbian Rumor - aww, nice! Also, that's a pretty crappy thing to do in the first place.

- Obama explains why we need a stimulus bill in an editorial in the Washington Post. The best line is the tagline: "The writer is president of the United States."

- Surveillance Pic Shows Man Robbing Stores With Klingon Sword - the clerk recognized it as a Bat'leth.

0 comments

the world is depressing links
Mood: grumpy
Posted on 2009-02-03 10:22:00
Tags: essay links
Words: 784

I was pretty grumpy last night, and while I'm somewhat less so, I also had to get into work 2 hours earlier than I usually do. So, behold:

- The pope promoted an ultra-conservative Austrian bishop who said things like Hurricane Katrina was "God's punishment" for New Orleans' relaxed attitude towards sexual promiscuity and homosexuality. He's also your more standard fundamentalist with regards to Harry Potter books being evil, and apparently blamed the 2004 Asian tsunami on "rich western tourists" who had "fled to poor Thailand". Good to know where the Catholic church stands on such things. *sigh*

- This article about the new Battlestar Galactica by the guy who played Starbuck in the old one is really pretty amazing. I will excerpt, but you should read it all to appreciate teh crazy.

Starbuck was meant to be a lovable rogue. It was best for the show, best for the character and the best that I could do. The Suits didn’t think so. “One more cigar and he’s fired,” they told Glen Larson, the creator of the show. “We want Starbuck to appeal to the female audience for crying out loud.” You see, the Suits knew women were turned off by men who smoked cigars, especially young men. How they “knew” this was never revealed. And they didn’t stop there. “If Dirk doesn’t quit playing every scene with a girl like he wants to get her in bed, he’s fired.” This was, well, it was blatant heterosexuality, treating women like “sex objects.”

The Suits were not impressed. They would have their way, which is what Suits do best, and after one season of puffing and flirting and gambling, Starbuck, that loveable scoundrel, was indeed fired. Which is to say, “Battlestar Galactica” was cancelled.

There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won.

In the bleak and miserable “re-imagined” world of “Battlestar Galactica,” things are never that simple. Maybe the Cylons are not evil and alien but in fact enlightened and evolved? Let us not judge them so harshly. Maybe it is they who deserve to live and Adama and his human ilk who deserve to die? And what a way to go! For the re-imagined terrorists (Cylons) are not mechanical robots void of soul, of sexuality, but rather humanoid six foot tall former lingerie models who f**k you to death. (Poor old Starbuck, you were imagined too early. Think of the fun you could have had ‘fighting’ with these thong-clad aliens!) In the spirit of such soft-core, sci-fi porn I think a more re-imaginative title would have been “F**cked by A Cylon.” (Apologies to “Touched by an Angel.”)

One thing is certain. In the new un-imagined, re-imagined world of “Battlestar Galactica” everything is female driven. The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak and wracked with indecision, while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing cigars (gasp!) and not about to take it any more.

”Re-inspiration” struck. Starbuck would go the way of most men in today’s society. Starbuck would become “Stardoe.” What the Suits of yesteryear had been incapable of doing to Starbuck 25 years ago was accomplished quicker than you can say orchiectomy. Much quicker, as in, “Frak! Gonads Gone!”

1 comment

random amusements
Mood: okay
Posted on 2009-01-28 11:08:00
Tags: links
Words: 42

- Champion of Guitars - a Zork-like Guitar Hero.

- Do You Talk Too Much? - the stoplight idea is interesting. iPhone app?

- Ten sci-fi devices that could soon be in your hands - I've read about the invisibility cloak but the other ones are pretty interesting!

1 comment

happy 2009!
Mood: awake
Posted on 2009-01-02 10:32:00
Tags: links
Words: 168

Games I played for the first time in the last few days: Agricola, Dominion, Stone Age, Fjords, Shadow Hunters. Life is good!

- Outline of "Predictably Irrational" - lots of examples about how we are not rational. Take that, economists!

- Alberto Gonzales Can't Find a Job, Whines includes this amazing quote:

for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.

3 comments

just so I feel caught up
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-12-29 10:52:00
Tags: travel gay politics links
Words: 326

Back from vacation! Christmas and related activities were good and fun and relaxing. Enjoyed spending time with family and got a lot of work done on whereslunch.org - only remaining things on my list of "must fix before launching" are dealing with IE and possibly adding tag editing (which will be a pain).

Driving back to Houston tomorrow to watch Rice play in the Texas Bowl, and driving back the next day - glad I have a plan for that now.

There has been some controversy about Obama inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. He's the pastor of Saddleback Community Church and while he has focused on poverty and the plight of AIDS victims, etc., he did endorse Prop 8 in California. It turns out he did so on a Friday 10 days before the election on his church's website (not anywhere more public) and neither he nor his wife donated money to the campaign. Obviously I don't agree with him, but I'm all for engaging people we disagree with, and Rick Warren is no James Dobson or Fred Phelps. Plus, it's just an inauguration - not like he'll be writing policy or anything like that!

Oh, what the heck...some more links:
- 90% of the copies of World of Goo are pirated - yeah, yeah, I know not all of those people would buy the game, but this is kinda depressing. It's cheap ($20), it's DRM-free, and it's a good game!
- The US Census Bureau just released the 2009 version of the Statistical Abstract of the United States = tasty tasty data. Maybe I will do a project in R...
- A Russian professor predicts the breakup of the US in 2010. The map at the bottom is pretty awesome. I definitely think states like Kentucky and Tennessee would be excited about joining the European Union. Sheesh!
- No big surprise: text messages costs carriers nothing - I didn't realize SMS was designed to fit inside a control message, neat!

3 comments

big pile o' links
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-12-19 14:18:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 211

- Brett Favre beats Lizard People - the Minnesota recount goes on, and things get weird.

- The Strange and Bizarre Story of Wallace Scarborough’s Fight Against Democracy - hopefully the South Carolina House of Representatives does the right thing here, as it looks like the guy just lost.

- Scientists debunk the myth that you lose most heat through your head - my mom was wrong!

- Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits - umm, a few years too late?

- In 2006, a Embraer Legacy 700 hit a Boeing 737 over Brazil. Vanity Fair just printed an article about the crash and how it happened. There was a writer on board the Embraer - here's his story in the NY Times about a week after the crash.

- Austin is the fifth safest city of cities of reasonable size! (500,000+ people) Houston is the 10th most dangerous of those.

- Austin 3G speed test - AT&T wins overall, although it's terrible downtown.

- Typo In Proposition 8 Defines Marriage As Between 'One Man And One Wolfman' - ah, the Onion...

- Air Traffic in 24 hours - seen it before but always interesting to see the pattern of flights as the sun comes up and goes down.

- A three-time wrestler explains why "The Wrestler" is good - interested in seeing this movie although I'm not sure why.

3 comments

links to cheer me up
Mood: grumpy
Posted on 2008-12-17 13:32:00
Tags: links
Words: 61

- The Muppets Sing - Beaker singing Ode to Joy is a must watch!

- A good guide to board games (from Wil Wheaton's blog)

- 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs - UI design is hard, sadly.

- Bernard Madoff just got busted for running a Ponzi scheme and taking something on the order of $50 billion, which is a lot of money.

0 comments

links links links links links links links links
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-12-11 14:31:00
Tags: travel gay politics links
Words: 87

I'm trying out Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 - the new fancy Javascript engine makes things (like whereslunch.org, which I really should work on more) much faster!

- A collection of tourist scams that I found interesting.

- James Franco and Sean Penn kiss on camera in "Milk" and get lots and lots of questions about it.

- Obama is crazy popular these days, way more popular than Bush or Clinton were when they came into office. 79% say they won't miss Bush and 48% say he's been worse than most presidents.

0 comments

friday link friday
Mood: bouncy
Posted on 2008-12-05 13:34:00
Tags: links
Words: 179

And now, a special Friday installment of Link Friday!

• Happy Repeal Day! I will raise a bottle tonight in celebration.
• Auditorium is this awesome flash game. It was quite popular at gamenight last night. (thanks to destroyerj for tipping us off)
• Remember that Senate race in Minnesota? Well, the recount is over (although there are still ballot challenges to look at) and Democrat Al Franken is up by a total of four votes. Not four hundred, not forty. Four!
• Inside the world's most annoying economic crisis - apparently they're short of coins in Argentina. Weird!
• The Incredible Convenience of Mathematica Image Processing - as someone who hasn't used Mathematica in a long time, this is pretty cool.
• What Your Computer Does While You Wait - good article on how long things take (accessing L1 cache vs. L2 cache vs. memory vs. hard drive is a huge difference!)
• Python 3.0 (kinda known as Python 3000) was released yesterday. It's incompatible with the 2.x series of Pythons to fix some cruft that had built up in the language. Here's what's new. (hint: a lot!)

2 comments

prop 8 - the musical
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-12-03 14:13:00
Tags: links
Words: 45

If you don't like a musical with (in order of awesomeness) Neil Patrick Harris, Allison Janney, Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Margaret Cho and Andy Richter among others, are we really friends? Because I'm having doubts...

4 comments

getting back in the lj habit
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2008-12-01 11:36:00
Tags: health wedding links
Words: 361

Thanksgiving was nice with djedi's family. We went to the mall on Friday and didn't buy much but got a lot of ideas for people. Apparently we're in a recession that started last December, but you wouldn't know it looking at all the people that were there. I managed to screw up my shoulder something fierce, but staying dosed on Advil helps a lot, and indeed it was feeling much better this morning.

As I mentioned angrily before, I need a root canal. I decided to switch to the better dental insurance at work since apparently my teeth are fairly crappy, genetically speaking or something. The new plan takes effect Jan 1 and I'm trying to decide whether to put off the procedure until then. The tooth has only hurt a little since I went in and got a cleaning, and I have some antibiotics in my back pocket that I can take for 5 days (and they'll be effective for 10), so I could wait until it hurts a lot and take those. The downside is that if it doesn't work, I'll know mid December which will both be too late to schedule something before the holidays and Christmas will be filled with tooth pain.

Rice football is 9-3 and hopefully I'm gonna see them in the Texas Bowl! (which is in Houston)

We finally got around to asking the rector at our church a few weeks ago if we could have our commitment ceremony there or have him officiate. We heard back last night - nope and nope. (because of the rules for the diocese) He was very nice in the email and I understand that rules are rules and I'm really not surprised, I guess, but I am disappointed. Honestly, we're lucky that we live in an age where we can just be a couple most of the time, but it makes the times when that's not the case more jarring. We'll have to find somewhere else to have the ceremony, and someone to officiate...blah.

One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex - sounds kinda sketchy. I didn't realize the Pentagon used military analysts to push favorable media coverage of the war, etc.

2 comments

"I wish I had done this!"
Mood: geeky
Posted on 2008-11-26 10:16:00
Tags: essay math programming links
Words: 387

"I wish I had done this!" is my highest praise for a website. The last time I can remember using it was for wowjutsu, which tracks raid progression in WoW by looking up what gear people are wearing in the Armory and matching that with where that gear came from. Simple idea, useful, interesting, but the technology behind it is something I totally could have done.

My newest "I wish I had done this!" is StateStats. You enter a search term, it finds which states in the US search for that term more per capita, then gives you a nice heat map of the US. But then it correlates that with a host of other state rankings: obesity, income, high school graduation rates, voted for bush, percent youth, etc., etc., etc. So you can see that searches for "prius" are correlated with income and negatively correlated with energy consumption. Or searches for "gay" are correlated with density (i.e. more urban states) and negatively correlated with voted for bush. Or searches for "lsu" are highly correlated with, well, being Louisiana. Or searches for "coke" are highly correlated with obesity, while searches for "soda" are highly negatively correlated with obesity. (huh?) Or searches for "tea" are correlated with income and negatively correlated with voted for bush.

Anyway, it's a ton of fun to play with, and the example queries ("garth brooks" is highly correlated with voted for bush!) are interesting, but it's even more fun to think of a common search term and see what pops up.

The correlation metric it's using is just based on rank and not intensity - i.e. it's just the order of the 50 states that matter, not how much the first place one is bigger than the second place one. This probably leads to some false positives when the numbers are very close together. Also, I'd imagine there's a natural inaccuracy determining which state a particular query is coming from, and since you're looking at things only on a state by state level (as opposed to county by county or something) it's not as precise as it theoretically could be.

And don't forget correlation is not causation - searching for "hockey" does not make it colder outside, or make you richer.

I award StateStats the official "I wish I had done this!" seal of approval.

2 comments

tv stuff
Mood: post-y
Posted on 2008-11-25 13:29:00
Tags: links
Words: 173

(apparently I'm in a post-y sort of mood...)

How Fox Helped Make Torture Happen - apparently the interrogators at Guantánamo Bay are big fans of 24. I'm all for realism in TV shows, but at some point TV shows do affect popular culture and if 24 glamorizes torture (which it sounds like it does) to the point that it encourages government officials to do it...well, something's wrong there.

I'm a big LOST fan, and I've been doing their ARG this summer/fall, which was to apply to a position in the Dharma Initiative, take some tests and then...well, it turns out the ARG was cancelled because of the financial crisis. At first I thought it was all part of the ARG, but no! You can see the email sent today. If you haven't been watching LOST, or forgot what's been happening since it's been six months since the Season 4 finale (grumble grumble), you can see the LOST Starter Kit (password is "lafleur"), which is kinda like the "What the Frak?" summary of Battlestar Galactica.

11 comments

links in th' morning
Mood: happy
Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning"
Posted on 2008-11-25 09:53:00
Tags: links
Words: 163

Princeton Proposition 8 to protect traditional sidewalk values. (being a freshmen is a choice!) I'm flattered (well, "flattered" isn't exactly the right word) that people are taking this rejection of gay marriage pretty seriously, although many many laws banning gay marriage have passed in other states and it never hit the national consciousness. Of course, this one is different in that it takes a way a right that had been given (by the courts) but, you know, still. I'd be pretty darn happy with civil unions in Texas even if it isn't called "marriage" for a very long time, but this is exactly the case in California...

Take the civics quiz! I scored 30/33=91% although I had some lucky guesses. Our elected officials don't do so great on it.

Here's what to do if you break a CFL bulb - basically, don't freak out, let the room air out for 15 minutes, then scoop up the pieces in a plastic bag (and wear gloves).

1 comment

link monday
Mood: blah
Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning"
Posted on 2008-11-24 10:31:00
Tags: netflixprize math links
Words: 364

I'm actually feeling a bit down from finishing my talk - I guess I was looking forward to it more than I thought? It's weird. Maybe I need to work on whereslunch.org some more or something. Anyway, to cheer myself up:

• We saw Quantum of Solace this weekend. It was good - on par with Casino Royale (which I liked a lot). More Judi Dench = awesome. And we saw some good previews, like:
• The new Star Trek movie by JJ Abrams. I'm actually a little less enthusiastic now that I've seen the second trailer, but given that it's a new Star Trek movie/franchise I'll probably see it at midnight. Also, Zachary Quinto as Spock is an inspired choice! (he plays Sylar on Heroes) Here's an interview with Quinto, Abrams and Leonard Nimoy about the passing of the torch.
• Watchmen - they showed the second trailer which I hadn't seen before. Both trailers sucked me in really well, but it's hard for me to see how well that will translate into an actual movie. Here's the first trailer. Incidentally, both of them used very good trance-y music - the second one used "Take a Bow" from Muse's "Black Holes and Revelations", and I just discovered the first one used "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" by Smashing Pumpkins on their album Rarities & B-Sides. I'll probably get the single to that, since the album has over 100 songs on it!
• The Wrestler - may or may not end up seeing this, but the trailer did a good job of establishing a feel for the movie and such.
• Speaking of music, Guns N' Roses "Chinese Democracy" is actually out! Here's a really long review. Been waiting for it to show up on amazonmp3.com but no dice yet. 31 lost projects we're hoping to see in the wake of Chinese Democracy
• Unrelatedly, Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective, or "Y2Gay". I LOLed.
• Here's a NY Times article about the Netflix Prize. (thanks amorphousplasma and wonderjess!) It kinda makes me wish I was still working on it...although I don't have nearly the theoretical background that the top teams do, apparently.

0 comments

i'm kinda busy, but here are some links I enjoyed and thought you might enjoy as well!
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-11-20 12:45:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 244

Finally everyone called Missouri for McCain (so long, bellwether state!), and Obama won 1 electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd congressional district (the one with Omaha in it), so the final electoral total is 365-173, and Obama won the popular vote by around 7% (see CNN's final results), which is a lot for modern elections. This is the largest percentage of popular vote win for a Democrat since LBJ in 1964. He flipped 9 states from red to blue from 2004.

Senatewise, Ted Stevens did in fact end up losing in Alaska, so you Alaskans are off the hook...for now. Georgia senate race goes to a runoff since the Republican won just under 50% of the vote. In Minnesota, there's an ongoing recount between Al Franken(D) and Norm Coleman(R) - Coleman is currently ahead by 172 votes (down from 215 before the recount started). Here's a neat feature where you can see some of the ballots that are being challenged and vote on how you think they should be called. I think #5 is my favorite!

South Park creators to write Broadway musical lampooning Mormons - so many mixed emotions. Angry at Mormon church for funding Yes on Prop 8 in California. Not real comfortable with a musical making fun of someone's religion. Amused it's being co-written by the writer of Avenue Q. Amused the lead role is being played by an openly gay actor.

This Daily WTF is yet another remarkable case of programming without thinking.

19 comments

is it Saturday yet?
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-11-19 12:54:00
Tags: math links
Words: 175

Saturday is my math talk; last night I finished the slides and wrote up a worksheet. Things look pretty good - tonight I plan to do a trial runthrough and make some changes to the worksheet. (I'll post all this stuff when it's done for posterity's sake...) At this point, I've spent probably 8 hours preparing for my 1.5 hour talk (which includes the students working on the worksheet) and I expect that'll rise to 10 hours of preparation by the time this is over. How do you teachers do it? This is crazy. I'm really looking forward to having my evenings back...(not that it isn't kinda fun preparing, but it's getting a little old)

Making some progress on my annoying bug at work. No longer freaked out about teeth. The week is looking up!

A long look at the people who saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming, written by Michael Lewis.

Five Physics Lessons for Obama - good stuff in here. I think nuclear power is a pretty good way to go, assuming it's managed well.

11 comments

more election stuff (surprised?)
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-11-03 13:52:00
Tags: election links
Words: 62

John McCain was on SNL on Saturday - here's clip #1 and clip #2. I thought they were pretty funny. For balance, here's a Keith Olbermann sketch.

Although the final numbers still aren't in, early voting in Texas was up a lot, up more than one million from 2004.

Nate Silver's (guy behind fivethirtyeight.com) guide on what to watch for on election night.

2 comments

oh my goodness please count the votes already!
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-10-31 13:42:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 420

This cheery bit by CNN asked people to say something nice about the candidate they're not supporting. Here's mine: John McCain served our country honorably. I can't imagine being locked up in a POW camp for five and a half years. I appreciate what he tried to do with campaign finance reform. I like that he believes in global warming. I think he really would try to reduce lobbyist influence. Sadly, before this campaign this list would have been a lot longer...

Here's my list of things I want to happen on Election Night, in order of importance:
- Obama is elected, preferably by a fairly wide margin to avoid shenanigans.
- Prop 8 in California (the one banning gay marriage) fails - the polls show it will be a tight race and I'd like to stay up until it's called. Prop 8 passing would be a huge huge setback for the gay rights movement.
- Democrats get to 58 senate seats (60 is required to stop a filibuster but 58 is probably close enough for most issues) - seems pretty likely.
- Larry Joe Doherty wins our congressional district (TX-10) - seems fairly unlikely now.
- Rick Noriega wins the TX senate race - seems pretty unlikely now.

I'll post my predictions on Monday. In the meantime there's this neat Google electoral map to play with.

Looks like abstinence-only education is losing support. (I wrote about abstinence-only education pissing me off a while back)

"Spreading the wealth" as an attack on Obama doesn't seem to be catching on. I would add that raising the tax rate on income above $250,000 from 35% to 39.6% is not "socialism". If you're against higher taxes on those making more than $250K a year, fine, but is it too much to ask to have a reasonable discussion about it? (yes is it, mostly) I also read an editorial (well, OK, the first few sentences of an editorial) in the paper this morning about how raising taxes lowers the incentive of entrepreneurs to make more money. I see how this is true in the abstract sense, but who says "well, I was going to make millions but it's not worth it if I might have to pay slightly more of that extra money in taxes! I'll just keep watching football or whatever."?

We drove by the early voting place at Randall's (183 and Braker) and the place was packed - the line to vote was well out the door. Burnt Orange Report has been tracking the early voting stats - here's their latest.

Happy Halloween!

9 comments

hodgepodge of whatever
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-10-29 11:22:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 275

NBC is back on Time Warner! Yaaaaay! And just in time for 30 Rock, too! (first episode is Thursday, I believe) A sure sign the dispute is over: thetruthhurtskxan.com is no more.

More Thriller: another video of the Austin event and an a capella version all done by the same guy with 64 tracks. (too bad his voice isn't that great) I think I'm done with Thriller links for now.

Charles Barkley might run for governor of Alabama in 2014. From the interview:

Brown: So are you going to run for governor?

Barkley: I plan on it in 2014.

Brown: You are serious.

Barkley: I am, I can't screw up Alabama.

Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view?

Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren't going anywhere.

We've tried it John McCain's way. We've tried it George Bush's way. It hasn't worked. Deep down, Senator McCain knows that, which is why his campaign said that "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

That's why he's spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. I'm sorry to see my opponent sink so low. Lately, he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class.

By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten.

1 comment

where's lunch rolls on
Mood: awake
Posted on 2008-10-28 11:07:00
Tags: whereslunch projects links
Words: 108

Finished the adding of restaurants last night! Now I just need to add an editing interface and do some more testing...

A long lipdub of Thriller - impressive camerawork! I wish I could keep the camera that steady while I walked. (obviously I should have combined all my Thriller links into one post, but oh well)

A federally funded group is sponsoring a contest to find an engaged couple who hasn't had sex yet. No takers yet...

Election data: lots of people have already voted early. Deadline in TX is Friday, and I'd recommend doing it today or tomorrow because I bet Thursday and Friday will be quite busy...

5 comments

life keeps rolling on
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2008-10-27 14:14:00
Tags: whereslunch projects links
Words: 192

Thanks for responding to my where's lunch poll! As I had hoped, it motivated me to code some more this weekend. I implemented the suggested restaurants (although it's pretty weak right now since there's not a lot of data) and am about halfway done with the adding new restaurants thing. Once I get that done and put it through another round of testing (haven't tested on IE for a while...*shudder*) I'll post it for real!

We voted this weekend, and while it was a little anticlimactic at the time, I'm still pretty excited by it. We went to the Randall's at 183 and Braker - happily it was during the UT game so there was no line. Voted against Prop 2, for Obama and Noriega and Larry Joe and most of (but not all) the other Democrats. Election Day is only 8 days away!

As a followup to Austin Mayor Will Wynn dancing to Thriller, this weekend Austinites shattered the Guinness World record for the largest synchronized Thriller dance. The previous record was 140 (only 140?) and we got 881(!). Here's a video of the whole thing although it's of disappointingly low quality.

0 comments

politics, whereslunch, magazines: an entry in three parts
Mood: awake
Posted on 2008-10-24 10:19:00
Tags: whereslunch projects poll politics links
Words: 410

Politics:
Will Ferrell was on SNL last night as George W. Bush and it was pretty good (although maybe not "one of the best skits ever"). It still looks like Obama is way ahead. It warms my heart that someone who wants to investigate all members of Congress to see whether they're pro-American or not (hello, Joe McCarthy!) can suddenly find that most people won't stand for that crap. Obama makes a good fantasy football partner. Also, politics has always been sleazy - this is not a recent phenomenon.

Where's lunch:
This is my project for a google map of lunch places in Austin. It's kinda stalled out, because I haven't had a lot of free time and I can't decide what to do next. Right now you can view restaurants, rate them, leave comments, color the markers based on rating and some other things, and filter which markers are shown. (if you're interested in trying it out, drop me a line and I'll hook you up) Things I want to add at some point:
- letting people add restaurants themselves. This is kind of a pain to do, and raises some security issues and means I have to police the data to some extent.
- suggesting restaurants you might like based on other people's ratings. This isn't too hard to do but since there are few ratings in the system it won't be interesting for a while.
- add user profiles where you store where you work and you can limit lunch places by their estimated time for lunch (2 * travel time + time it takes to get food).
- putting ads on the site to make $$$
So, how interested would you theoretically be in these features?
[ Fill out Poll ] [ View Poll Results ] [ Discuss Results ] [ Close Poll ]

Poll #1284500 Where's lunch features
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

How interested are you in letting people add restaurants themselves?

View Answers
Mean: 6.29 Median: 8 Std. Dev 3.10

1	1 (14.3%)
2	0 (0.0%)
3	1 (14.3%)
4	0 (0.0%)
5	1 (14.3%)
6	0 (0.0%)
7	0 (0.0%)
8	2 (28.6%)
9	1 (14.3%)
10	1 (14.3%)

How interested are you in suggesting restaurants you might like?

View Answers
Mean: 7.14 Median: 7 Std. Dev 1.96

1	0 (0.0%)
2	0 (0.0%)
3	1 (14.3%)
4	0 (0.0%)
5	0 (0.0%)
6	0 (0.0%)
7	3 (42.9%)
8	2 (28.6%)
9	0 (0.0%)
10	1 (14.3%)

How interested are you in user profiles?

View Answers
Mean: 3.86 Median: 4 Std. Dev 2.70

1	3 (42.9%)
2	0 (0.0%)
3	0 (0.0%)
4	1 (14.3%)
5	0 (0.0%)
6	2 (28.6%)
7	0 (0.0%)
8	1 (14.3%)
9	0 (0.0%)
10	0 (0.0%)

How interested are you in ads?

View Answers
Mean: 5.71 Median: 5 Std. Dev 1.28

1	0 (0.0%)
2	0 (0.0%)
3	0 (0.0%)
4	1 (14.3%)
5	3 (42.9%)
6	1 (14.3%)
7	1 (14.3%)
8	1 (14.3%)
9	0 (0.0%)
10	0 (0.0%)

Poll #1284501 Time or Newsweek?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Time or Newsweek?

7 comments

what's a good subject for the same old collection of politics links?
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-10-15 12:08:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 127

This account of Republican-leaning voters is pretty amazing:

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

0 comments

the usual mindless collection o' links
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-10-13 13:40:00
Tags: links
Words: 112

I heard on NPR this morning Weird Al Yankovic just released a song about the current economic crisis. The neat part is that since he did it digitally it's very relevant, instead of having to wait a year or two for a whole album.

The famous Obama "Hope" poster with many many parodies.

Austin mayor Will Wynn does the Thriller dance and he's actually pretty good!

While listening to This American Life's "Another Frightening Show About The Economy" (which helped me understand what's going on) I checked on my 401(k). Bad bad idea. Thank goodness I'm not retiring anytime soon...

A nice story about Obama that may or may not be true.

0 comments

two quick politics articles
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-10-09 15:44:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 148

Work = good. Throat = about the same as yesterday = meh.

The Obama Surge: Will it Last? - good short article that highlights the fact that Americans might be ready for the real change in health care Obama is proposing.

Rage in the Town of Bethlehem - more ugliness at McCain rallies. Includes this bit:

Even the opening prayer was politically charged. "O God, we are in a battle that is raging for the soul of this nation," the preacher said. "You, O God, have raised up Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for such a time as this." The preacher went on: "Help them, O God, to strengthen our economy, to keep our taxes and spending low . . . and grant them the privilege of being elected the next president and vice president."

10 comments

random whatevers
Mood: blah
Posted on 2008-10-03 14:16:00
Tags: links
Words: 766

Feeling a bit on the crappy side today - anyone else's allergies bothering them?

I've heard of Desktop Tower Defense but hadn't tried it until this week. Warning: quite addictive! (there's also now Whiteboard Tower Defense which I haven't tried)

For some Cold War nostalgia (which is a little weird since I wasn't alive/aware during the interesting parts), check out the Wikipedia entry on CONELRAD, precursor of the Emergency Broadcast System which preceded the Emergency Alert System (doesn't the logo for the Emergency Alert System look kind of frightening, like the country's falling apart?) CONELRAD's purpose was to control electromagnetic radiation by shutting down all radio stations except for a few frequencies (a station would stay on the air at one of two designated frequencies for a few minutes, then cycle off and another station would start broadcasting on that frequency) to confuse enemy planes that might try to use the signals to home in on cities. Apparently Japanese planes used a Honolulu radio station to home in on Pearl Harbor.

The British version was the Four minute warning (the estimated time between the detection of a nuclear attack and when it would hit). The announcement is pretty chilling:

This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. We shall bring you further information as soon as possible. Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own homes.

Remember there is nothing to be gained by trying to get away. By leaving your homes you could be exposing yourselves to greater danger.

If you leave, you may find yourself without food, without water, without accommodation and without protection. Radioactive fall-out, which follows a nuclear explosion, is many times more dangerous if you are directly exposed to it in the open. Roofs and walls offer substantial protection. The safest place is indoors.

Make sure gas and other fuel supplies are turned off and that all fires are extinguished. If mains water is available, this can be used for fire-fighting. You should also refill all your containers for drinking water after the fires have been put out, because the mains water supply may not be available for very long.

Water must not be used for flushing lavatories: until you are told that lavatories may be used again, other toilet arrangements must be made. Use your water only for essential drinking and cooking purposes. Water means life. Don't waste it

Make your food stocks last: ration your supply, because it may have to last for 14 days or more. If you have fresh food in the house, use this first to avoid wasting it: food in tins will keep.

If you live in an area where a fall-out warning has been given, stay in your fall-out room until you are told it is safe to come out. When the immediate danger has passed the sirens will sound a steady note. The "all clear" message will also be given on this wavelength. If you leave the fall-out room to go to the lavatory or replenish food or water supplies, do not remain outside the room for a minute longer than is necessary.

Do not, in any circumstances, go outside the house. Radioactive fall-out can kill. You cannot see it or feel it, but it is there. If you go outside, you will bring danger to your family and you may die. Stay in your fall-out room until you are told it is safe to come out or you hear the "all clear" on the sirens.

Here are the main points again:
Stay in your own homes, and if you live in an area where a fall-out warning has been given stay in your fall-out room, until you are told it is safe to come out. The message that the immediate danger has passed will be given by the sirens and repeated on this wavelength. Make sure that the gas and all fuel supplies are turned off and that all fires are extinguished.

Water must be rationed, and used only for essential drinking and cooking purposes. It must not be used for flushing lavatories. Ration your food supply: it may have to last for 14 days or more.

We shall repeat this broadcast in two hours' time. Stay tuned to this wavelength, but switch your radios off now to save your batteries until we come on the air again. That is the end of this broadcast.

4 comments

vp debate wrap
Mood: blah
Posted on 2008-10-03 09:46:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 199

Actually getting a little tired of national politics(!) - here's my quick debate summary:
You can check out my twitters during the debate (that was kinda fun but I'm not sure I'll do it again). Palin did well enough - there were a few awkward silences but certainly nothing like the cringe-worthy Couric interviews. (and she got the wrong name for the commander of our forces in Afghanistan) Biden started out very stiff and unanimated, but by the end he was doing much better - got his shots in at McCain and showed he has a command of the issues.

Most insta-polls show people thought Biden won. Probably the important thing is that Palin didn't falter or hurt herself/McCain. My guess is she'll avoid giving interviews until the election.
Also, McCain pulled out of Michigan yesterday (yay!) and there's a new poll showing him up by one in Minnesota. (boo!)

In its stead: local politics! Lots of local businesses are for Proposition 2, which would Stop Domain Subsidies. The other side is somewhat amusingly named Keep Austin's Word. I'm leaning towards voting yes on Prop 2 but I'm gonna read about it some more first.

Austin's commuter rail starts March 30 - yay!

4 comments

TX voter registration deadline is monday!
Mood: hungry
Posted on 2008-09-30 12:02:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 310

Barack Obama wanted me to remind y'all that the voter registration deadline for Texas is this Monday, October 6. You can register and find more information at voteforchange.com.

"But Greg," I hear you say, "why even bother? It's not like my vote matters here in the Lone Star State!" Good point, hypothetical friend, but here's why you should anyway:

• The presidential election is merely one of many races on the ballot in November. Senator Cornyn (boo) is up for re-election (vote Noriega!). If you live in my congressional district, TX-10 (you probably don't), Larry Joe Doherty has a shot at being our new congressperson. There are also judges, state senators, etc., etc., and even if you don't agree with me on who to vote for, more informed votes is better!
• Voting is your civic duty, dammit! Presidential elections are important (see: 2000) and even if you can't really make a difference do you want to feel responsible for sitting this one out?
• There's a real possibility that the electoral vote will be a 269-269 tie (Obama gets Kerry states + NM + CO + IA - NH). fivethirtyeight.com discusses the possibility here - the upshot is that Obama will probably win, but things get complicated because House of Representatives vote on the president on a per-state basis. Anyway, whoever wins the popular vote can take the moral high ground, which could be important.

3 comments

linkdump
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-09-22 13:41:00
Tags: 23andme genetics politics links
Words: 146

Busy today - links!

- Rock Band 2 is out for XBox 360 (PS3 version coming soonish) - it looks good (here's the new track list, all downloaded songs are automatically transferred and you can transfer almost all of the Rock Band 1 songs for a one-time $5)

- Really leaning towards getting my genes genotyped by 23andMe.

- Banning gay marriage in California is now losing 55-38. Yaaaay!

- short Bruce Schneier column - if liquids are so dangerous to take on planes, why aren't people arrested for trying to take them on (like guns)? The answer: because they aren't dangerous...there shouldn't be a class of stuff that you can't take on a plane but you don't get in trouble for.

- fairtax.org has what seems to be a pretty reasonable tax proposal.

- wonderjess posted this dialogue between Obama and Jed Bartlett - written by Aaron Sorkin! Oh this makes me miss West Wing...

0 comments

interesting things
Mood: bouncy
Posted on 2008-09-17 15:06:00
Tags: video games football politics links
Words: 330

I have a list of tabs open in Firefox mentally filed under "to post about" but I'm only really interested in about half of them - this half!

- GM reveals Chevy Volt design
The Chevy Volt is a plug-in hybrid car that scheduled to be released in 2010/2011. This is a car I could see buying (hopefully I won't need a new car by then!) - it goes 40 miles solely on charge alone, and after that there is a gasoline motor but it's just used to charge the electric battery, not for propelling the wheels (like the Prius does). Downsides - it's going to be expensive ($40Kish?) and only hold four people. Apparently the battery pack takes up room where the middle back seat would be. I've been keeping my eye on this - it would be nice for an America car company to take the lead in green technology for once, and plug-in hybrids are cool!

- Familiar Ground May Be Election's Deciding Factor
Right now, it looks like Obama's easiest path to victory is Kerry states + Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado, which is very doable. fivethirtyeight.com's numbers are favoring McCain now but I'm confident they'll swing back the other direction.

- Federal bank insurance fund dwindling
I don't claim to understand what the hell is going on, but our financial system seems to be going to hell and it's kinda scary. The subprime crisis has the classic hallmarks of a Black Swan in that apparently few thought it was possible, and the amount of money that's been lost is pretty staggering. If there's one thing I learned from "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it's that things are more uncertain in Extremistan than we think...

In NCAA 09 news, the U of H Cougars lost to Florida in the Fiesta Bowl 14-6 (sooo close to tying it up at the end...) but finished the season #10 in the nation, and had a good recruiting season. We're about to start season #2!

1 comment

the usual
Mood: blah
Posted on 2008-09-15 10:40:00
Tags: music politics links
Words: 165

Clinton and Palin on SNL:


Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes - one of the things I'm most looking forward to the end of is cronyism - hiring friends for the job rather than the most qualified person. It looks like Palin wouldn't be the end of that at all.

Picked up a few new albums yesterday (I looooove me some amazonmp3.com!) - "Appetite for Destruction" by Guns N' Roses and "Speak for Yourself" by Imogen Heap. I didn't know that Guns N's Roses first album had both "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" on it! Interestingly:

According to Rose, the inspiration for the lyrics came from an encounter he and a friend had with a man while they were sleeping in a school yard in Queens. When they were approached by the "little black man", he yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!" This incident inspired the main lyrical declaration for the song.

3 comments

panhandling
Mood: thoughtful
Music: Death Cab For Cutie - "I Will Possess Your Heart"
Posted on 2008-08-26 12:59:00
Tags: essay poll links
Words: 260

I read this article on panhandling and it brought some things to mind.

I've never been quite sure what to do about panhandlers - they're somewhat common in Austin (and Houston) and so it's not infrequent that I'll be stopped at a light and one or two will be on the median. Back when I first started driving, I leaned towards giving them a dollar and feeling good about myself. "After all", I'd tell myself, "even if they are just going to spend it on alcohol or whatever, it's not my place to judge them, and I have the right to spend my money on stuff that isn't great for me, so why shouldn't they?" I thought it was the Christian thing to do.

After a while of that, I got a little jaded, and thought about the fact that economically I was encouraging more panhandling by "rewarding" those who were. (cold-hearted economics strikes again!) My mom tended to have a bag of non-perishable food (cereal and the like) that she would give instead of money, which is actually a pretty good solution.

Now I'm generally torn on the issue. Since we moved further away from downtown I don't see panhandlers as much so it hasn't come up, but reading the article sure makes me less likely to give. I like Denver's solution of converted parking meters where you can drop money and the city will give it to homeless shelters, etc. - that way you can give at the time you're being asked while ensuring it goes to a good cause.

[ Fill out Poll ] [ View Poll Results ] [ Discuss Results ] [ Close Poll ]

Poll #1248617 panhandling
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

Do you give to panhandlers when in your car?

Do you give to panhandlers when on foot?

11 comments

pretty contentless
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-08-22 13:34:00
Tags: referrer computer politics links
Words: 216

I got another link to my runs per inning calculator. Yay!

There's this new IM/email/social networking app called Digsby. It's pretty awesome - I can do Google Talk, AIM, and Facebook chat through it, as well as twitter, regular Facebook stuff and it checks my Gmail too! And it's written mostly in Python and there will be Mac/Linux clients soon. If you're gonna give it a try use this installer - apparently it fixes some memory problems. (hmm, it just crashed...but that's the first time that's happened)

Obama should announce his VP soon! Speaking of which, FiveThirtyEight.com shows he and McCain essentially tied. If Obama loses I'm am going to be quite distraught. On the other hand, politics is always entertaining: yesterday McCain couldn't say how many houses he owns and Obama hits back with an ad. Some scummy right-wing group trying to swiftboat Obama made an ad that even Fox wouldn't air!

A New York Times article about The Daily Show points out that it is actually a pretty substantive source for news, covering long-running scandals like prewar intelligence in a way most places don't. Also, this comment about how the staff finds footage to air from a former Daily Show employee is pretty interesting.

Here's a panoramic view from the high diving board of the Olympics.

0 comments

the usual
Mood: busy
Music: Peter Gabriel - "Down to Earth" (from Wall-E soundtrack)
Posted on 2008-08-12 14:31:00
Tags: pictures programming links
Words: 90

Since we're leaving tomorrow, I put up the pictures I had built up. Here are a few more ASMC pictures (check out my awesome chart!), here are a few recent random ones, and the most recent puzzle we did.

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner is out!

Barack Roll - memes upon memes...

I downloaded the iPhone SDK and may play around with it some, although I don't have a great idea for an app.

My throat gets tired talking for hour-long chunks at a time!

0 comments

history of marriage
Mood: thoughtful
Posted on 2008-08-11 14:37:00
Tags: links
Words: 25

Interesting Salon interview about the history of marriage. It's easy to forget that the idea that one marries for romantic love is actually pretty recent...

1 comment

random stuff friday!
Mood: determined
Posted on 2008-08-08 10:01:00
Tags: asmc politics links
Words: 164

Back to the summer musical grind tonight. It should be fun though - only one show and then the silent auction and a cash bar! Wooo!

random stuff:
- What I Learned Buying a Rug in Turkey - a narrative of good salesmanship. By the end I want a rug, too!
- The Tire-Gauge Dust-Up - contains this gem from Obama: "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."
- Women would rather carpool with Obama: because that matters for the leader of the free world. I'm glad Obama's winning that question (and the coveted "Who would you rather vacation with?"), but come on people!
- Nasty Democratic primary ends - I think "Jew-baiting" is a little strong for the ad that was aired, but it was nasty, and she lost.

Ever had that experience where, months or years after the fact, you discover there were crazy things going on you never expected behind the scenes that would have totally changed how you acted or felt? That always weirds me out.

6 comments

three days to go! eep!
Mood: tired
Posted on 2008-07-29 16:03:00
Tags: links
Words: 63

- How a warp drive (faster than light) might work - neat and maybe possible!
- Are Revolving Doors More Energy Efficient? - yes they are. Neat!
- Face Swapper Privacy - some software to put someone's facial features on someone else's face, resulting in a strange but human-looking hybrid of the two.
- Amazon has really really cheap generic pills.
- Executive Summary: charting the act of debugging - so true...

0 comments

today is good
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-07-25 16:08:00
Tags: worldofwarcraft referrer links
Words: 71

Yay, somebody likes the frost mage dps page!

Hot on the heels of this shocking video suggesting Bush and Batman are the same person (thanks omega697) comes an op-ed saying the same thing. Oy.

"Last Lecture" professor dies - I hadn't watched the Last Lecture before but I'm glad I did today.

Totally reinstalling my laptop is painful, but it's going OK so far. Next up - downloading billions of patches to WoW.

0 comments

nope
Mood: blah
Posted on 2008-07-23 16:39:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 84

McCain says Obama would "rather lose the war in order to win a political campaign".

Now, look. I understand if McCain thinks Obama is going about the war the wrong way, or if withdrawing our troops on a timetable (which 60% of Americans want to do, including Obama and al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq) is bad, etc. But saying he's trying to lose a war to score political points is pretty offensive.

Also, cause and effect relationships undermine American troops. Take that, causality!

0 comments

linxplosion
Mood: bouncy
Music: Death Cabie for Cutie - "Long Division"
Posted on 2008-07-16 15:22:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 105

Lots of links for no reason!

- Sean Tevis is running for Kansas State Representative, xkcd style. Help him out! (I'm #384 or so to give)
- Rock Band 2 tracklist - you can also use songs you've downloaded and "most" of the ones off the first Rock Band.
- President Bush: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter". Kind of a jerky way to end a meeting.
- Super rich tax cheats outed by Liechtensteiner bank clerk
- Division Emerges Among Foes of California Same-Sex Marriages - if Prop 8 passes I will be extremely sad and angry.
- John McCain is against gay adoption. Sort of.
- Your guide to the Wall-E controversy.

3 comments

just the usual
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-07-14 13:33:00
Tags: music links
Words: 134

Feeling more normal today. Had fun with my family, with whom we saw Wall*E again and then Esther's Follies which was pretty awesome. Wall*E was good again - the good parts I appreciated more (even during the second half of the movie). It's a very good movie. Gonna grab the soundtrack (which almost by definition was good given the limited dialogue) tomorrow as well as Nas's new album, both of which I'm excited about. Yay Amazon mp3 store!

Links I was going to post on Friday:
- A little more about Phil Gramm's "mental recession" and "nation of whiners" remarks. What a stupid stupid thing to say.
- Video of a lightning strike...hitting the video taker. She's fine, but it's a little loud.
- The growth of Walmart across America - neato timeline map thing. I love data visualization!

2 comments

not the ideal situation for starting 3 solid weeks of rehearsals
Mood: tired
Music: Nas - "Black President"
Posted on 2008-07-09 13:33:00
Tags: asmc worldofwarcraft programming politics links sleep
Words: 260

I've been unable to get to sleep the last two nights. Last night was particularly bad so eventually I got up and programmed some and played a little WoW. (won a close AB battleground on my 46 pally) Even then after returning to bed it took me a while to sleep. I had no sodas yesterday, which is the most common cause of insomnia for me. Hopefully it just kinda disappears. The alternative is that I get so tired that falling asleep is no problem, but I'd kinda like to avoid that :-)

White House, 2005: Setting the Record Straight: Democrats On An Artificial Timetable In Iraq

The President Explains Why Timetables For Withdrawal Are Bad Strategy. PRES. BUSH: "Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a message across the world that America is a weak and an unreliable ally. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a signal to our enemies - that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends. And setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorists' tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder - and invite new attacks on America." (President Bush, Remarks On The War On Terror, Annapolis, MD, 11/30/05)

Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday that his government would not sign an agreement governing the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

2 comments

nothing much
Posted on 2008-07-03 20:28:00
Tags: movies politics links
Words: 68

Wow, I can't remember the last time I posted on a weekend. (ooh, maybe my LJBackup stats page should have a day of the week analysis!)

Obama's been taking a bit of flak for saying he'll vote on the FISA bill - here's his well-written response. (some analysis)

I'm really excited about The Dark Knight, mostly because I loved Batman Begins. We saw Wanted today - it was pretty good.

0 comments

Big Bad John
Mood: amused
Music: "Biig Jooohn"
Posted on 2008-06-19 13:46:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 64

I'm no fan of John Cornyn (although I do like his government transparency efforts - even cosponsored a bill with Obama!), but this ad of his is being unfairly maligned. Isn't this like the best ad for a Texan ever? Now I'm going to be humming "Biig Jooohn.....Biig Joooooo-oohn" all day!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The Abridged Script (via kottke)

0 comments

best day ever
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-06-17 09:16:00
Tags: movies rant links
Words: 288

You can download Firefox 3 starting at noon our time. (you might be able to Help->Check for Updates... as well - not sure when that will be turned on)

Gays can marry in California today! Here's an interactive map of the legal status of gay marriage/civil unions in all 50 states.

Last night at Kung Fu Panda (which is still good, by the way, I'd probably even see it again) we saw a trailer for Fly Me to the Moon which is about three stupid flies that tag along on the first moon landing. This makes me angry. The graphics quality looks meh, it's filled with bad and stupid and pointless puns and the smart fly is named "Iq". Judging by the trailer, you're supposed to think that the idea of the fly on the moon is just so awesome, we'll have a bunch of characters say "Nat's going to the moon!", "Your boy is going to the moon!", "We're going to the moon!", etc.

Also, (and here's where I go off a bit) apparently there's some problem with the capsule and the flies have to save the day. This (aside from being stupid) I find offensive - it took years and years of hard work and dedication and lost lives to get us to the moon, not some stupid-ass flies fixing some problem or whatever. Next up: some scorpions are going to Normandy! And the Allies can't win the battle without them! So they go around and sting some Nazis or something! After that: well, you get the idea.

Maybe the 3D will make it way more awesome but somehow I doubt it.

In the vein of bad movies, a review of The Happening that contains all the spoilers.

8 comments

The good news
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-05-29 13:07:00
Tags: work links
Words: 131

I'm feeling pumped! Got a debugger working that should help me out and one of my problems looks like the same as another problem someone else is looking at. Also, I think I finally got the right number for 3 card straight flushes of a specific suit!

Other things that make me happy:

- Making good progress in GTA IV. (incidentally, so far it's affected my brain less than Katamari Damacy...after playing that game for a while I kept looking for things to roll up!)
- Six Degrees of Wikipedia - very interesting. Billie Jean King is better connected than the United States!
- New York state will recognize gay marriages performed in other states!
- This clip from 30 Rock about the uncanny valley.
- This Starbucks commercial. Glen! Glen!Glen!Glen! (think "Eye of the Tiger", here)

0 comments

this has been a long week
Mood: rejuvenated
Posted on 2008-04-18 10:59:00
Tags: work worldofwarcraft links
Words: 237

mostly because I've been horribly unproductive at work. Luckily, the Productivity Fairy has waved his magic wand and yesterday and today have been much better.

Rolled out the new version of the Frost mage DPS calculator (hopefully soon to be arcane and fire as well) - here's the old version for comparsion. I think it looks a lot nicer now.

This story about a non-doctor having a breakthrough in curing cancer makes him sound like a crank, until you get to the part where his method is being tested in hospitals now, including M. D. Anderson. The late Dr. Smalley (that felt weird to type) helped out by providing some nanoparticles.

I'm hesitant to link this story about elevators because it discusses a guy who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Make sure you're in a strong mental state before watching the sped up security camera footage of the ordeal. The piano music makes it even more tragic.

Last night's Zul'Aman run went well - we downed the Bear and Eagle bosses with 9 minutes (plenty of time!) before the sacrifice and killed Hex Lord Malacrass for the first time. Did a decent job on Zul'Jin - almost got through phase 3 before we called it a night. Unfortunately wowjutsu hasn't picked up our new loot yet because it's slow and unreliable. (I'll admit to being bitter I didn't think of the wowjutsu idea first...genius, I tell you!)

1 comment

weekend shenanigans
Mood: peaceful
Posted on 2008-04-14 09:18:00
Tags: projects worldofwarcraft links
Words: 185

This weekend we ripped through Zul'Aman - first time for downing the bear boss in 20 minutes, downing the dragonhawk boss, downing the gauntlet and eagle boss (one-shot!), and downing the lynx boss. (I got a nice new chestpiece - now my frostbolts cast in 2.45 seconds!)

I've also been working on a new design for my frost mage DPS calculator - here's the new version versus the old version.

We also went to a few birthday parties and bought a new bed from Austin Discount Mattress, and took a very few pictures of said events. I'm going to take my camera places from now on instead of relying on my cameraphone - while it works in a pinch, the pictures are blurry and the color is always a bit off. I also learned that alcohol + hot tub is bad news for me, even after just one glass of wine. I got extremely woozy and lightheaded after a little while, and it all happened very fast. Anyway.

We need a Wikipedia for data - as an avid consumer of data, I heartily agree!

Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People

6 comments

RIP webmajig
Mood: peaceful
Posted on 2008-04-07 11:00:00
Tags: projects links
Words: 168

So I've been working on this startup in my spare time with some people, and it died Saturday night for reasons I'm not going to go into. The consequences are I'll have a little more free time and I'm looking for a new project! More work on the WoW Frost Mage DPS calculator is a possibility, but it doesn't honestly sound that interesting. I'm working on rewriting my gift list site in Django, but that's not really catching my fancy either.

We watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica this weekend, including the Season 4 premiere. Here's an primer to catch you up, or alternatively a video version called "What the frak?". Here's an old feature on what the heck Donnie Darko was about, which I found interesting.

And if you like people talking fast (long live ze frank!), check out Zero Punctuation, which is a 4-5 minute weekly review of video games. The gay jokes get a little annoying, but honestly it's worth it because it's pretty hilarious.

2 comments

random stuff, because that's how I'm feeling
Mood: random
Posted on 2008-04-02 15:07:00
Tags: smashbros referrer links
Words: 101

I have the #1 result on Google for numCoins. My lifelong ambition!

Video interviews with people who are really really good at Smash Bros. Their favorite characters - Metaknight, Dedede, Marth, Game & Watch, and sometimes Olimar(!) and Diddy Kong (he talks about how the bananas are so awesome). Least favorite: Ganondorf, Sheik.

A friend of mine has a DonorsChoose proposal.

If you're in the market for an HD TiVo, they now have an offer that lets you get it with lifetime service (and a TiVo plush doll!). Still rather expensive, though.

I think I'm finally getting my Rock Band guitar back. Woo!

0 comments

captioning sucks
Mood: okay
Posted on 2008-04-01 17:12:00
Tags: links
Words: 27

I stumbled across Captioning Sucks, a new site from the Open & Closed Project. It reminded me of Stanton's comment on closed captioning ads.

Food Court Musical - awesome!

2 comments

SxSW music
Mood: accomplished
Music: Bodies of Water - "I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess"
Posted on 2008-03-25 10:19:00
Tags: health music links
Words: 262

Bands coming to South by Southwest (never been - gotta make it one of these years!) can release a free MP3. Paul Ford listened to all 763(!) of them and gave them six-word reviews. (short interview in the Houston Press, in which the interviewer mentioned he once listened to 24 hours straight of Houston radio, changing the station every 3 minutes) It even manages to be pretty amusing along the way.

If you're looking for a distraction, you could do a lot worse than listen to the 4 and 5 circles tunes. I was going to listen to all of them and pick my favorites, but I'm really busy now apparently, so here are the ones I got to listen to and liked.

* Creature - Brigitte Bardot - Didn't like them quite as much as Paul. Reminds me of Freezepop.
* Alabama3 - Woke Up This Morning - it's the Sopranos theme! I loooove that guy's voice - nice deep baritone.
* Wisely - Through Any Window - catchy guitar and vocals.
* Album - Stab You - "Mexican alt-rock" is a pretty good description.
* Black Tie Dynasty - Tender - as promised, kinda 80s-ish.
* The BoDeans - Everyday - nice guitar backing, sounds...good. (this is why I don't review albums)
* Bodies of Water - I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess - interesting mix of choral folk singing and jamming and stuff. Nice harmonies. Very very good!
* Chiwoniso - Kurima - catchy African drumming and xylophone and guitar and stuff.
* Dr. Dog - The Girl - interesting Beatles-esque sound.


Also, randomly: this neat patientslikeme.com where you can share your experience with drugs/treatments. Article in NY Times about it.

(all via waxy.org)

2 comments

positive surprises
Mood: happy (somewhat forced)
Posted on 2008-03-19 13:52:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 262

The cable guy said that in houses, you can't do internet and cable off of the same jack like you can in apartments. Indeed, when I tried the internet got slow and flaky.

We have a cable jack on the other side of the room, though, so I was looking at some sort of wireless box like this, but I wasn't sure if it would work with the cablecards or not.

After they didn't have any such products at Fry's, I went to Radio Shack and asked a guy if they had anything. Luckily another guy was working there who was pretty knowledgeable (surprise!) and didn't think it would work but suggested some other things that ended up not working, then said the easiest thing to do would have them just put in another cable jack. This seemed problematic since there's a room above our living room.

But, I saw they had a cable signal booster, so I figured it was worth a shot. Put it in front of the splitter and then the internet went back to working as normal (surprise!). Last night I hooked up the TiVo and the cable cards worked without any fuss. (surprise x 3!)

Cool things:
- If you liked Portal and World of Goo, you will almost certainly like Crayon Physics Deluxe which looks pretty awesome.

- Video and text of Obama's speech on race and his pastor yesterday. It was impressive. (The Onion's take on Obama's campaign)

- The Google Chart API now lets you make maps which is awesome.

- Solving Algebraic Equations Using Regular Expressions - yes!

3 comments

fridays - meh
Mood: okay
Music: U2 - "Where The Streets Have No Name"
Posted on 2008-03-07 13:26:00
Tags: projects politics links
Words: 181

For some reason Fridays haven't been very exciting to me lately. I am excited about the weekend though (smash bros!). I'll feel better when house crap is taken care of (Time Warner is supposedly coming out this afternoon so hopefully we'll have internet there at least...).

Nixon's plan to end Vietnam was to make the Russians think he was crazy enough to bomb them. That is rather frightening.

Map of Starbucks and Walmarts per capita. Vermont has the lowest combined total by far.

Why is it taking so long to total TX caucus results? (short answer: they're being sent in by mail!) Right now Obama's ahead 56-44 with 41% reporting, so it looks like Obama will end up with more total delegates from TX.

Has anyone used Processing? Not that I need another project, but you can do some neat stuff with it (examples) and there are a number of books about it. Maybe I'll check one out next time I'm at a bookstore.

This is an excellent example of being so close to a good approach but just missing it!

1 comment

I won't mess up your game, dear reader
Mood: not bad, really
Posted on 2008-02-26 14:29:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 38

Early voting in Texas is way, way, waaaay up, especially on the Democratic side.

Barack Obama apologizes for "messing up your game".

Interview with Summer Glau aka River Tam aka that Terminator robot in the Sarah Connor Chronicles.

5 comments

I'm living in my own private Idaho
Mood: frustrated
Posted on 2008-02-21 15:20:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 51

Debate is tonight. Check out this sweet donut-shaped poll!

I get to play Ultimate tonight - hopefully the rain will hold off.

In West Wing, Matt Santos was based on Barack Obama! And not like "is similar to" but like "the writer called up an Obama aide to learn more about him".

4 comments

happy v-day!
Mood: creative
Posted on 2008-02-14 10:13:00
Tags: haskell programming politics links
Words: 272

Appropriately, the ban on selling sex toys in Texas was overturned (although it doesn't take effect until March). I swear, the laws we pass in this state. I wonder if there's a count somewhere of which state has had the most laws overturned by a federal court?

I think my stomachache yesterday was caused by the large mocha (four shots of espresso!) I had in the morning to try to curb my headache. Then I wasn't hungry for lunch, then I was very hungry for dinner. Anyway, that's all sorted out, and my head is doing significantly better. I slept much better than I thought I would. Hooray!

From this article about Clinton campaigning in Texas:

Delia Guajardo, 63, a retired administrative secretary, was among several in the crowd who said they don't foresee Obama swaying them: "Just the Obama name scares me. It's not a common name."

13 comments

MacBook Pro: October 17, 2007 - ?
Mood: anxious
Music: Radiohead - "Sulk"
Posted on 2008-01-31 07:59:00
Tags: work house worldofwarcraft mac computer politics links
Words: 366

While kicking butt in Arathi Basin last night, I knocked a big ol' glass of tea right onto my $3000 laptop. A good chunk of it went in the keyboard (which made the laptop turn off which is probably a good thing given the alternatives), so djedi hurriedly mopped as much as we could off, disconnected it and moved it to higher ground. (it's currently sitting upside-down on our dining room table in the hopes that it will drain or something) I didn't have the heart to try to turn it on this morning - guess I'll see about that tonight. I did buy the AppleCare for it, although I don't know if that covers spills or not.

The weird thing was that I wasn't super panicked or angry or whatever. I was upset at myself, but I know that I'm prone to clumsiness when I'm tired. (like when I burned my thumb on the oven last week!) And if the laptop is unrecoverable, well, that would suck, but I could get by for iPod syncing and WoW playing and whatnot. It would be nice if it worked though.

Ironically, I was just yesterday reading about jwz's backup strategy and thinking it sounded like a good idea. Not that I had anything particularly interesting on the laptop data-wise (I always back up my iTunes database), but still...

Other than that, work has been going really really well this week. My mom visits next Wednesday, Friday we close on our house (!), and that weekend djedi's parents are coming to hopefully buy carpet for us and stuff, which will be quite helpful.

I'm going to miss campaigning in Florida, specifically hearing about Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani saying that English should be the national language, and then advertising in Spanish. That's some good hypocrisy, there. Via dailykos, an article in Rolling Stone about how Republican's immigrant-bashing is not going to help them, especially in the Southwest.

Finally, on the way home I heard this kinda-brutal story on NPR about how Giuliani should have taken his advice from his leadership book, complete with excerpts from the audiobook itself. (it's the story on top, not the longer story on the bottom)

1 comment

a collection of links that suddenly accumulated in my firefox tabs
Mood: hopeful
Music: Radiohead - "15 Step"
Posted on 2008-01-29 13:04:00
Tags: activism programming politics links
Words: 245

5 attributes of highly effective programmers - the title is cheesy, but it's a very good article, and it quotes The Screwtape Letters which was a nice surprise. Also on that site is The Effective Software Developer's Book List which is an impressive collection.

For Gay Democrats, a Primary Where Rights Are Not an Issue, This Time - the headline says most of it, except for this gem:

In an address last week honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a black church in Atlanta, Senator Obama made waves by lecturing the audience about homophobia. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them,” he said during the speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as co-pastor with his father.

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group, said he thought Mr. Obama’s speech was the first time a presidential candidate had brought up gay issues in front of a nongay audience without being prompted to do so. “This is dramatically refreshing,” he said. “It’s a great day when we can look at a field of candidates and determine that we are comfortable with all of them on gay rights and move on to other issues.”

2 comments

more links
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-01-10 15:54:00
Tags: links
Words: 105

I'm not really happy about posting 2 links every day - maybe I should combine them more? Or link less? I dunno.

Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die - absolutely chilling retelling of one of those "To Catch a Predator" segments gone wrong. NBC's response to the article. (via kottke)

After a bunch of bank account details were lost in the UK, a TV star said it was no big deal and published his own bank account number to prove it...and somebody gave some money from it to charity. Oops!

Video from CES: Bill Gates is looking for a job!

Rock Band drumming tips from Harmonix

0 comments

links when I should be preparing for a meeting
Mood: busy
Posted on 2008-01-09 12:01:00
Tags: links
Words: 36

Star Wars Guide to the Candidates - Tom TanGreedo cracks me up! (via kottke)

Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House? - funny Microsoft "children's book". More things should be explained in terms of children's books!

0 comments

posthumous blog entry
Mood: moody
Posted on 2008-01-07 15:10:00
Tags: house links
Words: 49

This is the final entry of a blogger who died in Iraq. Sobering stuff.

Some gay-targeted ads which are pretty clever/amusing.

We might make an offer on the house this week or next week. This is exciting!

Pride and Palpitations - an account of seeing Obama win the Iowa primary.

2 comments

happy caucus day!
Mood: curious
Posted on 2008-01-03 09:11:00
Tags: election politics links
Words: 154

And remember, caucuses aren't elections nor particularly democratic (with a lowercase "d"), so when whoever wins try not to get too excited even though presumably the media will crown him/her tomorrow morning because it's not like the media has a blatant interest in making the caucuses overly-relevant with their millions of dollars in media ads.

Also, I will say to supporters of Hillary what my mom said to me about Howard Dean in 2004 (paraphrased and mostly remembered): "Son, feel free to support whoever you want, but if Dean wins the nomination and then loses to Bush you're in big trouble".

I heard this interesting story on NPR on the way to work: a study seems to suggest the placebo effect can make you lose weight and lower blood pressure, although there are some other possible explanations. Interesting stuff, the placebo effect.

100 things we didn't know last year from the BBC (via kottke)

5 comments

last links of 2007!
Mood: excited
Posted on 2007-12-31 15:40:00
Tags: links
Words: 26

Minesweeper: The Movie - this is awesome. Just awesome.

The HDMI cable scam - I was just grousing about this at Fry's a few weeks ago! Digital > analog...

1 comment

one christmas down, one to go!
Mood: optimistic
Posted on 2007-12-28 10:57:00
Tags: pictures links
Words: 66

Here are pictures from the first Christmas. (not the first Christmas ever, mind you...)

From Daring Fireball, why 6 megapixels is the sweet spot for compact digital cameras and anything more than that just creates noise.

Why Starbucks actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses - that's kinda cool!

Why having a new programming language created every week for the last 50 years isn't necessarily a good thing.

1 comment

Gore coverage in 2000
Mood: angry
Posted on 2007-12-11 10:49:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 29

Excellent article about media coverage of Gore in 2000. (via kottke) It may make you angry. Remember this when the inevitable trivial stories start coming out about the nominees.

1 comment

random WTF
Mood: amused
Posted on 2007-12-05 17:50:00
Tags: programming links
Words: 51

I don't usually post stuff like this, but this is possibly the best programming WTF ever. Add() reallocates memory each time (although I guess maybe the C# Array class does the doubling thing for you?), and Remove()...ow, my eyes! O(n^2) FTW.

The explanation at the end, of course, seals the deal.

3 comments

iTunes rating analysis! Portal, TexRenFest.
Mood: uncomfortable
Posted on 2007-11-19 09:58:00
Tags: pictures music itunesanalysis projects links
Words: 322

I'm "officially" releasing the iTunes Rating Analysis after making a few last minute tweaks. Unfortunately you have to be at your home computer (or whatever computer your iPod is synced to) to use it, but you can at least see see my analysis, complete with fancy charts! Not being able to use it at work means it'll probably be significantly less popular than the WoW Frost Mage DPS calculator (currently the most popular page on my site by a factor of 2 or 3 or so), but that is OK.

We bought and played through Portal this weekend, which is a first person puzzle game and pretty darn fun (and pretty short). The end credits song is extremely cute and catchy, and it's sung by the passive-aggressive computer who's talking to you for the whole game. The song was written by Jonathan Coulton (here's his blog post about writing the song) who happens to have lots of music available for download! So I'll probably check that out this week. Edit: live version of Jonathan Coulton performing "Still Alive" - there's cake!

wildrice13, abstractseaweed, quijax, djedi and I went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday. David and I were going to see the Bolton's renewal of vows (here are the few pictures that I took - we participated in the ceremony so I didn't want to interrupt too much :-) ) which went well except for their not letting us do it at the festival proper (the words used were "unauthorized wedding" which I found amusing), so we went out to the parking lot and had a nice ceremony. The trip back wasn't so great - we got stuck in the parking lot as everyone else was leaving and then there was an accident 10-15 cars in front of us just as we were about to get to 290, so we didn't moved for half an hour or so. Ugh.

I slept on my neck funny. It hurts.

5 comments

charts and tables and stuff
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-11-15 13:03:00
Tags: itunesanalysis links
Words: 228

Your results:
You are Derrial Book (Shepherd)

Derrial Book (Shepherd) 75% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 70% Wash (Ship Pilot) 55% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 55% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 50% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 50% Alliance 45% Inara Serra (Companion) 30% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 25% River (Stowaway) 25% A Reaver (Cannibal) 0%

Even though you are holy you have a mysterious past.

2 comments

the router "saga" continues
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-11-08 10:02:00
Tags: worldofwarcraft links
Words: 142

(it's much less of a saga than the stupid washer)

Anyway, the wireless cutting out problem keeps happening with our Linksys 802.11n router, so I'm returning it today for the apparently more reliable DLink one. Here's a nice review of 802.11n routers that fartingmonkey found - it also mentions weird cutting out issues, which makes me feel a little better.

destroyerj mentioned this neat 2D portal-ish flash game which is neat.

This plot of Japan's Phillips curve (unemployment vs. inflation) looks like Japan itself! Similarly, from the comments, a chart of annual tobacco consumption that looks like Virginia! So awesome. (via kottke)

Mage buffs coming! Hypothermia's back down to 30 seconds in 2.3, and apparently Ice Block will be trainable(!), some sort of buff for mana gems and maybe some more mana-related issues. (which are a real problem for me in longer fights)

0 comments

remotes, registration, etc.
Mood: thankful
Posted on 2007-10-11 14:54:00
Tags: links
Words: 547

Today, as djedi mentioned, was all things DPS-ish. Last night before bed I made a list of stuff we needed - thank goodness we didn't need proof of address unlike our fun experience in MD. Got going late as usual - first up was the Travis County Tax Office (hi Nelda Wells Spears!) to transfer the title and register our cars. Got there, signed in and were seen within a minute(!), and the people were friendly and helpful and knew what they were doing. I even registered to vote (although I'm not sure it'll be ready before the TX constitutional amendments election in November) at the same time!

Since that went so quickly, we stopped by Wendy's and had lunch - I had a delicious yogurt with granola as a side item. If that's an option to replace fries it'll make it easy to avoid fries in the future. Then on to the driver's license office on Lamar. There was a little line for check-in, but the guy at the desk was pretty amazing. He was kinda brusque but very fast and knew exactly what you needed for stuff. When we got to the front we showed him all our stuff and he gave us the form to fill out, then gave us a number when we returned them. Waited ten minutes for our number to be called and everything went fine.


Total time: 90 minutes including travel time and stopping for lunch. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me! Also, my car has Texas license plates again which is nice :-) (the Texas license plate is a lot more decorative and nice-looking than the Maryland one in my opinion)

We just bought djedi's sister's old TV off of her, and it's pretty nice - HD and all that jazz. We hooked the TiVo to the HDMI port so we can finally see our HD recordings in HD, which is pretty sweet. The problem is that you can switch between all the TV inputs with an A/V button (they don't have the original remote anymore but they have a generic-ish one that works) except the HDMI input. For that, you have to bring up the menu, scroll to the bottom, hit right, scroll to the bottom, and hit right again. And it doesn't stay in this mode when you turn it off and back on.

This is problematic, to say the least. That would bring us up to three remotes needed to watch TV! (TV remote, TiVo remote, and receiver remote to turn on the sound) Not to mention lots of annoying button pressing.

So after doing a little research I ordered a Logitech Harmony 670 universal remote. This thing is pretty darn cool. You set it up by running some software on the computer, telling it what equipment you have and what "activities" (watch TV, watch a DVD, play Wii, etc.) you want to set up and what the correct settings are and such. For the input problem I just had it add the extra five presses necessary whenever it goes into the "watch TV" activity. It is awesome. It's even a replacement for the TiVo remote, technically, although the buttons aren't quite as well laid out.

The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks - thank you thank you thank you

0 comments

clearing out tabs
Mood: okay
Posted on 2007-10-02 15:50:00
Tags: music links
Words: 106

Radiohead is releasing their new album on October 10. You can order a fancy disc set or download it from them and pay whatever you want for it(!), which is pretty exciting.

And on the topic of downloading music, Amazon opened their MP3 store, from which you can buy and download 2 million MP3 files, unencumbered by DRM. This is great stuff (information about the downloader, which doesn't work on Linux) and I'm planning on buying Radiohead's Amnesiac from them when I get around to it.

It's not happening here, but it's happening now - striking ad campaign by Amnesty International, in the style of transparent screens.

1 comment

and so we go
Mood: impatient
Posted on 2007-09-20 10:54:00
Tags: worldofwarcraft links
Words: 323

So the packers came yesterday, and looked at our stuff, and said they could pack and move it all in a day. So we're without furniture, etc. one day ahead of schedule, but it freed us up to sleep later today! We'll be hitting the road tomorrow morning and we'll lose internet this afternoon after we return our cable modem, so call us if you need to get in touch. I'll twitter and LJ from the road as much as possible.

Do you hate the "Can you hear me now? Good!" Verizon guy? He's known internally as "Test Man", and here's Verizon's style guide to deploying him. There's so much good stuff in there, like

His sole purpose is to test our network. In so doing, he takes a step, or a few steps, and then says the line "Can you hear me now? Good!" He should say "Good!" in a variety of different ways to maintain interest. Occasionally he may put more emphasis on "Good!" That emphasis strengthens the thought that he has gotten a good connection.

0 comments

MD gay marriage (not!), leaving
Mood: bored
Posted on 2007-09-19 08:30:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 210

The Maryland Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage in a 4-3 decision. Although the majority wrote "Our opinion should by no means be read to imply that the General Assembly may not grant and recognize for homosexual persons civil unions or the right to marry a person of the same sex", which is nice I guess. Maryland's gay marriage ban was passed in 1973 - that sounds pretty early. Anyway, boo.

I found this wonderful new feature in the Washington Post (how I shall miss thee!) this morning - Fact Checker, for checking claims that presidential candidates make. I wondered why nothing like this existed before. Sam Brownback's "In countries that have redefined marriage, where they've said, 'OK, it's not just a man and a woman, it can be two men, two women,' the marriage rates in those countries have plummeted to where you have counties now in northern Europe where 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock... And currently in this country -- currently -- we're at 36 percent of our children born out of wedlock." gets 3 out of 4 Pinocchios!

The packers are coming today (hopefully soon). It really feels like we're leaving our apartment now - all the walls being bare did it for me.

0 comments

baseball, WoW, MacBook Pro?
Mood: irritable
Posted on 2007-09-18 11:22:00
Tags: worldofwarcraft cluesolver links
Words: 370

I got a link from a Houston Chronicle blog ("The Unofficial Scorer") - I'm "this little toy"! Of course this is terrible timing since my website will be going down in a few days for a weekish.

djedi sorta convinced me to get me a MacBook Pro which I've been talking about/considering for a while now. Maybe once MacOS 10.5 comes out. It would be nice to play WoW on an officially supported platform - I'm getting paranoid that a patch will come out and break me somehow and make me cry. Also, Macs are neat.

Wow recap:Things went decently last night. For reasons I don't want to go into we lost our healing Paladin (permanently, it sounds like) so we had to pick up a PuG hunter who did pretty well. After a few tries we downed Shade of Aran, hooray! It wasn't too difficult - we used the strategy of letting him run out of mana and do the massive pyroblast before the water elementals show up at 40% health (which were nicely banished and feared by our two warlocks).

Next we tried Terestian Illhoof. He is tough. The first time I AoEd the imps way too early and ran out of mana in like 30 seconds, and we couldn't DPS the Demon Chains down quickly enough so people died left and right. I managed my mana better after that, but we still couldn't DPS the Demon Chains enough and we didn't make significant progress. Not sure how we're going to handle that but eventually we just moved on. Did the Chess Event, no problem - fun and easy!

Our last boss try for the night was Netherspite - we had tried him before briefly, but we had a better idea of portal management, etc. After a few tries we really started to get the hang of it - got him down to 17% on our last try before people had to go. I started using consumables a lot, so I need to pick me up some more of those...

I'm still working half-heartedly on the clue solver, but I need to sit down, concentrate, and design a UI for the webpage. I've been too busy and way too unfocused to do so.

11 comments

Happy Fifth of July!
Mood: calm
Music: Radiohead - "Where I End and You Begin"
Posted on 2007-07-05 13:03:00
Tags: microresolution haskell worldofwarcraft links
Words: 334

Yesterday was nice - we got djedi his flying epic mount, finished Super Paper Mario, went out to eat at Copeland's, and didn't let the stormy weather get us down!

Super Paper Mario - pretty good game, and the story was kind of interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the ridiculous amount of conversation, etc. that you have to go through. Still enjoyed it though.

As previously mentioned, we saw Transformers at Bengies. I've only been to a drive-in once before, so it was fun! The place is pretty nice and retro, although the owner seems to be one of those people that sees it fit to enumerate every single thing you shouldn't do. See the House Rules and FAQ for examples. There was a condom machine in the bathroom that had (not exaggerating here) four paragraphs about how the management doesn't endorse their usage, and how it's just there for protection and abstinence is the only sure protection, etc. Yikes. The movie was pretty good for a summer blockbuster. (read: lots of giant robots fighting) I've never seen the series on TV so maybe you'd get more out of it if you did?

Microresolution complete! I spent some time on the hat puzzle genetic algorithm thing in Haskell. It's frustrating to work on because I really have to get in the functional state of mind, but I wrote a few tough methods (randomly selecting which genes to reproduce based on the fitness function) so I feel good about that. The genetic part of this is going to end up being a sort of framework for writing genetic algorithms in Haskell, which is a neat side benefit (although such things already exist).

I'm trying out Twitter. It seems neatish.

In Ohio, you can't get arrested on the Fourth of July! (except for felonies and treason...you would think the penalty for committing treason on the Fourth of July would be more strict or something :-) )

Babies learn to lie when they're six months old - lousy lying babies!

2 comments

link explosion
Mood: calm
Posted on 2007-06-18 09:56:00
Tags: facebook programming links
Words: 318

I'm going do to something called the "compliment sandwich", where I talk about something good, then something that could use improvement, then end with something good.

You look like snoopy, and it makes me smile.

I tried to work on my new facebook app, and made the same little amount of progress that I had on the previous one, but I just felt confused. I think the ideas I have are all pretty heavily friends based which seems hard to do with the API. I'm probably gonna let this idea die unless I get a huge burst of inspiration, which seems unlikely. Supposedly this is why "fun" projects are better than work - if they don't end up working out, you don't have to force it. I still feel bad about it though, like I'm failing and not good at "this stuff".

You really wowed that rep from the Cincinnati office! (thanks for the real quote, which was a little hard to find)

I had a long weird dream Friday night, the culmination of which was that searching for minnesota guacamole was very important. The results, as you can probably imagine, are not interesting.

Links I was going to share on my now-defunct neato Facebook thing:

• Wil Wheaton reviews old Star Trek:TNG episodes

• My LJ friends page (refreshing obsessively)


• Facebook (refreshing somewhat less obsessively)


• Bloglines, my RSS aggregator. Places I would visit every day were they not in my RSS feeds: Salon, Slate, The Old New Thing (Windows programming)


• kottke - general web goodness


• daringfireball - Mac-centered (I'm wearing their T-shirt today!)


• Worse Than Failure (formerly The Daily WTF) - bad code


• programming.reddit.com - programming/software-related links


• WOW Insider - random WoW topics

• Digg


• del.icio.us


• Consumerist - fight the man!


• Austinist


• Kotaku - gaming


• Joystiq - more gaming


• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs - hilarious!


• Fire Joe Morgan - good baseball blog


• Crawfish Boxes - Astros!


• Nintendo Wii Fanboy

0 comments

For taesmar
Mood: confused
Posted on 2007-06-15 10:33:00
Tags: links
Words: 20

Being pregnant and receiving unscientific advice go hand in hand. Also, she spells fetus as "foetus", which is pretty cool!

8 comments

For your amusement
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2007-06-08 10:37:00
Tags: links
Words: 28

A "map" of North America from a Japanese RPG. (via digg)

Also, if you like crazy programming goodness, check out the entries to the calculator contest at worsethanfailure.com.

4 comments

where's my burrito? where's my burrito?
Mood: okay
Posted on 2007-06-01 09:19:00
Tags: pictures links
Words: 177

I posted a few pictures - nothing earth-shattering, as I haven't been in the mood much to take pictures lately. With people visiting and our visiting people during June, hopefully that'll change :-)

I have a plan: rewrite the hat problem solver in Haskell. Maybe I'll get to it this weekend? I'd be interested in running timing tests to see the speed difference...

Wil Shipley argues for smaller, less flexible code. Yay!

Bush calls for global warming summit. Why do I get the feeling this is like Ronald Reagan not talking about AIDS until well after it was a problem?

I didn't watch the game, but LeBron James took over the Cavs' playoff game last night, leading them to victory in double overtime by scoring 29 out of their last 30 points. That sounds Jordanesque to me!

Blizzard's suing peons4hire, the most prolific in-game gold spammer that I've experienced. Yaaaaay! Although I played a lot last night and don't remember a single gold spam, which would be unheard of before the 2.1.0 patch...

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

4 comments

a personal confession
Mood: bored
Posted on 2007-05-16 13:01:00
Tags: links
Words: 84

I don't get Lolcats. They were kinda cute at first, but now I hate them. I find the pidgin English annoying. (and usually not clever) Feel free to correct the error of my ways or (more entertainingly!) call me old.

Two good articles from Slate:

- Alberto Gonzales browbeats the critically ill

- Jerry Falwell's hit parade (a bunch of Falwell quotes)

I like Slate a lot, especially since I don't read any of Mickey Kaus's stuff, which used to make me roll my eyes angrily.

7 comments

a few birthday links
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-04-20 13:02:00
Tags: links
Words: 126

Who's to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre. A helpful guide. (via kottke, yet again)

I think I believe that God doesn't control the world/our lives on such a low level as to determine the weather, etc., and I don't think He "made this happen" as some sort of punishment for something.

How to beat that traffic ticket. Am I alone in guides like this irritating me? It seems the point is to find any technicality ("Scott McCoy, a driver from northern California, recently beat a ticket by filing motions until he found erroneous paperwork.") to avoid punishment for something that you did. (obviously this is different if you weren't actually speeding) Taking responsibility for your actions FTW. (I might feel differently after getting a ticket)

1 comment

hangin' on
Mood: high-strung
Posted on 2007-04-11 14:26:00
Tags: pictures music links
Words: 94

Pictures from Easter are up.

The author of the Joshua Bell street performer article I linked to earlier took part in an online discussion with Washington Post readers. Good stuff!

Now that "The Show with ze Frank" is over, you can buy an album of songs from the show, including the very catchy "Where the Fuck Do Ideas Come From?"

Recent developments have left me a bit jittery.

American Airlines just launched a website for women who travel. Umm, what? Someone please explain to me how this isn't horribly insulting and stereotypical and stupid.

3 comments

linky linky
Mood: bouncy
Posted on 2007-04-09 14:56:00
Tags: links
Words: 71

The Washington Post convinced violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to pretend to be a street musician and play outside a Metro station. Great experiment! (via kottke)

Pat Venditte is a switch pitcher, the only one in Division I baseball! (via kottke)

13 TV Shows That Should Never Have Been Cancelled - it includes Firefly and Arrested Development, so it gets a thumbs up from me. (via digg)

Alberto Gonzales deathwatch - up to 86%!

4 comments

firing-attorneys-for-political-reasonsgate
Mood: curious
Posted on 2007-04-05 20:15:00
Tags: links
Words: 28

(not all scandals end in "gate", stop the madness!)

Here is an excellent summary of what's happened and how the White House keeps making things worse. (via waxy)

1 comment

home sick
Mood: sick
Posted on 2007-03-28 14:31:00
Tags: pictures links
Words: 108

I'm not sure what happened, I felt perfectly fine Monday going to bed, and yesterday I woke up with bad allergies/congestion. I stuck it out at work but after a night of waking up a lot (I hate trying to sleep when my nose is all messed up!) I gave up. Hopefully I'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Anyway, it gives me a chance to catch up on stuff. Like put up pictures! And link to some random things!

- To promote their new book, zug.com staged a prank at the Super Bowl - unfortunately the intended message didn't show up as well as hoped.

- damninteresting.com is making a book!

0 comments

I like charts
Mood: geeky
Posted on 2007-03-09 14:40:00
Tags: links
Words: 33

The top 100 Wikipedia pages viewed in March. Heroes is more popular than many sex-related terms!

The top programming languages by number of posts to their comp.lang.* newsgroup. LabVIEW is #10! (via waxy)

0 comments

friday links
Mood: bouncy
Posted on 2007-03-02 14:20:00
Tags: links
Words: 76

It's a beautiful day outside - temperatures were in the 60s when I went out to get lunch! There's still a tiny bit of ice on the ground but it's by and large gone. Spring is coming!

The Boring Store (not a secret agent supply store) (via kottke)

This one's for tehfanboi's Boston rant - Boston Police Blow Up Suspicious Looking Man (no, not really)

Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein - yes, that's in the New York Times. (via daringfireball)

2 comments

Snow!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2007-02-08 13:23:00
Tags: microresolution snow referrer links
Words: 242

It snowed yesterday morning! We got a few hours off from work (which we promptly converted into sweet, sweet sleep) so I'm feeling pretty good in general. It's also starting to warm up a bit - only got down to 19 last night!

My last microresolution was to finish the auctioneer lookup, which I'm declaring myself done with. There's possibly some more data that could be gathered if I did a lot more digging and the web service took a lot longer to respond, but I'm pretty happy with what it does now. I haven't decided exactly what my next microresolution will be, but it's probably either something related to taxes or addressing/sending letters. Or maybe playing around with Adobe Flex.

A few weeks ago I bought and installed Mint for my web site - it's a web site analytics program, much like Google Analytics, but with a much nicer view and more options (or at least, the options are easier to figure out). I'm pretty pleased with the results - you can see what a Mint install on another site looks like. It's also fun to see what searches people are doing that lead them to my site, like "working at national instruments", swat ride, texas shaped sunglasses (hmm, where's my result on there?), etc.

Yahoo! released Yahoo! Pipes today, but it's currently down. Here's an O'Reilly article about it, though, and I'm looking forward to playing with it when it comes back up!

3 comments

Is the weekend here yet?
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-02-02 09:46:00
Tags: microresolution politics links
Words: 306

Thanks again for all of your help on writing that letter! I forgot to mention my impressions on Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which I used to compose it. I didn't try the spreadsheet part (except for a minute), but the word processing part is pretty neat. It has some rich-text options (fonts, colors, bullets, etc.), and it keeps a revision history so it's pretty intuitive to see what changes you've made. You can also save in a bunch of different formats. I'd be curious as to how the collaboration works. Anyway it seems more than adequate for something simple like writing a letter.

To make things interesting, I'm going to add another microresolution. I have a World of Warcraft auctioneer price lookup that doesn't work with the new version of Auctioneer. Microresolution: make it work again by next Friday. We'll see if having multiple microresolutions out at the same time is feasible or makes me fail to complete any of them :-)

Current position of my pages in a search for "microresolution" on:
Google: #3!
Yahoo: not present
MSN: #1!!
Ask.com: #6
The main competitors seem to be pages talking about microscopes and such.

Funny quote in this article about the mayor of San Francisco admitting to an affair with his aide's wife:

Tom Abbott, 36, an executive recruiter, said that having an affair with a loyal aide's wife was "a total slimeball move."

"Any guy who puts that much mousse in his hair can't be trusted," Abbott said. "You don't screw over your own boys."

However, Abbott said, he would probably vote for Newsom.

7 comments

almost Christmas!
Posted on 2006-12-20 14:01:00
Tags: ljbackup links
Words: 349

The holidays are upon us! This is our last week in town (we fly out Friday for Christmas & New Year's in Texas) so we've been busy trying to take care of things. Like the TiVo Cablecard adventure djedi mentioned yesterday. I'm leaving work a little early to be home so they'll hopefully come and hopefully fix it.

I got some time yesterday to work on LJBackup. Now, it works pretty well - I was able to use the web page (which I haven't made public yet) to download a zip file of my journal. I even figured out Apache RewriteRule's to redirect from a .zip file to a script. I was planning on giving up on having it done before we leave, but I think a little more work (want to add a few more features) and I'll just put it up. I'd like to have the "finished" product included in my real backup, which I need to do tonight.

Jason Kottke recently had a Celebrity Mii Contest (Mii's are the little avatars you can create on the Wii), and here are the results. I like the winning one a lot, and my other favorites are Jack Black, Admiral Ackbar, and V from V for Vendetta. Kottke's blog is excellent - read it every day!

"Episcopalians Against Equality" - an editorial that ran in the Washington Post this morning about the 7 Virginia parishes that severed ties with the Episcopal Church and threw their lot in with a conservative Nigerian archbishop who supported legislation to criminalize "Registration of Gay Clubs, Societies and organizations".

I hesitate to post about this. Michael Crichton wrote a book called "State of Fear" which expressed the view that global warming wasn't a scientific fact (and later professed publicly the same). Michael Crowley, a writer for The New Republic, wrote a long column (subscription required) criticizing him for this view. In Crichton's latest book "Next" he made reference to a political journalist "Mick Crowley" who was a child rapist (excerpt is disgusting). Michael Crowley and "Mick Crowley" are both Washington political reporters who attended Yale. Slimy slimy slimy.

9 comments

just a day, just an ordinary day...
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2006-12-13 08:30:00
Tags: ljbackup politics links
Words: 465

On the way in to work this morning, I heard an editorial on Marketplace. (by David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush) He decried "populist economics" (basically the protectionist aspects of them) and sounded concerned since Democrats had just been elected. He said that, if they caused just half a percentage point of growth to disappear, that would be the equivalent of losing New Mexico's economic output, and in 20 years (assuming everything else stayed the same...) our economic advantage over China would be down to 3:2. But it was weird, because he never ever said a word about why assuming half a percentage point of growth would be lost was at all reasonable or anything. I'll excerpt from this Fire Joe Morgan post:

Then he said that maybe if Burnett hadn't mouthed off last year and been benched for the last week of the season, who knows, maybe 5 years $55 million could have been 5 years $75 million. Then, without backing that up, he then proceeded to chastise AJ Burnett for what he labeled a "$20 million dollar mistake."

You can't just make something up out of nowhere and then use the made-up thing to criticize someone for something that actually happened.

Maybe if Paul Konerko had not only hit 40 HR last year but has also invented a cold fusion machine, instead of $60 million from the ChiSox he might have gotten $50 billion from the government. That's a $49.994 billion mistake.

4 comments

Safe-wii first!
Mood: cold
Posted on 2006-12-05 19:25:00
Tags: ljbackup wii politics links
Words: 128

The Japanese Wii manuals safety pictures are hilarious! So darn cute. And here are some equally cute fake Wii safety pictures! I still don't have one, though.

I put up a new version of a sample LJbackup - the only thing of note is the stats page now includes the longest posts. Interestingly, my longest posts is a friends-only meme I posted, probably because the word counting is pretty primitive and inaccurate (counting HTML tags as words, etc.)

Same-sex marriage appeal in Maryland was argued yesterday. It's pretty neat being in a state where this is even remotely possible! Here's a fun quote:

"Our laws should reflect what is best for children, not what is best for adults," she said.

4 comments

Peppermint Mocha links
Mood: nervous
Posted on 2006-11-16 13:55:00
Tags: worldofwarcraft links
Words: 166

So what with all my efforts to get a Peppermint Mocha being thwarted, I thought fate was sending me a message. Well, I sent fate a message by going out of my way this morning to get one - so there! And it was gooood too. And helped keep me awake until now.

This should be an Onion headline, but it's real - apparently OJ Simpson wrote a book about "how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible. What??? Who thinks this is a good idea? Also, he's being interviewed on Fox about the new book - kudos to NBC for turning down an interview. Yikes.

The story of a Star Wars virgin who watched the films for the first time in order from I to VI. Kinda amusing.

I played Excite Truck on a Wii today for a few minutes. I'm excited! Also, I sure hope I wasn't banned from WoW for using Linux. (not Blizzard's intention, but it sure would be inconvenient...)

2 comments

last weekend at NI
Mood: cheerful
Music: ze frank!
Posted on 2006-08-11 13:20:00
Tags: links
Words: 439

Yikes, that's scary.

Getting beyond our airport security obsession - An "Ask the Pilot" column about why it's fairly hopeless to try to detect dangerous stuff being brought on an airplane.

A the show with zefrank about terrorism. I like zefrank a lot. He never blinks! Here's his ugly myspace competition and the "winners". Another good show, although they're all good from what it seems. ze frank's homepage has lots of neat interactive toys and whatnot. Whee!

I found the evaluation I wrote for COMP 360. COMP 360 was computer graphics. But, and here's the catch, the projects were impossible. We were given little to no direction and not enough time. destroyerj and I worked on project 2, after which he dropped the class (but not before we finished the project!!), and we were up until 5 AM the night it was due trying to get it to work. I don't think a single project in that class I did worked entirely. And I had good partners, but it didn't matter. Anyway, the last day of class I released my anger in the form of an evaluation. Then I released it again by copying over the evaluation so I could save it. Then my hand hurt.


Dr. Goldman made this class an unreasonable amount of work, grossly incommensurate with a 4-hour class. The labs assigned were quite difficult and took very large amounts of time, even when starting early. Compounding this problem was that the only place we were able to work on the projects (Symonds II) was locked to students - to work in there, someone had to be inside or one of the "babysitters" (some students) had to unlock it. This seems like a ridiculous way to handle access to the lab - why not give us all access? Apparently someone thinks we are common thieves...

More often than not, the lecture notes (and lectures) were not helpful in doing the labs, and we had to find some other resource or try to figure it out ourselves. This was extremely frustrating.

Most telling was the fact that around 70 people started the class, and about 20-30 are in it now, and I know that quite a few of these are graduate students who can afford to spend large amounts of time working on projects. Unfortunately, we undergrads don't have that luxury, and this class alone was cause for many stressful days and very long nights.

This class should be heavily revised so it is no longer a "weed-out" class for COMP 460. Never have I been so disappointed in a class in the Computer Science department here at Rice University.

1 comment

look what we can do!
Music: Dave Mathews Band - "Steady as She Goes"
Posted on 2006-08-07 15:28:00
Tags: links
Words: 299

(the asmc-related subjects will taper off, I'm sure...)

Work is starting to die down, and I'm spending more of my time on quitting-related activities. Which means I'm probably not going to finish the last project I wanted to, but so it goes. Also, I was amused to find they're going to use my BCD clock for a demo at NIWeek, which starts tomorrow.

Due to my resurgence in baseball interest, I've been reading Fire Joe Morgan, a blog about bad sports writers and announcers. It's pretty negative, but also extremely amusing. (I bet spchampion would like it!)

Speaking of spchampion, I've added two new feeds of non-LJ blogs - spchampionblog, which is spchampion's (Stanton's) blog, and haunspergerblog, which is Doug and Teresa's blog. You can add them to your friends list and their posts will show up like normal friends posts. You'll have to go to their blog site to comment on them, though. (well, you can comment here but they'll have to know to check here to find them, which sounds annoying)

Cricket Explained (An American Viewpoint) - I like watching the occasional (every 5 years or so) game of cricket, and I learned a lot from this article.

Computers just can't seem to get past Go - an article about how not good computer Go programs are. I'd like to play more Go...

Iran to supply Hezbollah with surface-to-air missiles - this seems seriously bad. How far from this to an Iran-Israel war?

Virginia is for Haters - Andrew Sullivan points out the Virginia is the "most anti-gay state in the union", as it denies gay couples even the right to "legally-binding private contracts to help them support their relationships". That sounds fairly unconstitutional to me. Anyway, I would have figured some other state (Mississippi? Tennessee?) would be worse, but maybe not...

18 comments

a few links
Mood: okay
Posted on 2006-08-01 14:49:00
Tags: links
Words: 77

Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It... - date a geek or nerd today!

Rice is adding two more residential colleges, to which I say "pah".

Late addition: a horrible commercial type thing for Appalachian State University. Apparently it's HOT! HOT! HOT! Also, if you're going to throw out "best in the country" and you're not an Ivy League school, you might want to clarify or qualify that statement somehow. Otherwise you just look like a big liar.

29 comments

the future's looking good to me
Mood: ready
Posted on 2006-07-28 13:49:00
Tags: asmc links
Words: 129

So we only did one runthrough last night, and we got yelled at (well, not actually yelling) because it sucked. I screwed up at least three different times, lines were dropped, etc., etc. Which should mean that opening night (tonight!) should be fantastic!

I found this pointer to an amazing presentation about Sustainable South Bronx. Maybe I'll send them some money. Wow.

Army Dismisses Gay Arabic Linguist 'Outed' By Anonymous Email Campaign. Note that Sergeant Copas didn't "tell", yet he was certainly "asked". I don't understand why "don't ask, don't tell" applies to non-field personnel, anyway...

The congresswoman involved in the security dustup in April is losing in the Democratic primary. The system works!

A story from a former airport security person. Another example of "teaching to the test".

0 comments

whatevs
Mood: grateful for the little things
Posted on 2006-07-27 14:57:00
Tags: asmc poll links
Words: 205

Rehearsal went well last night, except we didn't get a chance to do a runthrough because we had to re-setup the sets (someone used the theater Tuesday night) and lots of other stuff. So we're doing two runthroughs tonight, which we need, but is going to totally exhaust me. On the plus side, I'm not too exhausted since we didn't runthrough last night :-)

There's a part of the show where me and some other guys lift Vixen (a doll) up in the air. Last night it didn't go well, and we sorta half-dropped her, although she ended standing up. I hold her legs and feet, though, so I got kicked in the jaw. Totally not her fault, of course, but it's still bothering me a bit today :-/

Lance Bass (member of NSync) is gay! Neat!

Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder - I have this, most certainly.

Clips from the new Simpsons movie look good so far. Maybe it really will come out next year :-)

Tour de France winner Floyd Landis tests positive for testosterone, although the results aren't final yet. Hope it isn't true, but if so...ouch.

TIOBE ranking of most popular computer languages - wow, didn't realize Java was #1. Ruby's only #17. Also, go LabVIEW! (#34)

[ Fill out Poll ] [ View Poll Results ] [ Discuss Results ] [ Close Poll ]

Poll #779634 Why is my shirt yellow?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

In the musical, I'm a kid named Lance who is afraid of everything. Why is my shirt yellow?

10 comments

it's only wednesday??
Mood: tired
Posted on 2006-07-19 10:18:00
Tags: music links
Words: 127

I was gonna save these until Friday, but I'm tired and bored (waiting for a looong compile) now.

Christopher Tin composed the opening Civ4 music (there are more nice samples of his compositions), and when I read that I thought it was the same guy who did the music for Futurama. Turns out that's Christopher Tyng...so close!

Ken Lay was compared to Martin Luther King, James Byrd (black man lynched in Texas), and Jesus himself at his funeral. I understand respect for the dead, but this is ridiculous.

Daily Show segment on Mr. T - I love Mr. T!

Sound files created with pirated software shipped with Windows XP.

AOL Retention Manual - a followup to the story of the guy trying desperately to cancel his AOL account.

1 comment

since lj is slow
Mood: skid marks on my soul!
Posted on 2006-07-11 14:13:00
Tags: links
Words: 23

Pole Position commercial. HEEEEEY!

US detainees to get Geneva rights - woohoo!

More info on the Zidane headbutt. Materazzi said some nasty things, maybe.

0 comments

aren't you supposed to be well-rested after a long weekend?
Mood: tired
Music: Ragtime - "Justice"
Posted on 2006-07-05 12:42:00
Tags: links
Words: 141

Apparently, no. Here are some links I found to keep me awake...

The Urban Etiquette Handbook - this is great! And entertaining to boot. My favorite page is the one with proper cell phone conduct and the four levels of iPod interaction.

Infared photo gallery of nature. The fact that the trees are white gives it an otherworldly kind of feel.

11 "Don't-Tell-the-Wife" Secrets All Men Keep - this is mildly entertaining and somewhat true (Secret #1: Yes, we fall in lust 10 times a day -- but it doesn't mean we want to leave you). Mostly applies to gay men too, just so we're clear :-)

CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04. The website doesn't look horribly...reliable? But it was always pretty clear that the bin Ladin tape released four days before the election helped Bush, and the article suggests this was his intention.

1 comment

bad news, good news
Mood: calm
Posted on 2006-06-29 14:35:00
Tags: politics links
Words: 325

Random news items that have left me thinking recently:

Bad news - High court upholds most of Texas redistricting map. The Supreme Court ruled that it is essentially OK for state legislatures to redraw Congressional districts whenever they want, and not just every 10 years (after the Census) as required by law. This to me is really horrible news. A Daily Kos article opines that the Democrats should take advantage and do this in states where the state legislature is more Democratic than the congressional delegation. I consider this whole thing to be a non-trivial threat to democracy. Guh.

Good news - High court blocks Gitmo military tribunals (CNN really likes to refer to the supreme court as "high court", apparently :-) ) This is a big rebuke to Bush's claim that, since we're at war, he has broad overarching powers to hold people as enemy combatants. Andrew Sullivan points out the court seems to have reinstated the Geneva Conventions in the "war on terror", which is also good.

Bad news - Israel hits Gaza as Hamas lawmakers held. This has been a rapidly-escalating series of attacks between Israel and Palestine and it looks like things are getting much worse. This latest conflagration started when Palestinian militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier, and they have killed an Israeli settler since then. To put pressure on the Syrian president to stop aiding Hamas, Israeli fighters buzzed his home yesterday (anti-aircraft guns fired on them). Scary stuff.

Good news - Buffett to give away billions. Warren Buffett is giving away $30+ billion dollars, most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. The Gates foundation does great stuff in global health and education, and $30 billion dollars goes a looong way. Good for him!

I read this great speech by Barack Obama - it's a little long, but very powerful. The last 10 paragraphs or so I liked a lot for personal reasons. I hope he runs for president in 2008 or 2012 or sometime...

6 comments

warning: good weekend ahead
Mood: happy! not sick!
Music: Lordi - "Hard Rock Hallelujah"
Posted on 2006-05-26 09:37:00
Tags: pictures music ruby palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 500

Already this weekend (starts on Thursday!) has been good - we finished Maraudon last night in WoW, which was fun (despite an infuriating part where Dextra and I (the two people who can rez) died and had to spirit rez and fight our way back. Scary!), and I got a shiny new dagger and orb.

Another good thing - I'm not sure yet, but I think I've solved my work problem...but not in a great way. It's like finally arriving at Disney World in Georgia (the country, not the state), and you're tired but happy you finally got there, and then getting out and realizing that Tennessee (where you started) is really right across the street from Georgia (the country, not the state). And you think everyone is mocking you for taking such a roundabout journey when you were right there, except they presumably aren't. Whee. I think I'll put this analogy to rest :-)

I have a problem...I cannot stop listening to "Hard Rock Hallelujah"! Seriously. Sometimes songs stick in my head so long, it actually makes my stomach hurt (and can keep me up at night). This song isn't there yet, but it's headed that way...

I put up pictures of Stephen's graduation. Next up - pictures from wonderjess's graduation! And then the pictures I will have acquired in the intervening time. Yikes.

Had a breakthrough in the palm to google calendar thing last night.

So the problem I had been having was that, when you connected to start the syncing process, it wouldn't return until it was done, which means that you couldn't poll for status updates. (actually, I guess you could, but then you'd have two connections open at once unnecessarily) So, I tried something like this:

# Create session and return session id to browser

pid = fork do

   # Do long-running stuff

end

Process.detach(pid)

# Create session and return session id to browser

pid = fork do

   $stdout.close

   $stdin.close

   $stderr.close

   # Do long-running stuff

end

Process.detach(pid)

7 comments

a few random things
Posted on 2006-05-25 12:42:00
Tags: music palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 140

If you haven't seen the winning Eurovision song, and you like seeing people from Finland dressed as Klingons (or something), you owe it to yourself to check it out!

So I saw in my referrer logs that some MySpace page was using my spade image (), so I decided to look at the site. Aaand...wow. I think my eyes exploded just looking at that.

I made some good progress on the palm to google calendar thing - it's mostly working and the server is updating status as it goes. Now I need to figure out why the client doesn't poll for status until the server is done, and make the client display status in some nice and friendly way. Oh, and make it a bit more secure, too, just in case. Hopefully in another week or two it will be doneish!

14 comments

la-de-dah
Mood: happy
Music: Pink Floyd - "Time" (imh)
Posted on 2006-05-19 09:49:00
Tags: links
Words: 111

Whee! Friday! And I'm visiting wonderjess and watching her graduate, so I'm looking forward to that. And I'm flying JetBlue, which I've never done before! Man, I like travelling. They show DirectTV on the plane and everything, which intrigues me.

These "seamless pictures" are very very cool. They're the work of Rob Gonsalves.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a group funded by lots of big companies that, among other things, argues that global warming isn't really happening. They have decided to start a PR campaign to defend...wait for it...CO2. The ads are hilarious, especially the one on the left ("Energy")! (from Andrew Sullivan)

Random Jon Stewart quotes

Have a nice weekend!

1 comment

aww yeah
Music: Pink Floyd- "Hey you"
Posted on 2006-05-10 09:51:00
Tags: pictures weight links
Words: 128

So after the weekend where I ate lots of bad stuff, I was sure I was going to gain at least a pound. Flash forward to Tuesday morning....I step on the scale...plus .2 pounds! Awesome. So my goal this week is to lose weight, and next week to get below my low since I started in December (I'm only .8 pounds away, so this is very doable). Woohoo!

Some fun Daily Show videos: Hayden/Goss and "Oh, Really? bin Laden? Who?". Well done! Also a fun trailer for a "Pac-Man" movie made by Uwe Boll.

I put up the pictures from last weekend. Cute pictures of the nephews :-)

Fun information about US interstates. (thanks medryn)

Oh yeah - here's the Onion's preview of summer movies. (hint: they're not terribly excited)

0 comments

link friday
Mood: drained
Music: Hoobastank - "From the Heart"
Posted on 2006-05-05 15:27:00
Tags: links
Words: 309

Ugh, this day hasn't been so great. Nothing horrible, but I'm (as usual) stuck on a problem at work. Hopefully these links will cheer me up!

I've spent some time this week looking at the exploits of Improv Everywhere. Wow, these people really make me want to live in New York! Some of their more entertaining missions: Best Buy (80 people enter a Best Buy store dressed in blue polo shirts), Surprise! (surprise birthday party on the subway), The Moebius (repeating time loop in a Starbucks), Look Up More (a bunch of silhouettes dancing in the windows of a building), Even Better Than The Real Thing (impersonating a U2 concert on a rooftop), The Dollar Dudes (handing out dollar bills on the subway), Best Gig Ever (massively attending the gig of an unknown band, and the band's response), and Ted's Birthday (pretending to know a stranger and throwing him a birthday party). Wow!

Sesame Street Video Clips! (from kottke). There are videos for a lot of songs on Songs from the Street, like "Furry Happy Monsters". Also an awesome Celebrity ABC song - Ray Charles plays piano, and Patrick Stewart really nails "T-U-V"! Born To Add is good too.

Apparently people are using laptops to steal cars with keyless entry and ignition systems. Um, great.

They're going to be selling the original unaltered Star Wars DVDs for a limited time! (from waxy)

I come across Damn Interesting every once and again - there are some cool articles there, like America's secret plan to invade Canada (and their secret plan to invade us!), and the creepy story of Centralia, PA (which was the basis for the movie Silent Hill. Their article on the parasite Toxoplasma gondii was the first article I read there, I think (and I may have linked it before...)

OK, I'm all linked out. Have a good weekend all!

0 comments

I went to the 108th best high school in the country!
Mood: bored
Music: Rent - "Rent"
Posted on 2006-05-03 10:31:00
Tags: movies palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 178

At least, according to Newsweek (here's the full list). Ed Felten points out that their methodology is a little suspect...

Disney is toning down Mission:Space ride - at first I thought they were toning it down for everyone, but they're just providing a toned down version in addition to the original, which is good. I can see why some people have trouble with it, though - the ride is pretty intense. Good stuff!

LJ was slow yesterday because of a DDoS attack. Guh. Although that thread does contain a somewhat entertaining flamewar!

Superman Returns trailer - ooh! (from kottke)

Made some more progress on my Palm datebook to Google Calendar importer - now I can delete entries, as well as add entries that don't repeat. Repeating entries are annoying (that was the block of code I posted, although I later learned that everything after the first three lines will always be the same, since it describes the timezone and daylight savings time), and I don't get any useful error message, so I guess I'll just tweak it some more until it works...

15 comments

just a few links
Mood: happy
Music: Firefly - "Main Title"
Posted on 2006-05-02 12:31:00
Tags: links
Words: 203

Apple has some new ads out comparing the Mac to a PC. I like these ads a lot - the tone seems to be just about right (except in "Better", which is the worst one IMO). I think I like "Network" the best, although the benefit they're showing in that one is probably the least impressive. I also find it amusing that in "iLife" they criticize the PC for not having more bundled apps - isn't that what the whole antitrust thing was about? Also, the Mac guy is quite cute :-)

They've found the gene that causes "stone man syndrome", a condition in which muscle is turned into bone. I wish the article had more information. Also, it ends with the mind-boggly dumb quote:

“The substitution of one genetic letter for another out of six billion genetic letters in the human genome is like a molecular terrorist that short-circuits a functioning set of muscles and connective tissues and transforms them into a second skeleton, in essence turning a light bulb into an atom bomb,” Dr Kaplan said.

7 comments

weekend, everybody's working for the
Mood: excited
Music: University of Rochester Midnight Ramblers - "Mr. Brightside"
Posted on 2006-04-28 15:35:00
Tags: links
Words: 91

What a crazy crazy crazy week.

White House press corps member asks Air Force One to change TV's from Fox to CNN - hehe. It's also amusing because it's an article on cnn.com :-)

House Speaker Hastert gets out of a hydrogen car and back into his SUV a few blocks away from hold a press conference talking about high gas prices. Classy!

That's about it, I guess. Checking in code today that I've been working on for almost a month (yay!). Backwards compatibility is sweet for users and a pain for developers...

5 comments

passing the time...
Mood: chipper
Location: work
Posted on 2006-04-27 14:05:00
Tags: palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 173

(compiling can take a while)

Senator Specter threatens to cut off funding for secret wiretaps - wow! Good for him. This could be a major battle...

David Copperfield robbed after show - the amusing part is that when the robbers got to him, he pulled out all of his pockets to show they were empty...except he had his cell phone, passport and wallet. Man, that's cool!

A reasonably entertaining interview with Matt Groening where he talks about the Simpsons movie and Futurama straight-to-DVD movie-like things.

Google released a free 3D modeling program today. (more information) There's some sort of integration with Google Earth where you can, say, build a house and put it on the Earth, which sounds a little weird but like a lot of fun. Wow, they sure do crank out (or in this case, buy other companies and release) the free software!

djedi gets home today - yay!

Still working on my project to upload data from my palm to Google Calendar...maybe I'll have some more time to work on it someday.

3 comments

happy San Jacinto day!
Mood: upbeat
Posted on 2006-04-21 11:05:00
Tags: movies palmtogooglecalendar links
Words: 307

Today in 1836, the Battle of San Jacinto took place, where the Texas Army defeated the Mexican army (sneaking up during their afternoon siesta) to gain our independence. To commemorate the victory, the San Jacinto Monument was built on the battleground, which is the "world's tallest memorial column", taller than the Washington Monument by around 5 feet.

Yesterday, I saw the movie Inside Man, and enjoyed it! Denzel Washington was good (so was Clive Owen) and Jodie Foster was good although a little creepy.

If you haven't tried the new Google Calendar, you should give it a shot. I've changed my mind - my next project will be using the Google Calendar APIs to import events from my palm. Still gonna try to use Ruby, though...

In other Google news, the Da Vinci Code quest is pretty fun - there's a new puzzle every day for 24 days. I've solved all four of them so far - not too difficult (although they keep sending me to the official movie site, which is loud and takes a while to load).

Cute Metroid cartoon

So the Kryptos sculpture (constructed on the grounds of the CIA in 1990) contains four encrypted messages. People have solved the first three, but no one has been able to crack the fourth (which is thought to refer to the first three heavily, as well as possibly other physical elements on the CIA grounds. The creator just announced there was a typo on the second section, which had caused the last eight letters to be misinterpreted. I'm hoping this will lead to a breakthrough on the last section :-)

"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." Darn...

0 comments

workin' for the weekend...
Mood: chipper
Music: Aural Pleasure - "Enjoy the Silence"
Posted on 2006-04-19 12:47:00
Tags: music links
Words: 182

(apparently today is "play songs Greg has a capella versions of" on Austin radio...on the way home from Jason's Deli I heard "Rosanna", followed by that Beverly Hills song I'm sick of, so I switched stations to hear "Come Undone". Neat!)

LiveJournal just announced a new account level (Sponsored+) that gets you most of the benefits of a paid account for free, while showing ads on your journal. I'm not huge on advertising, but this is the right way to do it - it's up to each person whether to show the ads or not (and there is incentive to), while free accounts maintain the same abilities they've always had. And paid accounts don't see ads on any pages to boot!

Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain - interesting article!

Play Syzygy! The creator of the game emailed me after seeing my Syzygy pictures (random!) I didn't realize it was created and distributed by one person - good stuff! It's a good game, although one I haven't played too recently...

Work is frustrating, but I'm not gonna let it get me down! (hopefully!)

1 comment

Mini-link monday
Mood: happy
Music: "RBI Baseball" music
Posted on 2006-04-10 16:36:00
Tags: music links
Words: 69

A little out of the ordinary, but these two links totally made my day:

Seven Songs with Factual or Logical Mistakes in the Lyrics (via waxy)

This one is crazy - someone re-enacted the 1986 World Series Game 6, bottom of the 10th inning in RBI Baseball! The original radio commentary is played over the video, and the guy really took care to get everything right. Well done! (via kottke)

0 comments

perhaps perhaps perhaps
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2006-03-24 13:07:00
Tags: computer links
Words: 94

I just heard 94.7 boast about how their studio was "AMD-powered". Neat!

Got a new motherboard (third one this month, for those of you keeping score at home) that will undoubtedly work out of the box and not have any problems ever.

How does one become a ninja? - now you know!

Kotaku has some awesome features today - first showing the endings of two horrible Zelda games (not made by Nintendo, thank goodness), and then showing the beginnings of them as well. I'd point out particular parts that are bad, but really they're all hilarious!

4 comments

urgh
Mood: angry
Posted on 2006-03-17 08:59:00
Tags: phone music computer links
Words: 238

So originally this post was going to be about how angry I am that my new hard drive is dying, which I am. Although the upside is that I can return the new hard drive I got because presumably the old one will still work with a new motherboard, which is almost certainly the culprit. But, upon further reflection, meh. I'll fix it, it'll keep working eventually, and all that jazz.

Things that cheered me up:

- My new phone is out for delivery and should be arriving any minute now!

- Wednesday morning, as I drove to destroyerj's house to let him in, I was listening to KUT. Since this week is SXSW, they have lots of good live music on, and I listened to Sonya Kitchell, whose new CD I will be buying when it comes out (maybe I'll buy it at Starbucks just for fun!). I've been listening to the two songs from it that are available from the website quite a few times.

- This article "Who Can Name the Bigger Number" is interesting.

- The wikipedia article on recurring parts in the Colbert Report gave me a laugh. I should watch more of it!

- This site (NSFW, although it's not dirty, and only the sound is important) that destroyerj pointed me to is hilarious! -50 DKP for my motherboard.

- This SNL segment about a pirate convention is good stuff, although I may have linked to it before....

2 comments

math problem not so interesting
Mood: disappointed
Posted on 2006-02-28 08:51:00
Tags: pictures links
Words: 337

I mentioned an interesting math problem last entry -

OK, I lied, it's not too exciting. I implemented the interquartile range method first (because it was easier than calculating the standard deviation) and ran it on a set of markers. It found a lot of markers that were in the correct city, but were definitely outliers from a statistics perspective. These markers are all dental clinics (more or less), and it turns out they're not evenly distributed throughout a city. So I kept the interquartile range method but added a test to only reject it if the distance from the median point was more than .25 latitude or longitude. This got rid of the false positives (and kept something that indeed wasn't categorized correctly!), so that's what I'm using. The sad part is that I'm pretty sure that that would give the same result if I just did that test and not the interquartile range, but I don't have the heart to test that. So, not so interesting problem after all, but at least it's presumably solved.


I'm definitely making more progress on this side project, and hopefully I'll work on it tonight a bit and maybe be "done" for now ("done" because it's never done, stuff keeps getting added, which I'm going to have to deal with at some point. ugh...) On the plus side, I'm writing a lot of stuff that can at least be theoretically reused for some other project. *shrug*





Here's a good article about lobbying to get your industry millions. Ugh. Hopefully the fact that the article was written will shed some light on the system. I am proud, however, that my former congressman Lloyd Doggett was mentioned as trying to end the offending credit. Good for him!

Some indie rockers are refusing to license their songs for Hummer commercials, turning down big money in the process. Good for them!

Wow, this is turning into Link Tuesday. One more: here are the local commercials that Rudy's aired during the Super Bowl. Good stuff!

2 comments

Link Friday!
Mood: cheerful
Music: Rent - "Take Me or Leave Me"
Posted on 2006-01-13 13:39:00
Tags: links
Words: 345

I was informed at lunch that today was Link Friday, which surprised me at first, until I realize that most linkdays are Friday. So, why not embrace it?

A vintage Nintendo shirt with a funny slogan

So, you may have heard of the Million Dollar Homepage, in which a clever student raised a million dollars selling pixels on a 1000x1000 grid at $1 a pop. It inspired some copycats like the Five Hundred Thousand Dollar Home Page and the Million Penny Homepage. The most amusing spinoff I've seen is Fill My Room, which is selling blocks in his room in an effort to fill it up with lego-looking blocks. Hehe!

The Prejudice Map - a map with what "the internet" thinks of people from different countries. People from Norway are known for thriftiness and love of fish, while people from Canada are known for liking their beer and being tolerant.

The Aargh Page - a matrix (based on the number of "a"'s and "r"'s) of the number of spellings of aargh on the internet. Nifty! The funny part is the weird outliers, like why Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgh (12,7) is significantly more popular than the spellings near it.

After reading fairydust1's complaint that one's posts are locked in to LJ, I found a way to retrieve all your old posts. Unfortunately, that doesn't include comments, so I'm thinking of writing a script to read each post and store the comments in XML as well. The other main project on my mind is writing a World of Warcraft mod to automatically record guild information and post it to the guild website, or something.

When buying organic pays, courtesy of Consumer Reports.

I really like the Rent soundtrack, especially "I'll Cover You" and "Take Me or Leave Me".

Is Apple working on a full-blown mobile phone network? (including a phone made by Apple that will hopefully be better than the ROKR) This seems crazy to me. But I am interested in one of their new MacBook's, although maybe some other models are coming soon, or something different but also exciting? Who knows...

9 comments

it begins...
Mood: chipper
Music: Depeche Mode - "Just Can't Get Enough" (Pandora)
Posted on 2005-12-30 12:43:00
Tags: links
Words: 300

So New Year's has kinda started, so if anyone needs to get in touch with me, probably the best way is my cell phone for the next few days. Looking forward to the festivities!

kottke.org has posted his Best Links of 2005 and The Rest of the Best Links of 2005 - if you're stuck at work and have some time, there are some very interesting articles in there. Like capturing an identity thief, or the story of a fake bathroom attendant at McDonalds, or even how to destroy the Earth, if your tastes swing that way.

I had a scary two hours this morning when the power blipped at work, and then my computer turned on, but nothing showed up on the monitor. Tried switching video cards and monitors and booting into DOS - nothing. So I tracked down the warranty information (still under warranty, hooray!) and called Dell Support, expecting they'd have to ship me a new motherboard or something. After waiting on hold for a little while, a guy (sounded like he was from India) talked me through some steps, and he got it working again to my great surprise! There must have been some static left in the AGP slot or something - he had me unplug the computer and hold the power button for 25 secs to discharge, er, something. Anyway, it worked fine after that. So that was nice, although I did waste my morning...

Happy New Year!

Pah, I forget again. There's an interesting story at the New York Times about the SNL video "Lazy Sunday" - it includes the fact that "chronic" is slang for marijuana (which I didn't know). So that makes the "chronic(what?)cles of Narnia" chorus part make sense, and funny! Also, an idea from a Boing Boing reader for a related T-shirt. Hehe!

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holidays, book reviews
Mood: chipper
Music: Everything but the Girl - "Walking Wounded" (Pandora)
Posted on 2005-12-28 10:59:00
Tags: reviews books links
Words: 520

Quick summary of holidays: they were good! I had fun at home, wonderjess made me delicious mochas. Funny things happened, played a lot of Taboo and some other games, and watched a fair bit of Arrested Development (and read about the Simpsons (one of my presents), so I have a lot of quotes in my head. Watch out!).

Outrageous Firsts in Television History (not entirely SFW)

Christmas is a bad time to try to lose weight. Also, weighing one's self right before bed can lead to having an angry sleep. Ugh.

I got a lot of books for Christmas, so I'm going to review them. Here are the ones I've read so far:

The Scorpion's Gate by Richard Clarke. The tagline for the book is "Sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction", and the book seems fairly realistic. It's a tad...idealistic, maybe, that a few people could stop such a major thing from happening, but then again maybe that's how it works. The secretary of defense is evil, and although his name isn't Rumsfeld, you get the idea. It's a pretty good thriller, similar to Tom Clancy but a lot shorter.

Bait & Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich (borrowed from my mom, who had checked it out from the library). I liked her other book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, where she tried to live off of the salary of very blue-collar jobs (working at Wal-Mart, being a waitress in a diner, etc.). In Bait & Switch, she tried to get a white-collar job by hiring image consultants and resume guidance counselors and things like that, but I didn't quite see the point. Overall it was mostly depressing and I didn't get much out of it except being worried about losing my job. Not really recommended.

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting too much out of this book (maybe because in my copy the pages weren't cut correctly, which irritated me at first), but it blew me away. He talks about lots of things that have changed under this administration that he credits the rise of fundamentalism to, and although the list of things that have changed wasn't terribly new (science vs. religion, separation of church and state, etc. - you can see the table of contents at amazon), he presents his case very well, and manages to maintain a sort of composure while still conveying a sense of urgency. He includes a few chapters on foreign policy and nuclear proliferation which had material that I wasn't familiar with. Also, the writing style is very straightforward, and he often talks about what the Carter Center (nonprofit organization that he and his wife started) are doing to alleviate the problems he lists. Overall, I was highly impressed, and would definitely recommend it.

I really like Pandora when I want to listen to music but nothing in particular. You should try it if you haven't!

Oh, and this SNL rap video about the Chronicles of Narnia has been making the rounds - quite amusing!

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special home-for-the-holidays post!
Mood: relaxed
Posted on 2005-12-22 20:35:00
Tags: links
Words: 168

I'm home for the holidays! That's nice. Houston is...about the same as Austin. Since my last two trips to Houston involved hitting a deer on the way home and calling 911, I'm hoping nothing totally crazy and out of the ordinary happens this trip. Doing well so far.

I'm liking mochas more and more the more I drink them. This may be a bad thing.

Brokeback Mountain - very good. Someone (Heath Ledger?) should win an Oscar for this. Also very, very sad. You can read the original short story, if you'd like. The movie is pretty darn true to it. Also, the "straight dude's guide to Brokeback Mountain" may come in handy. *shrug*

Just a note in case y'all don't have news as a friend, free users can now have 6 userpics. Enjoy!

Hope everyone has a happy holidays (hate me, Bill O'Reilly!) and I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of y'all at New Year's! :-)

Oh, and I'm getting close to level 3 on Yahoo! Answers. Woohoo!

2 comments

I've got to admit it's getting better...
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2005-12-15 10:58:00
Tags: links
Words: 133

Why today is better than yesterday:

Yay Ford!

So I did spend all night working on the project, but I made good progress on it, and I feel a bit more confident in general.

The meeting turned out to be no big deal, although it was slightly awkward.

We're moving cubes here at work, which means I get a bigger cube (although not window-adjacent). However, that means I have to pack up my stuff tomorrow. At least it's a good excuse for cleaning off my desk, which is scary covered with stuff and dust. It looks better already, though!

Maybe Showtime will pick up Arrested Development!

Oh, and also I got a Peppermint Mocha yesterday which, although certainly not as good as anything wonderjess makes, was pretty good. And it cheered me up!

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early morning thoughts!
Mood: determined
Posted on 2005-12-12 09:49:00
Tags: links del.icio.us
Words: 84

Well, not really early, but you know...

Yahoo! bought del.icio.us late last week. Between that and flickr, Yahoo has some pretty nice stuff these days. Good for them!

Good tips for using del.icio.us.

I'm now level 2 on Yahoo! Answers. Woohoo! Next up - level 3!

If you're looking to get a USB drive for someone, why not get them a weird USB drive? I can't decide which is creepier - the thumb or the Barbie whose head you rip off to plug it in. Heh.

7 comments

linka linka linka
Mood: stressed
Posted on 2005-12-06 13:32:00
Tags: links
Words: 189

So I was going to write a real entry, but I'm busy, and have stressful things to do. So, I'm going to reduce some stress by posting some links I've been meaning to post. (these are not guaranteed to be interesting; check your owner's manual for details)

(oh, the other thing is that I got a small job doing some google mapsish stuff for someone. Neat!)

A puppet version of Serenity (not a video). Very very cute. The other movies he's done are pretty good as well.

Boo Ford! A CNN story on the same thing.

A story about a Fawlty Towers book that apparently has the script for an unaired thirteenth episode. Neat!

So a professor at the University of Kansas (I hate Kansas, by the way) was going to teach a class debunking intelligent design. Then he cancelled the class after sending out an email insulting religious conservatives, which seemed appropriate (the cancelling, not the insulting). Then he was sent to the hospital after being beaten up on the side of the road by men who referred to the class that didn't happen. That's really quite scary.

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almost thanksgiving!
Mood: lazy
Music: NEScover - "Eye of the Tiger"
Posted on 2005-11-22 10:12:00
Tags: todolist charlottesweb links
Words: 316

Ah, one (and a half) more day at work, and then the holidays. That's good stuff!

So after the big push at work last week, now I'm doing very little. Which is relaxing, but it's always tough to adjust from "crazy stressed-out fixing mode" to "do nothing mode". It is a nice change right before the holidays though. Hopefully nothing else major comes up this release.

Just got my video of Charlotte's Web in, so I'll probably show it to my sisters over break.

Had fun at game night/onefishclappin and krikwennavd's receptionish event. That's twice I've played Mario Kart in the last week, which is kinda neat.

Been working on my TODO list some more. I'm learning a lot about XMLHttpRequest, and why Firefox (the 1.0 branch) seems to do weird things with it sometimes. I'm hoping 1.5 will fix these problems (should come out this month or early December).

I know everyone and their dog is posting about this, but give pandora.com a shot - you tell it a group or song you like and it tries to find music like that. The algorithm is based on the Music Genome Project, in which they listened to a bunch of songs and characterized each one (heavy bass line, melodic vocals, etc.). So when it picks a song it thinks you will like, you can see why it thinks that, which is usually pretty interesting. (it's free and all that jazz)

I put these remakes of popular songs on the original Nintendo sound system on my iPod. They're quite fun to listen to!

Fans of Harry Potter might find this celebrity recasting amusing.

I spent a while yesterday reading through the stories of making the Macintosh and other Apple-related things. Interesting stuff!

For those of you experiencing LJ-slowness, maybe this is the problem?

One more: if you've ever lost a button-mashing minigame in Mario Party, check this out!

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