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The 5mp Hero Wide now supports 4gb SDHC cards (the previous max was 2gb using standard SD). I haven't upgraded mine yet, but it looks like a simple firmware update that shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Their website says the same update will be available soon for the non-Wide (Standard) 5mp Hero Cam, too. |
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An excellent article from The Economist: Driven to distraction If you must talk, text or twitter, do not do it while driving. |
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Everyone should read this. Stunningly simple, it visually explains all parties involved in the healthcare discussion, and also what their motivations are. Key point: insurance companies are a business, and for all their whining + complaining, we shouldn't forget that they ultimately have business interests at heart - everything else is secondary (quality of care, cost to patients, individual health improving, etc.). All businesses exist to make money, and it's only natural that a business would oppose changes that reduce their profits/revenue. In the case of healthcare, any change will mean lower profits for the insurance companies, so they're generally against all change. They do recognize something has to change, but their preference would be to keep things as they are. Should individuals care? No. Business climates change, and the public has no obligation whatsoever to preserve an old, dying business model just because the businesses who still operate in that old, dying business model are unwilling to change. Either you adapt, or you become obselete. Times change, get over it. In general, consumers do a pretty good job of collectively figuring out which products are better than others. But for insurance, we don't have choices and we don't see the reality. A big reason why: the insurance companies themselves actively oppose choice and confuse everyone as an act of self-preservation. Why we even listen to them is beyond me, as they're arguably the most biased party in the whole equation... |
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It seems like all kinds of influential / significant people are dying these days. Surely part of it is just perception based on my own age - the people I know about are reaching the end of their years. For example, when I look at the top music albums/tracks on iTunes, I don't recognize any of their names; so it follows that if any of them died, and I somehow heard about it, it wouldn't resonate with me at all. But several people I do know about have reached the end of their days... John Hughes, Robert McNamara, Paul Newman, Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson. If a great movie director died say 20 or 30 years ago, would you ever know about it? No question that we're better informed these days - thanks to websites / emails / etc. - so we find out about other folks' passing instead of them just passing by unnoticed. Anyway, RIP John Hughes, thanks for the great films!
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June 9, 1916 to July 6, 2009 |
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"The Little Engine That Could" is a children's story that delivers several lessons to the reader, some of which are obvious and others less so. I read it as a child and remember the obvious lesson of "think positive". Having read it repeatedly during recent weeks (by request of my son), I've come to understand and appreciate the less-obvious lessons, and I feel obligated to share these bits of wisdom with others. Obvious Lessons
Less Obvious Lessons
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What's up with film studios deliberately crippling DVDs? While trying to create my own iPhone version of WALL-E, I've discovered that Disney crippled it with ARccOS. I own a fully-legal copy of the movie (3-disc set, no less), but due to ARccOS copy-protection b.s., I had to jump through several hoops to get the full-length movie onto my computer. I finally did it, and I hope others do it, too. I'm not file-sharing or doing anything illegal, just want it on my iPhone. They do include a "digital copy" that will supposedly allow me to put the WALL-E movie on my computer, but it's just more copy-protected wankiness, has an access code, limitations, etc. This really only serves to annoy paying customers, and does nothing to discourage thieves/pirates. I mean come on, all you need to know is which track to rip (30, in the case of WALL-E), and whether to time-shift the video (38 to 40 frames, possibly none at all depending on who you ask). Most 12-year-olds probably figured that out, and then the rest of the low-tech customers are just mad that they can't put the movie onto their kids computer. Nice going. Someone pointed out in the forums that it's easier to download an illegal, pirated copy than it is to create your own backup copy from your own legal DVD. I think they're probably right. Wake up, Disney. |
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They did a study where they sometimes tricked dog owners into thinking the dog had done something they shouldn't do when the dog had in fact done nothing wrong. Basically the dog's expressions had nothing to do with anything, the owners behavior and conclusions of guilt/innocence are really the only factors.
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Here's a chart I made by extracting data from the overall results of the 2009 Capitol 10k. It shows the number of timed participants for each overall pace. They sold 7,000 timed registrations (according to the initial registration form), of which 6,644 runners completed the event (according to the official results page). There were ~18,000 participants in total (according to news reports), so ~11,000 completed the event un-timed. Anyway, for the timed runners, you can see pretty clearly how people did. |
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I've been on mailing lists before, and take it for granted that "unsubscribe" means "right now". For Microsoft, it means "within the next 10 days". I wonder, is that business days or calendar days? I submitted feedback to Microsoft a while ago as part of a survey they were doing, I don't even remember what it was. But every now and then, they send me additional survey requests. I got another one today and finally made the effort to click "unsubscribe". A moment later, I received the following automated email response: From: winsurv@microsoft.com Subject: Windows Feedback Program removal confirmation Date: November 27, 2008 2:49:44 PM CST To: ****************** |
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I just took the Test of Civic Literacy. There are 33 questions, some of which were a little challenging, while others were just.... not challenging. For example: 21) Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II. According to their survey results, ~67% of respondents answered correctly. That means 33% got it wrong! Think about that. Roughly 1 in 3 people could not figure out the answer! I knew there were stupid people in this country, but this shouldn't even count as being smart. Everyone should just blurt this one out, no thought required. Canada and Mexico? w.t.f. Another stunning question... 28) A progressive tax: 1 in 2 people answered this incorrectly. Now, maybe this one is a little "harder", requires some reasoning if you aren't sure what "progressive tax" means. But the respondents included elected officials (at some point in time, at various levels, doesn't specify exactly which positions). And they break down the results explicitly:
Again, we're talking about elected officials. If 1 in 2 elected officials are incapable of deducing the correct answer from the choices presented, how can they figure anything else out? And these people are in charge of our government? This is like a really twisted, sick joke. By the way, the survey results state the following: Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. |
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Sweet, rigged voting machines isn't just an issue in Ohio and Florida, now it's happening in West Virgina, too. Voters have been noticing rigged voting machines in West Virginia (conveniently operated solely by the Republican party) to automatically cast all votes for McCain (and every other Republican candidate on the ticket). West More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes |
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I voted today. But since I live in Texas, my vote for the presidential race doesn't matter. If you live in Texas, your vote doesn't matter either, and here's why. In 2004, the state-wide totals went like this (full data here):
The 2008 results will be similar. The politicians understand this, which is why there are very few presidential rallies in Texas, and instead they focus their campaign efforts in swing-states. Obama held one rally in Austin earlier this year, surely just for fund-raising purposes. Outside of Austin, everyone else will vote for McCain/Palin. That's the problem with the electoral college. The outcome of the 2008 presidential election in Texas is certain, even now, 2 weeks before the real "election day". At best, my vote matters for determining which candidate wins Texas, not the actual presidential election. In reality, my vote only determines who will win my county, and since state-wide results depend on aggregating county results, my vote is lost between the county and state level. A vote for McCain is a waste because he will win Texas, whether he gets your vote or not. So why did I vote today? Two reasons. First, whenever I get into a discussion about politics, being of practical mind, I bring up the irrefutable voting data within the state of Texas. "It doesn't matter who you vote for", I say. But nobody likes to hear this, most people want to feel like they make a difference, no matter what, so they push back with rude / challenging comments. Regardless of how you feel about our democratic process, the data doesn't lie: voting results are so wildly skewed (at the state-level) that you're either voting for the clear winner or the clear loser. Either way, the outcome is clear. Anyway, I don't like people giving me crap about "not voting", despite the fact that it's provably irrevelant in Texas. So there, I voted. It doesn't matter, but I did it anyway. :) Second -- and this is the one I really do care about -- there were 20+ other positions to vote for (house representatives, judges, etc.) as well as a few city ammendments (whether to prevent future city-funded tax breaks / financial incentives to big businesses in Austin), and I know my vote makes a difference there. |
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Early voting in Texas starts today (well, Monday) and runs through the end of the month. Go vote! |
"Bush has now tied Richard Nixon's worst rating ever [of 24 percent], taken in a poll just before he resigned in 1974, and is only 2 points higher than the worst presidential approval rating in history, Harry Truman's 22 percent mark in February 1952," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. |
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Unregistered voters in Travis County have until Monday October 6, 2008 to register for the upcoming presidential electons. Register online here. You can verify your existing voter registration here. If you have moved or changed your name, you can update your registration here. Early voting starts Monday Oct. 20 and continues through Friday Oct 31. Early voting locations here: and here: |
I finally found a cheap ($20) wireless router that has built-in QoS (quality of service) support, it's the Airlink AR430W. With QoS, you can set up rules based on service type (http, etc.) or by IP address, so you can say "traffic from computer X should always get priority over traffic from computer Y", or "game traffic should get priority over web traffic", etc. I just set it up over the weekend, very straighforward, great features, good web admin tool, signal strength is better than my previous D-Link. Fry's does special pricing on the AR430W from time to time, lowest I've seen is $20. I know people out there spend $50 or $60 on the Linksys WR54GT (or whatever) but I don't want to learn nerdy details about what patch, version, blah.. is required to enable this or disable that, and the Linksys seems to require this. I might be totally wrong, but the small amount of info I found suggested the Linksys does not offer plug-and-play QoS, whereas the Airlink does. |
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Atlassian just announced "personal licenses" for Jira, pretty cool. There are some limitations of course... no support, 3 users max. But otherwise you can set up and use your own instance of Jira, even Enterprise, all for free. |
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Best. Ringtone. Ever. It's the theme song from Arrested Development. |
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I guess McCain is going to win Ohio |
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I've just discovered something enormously entertaining - digging through the "missed connections" section of craigslist personals. If you haven't seen it, it's like... I guess I can't really compare it to anything I've ever seen, but here's an analogy: "missed connections" is like putting a message in a bottle, throwing it in the ocean, and hoping it finds its way to one specific person. Here are some highlights from the "women 4 men" section. This one is pretty mushy. Assuming the guy found it, what the heck would he do? "Damn baby, I know things didn't work out between us, but I did not know you cried for 3 days. And then you ate a Kashi bar! Clearly, I have done you wrong, and for that I am sorry." I still don't know why you had to end it with us. I thought we were happy in our little routine of skating and bowling and all the things we both love to do. My only thought is that maybe you are going to follow your dream, the one you told me about that night when we stayed up all night over at your place and I cut my foot on the broken piece of glass on the driveway and you held me all night. I wish you knew that I would not have ever tried to stop you from that. I would have supported that dream. But all that is over now. You have moved on and and I did nothing but cry for three days straight until finally my landlord had to come over and bring me cranberry drink and a Kashi bar. I don't hold it against you. I can't make you love me if you don't. But it doesn't change it that I still love you no matter what you do or where you go. This is just the epitome of pointless. Every dork who thinks he's hot, or likes blondes (or both) will write back to her. You are smokin' hot That's all. -the blonde. This one is just stunning... just go talk to the guy!
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In 1986, the Cray 2 supercomputer was the first computer to calculate 1 billion floating point operations in a single second - 1 gigaflop. In 1997, the Intel ASCI Red became the first computer to calculate 1 trillion operations - 1 teraflop. Now, in 2008, the IBM Roadrunner became the first computer to calculate 1 quadrillion operations - 1 petaflop - in a single second. I think it's difficult to wrap your head around how large a number that is. Take a million, already a very large number, one thousand millions is a billion, one thousand billions is a trillion, one thousand trillions is a quadrillion. That's a petaflop. 15 zeroes. 1,000,000,000,000,000 Increasing calculation speed by a factor of 1,000 has happened every 11 years. If that trend continues, we'll see the first exaflop-capable computer in 2019. Another 11 years later, in 2030, we'll see the first zettaflop - one million petaflops. 21 zeroes. |
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The toilet on the International Space Station has been fixed, and Hillary Clinton is finally giving up. |
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This keeps showing up in the news, today noticed a link to Te Papa, the museum in New Zealand where the squid is being inspected. Lots of photos and info there. Also found this link with more stuff: Colossal Squid. |
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Does anyone make food using Red Bull as one of the ingredients? Like, chicken pasta with Red Bull sauce, or maybe snickerdoodle cookies with Red Bull. Surely someone has tried some stuff like that. I think this is an untapped market, especially for the raver party crowd. You get hungry partying all night, right? But what can you eat? How about a nice piece of Red Bull cake to go with your Red Bull + vodka. Or maybe bar peanuts dipped in Red Bull. |
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I thought we had seen the end of refrigerators with built-in Internet browsing, but Whirlpool just announced a new contribution to the otherwise dumb idea. Instead of making a fridge with a built-in computer system (which they apparently agree consumers don't want), they're instead making a fridge with a platform for other vendors to make computer and iPod hookups. Somehow, this is better. From A Chilling Idea at C.E.S.: That's as dumb as finding out that people take laptops with them into the bathroom, so they should have a toilet with built-in web browser. Seriously, people don't browse photos, internet, etc. in the kitchen standing in front of the refrigerator. They're probably sitting down, or least leaning over the counter. Why even be in the kitchen in the first place? So I'm supposed to believe that you should now hang out in the kitchen, glued to the front door of the very thing which contains exactly that (food & drink) which attracts people there in the first place? Not a chance. Whoever tries to surf the web on that stupid fridge is gonna get beaten up for being in everyone else's way. |
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This table shows the different quadrants associated with the Strengths Finder 2.0 personality test. They're mostly identical to the v1 quadrants, but a few themes were renamed.
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About 3 or 4 months ago there was that big bridge collapse, don't remember where exactly, maybe Minnesota? Clearly it didn't leave much of an impression, I don't even know the state let alone the city or any specific details. Anyway, I had no idea it had happened, literally knew nothing about it. That day I was at lunch with some co-workers and they were talking about it. Completely lost, I had to ask for clarification and their reaction of pure shock was quite amusing. The three of them were genuinely stunned that I knew nothing about the bridge collapse. How could this be? We have computers to keep us informed of every little thing! Who doesn't know about the bridge collapse?!, they seemed to say. But if you think about it, aside from being on the news why else would I know or care about a bridge collapse? I'm much more interested in reading about the continuing conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and how many tens of thousands of people have died fighting on both sides. Or maybe that the French President is all chummy with Qaddafi and doing multi-billion dollar business deal selling planes and other stuff to the Libyan goverment. If a bridge collapsed in Libya and CNN wasn't there to tell you about it, would you care? After my wife sent me an article about the tiger that just ate a guy in San Francisco, I went to CNN.com and took this screenshot of the current front page. I added emphasis to show the general theme. |
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This guy did the most badass thing with the Wii Remote. Full video here: Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote. If you're impatient, skip to 2m 44s. |
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Foreclosure wave sweeps America shares chilling details about the sub-prime mortgage problem. In Cleveland, Ohio, the "sub-prime capital of the United States", one in ten homes is vacant. Thousands of homes are vandalized and boarded-up. Crime is increasing as a direct consequence, and the city is now responsible for clean-up (demolishing abandoned homes) which will cost more than $100 million from taxpayer dollars. From January to August 2007 - just 8 months - there were 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings across the US. As many as 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years. This is also kinda interesting, stories from people who work in the mortage industry: US mortgage crisis: Readers' stories |
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Not a word. Look it up. It follows that the expression "a whole nother" is nonsense. |
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I found this website a while ago, Blade Your Ride. It's a physical device that bolts onto your tailpipe that both reduces emissions and improves fuel economy. Seems reasonable, the emissions reduction part anyway. But improving fuel economy? The only thing the Blade can do is restrict exhaust airflow, which in turn should have the effect of reducing power output from the engine. I combed through their website for any mention of power loss, but found nothing. So I emailed customer support, and today they wrote back with this: Thank you for your interest in the Blade. Our tests showed that we lost 4% in horsepower which effects the top speed of the vehicle, but in the operating range 2000 to 4000 RPMs it showed an increase in torque. Their website mentions an average fuel economy savings of 11 to 34%. Based on variable driving conditions when using the Blade, vehicles achieved 11% - 34% increases in fuel economy. I'm not sure if the fuel economy vs. power output reduction numbers agree with each other, but I'm glad they conceded there's a reduction in power. The laws of physics do still apply. :) |
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After watching Undercover In North Korea, I've also found several other free online movies about North Korea... |
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We just found www.moviesfoundonline.com There's a section of documentaries, including this oddball film - Guys and Dolls (2006) - which is about the relationships guys have with their Real Dolls. Weird, weird, weird. |
As part of the 10-year anniversary for Slashdot, they're selling a bunch of stuff online to raise money for EFF. And one of their coveted items is a 3 or maybe even 2 digit UID on Slashdot.org. Current high bid: $2,000. And that's with 7 days 22 hours remaining. Unbelievable. This is such a weird, weird thing to sell, and even weirder to buy. The power of a low user id is that it proves you've been around a long time, and it carries with it (in /. discussions, anyway...) a sense of respect. Low user ids tend to make comments only when they have something really important (or funny) to say. And whoever wins this surely will not fit that stereotype. Basically they're just trying to buy coolness. I've got a 5-digit user id - around 89,000 I think - and cannot imagine spending any money whatsoever to lower that number. Anyone signing up now will get a 7-digit id, as they're over the 1,000,000 mark for registered users. Update: As of Oct. 20, the auction is up to $2,813.00, bidding closes in 5 days. Update: The auction closed on Oct. 25 with a winning bid of $3,050.00. |
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There's been a flurry of news about Medtronic's implantable heart devices. Apparently there are some serious problems, and not just with the devices themselves. The oversight, regulation, testing, and overall necessity of an ICD does not appear to attract as much attention as it should. We talked to a cardiologist about this stuff and he told us about a patient with an ICD that fritzed out and shocked him 50 times before the battery finally died and it couldn't shock him anymore. As a result of the impromptu Medtronic-induced shock therapy, the man was so upset and freaked out that he spent one month in a psychiatric ward. I found another article in The New York Times explaining that a woman in Palo Alto had 25 shocks in a one hour period before it stopped (not sure if the battery died on hers or not). She opted to remove the ICD altogether, only to have her doctor recommend a replacement a few months later.... with the exact same thing. Last year, there were 296 patient reported injuries in 2006. During the same period in 2007, there have been 1,194 reported injuries. It's possible that the overall number of ICD patients increased but the rate of injuries stayed the same. Of course, it's also possible that the number of patients was similar and the failure rates increased, but I doubt it. |
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I keep ending up in chats about North Korea, how odd they are, etc. A friend just sent this video link: Undercover In North Korea. I haven't watched it yet, but apparently it's fascinating. Update: I've watched it now, and I can confirm that it is indeed fascinating. I recently read in The Economist that the national flower of North Korea is a type of begonia named "kimjongilia". It's almost too absurd to be true! |
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When the Nordschleife is open to the public, you can take any street legal vehicle (car, motorcycle, bus, van), but the common car rental companies (Avis, Hertz, etc.) do not allow their vehicles to drive on the track. There are lots of stories where they (Avis or whoever) somehow found out and charged the driver a 2,000 Euro penalty. Check out Ben Lovejoy's page for more car rental info: http://www.nurburgring.org.uk/carhire.html Anyway, if you don't have your own vehicle, or want to rent one for some other reason, check out Rent-Racecar (www.rent-racecar.de/gb). The owners - Theo and Heide - are very nice and just a pleasure to deal with, and they both speak English very well so there's no language barrier (assuming you speak English...). They have a huge selection of cars including a BMW 318, BMW 325, BMW M3 (both E36 and E92), Nissan 350Z, and Porsche Cayman S. Check out their website for pricing details, and send email for vehicle availability. I recently rented the BMW 325i E36 race car and had a great time. I had to change my reservation thanks to bad weather and they were very helpful in lining up another car for me on short notice. Also, they allowed me to take one extra lap in a 2nd car (a non-race car with back seats!) so I could take my wife and kid along for one lap of the Nordschleife. I'm already looking forward to the next time I can take a trip out there, and I would gladly give my business to Rent-Racecar again. |
We just got back from a trip to Germany which included a day at Nürburgring driving on the Nordschleife. I also picked up a few stickers from the gift shop for a cool 6 Euro each (it's like they've invented their own form of currency, it seemed like everyone in the gift shop stopped by the sticker section and bought a few). Since we all drove on the track (including one lap with the kiddo!), I think we've earned the right to put a sticker on each of our cars. :) |
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Despite ongoing drug problems, random behavior, negligent & dangerous parenting, and generally all-around sucking, Britney Spears is still in the news. Even the BBC is covering her latest goings on (Britney is dropped by management). She just got busted for committing a hit-and-run, in broad daylight, in front of paparazzi who took photos and video... I don't get it. Why do we care about Britney? |
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Kinda old news by now that Vista doesn't let you listen to music without cutting your network performace from 100% down to 10 or 15%. Instead of of 1 mb/s download, you'll get 0.1 mb/s. Quite significant. This is a serious, serious design problem. We can safely assume that all users make heavy use of their internet connection, and many (most?) play music through their computer (mp3, etc.). So for sake of argument, let's just say "this problem affects everyone". The new bit is a response from Microsoft about why Vista can only do audio or networking, but not both ( » Microsoft responds to Vista network performance issue). Here's my favorite part: "In certain circumstances Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback. This is by design" What in the hell? Even old computers (running old versions of Windows) are capable of multimedia playback + normal network performance. This is like saying, "if you drive your car above a certain speed limit, your radio won't work, so if you have the stereo on we'll just limit how fast your car drives to 20mph and your music will play normally." Seriously, it's that absurd. I'm a software developer and I'm fully aware that there are often trade-offs we must make between performance and usability. But remember, this will affect everyone so knowingly proceeding with a car that forces music listeners to drive 20mph makes no sense. Microsoft's claims that this only affects lan performance or downstream transmit only are irrelevant; it's still really bad. Did they deliberately cripple it? |
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I just got kicked out of the Starbucks on Anderson Lane, apparently as of May 21 it's no longer open 24-hours. I think that was the only 24-hour Starbucks in town, so now we have none. I guess I could go to some coffee shop near campus (but not Spiderhouse). Blech. |
If you have to fix it with a computer, quantize, pitch correct it and overly inspect it, then you can't do it and I can't get behind that! -- Henry Rollins, "I Can't Get Behind That" |
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On the drive home tonight, I turned on the radio and heard Don't Phunk With My Heart (Black Eyed Peas, audio soundbyte here). But the version they played was edited to use "mess" instead of "funk", so the line became, "no no no no, don't mess with my heart". W This is exactly why I can't stand mainstream radio. Most of the time it's a bunch of overplayed, lifeless, corporate bullshit, but the few songs that are any good get edited so they suck. The word is FUNK (with an "N" not a "C"). |
I finally started using Flickr to host / share my photos, and I've christened my photo stream with some photos of my Stratocaster. I recently replaced my manual-focus 50mm prime lens with a much nicer auto-focus 50mm. A fixed lens is not versatile by any means, but can produce striking results for the right shot. I'm pretty happy with this shot. |
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I modified my blog setup to generate topic-specific RSS feeds, so it's easier to keep tabs on certain things I post (like Apple stuff, without reading the Wal-Mart stuff). Here are the links to the individual feeds: |
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The Wii is still dominating the market, which isn't too suprising news since most people I know either want (or hopefully already have) a Wii. The other consoles just aren't that interesting. On the other side of it, the PlayStation 3 is trailing everyone, even the PlayStation 2 - their own console from 2000. Yikes. More info here.
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Does she know her face is delivered along with millions of spam messages every day? Does she care? And most importantly, is she really a doctor? We may never know. |
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I run a site using WordPress, and it was recently hijacked by spammers. The result was the page content was deleted and it showed their garbage instead. After doing some digging around, I discovered that numerous verions of WordPress have had serious security problems. Sadly, this is nothing new. Note to self: never use WordPress again. So after much digging + reading, the official "fix" basically amounts to backing everything up, including database content, then installing a new version, then testing stuff, then possibly having to roll it all back if things don't work right. Freaking waste of time. I don't want to do all of that, I want a damn patch so I can do other stuff and quit screwing around with WordPress! So here's my quick, easy fix: Rename your "wp-admin" directory to something else (like "wp-admin-hidden"). Do this through ftp or ssh. Bad: your admin interface is now completely unusable. Good: spammer jerks can't screw with your site content, it only took you 5 seconds to make this change, and it's completely reversible in another 5 seconds. When you need to make content changes, just rename that directory back to "wp-admin", make your content changes, then name it "wp-admin-hidden" again. Presto. Your next task is to migrate your content out of WordPress into something un-shitty, like MovableType... |
But then I realized I would rather eat cake. And not just today, but continually. So instead of starting the weight-loss challenge today with the guys, I bought a piece of cake and taunted my buddy Rob with a photo. Love that internet. |
Dear MPAA and movie production companies, I recently found an amusing take on the MPAA secret HD-DVD encryption processing key mess. At heart is the MPAA's claim that a single number is legally protected by the DMCA. Nobody can know about it, talk about it, copy it, store it, repeat it, etc. Anything that messes with their number is off limits. Hmm. If that's true (please suspend reality and go along with it), then it is also legally protected for me to have my own special number that's protected by the DMCA, too, and www.freedom-to-tinker.com helped me out. Here's my super-secret, don't-copy-this-or-I'll-SUE-YOU number: D4 C1 96 CA 0F 69 E5 42 4D 26 B8 2A E9 59 F9 A7 So www.freedom-to-tinker.com will generate a new number, just for you, and then use that number to encrypt a copyrighted haiku. So what? By encrypting that haiku, your number is then considered a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. But then immediately, the site owner gives all rights to you to decrypt the haiku. That means the DMCA should now make it illegal for anyone to mess with, copy, publish, etc. your special number. Stupid, isn't it? The whole situation is made even more ridiculous when you look at the landscape of cinema today: movie viewership isn't down because of theft or piracy, it's down because most movies suck. This nonsense with the MPAA shutting down websites (for printing their secret number) is just silly, and it's only fanning the flames. Sites like 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.com (whoa! could that be the MPAA's super-secret number? as a website name?!) are popping up with huge lists of other sites, all of them are determined to print that number, just to be a thorn in the MPAA's butt. (Please, just try making movies that do not suck....) |
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Follow-up to the drunk driver who smashed our car. In total, 5 vehicles were involved:
We still don't know if the guy had insurance, but officer's told us on the scene that he had a previous DWI conviction. The penalty for 2nd offense is 30 days to 1 year in jail. I found the police report online today, it shows the driver's name (Paul Keenan) and that he's 19 years old. So he's got a 2nd DWI on his record, while being underage, possibly without insurance, and he just destroyed 3 cars + wreck a young woman's face. Nice going, dumb ass. |
First time offense is one thing, but this guy has already been busted for drunk driving, so now he's just an irresponsible jerk. He was driving a Ford Explorer, none of the airbags deployed, and the front passenger smashed her face into the dashboard in the collision. Her jaw is broken, she lost a bunch of teeth, and bled all over the place (her friend came to our house today, gave us an update). Last we heard, she had gone to the emergency room for surgery. I guess they'll try to put her face back together. Why do we allow drivers like him back on the road? Now that he's had a second DUI (the cops showed up and took him to jail), how long until he's behind the wheel again? How long until he smashes up another 3 or 4 cars? What if he gets in another wreck, but instead of killing himself in the process, what if he takes someone else's life instead of his own? Here are some photos from last night, taken within an hour or so of the accident. |
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I went to a user group meeting tonight; I won't say which one, because I don't have anything nice to say about it. It was my first time to attend, wasn't really sure what to expect. Maybe I would meet some people with similar interests? Maybe learn something new? Anything's worth trying once. After 2 1/2 hours I was kicking myself that I didn't walk out early. I kept thinking it would end! I've since vowed to never again attend a meeting for this particular group. What a waste of an evening. |
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... but sold it a few hours later. The Wii is still pretty hard to find in stores, so when I found one today I was both happy and torn at the possibility of selling it for a small profit. The console itself retails for $250, and after sales tax the total comes to $270. I ended up finding someone on craigslist who was willing to pay $350 in cash. We met up earlier today, done deal. So I no longer own a Wii, but have an extra $80 in my wallet. |
So I was looking for info about the "Hammond Pro α" by Nittaku. I found their website, and it includes this super-informative graphic (which explains, um, something... in Japanese...), and this awesome product info. This sure helped me make up my mind! No more questions from me! I can't stand the "durability to become bad", and want to ensure that "seat and sponge invent big repulsive force". "Rubber and medicine are combined at the time of rubber generation"... what?! Rubber and medicine?? This shit sounds like magic! A rubber seat was 20-30% in the past rebellion became so good that the ratio of the rubber substitute to natural rubber became high but for the durability to become bad. A seat of a HAMMONDseries is to set rubber substitute to about 2 times of 60% while maintaining the durability, and high repulsive force is being shown. Highly precise rubber generation will be possible by nanocomposite technology, and Hammond-Xis also combining rubber substitute 70% in a sponge. (In the past, for rubber substitute 0, HAMMONDand professional ?, 50%) these seat and sponge invent big repulsive force. (More energy losses will be small.) if the batted ball process is expressed, flexibility of the natural rubber (catches a ball tightly and makes) them rip, and the ball repulsive force of rubber substitute caught is driven to the batted ball direction, said, it'll be (figure 1 referring). |
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I just read "Why affordable housing at Mueller will fail" and it makes a lot of sense. Affordable housing is supposed to provide opportunity for lower-income home buyers, that part's fine. But once a home has been sold to lower-income family (basically at a discount, funded by the city government), there is nothing that prevents that family from turning around and selling their home at current market prices. In the above post, he argues that within 5 years, that's pretty much what will happen. For example, say home #1 normally sells for $150,000, but the affordable housing version (home #2) sells or $120,000. That's great, if you qualify, you can buy home #2 and basically save $30,000. But if you were to turn around and sell home #2 a few years later, you could easily sell it for much more than your purchase price. In fact, if home #1 goes on the market for $160,000 (up $10k from original price), why wouldn't you sell your home #2 for $160,000 as well? You would. And by doing so, you've basically converted the city government's charity from a housing discount into real money. So what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that it won't take long before "affordable housing" home owners figure this out, sell their home for huge gains, and then... you're left with a housing development that looks a lot like what you would have if you had started out selling everything at current market prices (i.e., without any "affordable housing" homes at all). Whatever your initial goals were (diversifying the home owners, creating opportunity for lower-income families, etc.), you'll end up with something different. It would probably just be easier all around if the city held a random drawing among lower-income families and handed out $25,000 sacks of money. |
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I just found Shirt-a-Day (www.shirtaday.com) - they sell a different t-shirt every day, and the price goes down in real-time as more people buy it. At the end of the day, the final price is what all customers are actually billed. Interesting pricing model. |
44th Annual Birthday Party You can get to the park by taking a free shuttle (shuttle bus info here) or drive/bike/walk - here's a map to the south end of the park, that's where most of the activities will be. If the weather is bad on the 28th, listen to KLBJ (FM) or check eeyores.sexton.com. If it ends up being cancelled because of rain, it will be moved to the following Saturday (May 5th). Bring something to bang on and find the big drum circle. I'll be there with my 5-gallon water jug. |
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So yeah, I apparently posted the same thing two different times, over two separate days. And had no idea until my wife told me. Maybe I'll wait another day or two and post it a third time. |
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While shopping around for a used macro lens for my Pentax SLR camera, I managed to get a used lens physically stuck on my camera. What to do? Various options, but ultimately I used a hacksaw to chop it off. Several people I talked to over the weekend were quite interested in how things would turn out, so I took lots of photos and put this page together. |
If you live in Austin, and noticed that you felt like total crap today, I might know the reason why. My wife and I usually keep an eye on the various pollen counts, and we're pretty sure the cedar count is usually around 100. That's more or less "normal" according to News 8 Austin's website, which groups tree pollen counts into these ranges:
A few weeks ago, it was around 1,000 and many people (including myself) complained and dragged around all day. Once you start paying attention, you'll quickly notice a strong correlation between absurdly high pollen counts and lots of co-workers calling in "sick" (can you call in "allergic"?). Today, the cedar count hit 3,617 (again, from News 8 Austin's website). You'll notice that the cedar pollen count today is somewhere on the order of 30-35 times higher than normal. So yeah, if you feel/felt like crap today, you're probably allergic to cedar. Welcome to the club. |
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I've recently been interested in how Alexa Traffic Rank works. They keep data over time and maintain a website ranking system for millions of websites. At any point, you can see how a particular website is ranked and see changes through time. For grins, here is the Alexa page for my domain. At some point a few months ago, my site had a ranking of about 3,600,000. So according to Alexa, there were 3.6 million other websites that were more important than mine. Oh well. But in the past few weeks, my ranking has gone crazy. My overall site rank is now somewhere above 220,000 (the current 1-week average says 220,201, but it used to be higher, so the assumption is my actual "right now" ranking is higher than 220,000). Anyway, my Traffic Rank improved more than 10x. What does that mean? Apparently, not much. The most important detail is how Alexa gathers traffic data. They do so when users install the Alexa toolbar inside their browser, and it silently gathers web surfing data over time. So for starters, we're looking at a cross-section of all internet users - namely, only the people who have this toolbar installed (and that means only Internet Explorer users, so the cool Mac and Firefox users don't count). This raises some important questions. How much does the Alexa user community represent all internet users? Does my site really "matter" if Alexa says it does? Contrast this ranking system with Google's Page Rank and an important difference pops up. Page Rank is a function of website relationships (site A points to site B, that's a relationship), and has nothing to do with what a user does (or what their browser choice is). That is, Page Rank works off of the website content itself, whereas Alexa Traffic Rank works off what users click. Presumably, you could have a website with nothing on it (literally a blank page), but if enough Alexa users click on that website name it would receive a high Traffic Rank. So what would that mean? You could have a Page Rank of 0 (really low) with a Traffic Rank of 200 (really high) for a website that has absolutely no value to the world. I'm tempted to devise a plan to drive traffic to blank web page with the sole aim of skewing Alexa ranking data. So while it's exciting to see my Alexa rank jump way high, it doesn't seem to mean much. |
This is too funny... Microsoft's new "iPod killer" - the Zune - is currently not compatible with Microsoft's very own operating system, Windows Vista. It is true that Vista is not yet for sale in stores, but it will be soon. How soon? Well, after 5+ years of development, they're currently working toward an early December 2006 releaes date. So that's a matter of weeks. It is laughable that the Zune does not support Vista. If Apple had ever claimed anything as ridiculous about the iPod and OS X, they would have been mocked and ridiculed incessantly. And why not? Two products made by the same company should be expected to work together. And so it should be with the Zune and Vista. But it isn't. I took a screenshot just in case they change their website. |
Whoever you are, regardless of your political affiliation, you should watch Hacking Democracy. Watch "Hacking Democracy" right now (runtime 1 hour 22 minutes) |
1. give me the url The first two steps worked fine, although those don't have much to do with Microsoft doing anything correctly. But the last two were lame. The video started playing before it had fully downloaded, and also before enough of the clip was buffered. The result was choppy, shitty video. I clicked "pause" about 9 times before it finally paused the video, and then I let it sit there a bit for the whole video to load before un-pausing. Eventually, I watched the video. Then I tried to close the window, and it popped up a warning dialog! "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" What? You can't be serious! Another fine example of "bad interface", courtesy of Microsoft. |
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Well, after using various beta versions of OmniPlan over the past two months, I can actually say a bit more about it than, well, two months ago. For an application that's still in beta, it's very usable. In fact, I've been using it at work for project management for two months. Yes, it has crashed. Yes, there are bugs. But they keep fixing bugs, making improvements, and adding new features with each successive beta release. They've got an AppleScript library to allow automated actions on a project plan, and plenty (10 or 12?) export options, including Microsoft Project. Without much effort, I built a custom html export template, and have been using that to publish project updates online for my team. The only things I want are extended AppleScript support (specifically to automate export to web page), and fewer / no crashes. Over the past two months, I've sent a dozen emails to their team with feedback / bug reports, and they've actually responded to many of them. They're also taking lots of feedback in their forums. All good stuff. I'm looking forward to the official, non-beta launch of OmniPlan. |
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The word "macchiato" means "spotted" or "marked" in Italian. My drink of choice lately has been a double espresso macchiato, which is a double espresso marked with steamed or foamed milk. If it's made with steamed milk, it's "wet"; otherwise it's "dry" with foamed milk. Ratio-wise, my favorite coffee house makes it 1:1 ratio of espresso to milk, but other places use different amounts. I'm sitting in Starbucks (not my favorite coffee house) right now. I got into a bit of a discussion about how to make this drink for me, since it wasn't part of their regular menu, hence the quick read-up and this post. Anyway, once I sat down, almost as though on cue, the barista walked around asking if anyone wanted a free caramel macchiato. Somebody made the wrong drink, I guess. I don't really know what's in a caramel macchiato, but I think it's a made-up, Starbucks-only drink. So... nobody was interested, and she swore she was throwing that poor drink in the trash! For shame! Can't let that happen! It's now sitting here beside me, waiting for me to digest the double espresso macchiato I just drank like 4 minutes ago. I suspect I'll be awake late tonight... |
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This is brilliant! A group of scammers contacted AT&T claiming to be the owners of a pizza restaurant who were having phone problems. They asked AT&T to please forward all incoming calls to a new, different phone number. So all the scammers had to do was sit back, wait for people to order pizza, and insist they pre-pay for over the phone. Whaddya know, it worked like a charm. And why not? The customers initiated the call! |
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When I was a kid, I idolized Steve Vai (along with several other guitar heroes, most of whom I don't listen to anymore). As an adult, I listen to very few guitar shredders, but if I do it's likely to be Vai, and even more likely a track off Passion and Warfare. Anyway, I randomly stumbled upon vai.com and found the Video Vault. They've got a big ol' notice saying not to link to the individual videos, and it says they rotate videos often, so who knows what's up there right now. Go check it out for some whizbang guitar hero goodness. |
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Jamie Madden at 37 signals just wrote a post today called Getting in too-much touch (interruption is not collaboration), and it really hit home. I can't speak with any real authority about productivity other than my own experience and intuition, but there's definitely something to the notion that increased "collaboration" is really just more interruption. Email, instant messengers, phone calls, voice mail, sms alerts on your phone. And there's always meetings, calendar reminders, co-workers, office noise. Blech. When I'm being gently needled by small (or large) amounts of these individual distractions, it amounts to a single, giant hurdle between me and productivity. In fact, I tend to get most of my best work in the middle of the night when everyone else is offline/asleep. Interruption is productivity's biggest enemy The other thing that I've grown more aware of over time is the ability to recognize when I'm "in the zone". Whatever that really is, all I'm aware of is that it's a state of mind where I'm really focused and capable of being ultra-productive. When I'm in the zone, I get away from distractions and find that I can sit for hours and hours just cranking out big chunks of work. It's energizing and satisfying, and the only downside is that I'm unable to induce it on my own. I've known a handful of people who were absolutely brilliant; like, way high on the IQ scale. Just so incredibly smart that they spend most of their waking hours frustrated and annoyed that the rest of the world is much dumber than they are. I imagine that for people like that, they're in a kind of perpetual "zone" of ultra-productivity and ultra-focus, because they seem to never get tired mentally and never wear out. |
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An accountant named David Canada wrote the following comment about Google spreadsheets: As an accountant myself, I see [Google spreadsheets] as a major collaborative tool that will change workflows in a way that Excel cannot. There are thousands of Excel spreadsheets on corporate networks that nobody knows the relevance of because windows file systems have no indexing or search capability. 99% of business spreadsheets would be served by the Google functionality. |
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This morning, I received my invitation for Google spreadsheets, and thought I'd do a brief write-up of the pros and cons. I'll start with the bad.
And now, the good.
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I'm typing this from a popular coffee house in Austin, Texas. I often work (like, "full-time employment" type work) from coffee houses. I try to avoid going to the same place a whole lot, just so I won't get tired of it. But I have reached my saturation point for Spiderhouse, and I am not coming back. Ever. Why? Keep reading, and I'll tell you. Shitty tables and sucky chairs This place is filled with mismatched, broken, and wobbly chairs and tables. Most of the seating is not padded, and the few padded seats have big holes with gross, nasty duct tape peeling off, ready to stick to your butt when you sit down. And the outside seating is the same - junky, messed up tables that they probably bought at a flea market. Listening to bad music is not cool Spiderhouse seems particularly affected by crap music choices. Now, I know musical taste is highly subjective and runs all across the board, so here's the criteria for good coffee house music: people are listening to it, not wearing headphones, and the music creates some kind of pleasant/interesting/etc atmosphere. But I often see other patrons wearing headphones, clearly not listening to the garbage being played over the stereo system. And as far as creating an atmosphere, the only vibe I've ever picked up is "pissed off". They play a lot of angry music here. Loud, obnoxious music that you'd expect to hear from a crappy, no-name band of wannabes, playing in some shitty dive on the wrong side of town. Damn, the music here sucks... Coffee house dorks are completely and totally posing as poor people It is both odd and just plain dumb that fashion has "progressed" or "evolved" to the point where it's cool to dress like you're homeless. Furthermore, as someone who grew up shopping at thrift stores out of financial necessity, it's mildly offensive to see people voluntarily dressing like they can't afford anything better. Are they really poor? Who knows... Maybe they don't have the money to shop for clothing that is less than 20 years old and has had fewer than 5 owners. But then you notice the fancy laptop computers... the iPods... the fact that they're in a freaking coffee house spending money on coffee and snacks in a way that would completely insult anyone who was really poor. If you were poor, you would rarely (ever?) be able to justify spending $4 on a cookie and cup of coffee. Give me a break. (This fits pretty nicely with the shitty music though - "I am poor, I am raw, f*** you!", they seem to say.) Summary Spiderhouse is where you should come when: Note: I will refrain from further dinging Spiderhouse for their unimpressive service, both at the counter or table waiting (both are bad). I will also refrain from discussing their inability to choose an identity - coffee house? bar/beer garden? singles spot for angry punk homeless posers? How about "all of the above, and be sure to stop by next week to see the latest interior/exterior remodeling project!" |
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I read something a few days ago about the new Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston movie "The Break Up". It wasn't good. To paraphrase, the movie was dumb, predictable, severely un-funny and pretty much terrible. What happened afterward is both commonplace, and personally confusing to me. Namely, most people didn't read any of the reviews, went out and saw the movie, and it was only a matter of days before the candid, honest reviews were replaced by things like this: "'The Break-Up' is top weekend film". That article doesn't say anything objective about "The Break Up", other than how much money people flushed down the toilet by watching it. Is it a good movie? According to the reviews earlier this week, it's not. But now (and from here on until it's not in theaters anymore), the press is only going to mention this film in terms of how well it's doing in the box office. There's something wrong with that. A movie can do well at the box office for a number of reasons. It can be a really good film that your friends insisted you should see. Or it could be a sequel to something you enjoyed, so you want to see where the story goes. Or - and this is what seems to be happening with most Hollywood productions these days - it could be rather forgettable film with a bland, predictable plot that a bunch of people go see because Hollywood marketing campaigns work. Add to this list films like "The Da Vinci Code" (everyone I know who has seen this film said it's basically a silly film, worse than the book, with terrible acting) and "King Kong" (oh lord, did that movie suck...). But hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people went to the theaters to see these films. Was it worth it? Were they any good? This constant cycle makes me wonder why audiences aren't more critical of the marketing hype compared to the quality of the film. If anything, the less marketing a film has, the more likely it is to be good. I'm thinking March of the Penguins, Napolean Dynamite, Lost in Translation - all great, entertaining (albeit quirky) films. This exact same marketing hype thing happened with Steve Martin's remake of "The Pink Panther" a few months ago. The first few days it was out, the reviews were just terrible. I mean really, really terrible. But they were marketing the hell out of that movie, and once the box office numbers came in, whaddya know "Pink Panther" is the #1 film. And yet it was terrible. So here are my lessons on movie watching: |
It was the summer of 1988. I had been out skating with Keith Hurt, and we went back to his place to hang out. Without any introduction, he slipped the vinyl album out of its sleeve and cranked the volume. And about 2 seconds later, I was begging him to tell me who the mystery band was. Pretty soon afterward I bought that first album on cassette, and damn did I play the shit out of that poor little tape (yes, it did eventually die). Along with this pleasant walk through my younger days, I also quickly realized that it was 18 years ago. I know I've got a really good memory, but it's a bit odd to have such a vivid mental picture that's nearly two decades old, all triggered by a song. |
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There's a new Apple Store in New York on Fifth Avenue (and it will be open 24 hours a day, too). I don't live in New York, so it's not that important to me. But the website for the new store is pretty cool. They've got a time-lapse video for the first 24 hours. Neat stuff. |
(Btw, if you care, the chart represents the overall increase in traffic during the year 2005). |
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Prior to Drew's death, I had never lost anyone close. Of course I've known people who have died, but I never found myself counting the days or weeks since they were gone. The nearest was the death of my grandparents. They passed away years ago, and it was more or less "now you see 'em, now you don't". What I mean is that on a personal level, it just didn't matter that much. It was sad, for sure, and I'll never forget my grandmother's funeral where I was asked to bury her ashes (man was that creepy, holding that heavy box). But when you lose somebody, the less involved you were in each others lives, the less it matters when they're gone. (And of course it doesn't have to be mutual involvement, which is what makes it possible for so many people to feel sad when a movie star/musician/etc dies). That's what made it so hard for me when Drew died. He was much more than a friend. I feel like I lost a brother. To nobody's suprise, the days and weeks and months continue to tick by. But now I'm marking time, and thinking about him. We're well beyond two months at this point, and things do seem different to me. It's rather depressing to realize, but sometimes it takes an awful experience like this to put your life in perspective and help you realize what's important. A bunch of us talked about that at Drew's funeral, how great it was to put the silly details of our busy lives aside and spend a tiny bit of time together. But we don't do that on a regular basis, and it's a hard habit to break. Even more relevant is Drew's own crusade against apathy and hard habits. I can rarely remember him saying something like, "blah, I just don't feel like doing that". With him, the emphasis was on what he wanted to do, not what he didn't want to do. Maybe it was simply how he communicated his opinions, but it always came off to me like he was somehow immune to the apathy that cripples everyone else. So as time keeps passing and our lives move forward, that's what seems to stick with me. Do what you want to do, and don't do what you don't want to do (unless it's for someone you know or care about, and then maybe you should go ahead and do it just to be nice). Life is what it is, so do what you can to make it enjoyable. |
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It really irks me when writers get up on their pedestal to make a contrived or weak point. (Didn't have anything interesting to say in your editorial this week? Better come up with something!) A good (but made-up) example would be blaming a vegetarian restaurant for the absence of meat in their entrees. In The mystery of the "short" cappuccino, Tim Harford argues that we should be upset with Starbucks for "hiding" product choices that are a better value for the consumer (specifically, cappuccino), and he goes on and on about it, as though to rile us up against Starbucks. At issue is the unadvertised availability of a smaller, more traditional sized cappuccino. He argues that this smaller size is better, even going so far as to cite the World Barista Championship rules. This smaller cappuccino, which is not among the cappuccinos listed on the product board (so it must be requested by the customer), contains less milk foam (thereby increasing the taste), the same amount of espresso as the 12-ounce size (1 shot, so equivalent caffeine buzz), but costs you $0.30 less. Because Starbucks offers this drink at a cheaper price, but does so only by request, we should be angry. To start with, Tim cites the World Barista Championship rules, and points out that Starbucks' smallest listed cappuccino product size does not comply with the rules. Reality check: How long did he have to go hunting to find that the WBC even existed, let alone that they had specific rules for a cappuccino? Does he have any data to show that Starbucks customers know about the rules, or that they even care? I submit that Starbucks customers do not care about the rules (or even know that they exist), and I expect that none of them has any idea about what constitutes a "traditional cappuccino". Go look at the menu at any Starbucks and count the number of completely invented, made-up coffee (and sometimes non-coffee) drinks on the menu. There are many. If Starbucks customers cared about rules or traditional drinks, they would not throw their money at the latest coffee invention from Starbucks. Any visit to Starbucks proves that customers are quite likely to order something extremely non-traditional. Another aspect of his argument is that we should somehow be offended for spending the extra $0.30 on milk foam, as the additional 4 ounces is not espresso but rather more milk. To this, I ask, are you perfectly happy spending $2.35 on the traditional, 8-ounce cappuccino, which is nothing more than a smaller quantity of espresso and milk foam? What are the actual costs of coffee and milk that go into making that $2.35 cappuccino? Who says that $2.35 is a fair price for an 8-ounce, but $2.65 is not? Reality check: All prices at Starbucks are inflated, and by far exceed the cost of ingredients. In general, this applies to all coffee shops on the planet, and all restaurants and bars, too. It is always cheaper to buy the ingredients yourself, whether it is coffee beans, milk, sandwich meat, or whiskey. If you are a customer with a complaint about drink prices at Starbucks, you should: If you do not choose one of the above, you must recognize that you have no grounds to stand on when complaining about product value for anything sold at Starbucks. If you feel that $2.35 is a reasonable value, but $2.65 is not, you are insane. All of their prices are inflated beyond the value of the actual ingredients. None of it is a good value. Get over it. Lastly, it is important to point out that the perceived value of a cappuccino (or any other drink) for any coffee shop customer is not defined by the championship rules or traditional style, but is determined by the customer who consumes the drink. One simple argument in favor of a larger sized cappuccino might be that you get more hot drink stuff to consume, so it will last longer. Tim may be correct that the taste quality of a larger size is not traditional, but his value criteria are not the same as Starbucks customers. Starbucks customers are in general untraditional, as is much of the Starbucks beverage menu. Flaming Starbucks for offering non-traditional beverages is about as silly as flaming a vegetarian restaurant for not serving you a steak. If you don't like the products, go somewhere else. The bottom line is this: If there is a market for Starbucks to sell their products at the prices they choose, you have no say about it beyond keeping your own money in your pocket. Making claims about product value from any retail food or beverage establishment is just silly. It's even sillier when you're talking about Starbucks. |
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I just placed a Kraftwerk reference in a suprising source - Jay-Z's (Always Be My) Sunshine. It's not a direct sample, but is extremely similar to Kraftwerk's The Man Machine, most noticeable right at the end (at 3m49s). I don't think I would have come up with mixing rap with German techno-pop, but the result is good. |
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Microsoft has been in the news recently after announcing that Windows Vista will not be released in 2006. Right now, they're saying it will be ready in early 2007, but who knows. They've been slipping Windows release dates for several years already, and it has been more than 5 years since the last version of Windows (XP) was released. Here is something I believe to be true: Vista is going to suck, probably more than any other version of Windows before it. Will it have fancy features, like desktop search and sharp looking graphics? Probably, if the development team is able to build the features that the marketing department has already been advertising. But until Vista is built, ready to buy, and sitting on computer store shelves, we are limited to having conversations about a product that, in actuality, does not exist. I'm looking at this from a consumer's point of view: it is irrelevant if a product has been in development for 5 years. If it cannot be purchased today, it does not exist. A little background:
And the problem: according to the New York Times (Windows Is So Slow, but Why?), Windows Vista has already grown to 50 million lines of code. I know Microsoft has a difficult challenge in maintaining hardware compatibility with the world's desktop computers, but 50 million lines of code for an operating system is not only absurd but also direct proof that Windows Vista reeks of bloated over-engineering. I am a professional software developer, and I'm absolutely certain that no development group at any company (Microsoft or not) will ever be able to maintain and develop a product with 50 million lines of code. Important point: when a project gets to a certain size, it starts to fall apart and create problems seemingly by itself. I do not believe it's possible to say where that transition from maintainble to unmaintainable occurs in general, but if your project has 50 million lines of code in it, I'd bet you $100 you're on the "unmaintainable" side of the scale. Once you get there, developers have a hard time working consistently. Project leaders have the horrible task of keeping their groups working well together. One group starts working this way, another group that way, oh no we're doing things differently? Let's patch it up and get on track together. Then somebody else comes along and builds something on top of our patch, maybe even 3 groups do this, but that patch really shouldn't have been there in the first place. Then another group sees the 2nd group's code and builds on that, but they shouldn't have done it that way either. And because the entire project has 50 million lines of code, no single individual or group can possibly have any way to verify that things are well-built or architected correctly. Rinse and repeat for a few years and your project will have bugs that nobody will know how to fix, features that once worked will break unexpectedly, and future development will require constant avoidance of potholes and landmines. The project will continue to grow in size and complexity until... it's just as bug-ridden, delicate and crashable as previous versions of Windows. One of the single biggest problems with past versions of Windows has been the sheer enormity of the code base. As with anything in life (home repair, driving directions, etc.), the more complex it is, the more likely you are to experience problems. Software is no different. And a project with 50 million lines of code is doomed. |
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The outpouring of support from everyone who knew Drew, and even those who didn't, has been unbelievable. Drew made such an impact on so many people. He was far and away one of the most influential people in my entire life, and I just cannot believe that he's gone. A few of his close friends have put together a website where friends and family can share their stories, photos, and awesome memories of Drew Lippolt. Please visit goodbyedrew.com. |
I didn't really sleep last night, kept awake thinking of Drew. I cannot believe that he is gone. I feel devastated, and cannot begin to imagine what Sachi is going through. It seems impossible to think that life will go back to being normal. I think it won't. I have so many great memories of Drew, but one of the most special was a little more than one month ago. It was the day our son was born. I had been on the phone calling our closest friends and family, but I couldn't reach Drew. He changed his mobile number so many times that I stopped updating my phone long ago, opting instead to look him up on my computer (emails, etc.) if I needed to call him. We were both always online anyway, so instant messenger or email was the usual means of communication. But I really wanted to tell him that we were parents, and didn't have a way to do that from the hospital. I don't know if it was luck, coincidence, or something else, but Drew decided to call me that evening. He had good news to share: we had been threatening to get out to Iron Rock Raceway to race go-karts, and he had stumbled upon an opportunity to get an old kart that we could fix up and race. We talked about that a little bit, and then I said I had good news too: we were parents, and had a beautiful baby boy. He was so excited, and wanted to come see us, but didn't think he could make it until after midnight. For anyone who knew Drew, you know he was not bound by practical things like time of day - if there was an opportunity in front of him, he would take it. It didn't matter if it was the middle of the night. He stopped at the store to pick up some food for us, and came that night to the hospital. He stayed with us until about 2 am. He was so happy to see our child, taking him into his arms immediately. It was as though he had been a parent 100 times before. Seeing Drew hold our son just seemed right, and it was simply wonderful. I feel so lucky to have been a part of it. Drew was one of the most important people in my life, and it means so much that he met our son on his first day of life. It feels a bit unfair that my wife and I could have this awesome memory and keep it to ourselves, so for all of you out there who knew and loved Drew, I wanted to share. |
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Here's a thought problem: An airplane taxies in one direction on a moving conveyor belt going the opposite direction. Can the plane take off? I just heard about this today. Apparently, it consumed a bunch of people's time at work, resulting in a flurry of email throughout the day. But since I'm not on the "total time wasting email lists", I didn't hear about it until this evening. If you're not up to speed, a quick Google search will help: conveyor belt jet take-off problem. Anyway, the idea is that a gigantic conveyor belt sits underneath an airplane, and you have to answer the questions of whether the plane can take off, and why. Here's my take: people are inclined to think of the airplane's motion as they do car motion. That is, wheels are what propel a car forward, and wheel spin would cause the conveyor belt to spin, therefore keeping the car in a fixed position. But airplanes do not generate power through wheel motion. On an airplane, motion occurs as the result of thrust generated by the engines. During take-off, wheels keep the plane off the ground so it does not drag along the runway. Wheels are not a means of propelling the plane, or applying forward motion, or anything other than keeping the plane off of the ground. That's all. Back to the car analogy, the wheels are quite clearly related to the forward motion of the car. No wheel motion, no car movement. Everyone agrees on this. But for an airplane, you could theoretically remove the wheels altogether, and with enough engine force, drag the plane along the ground until it reached take-off speed. This is because the engine force is applied as thrust through the air, not as rotational motion applied to the wheels. Whether the conveyor belt is there, or not, is irrelevant. Whether the conveyor belt can increase in speed is irrelevant, too. The plane will take off. |
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We just hired a new developer at work, he started this week. When he interviewed a while back, I was one of the people who talked with him about technical stuff. So I was amused at the first thing he asked me: had I read The Perils of JavaSchools before the interview? I hadn't, but I just did and I can see why he asked. I spent a lot of time in the interview asking about memory allocation and memory management, both of which happen for free in a programming language like Java. We also talked about iteration vs. recursion, how they work, what's good, what's bad, what kinds of memory considerations need to be made, etc. The funny thing is that Joel's article above discusses these very topics, only he goes on to make the point that "pointers and recursion" are neglected in C.S. curriculums today. He argues (correctly, I think) that more time in a C.S. program is spent on traiditional C.S. topics (like data structures or algorithms), and less time on things like memory management. From my own experience getting an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, the most useful and practical courses covered assembly language, compilers, operating system, and object-oriented design. Probably not by coincidence, these courses that were taught by professors who weren't professional academics. That is, they had either current or previous real-world experience writing software in the professional world. Seems pretty obvious: discussing c.s. theory in a lecture hall is not good preparation for being a productive contributor to a software development group. So why talk about memory management in an interview? Because I like to ask questions that cannot be answered without applying thought or recalling something you ought to have learned (and retained). It's not very useful or informative to discuss things that are common knowledge (such as queue vs. stack), unless you don't know the answer, which can be really bad. Every technical candidate should expect questions about Java language characteristics, or basic data structures (and be able to nail them to the wall). But if you are unable to compare strings in Java, or describe what a linked list is, we can pretty much wrap things up early and say goodbye. True story: I once interviewed somebody for a Java development position and noticed "emacs, vi" (footnote for the non-technical: these are two popular but different text editors) both listed on the resume. I was curious because I've never, ever heard of anybody using both. In fact, you're far more likely to find a crusade-like passion for one or the other. But not both. So I ask what's up, and was suprised with: "they're good at different things". Really? Like what? "Well, one is good for searching and replacing, and the other is good for moving stuff around". I didn't end the interview there, but I damn well should have. Back to the point, my goal in an interview is to find the knowledge boundaries, because that's where things get interesting. When I can find the edge of what you know really well and are comfortable talking about, that's where the interview becomes a bit more genuine, more authentic, and much more informative. And just as important as your actual answers, I also pay attention to your behavior and attitude. Some people get rude and downright jerky when you ask questions they don't know. Thank you very much, I would rather they work somewhere else. At some point, we will encounter real-world problems that none of us knows the answer to, and if you can't handle an interview scenario like that, you are likely to implode if something goes seriously wrong on a production server while paying customers are online, or if we're working toward a big deadline. A shot of negative energy from someone cracking under pressure is the last thing your team needs. As the interviewer, the challenge is finding that boundary of your comfort zone. This varies with every interview, because each candidate knows different stuff. Sometimes it's hard to find the boundary, other times it's easy. But once you get there, all kinds of interesting things start pouring out. |
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Mitch was one of the funniest comedians I've ever seen, and it was super shitty to hear that he had been found dead in his hotel room last spring. There was a flurry of coverage surrounding his death, but nobody seemed to know what really happened. I remember seeing a lot of "heart failure" claims, but there was never very much information. It seemed like there had to be more to the story. Recently, Spin magazine tracked down reports filed by the New Jersey medical examiner's office. It turns out Mitch died of multiple drug toxicity, including cocaine and heroine. I'm glad to finally know what really happened to him, but it just reminds me of how shitty it is that he's gone. Why couldn't someone else have died, like that antagonistic prick Pat Roberston? Surely he wouldn't be missed, not by me anyway. Oh well. After receiving this same information, Mitch's family posted a note on his website (www.mitchhedberg.net) on December 28, 2005: To Mitch’s Fans, Well, I hope there is an afterlife, and that it has internet access. That way, cool people like Mitch Hedberg can see how much they are missed by the rest of us, and idiots like Pat Robertson can see how glad we are when they're finally dead and gone. Dear Mitch, |
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After an eternity of waiting, our beautiful little baby has finally arrived! We'll be posting more updates (including pictures), but on a different website. This is the last baby update to appear on this blog. From now on, all updates will be on the new website. The new website will be password-protected, so please send an email and I'll set you up. |
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Until recently, I hadn't really considered similarities/differences between democracy and communism. And more specifically, democracy as it exists in the United States. We probably talked about this stuff in high school government class, but like much of my public education, I have only retained the things I was interested in learning. Everything else was erased 4 minutes after the last exam. I think most people are like that, which is why I think public education is a waste of time. But I read something a few months back claiming U.S. life is a lot closer to communism than we'd like to admit. So I dug up Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to find his 10 characteristics of a communist society.
Many of these describe exactly life in the U.S. Namely, free public education, a heavy progressive income tax (thanks IRS), a centralized bank run by the state, government run transportation, cultivation of waste lands, industrial armies, and gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by population distribution. The older I get, the more cynical I am of our government and large corporations. Together, they exert far more power than most citizen bodies, and they're more or less at the helm of our country. That's not to say individuals don't make a difference: they do. But when they do, it's almost always a reactive step in response to something the government and/or corporations did. But it's rarely the other way aroound. We generally don't see individuals initiating something in a purely non-reactive manner. Anyway, it puts things in a different perspective to realize that our country is so easily described by Marx's top 10. |
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the freshest, most mundane details from Starbucks at Far West and Hart Lane at 3:12 pm, there are more employees than customers. right now, it's 4 to 2. it's another rough, Texas winter day: clear, sunny skies, 74 degrees... man, there's just nothing happening here today. totally dead in here. a lady came in and browsed the christmas sale stuff. then she bought some of it. i said it was super dead in here, especially for a friday, and one of the girls said, "yeah, maybe it's because we smell". i told her about the libraries in Dallas banning smelly people. she said that was discrimination. goddamn that's a hairy guy. and he's wearing super short running shorts to show off his hairiness. "see how much hair i have?", he seems to say. 4:06 pm: ok things are finally starting to pick up. a guy came in and asked for a phone book. he is now looking through the phone book. he looks serious. he's using his finger to point things out to himself in the phonebook. it seems like the people who come to this starbucks are a lot older than the people who go to the Anderson/Rockwood location. much more gray hair coming and going. |
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the freshest, most mundane details from Starbucks at Rockwood and Anderson Lane. (I actually wrote this on Tuesday, but didn't post it until today.) lady nearby seems pretty hip, maybe early 40's?, using a fancy PowerBook, cool little flip phone, stylish eye glasses. in stark contrast to all this hipness: wearing a bright red sweater with "bashful" the reindeer on it. wow. two high-school girls, hanging out in the high-back comfy chairs. both of them so slumped down in their chairs that they're resting almost entirely on their backs, not the typical behind area that most people use for sitting. lady arrived on a bike, came inside, got a coffee, went back outside to sit with her bike. she won't take her helmet off. it's been on for more than 30 minutes. sitting, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, still wearing helmet. does she know it's okay to remove the helmet when not in motion? 1:44 pm - the old dancing man is here for his afternoon coffee. i've seen this guy pretty regularly, but never kept track of his arrival time. i call him the dancing man because he kinda bounces and jumps as he walks. he's gotta be 80 or older. i hope i have as much energy when i'm his age. 2:01 pm - the dancing man departs, crossing Rockwood first, then Anderson Lane to head south on Rockwood. a blind lady just bumped into me a few times, feeling her way around to find an empty table. she was nice about it, eventually found an empty table and sat down. oh wow, she has a blind friend. he just bumped into me, too. they both have walking sticks. the blind leading the blind! 3:28 the blind just led the blind out of Starbucks. perhaps the change in temperature was caused by a shift change. the cooler employees have been replaced by warmer ones who crank the freaking a/c. |
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Random observation about usage for the words rejected, dejected, and ejected.
Wouldn't it be simpler if we called dejected and ejected people and things "dejects" and "ejects", just as we call rejected things "rejects"? Much more concise and simple. |
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I've been working at Starbucks most of the day, and something happened that's an absolute first for me. A guy walked up to me, talking like he knew who I was. I had my headphones on, jamming to Any Given Thursday, so right off the bat I'm annoyed to have to pause it. I mean seriously, who wants to have their music interupted? Not me! So this guy starts rambling about how I look like a guy who works at the auto parts store, and can I help him. I'm like, "dude, I do not work at an auto parts store, I don't know what to tell you." After a while he accepts that I'm not the auto parts guy, but then he asks me to help him call them on the phone. So he digs through his pockets looking for the phone number, empyting everything on the table in front of me. He puts three quarters on my notepad, asks me to call the auto parts store to see if they have his flange, but he couldn't find their phone number. Man, there was all kinds of random stuff in his pockets, including fistfuls of peppermint candies (literally, he must have emptied one of those baskets that sits at the cash register at a restaurant). So he's got peppermint candies everywhere, some other random stuff, and then he pulls out a freaking used hypodermic needle and says, "whoa, I should have thrown that away", but then puts it back in his pocket! He keeps talking to me about needing to call the auto parts store, but still can't find the phone number. Then he rambles about how unfair it is that they expect you to see a mile and half without glasses (?), and how they want you to run around everywhere (?). Then he abruptly stops talking, runs over to another guy, then a minute later he bolts out the door. Over the next 20 minutes, he comes and goes several times, then he starts talking to other people nearby. He was still talking to them when I packed up and left. I swear, I am not making any of this up. I almost took a picture of him with my camera phone, but I thought he might freak out. I really wanted a photo of his hands full of peppermint candies. |
Kraftwerk is one of my all-time favorite bands, and it's awesome that they're still going strong. They've got videos posted on their website: Numbers, The Robots, and The Model. More media options available here. They recently released Minimum-Maximum, a 2-disc CD which is absolutely super. The entire album is great, but I tend to listen to the 2nd disc a lot more than the 1st. Definitely part of my regular rotation. Tonight I looked on www.astralwerks.com and saw an update from December 6, 2005. Apparently there's a 2-disc DVD out, and while I couldn't find it on astralwerks' own site for purchase, Amazon has it for less than $20. This is the first official production of a live Kraftwerk show ever. Plus, it's probably the closest most of us will get to seeing Kraftwerk perform live. They still tour pretty regularly (and all over the world, too), but they only hit the biggest cities, and usually only for a few shows. |
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I posted about this last year: a woman in Virginia continued smoking throughout her pregnancy, but was concerned that nearby jackhammer noises would harm her developing baby... My friend Lowell sent me an article by Joe Kennedy that should have accompanied my first post. More details and info about what happened, as well as some interesting commentary about stories like hers and how they're covered by radio and newspapers. |
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I found these pictures from Austin City Limits 2005 posted on myspace. I guess they're not as stlyish and creative (photography-wise) as the ones photos at johnpointer.com, but they're still cool. Especially with the Terminator sunglasses. John, I figured you wouldn't mind my posting them... I mean, you didn't take them, but they are of you. If it's not cool to post these pics here, we'll have to discuss their removal while having a beer sometime in the near future... ;)
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... that you could stumble across John Mayer's blog? I sure didn't expect to find something like it. I only came across it after seeing it mentioned on a friend's blog. So cool, a mega-crazy-superstar musician writes stuff online for you to read. If you're not a fan of his music (or his guitar craftiness, or his general musicianship, or...), it's probably not worth reading. But I'm a fan and found his blog posts interesting and funny. |
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It's been a while since I posted anything about the pending addition to the family. So far, we're still heading toward the finish line, not much else to report. Frankly, I'm a bit bored and ready for the next step! |
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It's official: the voting majority in Texas has approved a state constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage. Apparently, it wasn't good enough to have a state law against gay marriage. And sadly, I think everyone could see this coming from a mile away. The final numbers are not yet in, but it's about 75% for and 25% against the ban. Said another way, 25% of the voters support gay marriage, and 75% support discrimination. I prefer to think well of my fellow Texans (and that's pretty easy to do for folks here here in Austin, unlike the back-asswards people who populate the rest of Texas). But it's a bit unsettling when 3/4 of the population steps up to say, "we're afraid of gay people, we think they're ruining society, and we think it's totally ok to discriminate against other people because they're not like us" [that's my summary of the general point of view, not an actual quotation]. Well hey, to the rest of the non-backward folks out there, I didn't vote to ban gay marriage. In fact, I don't think gay people are causing anywhere near the social disruption that controlling, paranoid, freak-out conservatives cause by being bad parents and weird neighbors, the kind of people who are defined by little more than the church they attend. You want to see some positive changes in local society? Let's take all of those conservative, controlling, "oh-my-god-everyone-else-is-ruining-society-except-for-me!" people and encourage them to think for themselves. I know that's never going to happen, especially because this whole "gays ruin marriage" war is being led by Christians, and it's Christianity itself that trains people at being good followers, not individuals with the capacity for critical thought. Come on, people, don't you have anything better to do with your time? Aren't there a few areas in your own life that you could stand to improve? Why not start with yourself first, before you go running around trying to fix everyone else? Has it ever occurred to you that if your life sucks in some way, perhaps it has more to do with you than with gay people (or anyone else)? [Answer: Yes, your happiness does have more to do with you than anyone else; this applies to you no matter who you are.] It's stunning that grown adults will tell you, with as much seriousness as they can muster, that gay people are ruining the sanctity of marriage. News flash: divorce ruins marriage, not gay people. And 1 out of every 2 marriages in this country (between straight couples) results in divorce. That's half of the married population, and that's a goddamn lot of people. Are the gay-bashers too gay-scared and gay-distracted to realize this? Do they think that it's gay people who are causing 50% of straight folks to get divorced? Or maybe they think that straight people didn't even get divorced until gay people came along and started ruining society, so now straight people get divorced 50% of the time? |
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I don't know how he makes these images, but they have much coolness and I can't stop staring. |
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I just found www.meebo.com, a web service that will log you into AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, or MSN instant messengers, and it does it all through a web browser. Not only is it a slick usage of Ajax, it actually seems rather usable. |
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The song "Talk" on Coldplay's album X&Y has an unbelievably familiar sound. It took me a little while to place it, but I finally remembered why "Talk" sounds so familiar: the chorus sounds just like "Computer Love" by Kraftwerk The music during the chorus of "Talk" sounds so much like Kraftwerk that I can't believe it's an accident on the part of Coldplay. A little googling confirmed that Coldplay's Chris Martin wanted to sample Kraftwerk so badly that he wrote a letter (in bad German) to Ralf Hutter (lead guy in Kraftwerk). According to this site, Martin said, "The only thing I could think of was the pen pal letters I learnt in German lessons at school. I had no idea if they knew who Coldplay were so had to explain myself like a 15 year-old school-boy. Dear Ralf, I sing in a band called Coldplay, blah, blah. I drew a little picture. Everyone says it's extraordinary that they said yes." |
I was contacted a little while ago by a member of Kasablanca Boulevard, a rock band in Canada. They were looking for a photo to use on the cover of their new cd, and they had found a picture I took of an Austin freeway at night (try googling for "freeway at night"). So they wrote me a super nice email asking for permission to use my photo on their upcoming cd. I said "hell yeah, just please send me a copy of the cd when it's done!" The cd hasn't come out yet, but they've incorporated my freeway photo into their website, and given props to me for taking the original photo. This is one of the things that makes the internet so cool. I'm not a professional photographer and haven't done anything to pimp this photo to interested parties, but they found it online and now everybody's happy. |
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We're definitely over the half-way hump, inching closer and closer to the big day. According to the info web pages, the little one weighs about 1.5 pounds and is just over a foot long. |
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Google map link to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tuscon, Arizona, where old military planes go to retire. |
This is a bad day to be allergic in Austin, Texas... |
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This week brings us up to 21 weeks, so we're just past being "half finished". Time is starting to pass a little faster, I think because it's becoming more and more real. Just had the latest checkup and everything's going fine. According to the charts, it weighs about 12 ounces now. We're probably not going to do any more ultrasounds, so... no new pictures. If you're curious, you'll just have to join us in waiting for it come out of the womb. |
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Interesting, there's an entry in Wikipedia for my first name. Among other things, "Kaan" can refer to a day in the Mayan calendar. |
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This is really cool: Time. With a kid on the way, I think Jana and I are going to start something similar. |
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According to the pregnancy calendar, the baby weighs almost 4 ounces and is just about 6 inches long. We heard the heartbeat again last week, so it's becoming more and more real all the time. I can't believe we're barely halfway there! This is taking entirely too long. I can't stand to wait. |
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This table shows the different quadrants associated with the Strengths Finder personality test (Now, Discover Your Strengths, Strengths Finder online test). Note: I posted an updated version of the Strengths Quadrants for Strengths Finder 2.0.
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Just about everybody I know hates realtors (including me). When my wife and I decided to shop for a house, we didn't want to deal with a realtor, but we needed the help. So we were really happy that two of our friends were realtors, because we they're good at what they do, and they don't suck. Basically, they have the good qualities that you want in a realtor (smart, helpful, knowledgeable, competent, plus they're just interesting people) without any of the crap that makes you want to puke (fake personalities, pushing you to do what they want instead of listening to what you want, being annoying, etc.). They're there when you need them, helpful when it counts, and they give you all the room you want to do things your own way. So if anyone is looking for cool, competent realtors in Austin who are not fake plastic puppets, check out www.escapesomewhere.com. For starters, they can hook you up on automated mailings that flood your inbox with interesting leads, and then you just give them a call when you find something interesting. |
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According to the online pregnancy calendar, the little one is more than 4 inches long and weighs nearly 2 ounces. Of course, that's based on the average data after 13 1/2 weeks, so who knows what the actual size/weight are. So many things that we don't know, and we have a long way to go before we can find out. |
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I've written about this on the blog before, but it came up again recently and I wanted to re-post with more information. The topic is cocaine addiction versus other drug addictions. It is widely known that cocaine is highly addictive, more so than many other drugs, and crack cocaine is even worse. What's interesting is a particular study that involved rats in a laboratory. The rats were trained to self-administer a drug, and they were allowed to do so under unlimited-access conditions, meaning they could get a drug hit at any point in time, 24 hours a day. They never ran out of money, they never had to go to work, etc. They had none of the responsibilities or practical obstacles that people face in life. Laboratory rats were given unlimited access to intravenous cocaine hydrochloride or heroin hydrochloride. Animals self-administering cocaine quickly developed a pattern of episodic drug intake, with periods of excessive cocaine self-administration alternating with brief periods of abstinence. So that's kind of interesting, the rats sort of went nuts with cocaine, only taking brief breaks. But with heroin, their usage patterns were pretty constant, only gradually increasing over a period of weeks. But here's where it gets really interesting: The general health of the animals became markedly different: those self-administering heroin maintained grooming behavior, pretesting body weight, and a good state of general health; rats self-administering cocaine tended to cease grooming behavior, lose up to 47% of their pretesting body weight, and to show a pronounced deterioration in general health. Read the full results here: http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUreport06.htm |
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In a flurry earlier tonight, I coined a new term tonight: nipple chip. Definition: to eat ravenously Example: Man, I was so hungry at lunch that I nipple chipped half a pizza! Origin: This hot new phrase came to be when I intended to write, "I wolfed down a bunch of food", while chatting over IM with my wife. But when I thought "wolfed", my brain connected that with "wolf" (pretty straightforward), which pointed to the scene in Life of Brian when the guys were at the colosseum discussing whether Stan could have babies (not so straightforward). Specifically, there was a vendor walking around in the background selling wolf nipple chips, so my brain switched "wolf" with "nipple chips", and that's what came out. And there you have it, the origin of a beautiful new phrase. Random comment: I find it intriguing how this whole process took about 0.2 seconds from start to finish in my brain, yet it takes a ton of explanation to describe to somebody else. |
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A friend of mine is getting a new business off the ground, and I wanted to post it for others to see. It's a neat idea that others might really enjoy, the kind of thing that everyone wants to do but never has the time to follow through. Her business is called Timeless Memory Productions, and it specializes in recording the life stories of loved ones and publishing them in a leather-bound book. A lot of people who are interested in genealogy have to work hard to reconstruct the stories of the past through the few clues they have. Timeless Memory Productions is different in the sense that they construct a biography of the person while they’re still alive, and in their own words. Books typically include about one hundred pages of stories and memories with restored photographs spread throughout. At the end of each book, there is a special tribute section where friends and family can write in fond memories of the person. Finally, there’s a photograph gallery containing an additional fifty photos, digitally restored. If you are interested or if you know of someone who would be interested in something like this, you can check out the website at www.timelessmemoryproductions.com. |
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I saw this in the current issue (#29) of CMYK magazine, it's a student submission from Chicago Portfolio. I don't know who made it, but I thought it was powerful and needed to be spread around. So I'm spreading. |
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I got a copy of Now, Discover Your Strengths and took the Strengths Finder test online. Here are the Strengths Quadrants for each of the different strengths. My top 5 strengths are:
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I've been having a little bit of fun at Mr. Bling and Gangsta Gold. Would I really spend my cheddar on bling like that? Probably not (mostly because I'm white and I would feel like a damn fool). But I sure would enjoy the looks on people's faces if I did... |
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I just took the Right Job, Wrong Job test, the kind where you answer dozens of questions about seemingly random things. The results came back with a personality description for me that seems pretty accurate: Kaan, the Right Job for you will allow you to be Analytical and Creative. Oooh, this is fun stuff, and yet it's kinda creeping me out. After taking the Job test a minute ago, I decided to take the Ink Blot test, too... Kaan, your subconscious mind is driven most by Curiosity. |
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Even though the original goatse.cx site has been shut down, the spirit of goatse.cx is alive and well all across the internet. As ever, goatse content can (and probably will) shock you. I think that's what it's most famous for doing. So anyway, I just clicked several links from the above url, and I'm now in a state of shock. Just thought I'd share. |
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The World On Fire video did a great job of making me feel like I'm wasting my time writing software... |
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I just finished installing a new hard drive in my 2 1/2-year-old 800mhz G4 Powerbook, and I'm so excited that I have to share. Two reasons motivated me to upgrade the from the stock 40gb IBM drive (IBM-IC25N040ATCS04) - speed and capacity. The 40gb drive now lives in an external drive enclosure, and has been replaced by a 7200rpm 60gb Hitachi (HTS726060M9AT00). For anyone considering the upgrade, do it now. I ran Xbench before and after installing the new drive, and it shows that some aspects of drive activity are as much as 3 times faster (!). Here are the results with the 40gb stock IBM drive: System Info Xbench Version 1.1.3 System Version 10.3.5 (7M34) Physical RAM 1024 MB Model PowerBook3,4 Processor PowerPC G4 @ 800 MHz Version 7455 (Apollo) v2.1 L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data) L2 Cache 256K @ 800 MHz L3 Cache 1024K @ 201 MHz Bus Frequency 134 MHz Video Card ATY,RageM7 Drive Type IBM-IC25N040ATCS04-0 Disk Test 33.50 Sequential 40.74 Uncached Write 35.52 14.81 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 33.37 13.66 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 84.01 13.30 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 35.50 14.34 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 28.45 Uncached Write 17.81 0.27 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 28.54 6.44 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 40.85 0.27 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 40.08 8.25 MB/sec [256K blocks] This is after I installed the new 7200rpm 60gb drive: System Info Xbench Version 1.1.3 System Version 10.3.5 (7M34) Physical RAM 1024 MB Model PowerBook3,4 Processor PowerPC G4 @ 800 MHz Version 7455 (Apollo) v2.1 L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data) L2 Cache 256K @ 800 MHz L3 Cache 1024K @ 201 MHz Bus Frequency 134 MHz Video Card ATY,RageM7 Drive Type HTS726060M9AT00 Disk Test 72.14 Sequential 73.51 Uncached Write 83.54 34.82 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 55.23 22.62 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 107.72 17.05 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 66.43 26.84 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 70.83 Uncached Write 59.51 0.89 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 73.89 16.66 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 80.02 0.53 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 73.31 15.09 MB/sec [256K blocks] |
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I've been thinking about anonymity lately, how it can exist so easily in one context and be completely elusive in another. In some aspects of life, we enjoy the simplicity of disappearing into the background; in other aspects, we have no hiding places at all. At a bar, restaurant, movie theater, etc., it's pretty easy for others to notice you if you do something out of the ordinary. But even if you're noticed by those in the immediate vicinity, you still retain a huge amount of anonymity relative to the rest of the the world. What's more, whatever happens in public exists one moment and disappears the next. In a public environment, there is little retention of events (beyond the stories that make it to the evening news). Everything else just happens, and then it's gone. But on the internet, your actions persist. They linger, they're cached, stored, indexed, referenced. All it takes is one person or one entity, anywhere in the world, to take notice of something you've done and capture it, or propagate it. Anonymity starts to disappear. I realize that the above scenarios only apply when an individual uses a single identity in both the real world and the electronic world, and I'm fully away that many (most?) people don't do this. But that cross-section of the population that has a single identity, however small it might be, it's the group that I'm a part of. And so, for me, the anonymity issue exists. Anybody who knows me in the real world knows my name, and they can easily find me on the internet if they take a little initiative. The converse is true as well, people who only know me online can see a snapshot of my existence through this site. So while people might be out in the world, secretly looking into my world, they maintain their own anonymity with me. I don't even know they're there. Sometimes I wonder who peeks into my world, I wonder whether I know them at all. I used to enjoy reading mundane details about total strangers, but that got kinda old. But who reads what I write? I have no idea. So co-workers, friends, strangers, family... they're all out there, on my mind, encouraging me to share some things and censor others. |
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I was on Friendster a little while ago, and noticed a collection of "Popular Searches" that people were running through the Friendster system. An amusing slice of social interest.
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I'm all about minimalism right now, and the recent overhaul of the ui shows it. Things are so much cleaner and simpler looking now - barely any color, very little wasted space. It's music to my, um... eyes. |
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I'm in a ranting mood. Today, amidst a general discussion in the office about whole grain breads, a few co-workers and I were graced by a brief rant by another co-worker who said that the cost of buying wheat bread at $2.00 per loaf was too expensive compared to buying white bread at $0.60 per loaf. He said that for his four kids, the additional price to purchase wheat bread was just too expensive, and that we didn't know what we were talking about because nobody with four kids would buy wheat bread for their families. It is simply too expensive. I find it amusing that, maybe 6 months ago, this same person bought a brand new Chevrolet Avalanche truck. According to fueleconomy.gov, the various Avalanche models get between 14 and 20 mpg, which means that in addition to the car payment he makes every month, he's paying more for gasoline cost than he would for something smaller, like a Honda Civic (26 to 31 mpg). Following the numbers, he could see an improvement of bewteen 6 and 17 mpg by driving a Civic. Even though I attempted (in vain) to point out that it was simply a choice on his part to not buy healthier bread for his children, and instead pay more for other things (like more gasoline for his truck), he refused to acknowledge that he had a choice. So what's my point? This guy is a middle- to upper-class, educated, intelligent white male who has the means to both understand and embrace a healthier lifestyle, yet he refuses to do so. If somebody like him cannot accept that he makes unhealthy choices in life, how is it possible for lower-income, less educated, less intelligent people to do any better? |
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A talk radio show was recently discussing the issue of obesity, whether or not it should be considered a disease. The trend in this country has been to treat obesity as a disease, confirmed by the Medicare policy shift that formally classifies obesity as a disease. But the Center for Consumer Freedom says obesity is not a disease, and the CCF's executive director said: "This is truly a dumbing down of the term 'disease'. This is the only disease that I'm familiar with that you can solve by regularly taking long walks and keeping your mouth shut." -- Center for Consumer Freedom's Executive Director I suspect the Director has not heard of "alcoholism" before, because it is also categorized as a disease and shares the same solution of "keeping your mouth shut". The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence says: While "idiocy" may not technically be a disease, the Executive Director of the CCD might consider avoiding it by keeping his own mouth shut, thus avoiding any opportunities to make stupid comments in the public forum. The funny thing is, what's going on is anything but a "dumbing down" of the term "disease". A disease is more than something you catch from another person's sneeze, or by not washing your hands. The second definition of "disease" according to Merriam-Webster, is "a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning". What is "dumbed down" about "obesity" being classified as "a condition that impairs normal functioning"? Is anybody out there trying to argue that it's normal for a person to risk having a heart attack while climbing a flight of stairs because he's carrying around an additional 150 pounds of blubber? Or is it normal for somebody to be unable to reach their feet to put on their shoes? But hey, what the hell should I care? Anything that might lower my insurance premiums would be a good thing, right? Our health insurance premiums are huge right now, thanks in no small part to the mandatory subsidizing (by people like me) of the excessive health problems in the obese population. And when I say "excessive", I mean "excessive compared to me". I live a healthy, fit lifestyle, I eat well, exercise regularly, have no known health issues, and take no medications or prescriptions. But despite our own lifestyle choices, my wife and I pay large insurance premiums to have basic coverage. Shouldn't we get a discount? |
People shouldn't be fooled by my short hair these days, I still wish I had an afro. In fact, the only consideration I've ever given to using hair regeneration products has been in the context of achieving big, huge afro hair. And I wish everybody dressed like it was the 1970's. I mean, come on, picture it... huge platform shoes, tons of colors, flowing clothes, everyone being all groovy and cool. It sure beats the glam rock 80's, the grunge/urban of the 90's, or the whatever-the-hell-is-going-on-now of the 00's. I'm a bit miffed that I wasn't even born until the 70's were halfway over... |
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At just under four months in the pregnancy, what was supposed to be a routine visit to our midwife today turned everything upside down. I feel numb right now, kinda dead to external input. After tomorrow morning, the pregnancy will be terminated. At four months in, it's a big blow to have everything come to a screeching halt like this. The doctor said it's a molar pregnancy, which means a baby did not form. The weird thing is that the mother's body marches along just like it would for a normal pregnancy. The only way to identify a molar pregnancy is through an ultrasound, and we did the first one today. Hence the bad news. I left the hospital at some point to pick some things up from the store (snacks, and the latest issue of People magazine for Jana to read). As I walked around the store, I found myself really sad and annoyed that other people could be enjoying themselves today. There were a few people just talking in the grocery store aisles, having a lighthearted conversation, but all I could think about was the bad news we received today. We'll definitely try again, and all of the information sources say we won't be considered a high-risk pregnancy in the future, so that's a bit of good news. This is just one of those things that happens. It's tough, for sure, but what can you do? Somehow, we'll get through it and move on. I joked with Jana earlier tonight, "one day we'll look back on this day and laugh", poking fun at the expression people so often use to lighten up a difficult situation. She immediately caught my sarchasm, and came back with something else silly to lighten the mood a little more. But there's no hiding the heaviness of the situation. It's important for us to keep each other's spirits up, and try to distract each other a little bit. At least until we can get used to the sudden change in our life plans. After a molar pregnancy, we need to wait a full twelve months before we can start trying again, so that's definitely a blow to our plans and expectations for the future. For now, we've got nothing but time. All of our friends and family have been so supportive and understanding, which is really touching and comforting. I keep finding myself bouncing between feeling fine and feeling extremely upset. I guess that's normal in this kind of situation, but it definitely doesn't feel normal to me. I can't think of anything else in my life that was as big of a blow as this. Oh well, I'm not gonna try to fight it. I'm thankful that we're getting such strong support from everyone while we get through this. |
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I have not yet seen the movie, but it's difficult to avoid the excitement and rattled nerves of all the people who have. On Sunday, this story was posted on /., and (assuming you're interested in the movie itself, the issues, the lies, the truth, etc.) you may find the various posts interesting as well. What I find interesting about the whole Michael Moore phenomenon is that people keep bashing him on the grounds that CNN or Newsweek published a different version of something he said, and that therefore he is wrong because clearly they (CNN and Newsweek) are right. I find that really sad, not because people disbelieve Michael Moore (I don't really care about that), but that people do believe everything the major news corporations tell us. I'm waiting for the day (and I probably won't have to wait too long) when people say you're a bad American if you don't blindly trust the gigantic media mega-corps... |
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Holy crap, if this isn't a cry for help, I don't know what is. From Madonna reinvents herself as Esther: "I did spend, you know, at least a decade taking my clothes off and being photographed, saying bad words on TV, and, you know, that sort of thing," she told ABC's Cynthia McFadden. "I don't regret it, but it's just ... I mean everybody takes their clothes off now. And then what? You know? And -- and then what?" Ok, she didn't make that last comment, but dammit wouldn't it have been funny if she had? |
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Thought I'd take a minute to point out one of many examples of misinformation and falsification from mainstream media in our country. Sure, there are all kinds of theories about media sources mangling factual information, but a lot of the time it's about something controversial that cannot be proven easily. But today, one of the major news stations in Austin, News 8 Austin, published the following story on their website ("Hotels already booked for upcoming events"): "If you think it's hard to get a room in Austin with the Republic of Texas bike rally in town right now, it's going to be even harder in September. Who knows how many Austin residents (even cyclists) are expecting the World Championships to take place in Austin later this year. But it's not going to be in Austin, or even in this country. If you want to be anywhere near the actual World Mountain Bike Championship in 2004, you'll need to get yourself to France (see the full UCI race schedule for September). I expect that somebody will tip off the local news station to inform them of their factual butchering, which is why I copied the relevant portion of their news story above. I'd like to think that someday people in this country might question the media a little more often, maybe even think for themselves, rather than believing every single thing the tv stations and newspapers try to cram down our throats. Update: I checked the link at the end of the day today, and see that they edited the story to remove any mention of the World Mountain Biking Championships happening in Austin. |
I'm usually one of the last people to arrive at the office in the morning (and also one of the last to leave at the end of the day). On the random days when somebody brings in a box or two of donuts for communal consumption, it's a rare occasion for me to find any donuts left. But not today! To my suprise, I entered the kitchen late in the morning and found donuts everywhere, various shapes, numerous varieties, even from different vendors. It was truly a donut-licious experience. Apparently, it's National Donut Day. Sure, it sounds like a silly holiday, but silly or not, our kitchen is full of donuts and there's nothing silly about that. I don't know or care who started the holiday, or if anyone else is observing it besides our office. But I do know that this is one of the best holidays on the calendar. I mean, seriously, we need more yummy snack holidays between Easter and Christmas, and National Donut Day fills that need. Do your part. Eat a donut today. |
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Got into a conversation today at work about dns and address translation, and we started messing around with ways to create strangely formed urls. Among our discoveries, we learned that you can specify a url as a hexadecimal number. The behavior works correctly in Mozilla Firefox, as well as some versions of Internet Explorer. To see if your browser works, try going to 0xd86d764d (you should see the Yahoo home page). The breakdown is that the destination ip address is represented in the above hex number ("0x" denotes "hexadecimal number"), where each class of the ip is represented by a pair of hex digits. So 0xd86d764d is broken down as a hex ip address, namely d8.6d.76.4d. If you convert those individual hex numbers into decimal, you get 216.109.117.204 which resolves to www.yahoo.com. You can also insert any other valid hex digits immediately after the initial "0x" and they will be ignored. Said another way, the last 8 hex digits are parsed as the address, and everything else is ignored. So 0xd86d764d should resolve to the same destination ip as 0x00099909adff8dd9d97900000000000d86d764d. This brought up a silly discussion of hunting for web hosting providers by the coolness of the hex converted ip address. For instance, 0xdeadbeef (which translates to 222.173.190.239) would be ultra cool. You wouldn't even need a domain name anymore, you could just share your site location as the hex coded value. Think about it, no more domain registration fees! |
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I just discovered that Microsoft is trying to lure people from the popular (free, secure, fast, extensible, etc...) web server Apache in favor of their own Internet Information Services web server (or "IIS"). The marketing hype is called simply Try IIS. On the main page at tryiis.com, they list 6 reasons why you should consider IIS 6.0. I like picking on Microsoft (sometimes it's too easy to resist), so here I go... Reason #2: "Rebuilt security from the code level up that reduces attack surface area and blocks most known types of Web attacks." -- That means you'll get more security against the massive security flaws regularly discovered in Microsoft's software. Got that? You could leave a fairly secure OS such as Linux or OSX, and switch to a Microsoft-based system. And even though you had a perfectly secure system before, you'll enjoy IIS's "rebuilt security" (whatever that is). Or you could avoid the Microsoft security disaster altogether and go with Apache instead (even if you have to run Windows, it would still be a security improvement to run Apache). Reason #3: "Reliable support you can depend on for tested solutions, training, and more." -- This means that when (not "if") you encounter problems with your web services, possibly trying to do basic things that other products might do without problems, you can call somebody to get help. This may sound like a feature of IIS, but in reality it's a necessity. I know a lot of individuals and companies that base their entire web presence off of Apache, and they've never needed any support for it. Who needs support for something that works, and is modifiable if you discover that something's busted or not the way you like it? Reason #4: "Powered by Windows Server 2003." -- Yikes! See Reason #2 above concerning security. Reason #5: "A complete set of integrated application services that enable faster application development and reduce time-to-market for critically needed Web applications and services." -- I'm not sure about this, but it smells like they give you a big sack of VB or .NET widgets. One more thing to break or open up security vulnerabilities on your machine, but thank gawd you've got that "reliable support that you can depend on"! |
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I've been reading about the various people who have gone over Horseshoe Falls over the years. This guy, Jesse Sharp, had a shockingly bad way of riding the water - in a kayak, with no life vest or helmet. Here he is about to go over, the last experience of his life. A separate news report said his body was found the next day. |
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Wireless connectivity isn't too special these days, nor is streaming radio. Tiny high-power PDAs aren't too impressive either. But a co-worker put them all together - listening to streaming radio over a small, handheld PDA, with no wires attached - and it's ultra-cool. He's got a headphone jack on the unit, too, so he could easily plug in and take his music with him around the office, coffee house, etc. This reminds of what's cool about being a geek. The rest of the world will need to wait a long time before this kind of thing is mainstream enough to buy it at Fry's or Best Buy and set it up yourself. Sure, anyone could go buy the same pda and follow the same steps, but most computer users don't have the skills to configure anything more complicated than a vcr (and we all know how many vcrs still flash ...). |
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As I write this, there is a couple engaged in heavy petting behind my office building, in what appears to be an illicit relationship. How can I be so sure? First, the man arrived in a truck, and parked in one of the least visible spots in the parking lot (though it's visible from my desk at work, which is where I am right now, happily spending part of my Saturday working for The Man). Curious to find out more, a co-worker and I looked for clues. No more than 30 seconds after the arrival of the man in the truck, we watched a small sedan (driven by a woman) zip right over to the same spot. She hadn't even stopped the vehicle when he opened his door and got out, and her car had barely stopped moving when he hopped in. With no time to lose, they immediately got intimate (nothing raunchy, just lots of kissing and hugging). And when I say "no time to lose", I mean the guy got into her car, shut the door, and about one second later they were going at it. Not convinced yet? Kevin, my co-worker, pulled up a website that lets you look up information by license plate. I read the plates on the guy's truck, Kevin looked up the info. Turns out that the truck is registered to Fritz and Debra (they have the same last name, but I don't want to print it here). Unfortunately, we couldn't find any info on the woman's vehicle (and thus cannot confirm her identity), but I'm extremely comfortable believing that she is not his wife Debra. |
One of my friends came over tonight, and we got to talking about old video games. I've been into Gauntlet, Joust and Dig Dug lately, and we talked about other cool games, like Tempest. I remember being a kid, playing Tempest, and wondering why there was a big monster on the cabinet graphics when the game itself contained no monsters whatsoever. So I just did a search and hunted down this graphic, showing the cool monster that never appears in the game. |
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I was in the men's restroom this afternoon just as a co-worker was on his way out. It didn't take much to notice that he didn't wash his hands before leaving, which is an instant gross-out in my book. I know there are plenty of people out in the world who don't believe in washing their hands after going to the bathroom, but that doesn't make it any less gross. One of my favorite arguments is, "who cares? I've been doing this my whole life and I ain't dead yet." Well, to that point, I could shoot you in the arm and cut off your leg, and pretty much guarantee proper medical attention would keep you alive, but that doesn't mean it's frickin' good for you. I guess some people have really, really low standards if their worldview says the only negative consequence to consider is death. Anyway, I'm generally pretty accepting of others' decisions and way of life, but only to a point. For instance, I'm not too happy about accepting the following:
So what can I do? Tell the guy he should wash his hands? Or maybe I could tell everyone else to steer clear of the communal food, because Mr. Nasty Hands has rummaged through the contents? Or just keep it to myself, making a point to never eat any snacks again? Perhaps I wouldn't care if I weren't so observant and aware. That way I wouldn't have noticed who did or didn't wash his hands, nor would I have remembered seeing those same shitty hands dig around through communal food. Indeed, ignorance must be blissful. |
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Just gave a quick read through RFC 1725, then telnet'ed to my mail server and manually read my email through a command terminal. In the words of Triumph, I am a huge nerd. :P |
According to this grammar quiz, I am a Grammar God. When I saw the results page with this picture, my mind immediately began replaying quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("Good idea, O Lord!"... God: "Of course it's a good idea!"). |
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I put a cap on this morning (raining outside... must keep bald head dry...), and took it off once I got to the truck. No sooner had I taken my cap off than a wolf spider hopped out. I'm not panicky about spiders, but I would have rather not had one sitting on my head. I was immediately reminded of my inability to recognize a brown recluse, so I did a little research just now to confirm that what was on my head this morning was not dangerous (it wasn't). Here's a good info page on wolf spiders. This page shows two good pictures of a brown recluse, with some tips on how to identify one. |
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After posting a calorie chart from Chipotle, I tallied up my lunch from today and I'm a bit shocked at the sodium content. My burrito had a 13" tortilla, rice, black beans, fajita vegetables, red tomatillo salsa, and cheese. Here's the breakdown:
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A small group of guys at the office were trying to decide where to eat lunch today, and one insisted on eating at McDonald's. He was really jonesing for french fries. So he went to McD's by himself, and the rest of us went somewhere else. When we were all back at the office, I got him to come over to my computer to tally up how many calories he just ate. Using the Nutrition Facts from McDonald's own website, we came up with the following:
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William Hung has an album on the way, The True Idol. And somebody at work pointed out that a few exclusive tracks at the iTunes Music Store. |
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The "helmet debate" seems to never die. It's kinda like talking about abortion, gay marriage, or Israel/Palestine - there are good arguments for both sides, and whatever your opinions, it is clear that neither side can convince the other side that they're right. So yeah, helmets. There was a thread on a cycling forum recently about helmets, whether they should be required, etc. Here's the way I look at it:
Still don't agree? Just ask this guy. |
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About two months ago, I ordered a copy of my credit report from Experian. It was an online signup, and I remember agreeing to pay a small fee (maybe ten bucks) to get the credit report. I know you can get a free copy, but didn't know who to go through for that and $10 isn't really worth my time to investigate. So I just ordered a copy through Experian. While going through the order, I had to agree that I would be automatically enrolled in some nebulous "credit safety" program for $89 per month. The thing is, once I had received the credit report, it would include instructions for me to cancel this automatic service. A little leery, I decided to proceed but made mental notes to keep tabs on this issue. A month went by without the arrival of a credit report, and additionally there was nothing on my credit card statement from Experian (or any other name). I figured my request had somehow been foobar'ed, and nothing more would come of it. Fast forward another month (to today), and I saw an item on the credit card statement for $89. Niiiice. I just got off the phone with those clowns, I asked them to remove the charge for their silly "credit safety" service (they did). Just to be sure, I said, "I'm not going to be billed for anything else from you guys, and I'm not part of any other recurring automatic billing thing, right?" To which the operator replied, "There is an automatic renewal in the program after one year. Would you like me to cancel that as well?" Hmmm... how about yes? Why would I possibly want to stop a service (for $89!), but want it to kick in again after a year? Does anybody say, "No! Don't cancel that! I only want the service to stop temporarily, not forever". It's like a prompt from the average Microsoft software product, "You are about to close this window, do you really want to close it? Once it has been closed, you cannot open it again! So are you sure you want to close it? Are you sure you're sure? We're serious! Are you really, really sure?" Moral of the story: always check your credit card statement for fishy stuff. |
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Our neighbors, the crazy married couple, are going at it again. She's been in and out of their apartment over the past few months, leaving when she and her husband get in a fight. He's pretty much there all the time. The thing is, she's been in and out of the local psychiatric hospital more times than we know, but she doesn't take her medicine (not a good idea when you're crazy). So every and again they have a "domestic issue". Tthe cops have visited them 3 times tonight. A lot of the time the cops will directly ask her if she's taken her medicine, then she says no (big suprise), then they say she should, then she starts freaking out agian. A few hours ago, we heard some rustling at our door. I got up and looked through the peephole and her head pressed up against our door, presumably to listen for signs of us being home (we had a movie on). I made myself comfortable on the couch to continue with the movie when the knocking started. She knocked on our door for 30 or 45 seconds, definitely long enough for us to deliberate back and forth about whether we should answer it. We decided to ignore her, probably for the best. Don't get me wrong, if I could do anything directly beneficial I would certainly consider it. But we recognize that there isn't much to be done for a lady who routinely acts like a nutball. One night, she sat outside accusing her husband of hiding 4 people (including her dead brother) in the apartment with him while she had been away. That's one time I wish I had a video camera with me. She stood outside the door, yelling loudly, demanding all of these people to come out. When the cops finally showed up, she began explaining to them about these 4 people hiding in the closet (there were no people hiding in the closet). It was funny, strange, and sad to see this poor woman in such desperation. I talked to the police that day (on their way out), and they mentioned that this time of year was always hard on her (around Christmas), she starts hallucinating about her dead brother, and please if we hear any more noise just call the cops and they'll take care of it. They were totally nice about the situation, despite obviously having been through this before. I felt sorry for the cops. I mean, why become a cop? So you can go to the same apartment again and again, talking to a unemployed, overweight, smoking, crazy woman who stands outside her apartment yelling at imaginary people? |
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Hmm... have you ever wanted to Cook Your Way Into Her Pants? I don't know that they could be any more direct that this... |
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Hrm, I just found out that one of the guys I raced against last weekend (and the eventual winner of the race), is professional triathlete James Bonney who competes in races all around the world, including multiple Ironmans and marthons. And now he's racing Cat 5 USCF road races. Pshah! fyi: when you start out racing road bikes, you have to ride Category 5 for until you've done 10 races, then you move up to Category 4. Based on performance, you move up to 3, then eventually Cat 2. With more time and performance, you get to Cat 1, then after a long ass time you can try to turn professional. This Bonney guy is probably on par with Cat 1 or professional riders, and therefore way stronger than anybody else in the Cat 5 field. I guess he needs to get his 10 races in before he can cat up to racing 4's (and even then it's not gonna be a fair match), but for the time being I hope to God he doesn't show up at the same races I do. |
"Libby's Potted Meat is a delicately seasoned spread perfect for sandwiches and snacks. Stir in chopped onion, salsa or pickle relish for variety." What more do you need? Potted Meat is perfect for sandwiches and snacks! There is nothing better, because it's perfect! Well, it might be perfect if you've managed to avoid reading the ingredients list... The ingredients of Libby's Potted Meat are as follows:
After noticing Potted Meat at a convenience store, I had to buy a can of it. No, I haven't opened it (and I don't intend to). One glaringly huge question comes to mind: "who eats this stuff?" I'm tempted to call their we'd-like-to-hear-from-you! phone number (1-800-727-5777, Mon-Fri 9am-4:30 Eastern) and ask what their sales numbers are for Potted Meat. I suspect that Potted Meat is the leftovers from making canned dog food, but they didn't know what to do with all the random cow and pig parts when they had made enough dog food. Somebody must have said, "Ah! We shall make something for humans with these extra body parts! And we shall call it Potted Meat!" Update Sept. 7, 2004: curiousity got the best of us, and we finally opened the can of Potted Meat. Inside was a pourable meat sludge that smelled like Vienna Sausages. Coincidence? No way, because Vienna Sausages are made of the same ingredients. I considered feeding the Potted Meat to the neighborhood cat, but it seemed cruel. |
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Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" just cued up on the iPod randomizer. It's interesting to listen to music when I'm sitting at my desk working, because I pay attention to things I've never paid attention to before. For instance, prior to today I've never heard this set of lyrics: You’re a vegetable, you’re a vegetable Um, what? I'm a buffet? |
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Have you been looking for a web-based service that will do rot13 encoding? For free? Well look no more! Visit rot13.com now and you will quickly be able to decode rot13'ified text, such as this excellent 80's movie quote, "lbhe zbzzn jnf n fabjoybjre". And if you use vim, you can use the build-in rot13 support by typing |
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After Walburg on Saturday and Pace Bend on Sunday, I'm tired and ready to ride my bike slowly again. Both events were good, and I learned several things to do (or not) for future races. Did I challenge myself? You bet. Did I have fun? No doubt. Am I gonna do more? Hell yeah. |
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I haven't entered a road race in 10+ years, so it's with much anticipation that I await tomorrow's race at Walburg. I'm in reasonably good shape, and not too concerned about being dropped or put into huge amounts of pain. But I'm still totally excited/anxious about actually doing a race. The last few days have seemed like an eternity while I waited for the weekend to arrive. Anyway, as long as I finish with the pack (and I don't get taken out by some squirrely rider) I'll consider the day a success. I haven't been much of a sprinter before, so unless I'm feeling really strong tomorrow I expect my non-sprinting trend to continue. It's interesting to note the differences in my outlook on racing now versus 10 years ago. Back then, I could barely afford to own a bike, let alone the cost of clothing, parts, race fees, etc. And I took things kinda seriously back then because it was such an investment for me to participate in a race. Contrast that with now, I've got the financial support to race without concern for the costs involved (not that I don't pay attention how much I spend on cycling... I do pay attention) and the extra wisdom to see that I should be out there to challenge myself and have fun. So despite the anxiety, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. |
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Witchcraft? Supernatural? I had no idea. From Merriam-Webster online dictionary: Main Entry: weird |
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Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the World Cup Stacking Association. What is cup stacking, you ask? "Cup stacking is an exciting individual and team sport where participants stack and unstack 12 specially designed plastic cups in pre-determined sequences." Right. |
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It's an abnormally cold day today (low-30's) and everyone's chattering about the freezing rain. We've got a big project going on at work, and there are all kinds of important dates and timelines. So somebody just sent out a 5-page checklist with tasks, where each task has a person's name next to it. Open document - quickly scan for my name - no match! - excellent... - close document. A guy at work brought in Prince - One Nite Alone, a live cd set. Dammit if he ain't the shiznat, this album is awesome. |
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My wife sent me this online psychology test designed to show whether you can spot the difference between a fake smile and a real one. It's interesting, and at the end they tell how you did. From the info page at the end of the test: "Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling. Although fake smiles often look very similar to genuine smiles, they are actually slightly different, because they are brought about by different muscles, which are controlled by different parts of the brain." |
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Never let it be said that Windows isn't working hard to enhance my computing experience. I think they've done a lot of work, no doubt about that. But is my experience any better? I'm setting up a new machine running Windows XP Professional, and I'm being dragged through the coals again to undo all of the stupid, stupid things that Windows does. Here's a great one. All text files with the ".java" extension are associated with Notepad by default. Ok, I don't really have any issues with this. My preferred editor is vim, but that's fine, I'll just change the application association so that double-clicking a ".java" file will launch vim instead of Notepad. So far, so good. I located a ".java" file, right-clicked to get properties, then clicked the "Opens with..." button to switch the associated application. So for a text file, Windows offers the following applications to use to open the file (and no, I'm not leaving any out):
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Here's a new way to waste time online. |
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Talk about an uphill battle... I have two words for this effort: Good Luck. |
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I just heard about the Darwine project over at sourceforge, based off of WINE. The goal is to allow Mac users to run Windows applications without using a Windows emulator (like Virtual PC). So instead of installing Virtual PC and a copy of Windows, then running your programs within that environment, with Darwine you'll just double-click the .exe and it will launch and run -- no Windows involved. The website says they plan to use the QEMU cpu emulator, which will save them a ton of development time. Hopefully Darwine will reach a usable state in the near future. |
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According to the Death Clock, my personal Armageddon Day is August 25, 2060. So I've got another 56 years to get my business done. |
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I have recently learned that my phone number has been copyrighted by Magnus-Opus, a company in Australia. They used a computer to generate 10 billion phone numbers, and then they generated the sound of the numbers being dialed. Then they filed copyrights on those phone numbers. Now, every time a phone number is dialed, it violates international copyright law. Don't believe me? Check your own phone number, and then read their license agreement which you can fill out to obtain the rights to the sound of your own phone number. |
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Since Friendster is a pile of poop (I believe the official definition of "pile of poop" is thus: 'any web application that's so bloated that your web browser times out when you try to log in') and broke once people started using it, Google decided to give it a try. The new service is called Orkut (it's named after a Turkish guy who wrote it, Orkut Buyukkokten) and it's powered by Google. Incidentally, I just tried to log in at Friendster. Same shiznat, different day - another browser timeout. I hope this Orkut thing takes off, because it's a neat idea that requires a ton of server power. |
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The likelihood of coming across a 1959 Fender Strat today is extremely low. There simply aren't many of them around. I was just as suprised as anyone else when I found out that a co-worker has one at home, played for only a few days before spending the last 44 years sitting, untouched, in a pristine guitar case. Commence crazy story.... I recently bought a Stratocaster (2003 model, new). I deliberated for a few weeks on what to get, and one morning I finally decided to get it. So I picked it up from the guitar store on the way into work that day. Not wanting to leave my brand new guitar in the car all day, I brought it into the office. I did the Show and Tell thing with a few co-workers, "here's my new toy...", etc. One of the guys walks by, glances down at the guitar, makes a joke or two, then goes back to his desk. The next day, that guy asks me and another guitar player what we think an old model Fender might be worth. What condition? He tells us that it was purchased by his Great Uncle, and mere days later the man died, and the guitar has remained literally unplayed since then. How long ago was that? Sometime in the late 50's, he says. What model? He doesn't know, but he says it looks just like the one I brought into work the day before. Oh yeah, he also has a 1959 Fender tube amp, still in the box and wrapped in the original plastic. He had the guitar and amp appraised this past Saturday. The appraiser's opinion was that the amp would probably sell for $2,000 to $5,000, and the guitar could easily sell for $15,000 to $20,000, and it might be even more. Update: The guitar and amp were sent to Fender for official appraisal. The final analysis values the amp at $22,000 and the guitar at $55,000. They also tried very hard to buy the pair for the Fender museum. |
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Not really sure what to say about this site, but "weird" is probably the best I can do. See for yourself, go to the Boohbah Zone now. |
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Apple just announced GarageBand, a fully digital mixing and recording application. This is huge. It's supposed to ship on January 16, and so far seems to be available only as part of the iLife suite ($49). They've also updated iPhoto, eliminating any performance problems it used to have. You can now spin through 25,000 photos without any lags. |
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Here's a coupon to get $5 in tokens with the purchase of $5 in tokens at Chuck E. Cheese's. And don't say you aren't interested cause you aren't a kid - nobody is too old for an afternoon of skeeball. |
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Just got back into town from a 10 day trip in Oregon. Beautiful country up there, and the local economy is just as bad as everyone says. |
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I've heard of warchalking and wardriving before, but this is the first time I've seen anything about warflying. On December 10, 2003, we went out Warflying over Los Angeles and Orange counties. Not5150 was the pilot of the 4-seater beechcraft and Kallahar was the laptop/gps/antenna operator. In a 75 minute flight from Pomona to Los Angeles to Santa Monica to Long Beach to Orange and back to Pomona, 2013 access points were found. |
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In this interview with Steve Jobs, he makes an interesting comment about why record companies don't make much money, and why successful recording artists are peeved that they don't see bigger profits. Here's what Jobs has to say: After talking to a lot of people, this is my conclusion: A young artist gets signed, and he or she gets a big advance -- a million dollars, or more. And the theory is that the record company will earn back that advance when the artist is successful. Except that even though they're really good at picking, only one or two out of the ten that they pick is successful. And so most of the artists never earn back that advance -- so the record companies are out that money. Well, who pays for the ones that are the losers? The winners pay. The winners pay for the losers, and the winners are not seeing rewards commensurate with their success. And they get upset. So what's the remedy? The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, "We'll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we're not gonna give you an advance. The accounting will be simple: We're gonna pay you not on profits -- we're gonna pay you off revenues. It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime. We'll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you. But if you're not successful, you'll make no money. If you are, you'll make a lot more money." That's the way out. That's the way the rest of the world works. |
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Even though Windows is not my OS of choice, here are a few nice tips that I've gotten used to over the years.
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Whether the listener challenges one detail or the entire movie, it is likely that it will stir up questions or criticisms. I think that's the what the director wanted, to get people thinking and talking about the subject material. In any case, there are certain, specific facts about the behavior of people living in the United States of America, and I think the film tries to shed light on some of this. There are certain things that people in this country do that people in other countries do not. Whatever the reason, whether you blame it on this group or that individual, or some other person's political persuasion, there are certain things that just are in the U.S. and quite simply aren't in other countries. Of the many interesting things this movie tries to communicate, I found that one of the most interesting points came from a short interview with Marilyn Manson. He said that we live in a country of fear and consumption, that we're afraid our breath will stink so we buy Colgate, that the boys are afraid they won't be attractive to the girls if they've got pimples so they buy zit cream. Manson says we're afraid of many things, and the solution is to buy products. That got me thinking about all kinds of other things that we (collectively speaking) are afraid of - death, theft, car accidents, gaining weight, losing your hair, being un-cool, looking too trendy, settling on a career, losing your job, finding a job, buying a house, dealing with retirement, etc. What are you afraid of? What about the people you know? I just threw those out off the top of my head, but I realize there are many others, some of which sound totally strange and kind of silly. For instance, there are parents who won't let their kids wear backpacks (because backpacks might cause back problems), and instead make the kids bend over while pulling small rolling luggage bags filled with books. Or the parents who won't let the kid wear clothes with holes in the knees because it makes them look poor. But who really cares? If your kid is rough in his clothes and gets holes in the knees, so what? If you're poor, you're poor; if you're not, then what are you worried about? And who had the idea that it's a good thing for a kid to drag a suitcase filled with books? Having seen kids walking (clumsily, I might add) home from school, bent over, wheeling a suitcase instead of wearing a backpack, I cannot imagine that those kids will be any more immune to back problems than if they were wearing backpacks. Here's a bright idea: why not leave the heavy textbooks at home or at school? If the kid has to get the books to and from school every day, buy him a bicycle with a rack and let him pedal himself to and from school (statistically, that kid could use the extra caloric expenditure anyway). Whatever the issue, whatever the topic, there's something to be afraid of. The funny thing is, Marilyn Manson is onto something, because all of the "concerns" and "fears" we live with on a daily basis all have quick solutions that we can pay for. Here's an interview with the director on the Charlie Rose Show. |
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Seeing as it's flu season right now, I just did a little fact searching to answer a few questions. This page from the Centers for Disease Control has some interesting details about past outbreaks. |
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Found this article titled "How Do I Get the People Who Will Most Benefit From CRM/SFA to Embrace It?". Kinda interesting, because it goes on to say things like, "to increase adoption and usage, management teams must review the benefits of the systems through the eyes of a salesperson." But the article doesn't address the very real possibility that CRM hasn't caught on because it simply doesn't work. Said another way, if I design a widget that I think is super, but I cannot get anyone to use my widget even after I've spent several years trying to convince the world that my widget is awesome, shouldn't it occur to me that perhaps people simply do not need my widget? There are plenty of great ideas which unfortunately lack the right mix of practicality, usefulness, and simplicity; so why is the CRM "solution" to work harder at convincing the world that they need to use CRM apps? Talk about trying to push a square peg into a round hole... |
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Here is swordfishBob's idea for how computer components should be redesigned to operate, inspired by the ban of calling one drive a "master" and one a "slave". This is taken from his post on slashdot. Drives should not be dominant and submissive. Nor should any other componentry (also consider Bus Mastering on PCI, or even USB requiring a host to master all devices). No, all are equal. Any collection of devices with connection should either take turns making the decisions, or should hold a voluntary election where all devices have equal influence. |
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You can take this quiz to see how you much you really know about 80's music. Yeah, yeah, 80's music sucks, I can already hear it. Eurythmics, Duran Duran, Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Hall & Oates, Tina Turner, Robert Palmer, ... they're all just a bunch of chumps, right? You didn't really listen to any of their songs, did ya? Nah, of course ya didn't. <begin reality now> Give yourself 10-20 minutes to take the test, and see if you can beat my score of 115 (no, I didn't cheat, I just have an altogether too vivid memory of music, which is sadly inclusive of 80's stuff). Sample questions: *Note: this is probably among the easiest questions on the test, so if you're stumped by it you might consider saving the 10-20 minutes and simply accepting a score of "0" right now. |
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A friend of mine had to go to a meeting today. He said they were supposed to talk about some software that he wrote, and the meeting ended up taking longer than it did for him to write the software in the first place. Wifey and I were out with a group of friends last night, and the topic of meetings popped up in conversation. One story involved a few guys sending pager notifications to somebody who was sitting in a meeting, while they themselves were watching from another room. When they called the pager, it asked to enter in a phone number so the guy can return your call. They entered an 800 number for some adult phone service, and then sent the code that means "urgent, call back immediately". So the guy gets out his cell phone, excuses himself to everyone in the meeting, and then calls this 800 number. Apparently his reaction was pretty funny to watch from outside of the meeting room, and he continued to entertain by calling the number back and listening again. Another funny story was about Meeting Bingo. Before the meeting, someone would discreetly pass around special bingo cards for business meetings. Instead of numbers, they had marketing buzzwords and phrases, like "paradigm shift", "integrated solution", "consolidated environment", "business process automation", "unprecedented performance", "value proposition", "e-commerce", "action item", "cutting edge", "enterprise solution", ... I could go on (and on, and on). As the meeting progressed (hmm, does that mean that meetings make progress?), you kept track of your bingo card. Every now and then somebody would blurt out, "Bingo!". I know that these buzzwordy phrases have a useful meaning and save time while trying to communicate business ideas, but when I step out of a meeting and leave the office, the last thing I expect to hear from somebody out on the street would be "integrated solution". Could you imagine how funny that would be at, say, a Starbuck's? They could re-brand the simple cup of coffee as an "integrated solution", since it does include a spill-proof top, as well as a heat-protecting sleeve. It would be great, you could walk in and order a "GLM" (Grande Latte Mocha, of course) from the "Integrated Solutions" menu (aka, "carry out"). Just think of how much time that would save! |
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"... and the owner is a mental midget, with the IQ of a fence post..." Listening to Tom "I don't live here, I'm just here for the ladies" Waits. Trying to concentrate on something else (like work) with this stuff playing in the background is like being half-asleep, drifting in and out of the dream world, and every now and then I get kinda disoriented and wonder what the hell I just heard. I've got a crazy mix going on right now from Asylum Years, Beautiful Maladies, Blue Valentine, Small Change, Swordfishtrombones, and The Early Years. |
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It was 65 years ago today that radio listeners heard War of the Worlds. It's funny to listen to this recording in the context of today's information age. Would it be possible this kind of show to succeed today, or in the future? On one hand, I think it wouldn't work because we have so many media sources that it would be extremely difficult to pull off without a huge coordinated effort. But who knows? It might be fun to re-record a modern version of War of the Worlds in normal speaking voices, and try to broadcast it across the country or even just within a large metropolitan area. Now that I think about it, I could see somebody taking over a local radio station and broadcasting some crazy story. You're bound to trick at least part of the audience. This site has various recorded versions of the original broadcast of the show, including this link to a RealAudio stream. Check it out, it's an hour long. The academic description of the "heat ray" is one of the funniest things I've ever heard. |
Check out Lotus for more info on the Elise. |
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A Tenacious D DVD is on the way, for which Black notes, "I'm [also] proud of the menus. ... Nowadays, if your menus don't kick [butt], then you are lame." full interview with Jack Black Not only is School of Rock in theaters, but there's a Tenacious D movie in the works, and apparently a separate D dvd on the way. |
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I just noticed today that my photo journal of the 2002 MS 150 from Houston to Austin has been viewed more than 1,100 times. I remember noticing a huge spike in site traffic for that page during the few weeks prior to the 2003 MS 150. |
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Clear Channel has done it again. After DJs in Houston and Cleveland made comments and jokes on air about running cyclists off the road while driving your car, they had another situation crop up in Raleigh, North Carolina. So far, the past incidents have been followed up with big, lavish public apologies, and even pledges to give some money to a few small groups, but come on, who really buys that song and dance? Of course you're gonna go out and apologize after you get flamed to hell for publicly demonstrating that you're a bunch of bastards. A lavish apology is exactly what's expected from a gigantic megacorp who needs to kiss the public's ass as much as possible (they do, after all, own many different radio stations across the country). Anyway, I decided that I'm sick of this nonsense, so I just wrote the following email to the Clear Channel Public Relations group (pr@clearchannel.com), and then CC'ed Lowry Mays (LLowrymays@clearchannel.com), Mark Mays (markpmays@clearchannel.com), and Randall Mays (randalltmays@clearchannel.com) Subject: a few suggestions for you guys Clear Channel PR folks, After hearing about the most recent incident of Clear Channel radio DJs chatting humorously about running cyclists off the road (aired September 22 and 23 on G105 in Raleigh, North Carolina), I'd like to offer a suggestion for other funny topics that DJs could discuss. Continue reading "Clear Channel, the radio megacorp" |
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I had some pleasant success today with a project at work. Fed up with the freeware and even commercial applications, I wrote my own application that will let you apply stress to a web server. It's primitive at this point, but still very useful and (imho) well-designed such that future changes and enhancements will be much easier. So today's success came in the form of finding a sneaky bug in the threading that doesn't allow you to restart a thread once it has been join()'ed. I wasn't seeing any errors, just strange behavior. After fixing and testing, things appear to be working very well. |
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Yet another day reminding me to be thankful for what I've got. I'm reminded in part because of positive things that I'm thankful for, and in part because of negative things that make me appreciate those positive things even more. Sometimes it's funny how circumstance toys with our perception of unchanging aspects of life. |
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The Fort Davis Cycle Fest weekend comes to an end. We all had a great ride through the mountains of western Texas, and a nice dinner that night with our riding buddies. |
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I did the first ride today for my Carmichael Training Systems training schedule. The ride was brief and specific, designed to gather some data about my condition so that my coach can build a good ride schedule for me. |