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May Diet and Exercise Update

2012-05-14T22:22:00-05:00

Let's start this entry with the bad news. My 30 day trendline is going up.

This isn't the first time this has happened (it also happened [before the 2010 holidays][1]), but it was a little bit frustrating this time, because I have gone a long time without a contraindication. Granted, it's pretty low, because the blue trend line is still down over the thirty day period, but for a week or so there, it was not fun to get on the scale. I can usually handle a set of three or four days with numbers that are higher than I expect, because it all corrects itself in the end, but I was starting to see a trend.

The yearly graph shows it as the largest chunk of red so far this year. Hopefully it will be the biggest chunk in the whole year. I'm getting kindof close to my yearly (modest) goal of hitting 212 in the year. I might be reporting in the next diet post about making it. It won't mean that I will be stopping, but I will at least have a nice mid-year accomplishment.

In last month's report I reported that I was signing up for Goldy's Run 5K, with a goal of completing it in less than half an hour. I am happy to report that I ran it without any problems. It being my first race, I was a bit nervous about going into it and making sure that I had everything in order, so I elected to pick up my race packet the night before. There wasn't really anything of note in the packet except for the bib, and some coupons that I don't think I'll be using anytime soon - also a bunch of ads for other races. I guess it makes sense, but I was hoping for some more information about the race in the packet. It would have been useful to have a course map to look at or something.

The day of the race, I parked the car in a spot and filled the meter. I had arrived before the 10-mile race that was being run in the same day had started, so I got to watch the 10 milers start, and a couple of stragglers too. The 10 mile was chip timed so I guess it didn't matter if they crossed the start line a little late. Then the mass of people who were running the 5K lined up. I found a spot near the back and snapped a picture.

There were certainly a lot of people there. The start line is up there somewhere. I made some really small talk with some of the people around me, and then they started the race. The crowd started to shuffle kindof slow. I made sure to start my personal timer (RunKeeper on my Android phone) as I crossed the start line to make sure that I had as close to an actual race time as I could get.

In the first stretch down University Ave, there were a lot of people. I mean, most of the people in front of me at the start were still in front of me. They were going slower than I wanted to, so I ended up bobbing and weaving through a bunch of people, and started to find some lines where other runners were also trying to forge a way through the people. I don't really blame anyone but myself for not lining up a bit closer to the front where the "faster" runners like myself were though. It wasn't so bad, and it started thinning out as we progressed along the first long straight part.

When I hit the first corner, it was not too much traffic at all, but more than I had ever run with before. Of course, that would be a given -- since I started running last year, I had never really run anywhere with another person before the race. My runs are a kind of alone time, even if I am usually listening to my podcasts while I am doing it. It was strange to have to worry about other people's feet, and working out how I was going to pass this person or that person, which side to run on, and whether I should just fall in line at the same pace or go a little bit faster.

The course winded through the campus, in between both of the labs that I have worked at for countless hours and taking a nice run around the mall. There were water stations, but I didn't really need any. I am sure that the 10-milers were happy to see them about 2 miles from the end of the course. It ended up curling around the new TCF stadium and crossing the 50 yard line was the finish. I had never been in the stadium at all before, to watch a game or for anything else.
When I stopped my timer right after I crossed the finish, it showed 26:49. I was pretty happy. Goal achieved, 5K under 30 minutes.

After the race, I was happy to go home and have breakfast with Diana. I think it was a good race to run, not really impacting anything and a lot of people around who were more casual runners like me. I was not completely tired at the end of it, which means that I could have probably run it a bit faster than I did. I should have run faster when I saw the 2 mile sign, or started with a faster pace once the pack started to thin. I really just wanted to make sure that I finished though, and didn't start too fast and end up being slow at the end. It would have been a real failure for me if I had to stop and walk part of it, because in my training I was running longer than this distance without stopping regularly. It was a great experience for a first race though!

Speaking of training, the training for running the Red, White and Boom has been going basically according to plan. Moving the rest days that I was previously doing to different days has worked out quite well, and while I wasn't happy with turning down the total mileage at the start, the addition of a long run to my week really gives me a great feeling of accomplishment every time. So far my farthest run has been just over 9 miles, but I have a scheduled double-digit coming up in a couple days which I see as a big milestone. I'm going to have to start carrying some water soon, I think.

Adding the race report to the middle of this has made this entry a bit long. I've got some more interesting running tidbits to share, so maybe I'll make some more posts in between the regular updates. Until then, wish me good training - and thanks to everyone who is motivating me. It's surprising how much a "Like" means.

April Diet and Exercise Update

2012-04-08T14:08:02-05:00

Well, I've plonked out of the blogging for a little while now, but I hit another mark in my log book, so it's time for another diet and exercise update. Weight is still going down, although not as fast as I would want it to, in general. The exercise is going pretty great, and I have some exciting stuff coming up in the near future. Overall, I have been pretty happy about how I feel, look and weigh in the last month.

Looking at the last month or so graph is pretty interesting to me. There is a lot of strange patterns going on here. I don't know what the heck is going on, that there seems to be a pattern of me gaining weight and then followed by a precipitous drop down to a new low. The trend continued today when I reached my lowest weight, only one pound away from my (modest) goal for the year. Some of the points on the upper end of these sawtooth type patterns are above my weighted average line and pull it up, but most are still below, and the linear estimate still shows a caloric deficit. The year graph still looks good, even though it is more roller-coastery than I would like.

My running habit has been getting a little more serious, and I've been feeling pretty good about it. The training schedule I've been on in the last few months has been working pretty good, although I am thinking that it might be less of a training schedule and just more like a running schedule in the last couple weeks. I like the routes that I am on, though. I have been increasing the lengths of my long walks on Sunday for a little bit, and I really extended them this month. I've done about 10 miles or a little more on the walks in the last three weeks. The extended range of these walks feels pretty good, trouncing all around the city and reaching places that I haven't been able to get at before.

Running has been getting faster, and now I'm running consistently at around 9:30 per mile or faster. I lowered the amount of time that I am walking on my run / walk interval runs. I am thinking that I will be lowering the walking by a lot, and cutting it out completely possibly, in the next couple of weeks though. Lots of you I'm sure see my Dailymile profile posts to Twitter and Facebook though.

Last month I have been starting to get serious about doing at least a couple of races this year, just mostly for fun and to have something to aim towards. Well, my big news this month is that I have signed up and will run a 5K race next week. This is more of a race to get me used to races, or to do a smaller length race before I do something more serious later in the year. I've signed up for the Goldy's Run 5K and will be aiming towards a time under half an hour. I regularly run intervals which are much longer than that, so it shouldn't be a problem to finish and hopefully get a good time. I've never run with a lot of people before - not really with anyone before, so I am wondering how I will react when there are a lot of people around actually running a race. I initially considered signing up for the 10 mile race, but it was probably a little more ambitious to think about doing that only two weeks before the race when I was only walking that distance.

I also have decided that I want to run a half marathon before the year is out, and I don't really want to do it in the winter, so I've set myself a goal to run the Red, White and Boom! TC half marathon on the 4th of July. Luckily I've made this decision basically at the exact right time. I've found a 12 week novice training schedule online, and I am about exactly 12 weeks out from the race day. So I'm starting on the training schedule this Wednesday and following it closely. It starts with less running than I am used to, so I am modifying it a little to keep the total amount of miles that I cover about the same. I am a little worried because I usually am walking sections when I am running, and I will need to find some other routes that are slightly longer than I run now. I don't want to overdo it, but I have been pretty good at listening to my body about changes. Wish me luck.

Big Bang Theory Intro #17: Cave Face

2012-03-13T23:03:17-05:00

From faces above ground last time, we switch to below ground faces this time. I'm not quite easy to know what to say though.

This is just a random cave face carving, which I can't really say much about. The source image isn't that much help, it just says carving of a face in the description.

So I was looking for some cave carvings, and I thought about the Mayans, who had some pretty elaborate cave carvings. They don't really look the same though. There have been a lot of people talking about the Mayans recently because of their calendar. There are quite a few carvings of the calendar that you can find around the web. People say that it predicts the end of the world in 2012, but I'm not convinced. At any rate, that looks like a dead end anyway.

So I was wondering about some of the other cave carvings, and I remembered that there were quite a lot of carvings and statues in the Indian mountains. These are mostly statues though. Lots of them are of the Hindu Gods and Goddesses, of which there are a lot. There are at least 33 different vedas described in the Rig Veda, but some people say that there could be 330 million gods. Even others would say that 330 million was just supposed to be a impossibly large number (like a hojillion), and it really meant infinity. Again though, those statues don't look a lot like the crude carving that you see above, in fact they are quite intricate, so I continued my search.

I hit up Google for just a random search of cave face paintings, and I found another path that I investigated in Hellfire caves in Britain. There are some strange rooms in these caves, and one of the rooms has quite a few faces carved in chalk. These look a little more like the picture above, but I think that they are probably a bit more recent, and they are in white, not the distinctive brownish rock that you see in the source picture. Some of them do look quite similar though.

I think this is the first solid picture that I just don't have a good handle on. I kept looking for a while, but I didn't find much else. There was one cave in Australia which had a very similar color and a face which was similar, but it looks like my search was fruitless. I may come back and try to search out the photographer of this later, to see if I can find something more.

March Diet Update

2012-03-11T15:04:34-05:00

Another month has gone by, and that means that it's time for another Diet and Exercise Update. I've been pretty happy with my progress in this month, which is really pleasing to me. That's somewhat strange to say this time, because the 30 days of progress graph doesn't show much in the way of progress.

Thirty days doesn't look good, does it? Except for that little dip down near the end, I don't really show a lot of progress on the scale. I can't say that I was unhappy to wake up this morning and see the lowest weight that I've achieved yet (and only about 3 pounds from my year goal), but I haven't really been focusing on it this month. Partly that is because of the scale starting to go up and down without much of a prompt from me. The other part of it is that I have been happy with other stuff that's been going on.

The first thing is that I have been making progress on my running habit and it's been going pretty well. The training schedule that I outlined last month has been working out okay, and recently I've added some mileage to my interval workouts. I switched out my interval route run for the longer one that I was previously doing on my "As You Like" running days, because the original route was consistently less than 45 minutes.

That means that I'm running about a third of a mile longer than I was before. It also means that I'm also trying to find another route for my longer runs just to keep it interesting. I've tried a couple of different routes on my walking and Thursdays, but haven't settled into anything yet. I've been exploring around the neighborhood on my walking days lately, trying to find a course that is only 10% or so longer. All of the easy answers are kind of boring. I've found one last Thursday which I ran that was a good distance though, or at least felt like it. It was technically longer than I was looking for, but I like the route because it goes over a massive train yard, and apparently I am still 12 or something. At any rate, my running goal graph shows me 6 to 7 days ahead of my plan, which feels pretty good.

In the last month, it's been probably some of the coldest running days. This winter has been very mild, in major contrast to last year. I still had to don some of the gear that I would normally have to work out with when I went outside though. I wasn't really running last winter, so I didn't know what was really up. I did some research when it started getting cold and got what I needed though. Over the last three months, I've worked out what I need to stay comfortable in the harsh climate while I am running.

First off, I don't run when it is dangerous outside. That means that I won't run when there is a lot of ice, or the snow is high enough that I can't see obstacles or ice patches that I might need to avoid. I also don't run when it's raining or snowing significantly hard that I would worry about my phone breaking in the moisture. I got lucky enough this year to not have to switch to an inside workout or switch some of the days of the workout.

When it gets colder, I go through multiple stages of upgrades to the wardrobe as it gets colder. The first thing that I'll do is switch to a long sleeve shirt. I have two different long sleeve shirts now, one that is a little more breathable than the other, so I will use one first and another if it's windy or a bit colder. In the past I have felt strange wearing long sleeve shirts and shorts at the same time, but the rules of running are different. I will go around with just shorts and a long sleeve shirt until it is about 35 degrees or so.

Once it gets colder than 35, I'll consider switching out the shorts for running tights. I hadn't really experienced wearing tights before, but they work remarkably well for keeping the legs warm while they have a good compression feel on the legs for running. If it's colder than 30, I will almost guaranteed to have the tights on. Once it gets below 20, I will wear a compression top that I got as well, which layers under the long sleeve shirt.

If it's colder than freezing, I will wear some nice running gloves and a hat, which will protect my hands from getting frostbitten. When it was just starting to get cold, there were a couple incidents with my hands getting cold and not being able to move them earlier this year, which was bad, so I got these and they have been working good. They also have some mitten parts which come out, and block the wind while they also are hot yellow for visibility.

I have two different pairs of tights now, a lighter pair and a pair with a wool lining. The pair with wool lining is extremely warm, and I wear it when it gets below 15. If it gets colder than that, I will start layering even more on the top. I have a coat that I could wear, but I have never had to this year, and I also have a set of loose pants that I could put on top of the tights, but honestly with the wool lined ones, they were almost too warm even at the coldest day this year.

It's getting warmer again, which means that I haven't had to change from my default outfit of shorts and a running tech tee or long sleeve tee for a week or two. With any luck, spring has sprung and there will be a lot of good days from now on. I'll have to figure out some storage scheme for the winter stuff.

Big Bang Theory Intro #16: Moai

2012-03-07T20:49:39-06:00

The great mysterious monuments continue on this next picture. I haven't been to this one yet. The source image was pretty easy to find.

These are the statues called Moai. They are human figured carved from the rock around Easter Island. Easter Island is interestingly, owned by Chile, even though it is over 2,000 miles from Santiago. It's a quite small island in total, with only 63.1 square miles, and only about 40 miles if you walked around the whole thing on the outside. Mostly because of the statues, it's a popular tourist destination.

Speaking of the statues, they are mostly carved out of volcanic ash which had been compressed after many years. There are lots of them on the island, 887 that have been found. They are carbon dated to around 1100 AD, which means they're not all that old. They were carved by hand out of that stuff, using stone chisels which are actually much harder than the ash. Thirteen of the statues were carved out of basalt, which is much harder.

Interestingly, almost all of the statues are faced inwards. They would normally be placed on a big stone platform called an Ahu. The only ones that are facing the ocean are quite far inland at Ahu Akivi. Most of the statues aren't on their platforms anymore, because there was a time in Easter Island's past when the islanders got into a intra-island war and they toppled all the Moai, breaking a lot of them.

These ones have head dressings which are of a different stone and are called Pukao. They're carved from a different volcanic stone, which is actually red which you can see in the color version of this photo. There's actually a dent in the bottom of them, so that they can stand atop the statues like that.

The statues themselves are still being excavated actively from the island, with regular reports from the people at the Easter Island Statue Project. Their aim is to locate them all, document them, and also understand the context of all the statues that exist on the island. They've done some interesting experimental archaeology on how the statues were moved from the original quarry that all the rock came from to the different places on the island that they are at now. They've also laser scanned one which has been in the gallery at the British Museum for a while now.

Book Review: Consider Phlebas

2012-03-04T23:18:08-06:00

I picked up Consider Phlebas after I got it recommended to me on a list of great sci-fi books that I saw on reddit. Shortly after I noticed it on the list, it came up as a special on the Kindle store, and I picked it up immediately. I had heard some good things about these books, and I was looking for a good fiction book after reading a lot of YA fiction in the last year or so. I can't say that I've been disappointed.

Bora Horza Gobachul is the protagonist of this book, and a pretty good one as well. Set up as a Changer, the reader slips into the eyes of someone who can change their appearance pretty easily. Also, the book starts with action and stays there for a quite long while, not stopping for a breather until you're well into the book.

Horza seems to jump from one predicament to the next, each being small enough to be bite-sized, but every one illuminating more about the characters that continue to reappear and we gain more insight into throughout the book. The first part introduces Horza and Balveda, which are parts of two opposing sides but both not completely entrenched into their beliefs too much. Unfortunately, Horza is being executed quite unpleasantly at the start.

Someone saves our hero though, and we're thrown into the Culture-Iridan war. Consider Phlebas is part of a larger universe that Ian M. Banks has laid out in a number of books, with Phlebas being the first published, but not the first chronologically in the universe. The entire backdrop of most of the books revolves around the Culture, which is a set of humans who have put a bunch of their faith into sentient machines. This of course has made them very technologically advanced, and make some very large ships and stations.

The Culture is really a quite deep society, and we really only scratch the surface of it in this book, seeing it as we do throughout the eyes of the adventurers that we look into. Horza is opposed to them on philosophical grounds, which I find refreshing. There aren't a lot of really cut and dry villains and heroes in this book, or in the larger universe in general, and that gives a realistic bent to the writing which I really like. I can see upsides to both of the sides of this battle, or rather, I can see the reasons that people would be for or against the Culture as a concept.

Technology isn't really fawned over in Phlebas that much, with Banks opting to take us on a roller-coaster ride through a bunch of tough situations. Horza doesn't really get his footing until about two-thirds through the book, jumping from one seemingly untenable situation to another for a while. Through all of these situations, we start learning bit by bit about the technology that makes up the daily lives of the people in whatever universe that we are peeping into, from the Anti-Gravity to the Warp drives, and even peeking into mysterious sub-ethers of the grid without really explaining it.

Some would consider this meandering start to be a downside, but I really enjoyed it for the most part. Horza ends up being picked up by what could only be called a band of adventurers, really more like con-men or thieves. It has a somewhat Firefly vibe to it, which doesn't do it bad in my eyes. Not everyone gets along, and lots of things go wrong in the little missions that they head out on, just like you would expect. Unfortunately, Banks's universe which can be somewhat forgiving to, for example, being executed or wounded, can be particularly harsh as well, and many of the characters don't survive through some of the missions.

There are a lot of really great scenes here, but eventually everything gets settled down and the main plot, which has been started and was somewhat kept going through little interludes throughout the book where the first-person perspective changes to other characters briefly, starts taking over. The final third of the book really shows how gritty and harsh reality can be in the world.

Overall, I really enjoyed diving into the Culture and liked the way that Banks took us through, introducing things in a way which wasn't overwhelming but also made it very certain that we are sure that there is a lot of depth that we don't really see, things that have been thought out. While some could argue that there are stories at the beginning of the book which could have been left out completely with no story changes, I think that they just serve to make our entry into this complex situation that much less of a brain-dump. I rate it a A-, only because of those criticisms, which are founded. I will be looking for another of the Culture books, and probably reading them just as quickly as this one.

How's The Thesis? - Recent Developments

2012-03-01T22:07:11-06:00

My thesis work has been going along somewhat smoothly lately, although in the next few weeks, I'll be a little bit worried about how I am going to get working on the second and last experiment of my thesis. I've been putting polish on the first experiment client while I wait for the IRB paperwork to come through so that I can actually release and start the thing. At this point, the client and website are looking pretty polished, although I am somewhat worried that if I keep adding statistics-crunching stuff to each results page, it will take a long time or not respond well under load. I guess we will see when the client actually releases.

In preparation for the second experiment of the thesis, I've been starting another literature review, to check and see what has happened in the HRI field, or more specifically developments either tangentially or fuzzily related to my thesis topic, in the last year. One of the problems of working on the thesis while having a full time job is that the progress is a bit slower than normal, and some stuff can actually happen that you need to be keeping up on.

In the last two weeks, I've set aside one day, approximately two hours, to look at the recent conferences and journals and pick out papers which seem related. It had been a while since I had been looking through, so I really do have almost a full year of conferences to wade through. Some of these conferences, like IROS 2011 and ICRA 2011 are really large, with 70+ pages of titles and abstracts in IEEExplore. Add to those the journals like Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics which not only have 6 fairly large issues a year, but early access to unpublished but accepted articles as well, there's a lot to go though.

After sifting through the papers and categorizing them in "really related", "tangentially related", "somewhat related", "non-thesis interest" categories, I move them over to my Dropbox account and then get to reading them. I used to read on my Kindle which worked pretty well, especially with the note leaving feature, but I've started using Goodreader on the iPad which has a number of ways of marking things, and then happily emailing me the marks which not only works great for point out passages or commenting on the entire article, which I like to do at the end, but it is pretty great for highlighting references which I will look up later.

Overall, I've been pretty happy with the reading day set aside. I've read two articles which are really relevant to my thesis work. One which got really close to what I am doing in my first experiment, but is different in a significant way, and another which took a truly interesting look at the analytical side of things and has a modeling angle that I might seriously consider for future work. I've also got partway through a journal article which I am hoping that I will finish this week, that has a pretty good overview of the last year or three. I think that I'll keep reading at least one day a week, so that I can keep up on the latest developments as they happen from now on, instead of waiting for it all to pile up. Also, it's a great way to switch up the normal work that I have to do and relax into the weekend.

Big Bang Theory Intro #15: Stonehenge

2012-02-27T21:42:35-06:00

Wow, it's a picture of a place I've actually been to. I'm pretty stoked.

Stonehenge is widely regarded as one of the most mystical places on the planet. There isn't a lot of evidence of why the henge was erected, or what it was used for. The stones themselves are quite large, and apparently not from around there. They are arranged in actually three circles. Most people notice the middle-sized circle, and it's pretty easy to see the smaller circle inside. What people usually don't know or see (because it's not easily photographable like the other two) is the large third circle. The stones in the third circle are mostly buried, or just small to begin with.

The source image is in color again this time, and not too hard to find. They could have used any number of images of the site, there are plenty on flickr and even a few in the wikimedia commons. Overall, it's definitely the most photographed of the places that have been on the list so far. National Geographic even did a thing with Microsoft using Photosynth so you can fly around and explore the site.

Usually when you visit the Stonehenge site, you have to stay reasonably far away from the stones, and you can't really get that close. Staying on the path is pretty boring, I hear. I've been to the site myself, visiting in 2005 when I got the chance to take my first international trip with my now wife. I was lucky enough to be invited with a group of people who got tickets to visit the henge before normal visiting hours. When you go before normal hours, they let you walk around on the grass, within the circles. I got to touch the stones themselves, and they definitely have a quality to them that I can't exactly describe. Part of it I am sure is that it is an experience that I was treasuring every moment of while it was happening, and part of it was surely the fog that was slowly burning off across the area. By far, it was the thing that I remember most from the trip, the most interesting experience, and the one that I don't expect to ever be able to repeat again.

Under Review

2012-02-25T22:12:21-06:00

I've been getting annoyed more about people asking for my opinion on things. Normally, I would be willing to give my opinion on lots of items or experiences, and I've done so in the past, even on this blog. I really do form some solid opinions on things and I think that I am a good judge of the quality of stuff.

So why am I getting annoyed about people wanting to know? Because it's all for their benefit. They're asking me to take time out of my day and type in a web form so that they can sell more of their stuff. The most recent big offender is Amazon, which I have been using a lot more lately, but has started to get really annoying about this stuff. Three days after buying a thing, without fail, I get an email "Please review this thing!".

First of all, how do they know that I've even formed an opinion about it? Half of the time when I get that email, I haven't even had a chance to use the doodad or whatever that I have ordered, so I can't even review the stuff if I had wanted to. Sometimes the office to our building is closed at strange times or I just don't sync up with it being open, so a couple of times, it was still in the box and I hadn't even had it in my hands yet. It would be much better to email me three weeks later, or better yet, don't email me at all.

Second, there is absolutely no benefit for me in this process. Not only does the email come at the wrong time, I have no incentive to complete this arduous process. I already bought the thing - you have my money. I'm not going to buy another of the same thing, and I'm getting nothing out of giving random people on the internet my opinion about the stuff. The content is completely under your control after I write the review. If you decide that my opinion is great and want to use it to advertise your product, I have no say in that. Similarly, you could decide that it doesn't conform to your guidelines and completely squelch the review. If I'm going to review something, I can do it here. Even if I wasn't tech-savvy, it doesn't take five seconds to start up a tumblr, blogger or wordpress account where I do have total control.

Let's talk about those guidelines for a bit too. If I want to say that the product is a fucking pile of shit, I can't do that, because it has profanity. Even if the product I'm reviewing is literally a pile of shit. I also can't just leave a short review, like the size of a twitter post, because it would be too short. There's a lot of stuff in those guidelines that I might want to do in my review. The guidelines themselves seem to be steering people towards writing more content and also towards positive reviews. You can't complain about the seller or the packaging, or that you got something other than what you paid for. They siphon those off into other complaint departments. There are valid arguments for that, but I feel like if the seller is being a dick about something, I might not want to buy their products.

Finally, there is just too many people asking me to do stuff for them nowadays. Restaurant.com and Foursquare and OpenTable and Random Clothing Store #5 and NewEgg - it seems like everyone is asking me to review things nowadays. Amazon is one of the worst offenders so they get in the crosshairs here, but it happens far too often when I buy something online. If I want to review something, you know what I'll do? I'll freaking review it. I'll do it on your site if you haven't bugged me about it, and probably post it other places too. If I really love a product, I'll be tweeting and telling people about it naturally, and you want me to do that. If I have some problem, I'll try to contact customer support about it. That's about as much as you can ask from someone who you already made money off of.

Taking Credit When Due

2012-02-22T23:27:02-06:00

I just discovered possibly the fourth or fifth thing online in the last week which is dealing with transferring money from one person to another. This is a big thing online, and there are quite a few startups which are tackling it, it seems like. Mostly because there is a pain point on the internet right now, and that pain point is actually paying for things.

Right now, everyone uses PayPal. This is because they have the kind of market share that everyone dreams of, with a huge amount of people with accounts already setup, and the ability to pay into an account without needing one of your own. Of course, once you have an account, you can't just pay someone without logging in yourself, you have to login and use your account. Everyone also hates how much money PayPal is taking from each transaction, and how they use somewhat shady methods to avoid being called a bank so that they don't have to abide by the rules that normal banks do, even though they technically have a lot of cash in accounts. They also randomly could just shut down your account because they think it's shady, or decide that you can't take donations randomly because you aren't selling something, or cause your violin to be destroyed because of stupidity.

So lots of people want to get around PayPal, for reasons which are completely understandable. This feels similar to the thing where everyone started to hate on Godaddy recently because of their support of SOPA. Honestly I think that it was just a tipping point, because I've been off of Godaddy for so long because they were just annoying to work with. However, domain names are easy to technically route around. Money is not so much. The obvious solution is to just make something that's "PayPal but not PayPal". This is the approach taken by Moneybookers, which is accepted in some places, but every place it is, it seems a bit shady to me. That's not the connotation that you want floating around when you are putting your money in an account.

The emergence of smartphones has kickstarted another set of ideas with this. Square is the one that everyone brings up when you start talking about it. That's the little square thing that scans the magnetic stripe of the credit cards. The solution is pretty good because the magstripe actually has more information, and verifies that the card itself was present. I've been seeing it a little more lately, most recently at a trip to RollerDome. In the same line is Card.io, which is another credit card processing solution, but just uses the camera on your phone instead of requiring a stripe. I don't know how they're getting around needing the extra digits. Both of those solutions enable using just a credit card number as well.

I really like the credit card solution for paying people, because it has what PayPal has in the consumer's mind: security. Technically, you could take a picture of someone else's card using card.io, with only access to their card for a few seconds, for example, when they are off in the bathroom at a restaurant or something. That means that there is low security, right? That's not right though, because everyone checks their credit statement for stuff that they haven't charged for, and they know what to do - they call the credit card company and get it taken off. It's called a Chargeback, and it's fairly uncommon, because the person who made the charge has to pay. It's like a bounced check with the opposite penalty.

This fact that everyone knows what to do with a misplaced credit charge means that we can technically make the actual payment point much easier than we previously had. In the past, people didn't know what to do with credit cards, so they imprinted a copy of it, and checked your ID completely, and did a bunch of other stuff to make sure you were you. Nowadays we live with these plastic cards all over the place, so a simple swipe in a grocery store or at a fast food restaurant will most likely get you your stuff without even having to sign it. Joe Schmoe at the drive-thru has no idea if you are the person on that card, but you know what to do if someone charges on your card, so they don't have to care. It's why I'm not worried about NFC or RFID chips in cards, or other types of insta-pay methods wreaking havoc on the financial system - in fact, it's probably better for everyone when you can pay in less time with less hassle.

Of course, this added layer of convenience is actually costing us a ton of money every year in increased prices because the credit companies make money on every transaction, even when you don't pay a cent in card fees or interest every year. Each transaction on any of these services will cost the retailer a percentage of the cost plus a flat fee, in addition to any fees that you have to pay when you don't pay it all off at once. It's a hidden cost that is just part of doing business, and it's being passed onto the customer.

In the olden days of imprinting cards and sending mail off to get processed by a real live human being, this type of payment model made sense, but it doesn't really now - the profit margin on being a clearinghouse for all of these transactions is just obscene. The problem is, Joe's Credit needs to be accepted everywhere. When networks as large and established as Discover and American Express are having issues being accepted everywhere, it's the definition of a high cost of entry. It's one of the things that I point at pretty early on in free market conversations.

However, I really do give credit where due - the mindshare of the credit card is amazing in America. The electronic money system is here, and it's owned by Visa and MasterCard. Solutions like Stripe are making it easier every day to route around the PayPal pain point using the existing networks, so there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Big Bang Theory Intro #14: Cave Painting

2012-02-20T22:33:27-06:00

One of the earliest signs of artistic expression is next on our list - it's painting!

Cave paintings have been around for a long time. Really, a long, long time. The earliest cave paintings have been dated to over 32,000 years ago! That's a lot longer ago than the Big Bang Theory timeline suggests, and far before our previous scene of The Wheel. These are all out of order.

No one really knows the purpose of cave paintings. I always thought that they were some way of storytelling, but some of them don't make sense, because they are tucked away really deep into some caves, in places where there aren't any signs of habitation. Some have suggested that they might have been used in some type of religious ceremony.

It's also been recently thought that the paintings weren't made in one session, but instead added on to throughout the years, some taking over 20,000 years to complete. I love the idea of people stopping in a cave while being the migratory people that they are, and finding a painting which is partially done, and then adding on to what they saw. It hearkens to some type of Noble Savage impulse in my mind.

This would also be the first image in the opening sequence to have a female human subject - the figures on the left side are definitely of the chesty variety. I look and wonder what the heck they are doing though. The one on the bottom seems to be fulfilling some sort of either ammo restocking, or possibly waving something around to distract the hunted prey so that it is easier to shoot.

The one on the top is definitely giving someone the finger, suggesting it might be even more universal than I previously thought. Maybe M.I.A. was just trying to educate everyone about how old the gesture is. Apparently Diogenes of Athens used it in 4th century B.C. Then again, most Europeans are more likely to use two fingers.

Computing Happiness

2012-02-17T23:37:41-06:00

I've been thinking lately about how happy I am about the state of the computers that I do most of my work on. I've gotten into a situation somehow where most of the work that I do is on Linux computers, which I have enough control of to set up exactly as I want. This means that they all reasonably match, because I use Dropbox to store my dotfiles. I don't have an exact copy on all the machines, but the basic plan for when I set up a new development environment is to copy the .Xdefaults file, then copy the awesome config file, find some backgrounds that are the right size, and then symbolic link a bunch of files to the synced folder. Using that synced folder for the dotfiles makes it certain that I am updating for example my vim config file (and plugins) across all the systems, and the git aliases as well.

It reminded me of Alex Payne's Rules for Computing Happiness, which I had bookmarked a while back but didn't actually read through and think about until now. I agree with most of them in principle, if not by exactness. The list has certainly stood the test of time. The changes that I would make are mostly in the hardware section. I don't use Macs anymore because I use Linux on most of my machines, so I just need to make sure that the hardware works. Lately that has only been a second thought, because hardware is starting to become even more standardized than it used to be. In the past, you would have to worry about your network card being supported, maybe the sound card, or the disc burner. Nowadays, the only thing I double-check is the graphics card.

I also use a Desktop machine even though I have a pretty rocking laptop, because I really like working at a big display and having a numeric keypad when I am typing for some reason. I could argue that the compiling that I do rather regularly is resource-intensive, but that's not really the case most of the time.

So, notwithstanding the rules from Alex, which are (mostly) still valid, my rules for computing happiness (with a slant toward programmers):

Software

Use a plain text editor that you know well. (Yes, it's on the other list. It is important.)
Use only software that you either don't care about fixing, or you can understand the source code to.
If you do something more than 5 times, write a program to do it for you instead.
The command line is a powerful tool. Learning awk and sed will pay back in spades.
Sync your configurations so you can go from zero to programming comfortably in 5 minutes or less.
Prefer older, simpler versions of things instead of newer, GUI versions.
Don't do anything with a program that you can reasonably do with your text editor and a plaintext file.
Use source control for everything you will edit over more than one month, and all software you develop.

Hardware

Use Linux on commodity hardware for everything.
Get as much memory as is possible in every computer.
Try not to use anything but Linux on commodity hardware.
Get at least two monitors if you are working at a place for more than three hours regularly. As big as you can afford.
Backup everything you can't replace easily. Trust no hardware.

If I can't follow these rules, I don't make a big deal out of it. I still use Windows for Office, Excel, and other random stuff at work, and I use it for developing programs that others should be using. It's just not what I use for every day. However, if I am working for an extended period of time, following these rules make me happy and focused on the work instead of focused on the thing getting between me and the work.

Big Bang Theory Intro #13: The Wheel

2012-02-15T22:04:28-06:00

It's round, and it rolls. Nothing like the wheel.

The Wheel is one of the inventions that is always pointed towards as one of the earliest smart things. You see them on a ton of advertisements for patent filing stuff. The source image this time was from a different source. I think that I could make an argument for Irrigation, since it has been around longer and has more of an impact on civilization when it happens. The Wheel showed up on vehicles starting in around 4th century BC, and they were using irrigation in ancient Persia almost 2000 years before that.

Reinventing the wheel is something that people are supposed to avoid, but there's always something to be said for improving on a design. There isn't a ton of things that you can do to improve on the round shape though. Then again, if the roads were slightly differently constructed, then square wheels would work fine.

One of the best reinventions, or improvements, to the wheel, was done by John Boyd Dunlop who invented the pneumatic tire, which uses the property that air is an incompressible fluid and a rubber tube in order to make it possible for the tire to roll over small bumps and rocks without damaging the tire. It will just roll over, compressing and expanding the rest of the tire until the obstacle is over. This provides a type of shock absorption as well.

Even though they have a lot of advantages, airless tires have been one of the things that you always hear as coming in the next few years. Some of the more recent ones are from Bridgestone and Michelin. They look pretty freaky when they are in a moving car though - almost like the hovercar.

February Diet Update

2012-02-12T22:38:02-06:00

It's been a good month of exercise, and I've been doing pretty good on my goals that I have laid out for the year. The scale has been frustratingly un-helping this month though, and done some ups and downs. I have also devised a schedule to keep my running a little more exciting. The most frustrating part of the diet and exercise this month has been the diet part. Let's start with the charts.

The last thirty days can highlight my frustration with my weight over the last month or so. This graph has far more red areas than I am comfortable with. It seems like my weight is still on the downward trend, which is good at least. My daily deficit from this graph is about 300 calories less than I am aiming for, but it isn't a big surprise.

The year to date graph looks better. There were a lot of gains in the first month of the year which make the whole year not look so bad. I've been a little more lax on my diet in the last month. I don't watch the calories as much as I used to when I go out to eat, and sometimes have days when I overeat by a ton because I am eating lots of empty calories like chips and sweets.

I've found for a while that eating too many carbs just makes me hungrier later in the day, and makes me want to eat more again. This is probably some of the reason why a low-carb diet worked so well for me last year, and makes me want to start adding a significant amount of protein back into my diet, especially at the beginning of the day when it will have the most impact.

Recently I have been having a meal at about 4pm, which does some kind of substitute for a lunch meal which I usually skip. I really like to work at my job straight through the day so that I can get a full day in without having to take time off for lunch, and also get in fairly early. Having a meal right when I get home helps me get through the three or four hours of structured work that I have at home before a real meal, usually something wonderful cooked by my partner or a nice meal out.

Usually this mid-day meal is carb-packed because it's the most efficient way to get a decent number of calories into me. I usually don't want to spend a ton of time before I start cranking on some actual work and the exercise schedule.

Speaking of the exercise schedule, I've been pretty happy with the progress since the last report. By running graph shows the miles that I've run, and can lead you to all of the miles that I've done. The swath on the graph also makes it clear that I will handily make the one hundred miles a month goal that I have planned for the year. I've already got far enough ahead that if something kept me from exercising, I would be okay skipping a couple of days. According to my dailymile stats, I've almost ran 1000 miles since I started tracking it as well. That is a pretty nice accomplishment.

I'm starting to spice up my running schedule with the new workout type that I laid out in the last month's report. The pacing runs, I've found, are good for my confidence, and hopefully will help in the long run to nudge me toward running a longer time without stopping. I'm toying with the idea of running a half marathon without stopping sometime in the future, and I definitely can't do that if I keep running at my natural pace, which I end up tiring myself out too much.

In order to incorporate them into my workout, I've started replacing some of my interval runs with some of them throughout a month of workouts. My schedule is a little complicated now - it doesn't follow a set schedule as much as it used to before. I run on the "training schedule" on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, which consists of three interval runs followed by a pacing run, that I end up repeating. Because this is four slots for three days in the week, I only repeat the schedule every four weeks.

On Thursdays, I run "As You Like" days, where I run the course around the park, and run whenever I feel like it. Lately that has been meaning that I run longer distances than I would on my normal interval run, and have variable speeds. Usually it's not faster than the interval run days, but one of them is still in my top five fastest. Sundays are still the one day between two training days, so they are a dedicated walking day.

This schedule ends up being regular enough, and spiced enough because I'm not always doing the same day for the pacing day every week. I'm hoping that I can still have some gains in the next months like I had earlier when I first started running. It's still a lot of fun to run though, which is a good sign. I still haven't talked about staying warm, but there hasn't been as much need in the last month, with more forty degree days. Maybe next month.

Get Myself Organized

2012-02-10T23:22:24-06:00

Lately I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed, and not able to track all the things that I want to make sure that I don't miss in life. It's especially frustrating because I used to be a very organized person who could get a lot of things done in a day, and I could keep track of what I needed to do next. In the past I've used a number of systems to organize myself, but lately I have been flying by the seat of my pants so to say.

Going anarchic works for me for a certain number of tasks and a certain amount of time, and I usually end up working towards some type of list system in the projects that are large enough for me to have so many tasks that I can't remember all of the things that I need to do in order to completely forget about a task that needs to get done. In general, I tend to keep a master list in my head of all the things that I need to get done in every part of my life.

Earlier systems that I've tried seem to focus largely on removing the list from my head, and getting it down into a system which I can remember. This is one of the pillars of the GTD system, which is referred to as the "trusted system". It's really more of a pre-requisite of the system, because if you don't trust the system at all, then you're still left with the list in your head, and you've just externalized some of your list for no reason other than to remind you of the list that you're still carrying around in your head.

I've worked toward a trusted system in the past, and usually trust it for a while, but I have never really fully trusted it, partially because I have tried a lot of systems, and abandoned a lot of them for days or weeks at a time, and then the system doesn't have the most recent tasks in it. That's why the ubiquitous capture is one of the most important parts of the system for me - if I can't capture any task (any task, no matter if it is relevant at the time) right away, I can't trust that it will actually make it into the system, and therefore I can't trust the system to have all the things that I need to get done into it.

So usually I migrated toward some type of list-based system which I can use with paper, which I can carry around in little notebooks that I carry around with a pen. When I think of something to put on the list, then I can put it on the notebook right away, and process it later into some other lists. The most recent system which I abandoned was AutoFocus and then SuperFocus, and a strange hybrid of the two systems, which I had a strong affinity for because it has a strong list-based component, a very strong ubiquitous capture, and all works in a single massive list.

This single massive list worked okay for a while for me, and even survived through a destruction of the system which is way more than I usually expect. Usually I end up reacting to when the system fails like that by deciding to find a new system, and spend a week or two looking at some productivity pr0n before I settle on a new system to try out for a week, month or year. It really is a great system which does a great job of dealing with the "I don't wanna right now" aspect of the massive task list, which happens when you look at your next thing on the list and you have an aversion to doing it. It is one of the strengths of the system that it eventually just figures out that you won't be doing that task that you have passed over thirty of forty times and forces you to admit that as well.

The big failing of the system that is making me move to a new system now, is that it fails in the presence of two major things that have emerged in my task list lately: tangible priority and massive volume. Tangible priority happens when you have a specific list of projects which you should be working on from the top to the bottom. This is pretty strong in the work environment that I am in right now, where I am expected and really should be working on one project until I can't do anything, finishing tasks for this highest priority project until I'm either waiting on the calendar, another person, or a long-running task. Tangible priority screws with the "don't wanna" system of AutoFocus, making it that you have to do certain things on the list, and if something pops out at you and you want to work on it, you really can't do that because someone is counting on you to get the high priority thing done.

Sometimes tangible priority takes the form of the deadline that is farthest in the rear view mirror, and sometimes it is just that you want to have the whole office be more productive, and need to have the person who is waiting on you be the one with the ball. More often the rear view mirror is a symptom of massive volume though. AutoFocus and SuperFocus don't deal very well with tasks that come at you from all angles and in massive quantities, because even if you do manage to capture all of those items right away, you won't be able to actually get to all the items in the list, and it will just grow longer and longer. This happened to me at work. Eventually my list got to 20 legal pad pages of tasks, and wasn't getting any shorter. I abandoned the system and couldn't make it continue to work.

I've been working on my time-limited anarchic mode for about three weeks now, and it works well in the short term, especially when you have two or three project which have the higher priority that I mentioned a bit earlier. However, it falls down when you end up with a state where you have to actually keep track of all the tasks. I don't like depending on asking other about what they need from me right away, and I've been asking the question "What do you need?" a bit too much for my comfort lately. I'm determined to organize myself into something that resembles a strong system again, so I can get back to saying "oh, I finished that for you already" instead of "Do you need something?". I find when I'm in that mode at work, lots of great things start happening.

I haven't worked out exactly what I'm going to use yet, but I'm closing on it from all sides right now, and will be trialling a system for the "home life", which consists of a bunch of smaller projects as well as normal errands which are micro-tasks, and of course the massive thesis project. The varied sets and sizes of tasks made it a good trial run in the past, and I'm hoping to have a good system soon.

Big Bang Theory Intro #12: Evolution of Man

2012-02-07T22:14:30-06:00

Oh boy, a controversial topic. Well, controversial to some.

This is a fairly famous image and most people recognize it now as a symbol of the evolutionary process. I couldn't find the exact source image for this, but there are literally thousands of versions of it around the web. Although many would attribute the original idea to Charles Darwin, I couldn't find anything even similar to this in all his illustrations, which are all available online.

Personally, I have a belief in the theory of evolution, if only because you can see it from first principles and it makes sense to me. You can simulate it with a basic set of rules, and see natural selection happen over thousands of generations, which makes up a significant part of evolution. If you accept some basic assumptions, it's pretty easy to simulate. There was a marginally popular video which explained it, but that got also turned into a javascript thingy which works pretty good as well.

There are a ton of parodies of this depiction out there. I am a big fan of the computer-based one where we eventually evolve into typing on computers, because honestly I spend most of my day in front of a computer (although I'm standing more when typing lately). There's also one with the obvious natural ending of the obese man which seems to be fairly popular, and there are a large number of cartoons making fun of the image in one way or another.

Interestingly, there is some thought that evolution has stopped or slowed because we have less prolific fathers than we had before, and possibly because we are somehow cheating the natural selection by the use of technology. I've wondered about this for a while, and I think it's interesting both from a scientific perspective, as well as a ethical perspective. If we are somehow cheating natural selection through technology, is it a bad thing? Ethically, there are a lot of questions about the existence of genetically passed diseases and whether someone should procreate based on knowing that their child might be diseased simply because of your genes. I don't have a good answer, but it is the type of question which I wish would be asked and debated more than whether evolution is actually valid.

Two months with ICS on a Droid 3

2012-02-05T20:29:37-06:00

I was pretty excited when Ice Cream Sandwich was announced last year. So much that I actually considered getting a Galaxy Nexus phone just to develop for it and make sure that I was on the bleeding edge. I'm really excited about Android phones in general, and ICS looked like a big upgrade from the previous Gingerbread phone version. Eventually I had decided that I would let my phone get an official update or a ROM for ICS and I would use the cash I would have spent for an Android tablet.

So I was pretty stoked when I found out last year that hashcode had released an Alpha of the upgrade for the Droid 3. There was a lot of stuff missing and not working quite well, but I decided to take the plunge and check it out. Not the least of my concern was assuaged by the fact that the excellent safestrap by the same coder lets you essentially dual-boot your phone between the stock ROM and the new one.

There were a lot of things wrong with the ROM at first. Lots of apps didn't run at all, including Google Talk, which I relied on pretty heavily before I upgraded. I realized that I don't usually talk that much to people with it, and I have backup whenever I am near a computer in the form of my constantly-open GMail window. The OS itself was really fast, and didn't even seem to have many of the problems of previous CyanogenMod imports that I had tried on phones, which have always had a hit to my battery. The new launcher would crash a lot, basically whenever something strange happened, and it didn't have support from all of the applications that I ran before.

The good stuff first (well, almost first), because I have basically been running this new ROM without any breaks for the last 90 days that I have had it on the phone. The advantages have been outweighing the disadvantages. The most obvious ones are that the native apps are a lot more efficient and easier to deal with because of some of the new UI paradigms that they have been pushing lately. The "up" navigation direction is specifically something that I have been wanting in some apps for a while now. Back is great, and it shouldn't go away, because there are definite great uses for it (I've wished for it a lot on the iPad when I am navigating around), but sometimes I land in an app and I want to go "up". The new menu style is something which I appreciate as well, because it looks a lot more like a menu, as well as working better than the previous menu style which only could accommodate basically six buttons, and when you ended up with more than that you would have to sacrifice one of them for a "more" which basically was a neutered version of the new ICS menu paradigm. The action bar is also pretty great.

The new GMail is definitely the best email client I have ever used on a phone, and the upgraded regular email (which I use connected to an Exchange account, hey, there's a use for two email apps!) has similar improvements which find me replying quickly to an email more often than I would before. Talk (now that it works in the newest Alpha), works a lot better with the swiping side to side than it did before. Messaging works well still as expected, and the Maps application is improved even more on ICS somehow than it was on Gingerbread, which I didn't think was possible.

I should talk a little about the Roboto Font, since it got some previous attention for being anything from a Helvetica Knockoff to a frankenfont (make up your mind, peoples). If you haven't seen it on a phone, I think you should hold off your judgement. The difference when you are reading on a tiny screen is palpable, especially compared to the old Droid font family. I had previously switched to it on my (rooted) Gingerbread phone, and it was like night and day. I think it probably has too many problems at larger point sizes for the larger screen (I would never use it on my 260 square inch normal workspace), but it reads great on a phone, and I have seen it on a tablet where it looks pretty great too.

Of course, there are some problems though. I've already mentioned the app crashing problem, but I expect that from any Alpha or Beta ROM which I am on. The bleeding edge also comes with a huge downgrade: the Droid 3 ICS ROM doesn't have a working Camera right now. This is a serious downgrade for a phone, so much that I seriously considered never trying the ROM. Hashcode is working on it though, and in fact doing something like a compatibility layer for other ROM developers to get it working, because apparently the tiling manager is significantly different in ICS than it was in previous versions. For now, any app which tries to access the camera just force closes, which I have come to expect. For the first 55 days or so of trying the ROM it also meant that I couldn't use GTalk because of it, which I worked around, but there is a working one now which has just disabled it's access to the camera. There are also issues with saving things to the SDCard, partly because Google changed where they put the card in the Nexus, and it also doesn't always work right away when I am plugging it in to download some media. Also some growing pains caused the 'B' key on the hardware keyboard not to work for a while, but that hs also been fixed.

All in all, if you can stand not having access to the camera on your Droid 3 and are a bit adventurous, I would recommend trying it out. You can always go right back to your old system, because safestrap keeps it around. I have avoided it mostly though, only going back to it in order to load new versions of the ICS as it gets upgrades. It's enough of an upgrade that I have actually told my wife (who has the same phone) that when she sees me take a picture on my phone, that she should make me upgrade her phone. Once the camera works reliably, it will be the best phone I've used.

Book Review: The Necromancer

2012-02-02T22:06:48-06:00

The Necromancer is the fourth book in the series by Michael Scott which is titled The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. I have been reading this series for a little while, but I haven't reviewed any of the books until now, so this review will also cover a little bit of the whole series. The series centers around two kids, Sophie and Josh, who are twins and they are special. As should be apparent by the name of the series, they get into some adventures with Nicholas Flamel, who is famous for being a scrivener in Paris.

This book starts with so many of the characters in disparate positions - two of the main characters are in the Pleistocene era, others are stuck running away from their masters. Josh and Sophie are separated from Nicholas and Perinelle. So right away, the events at the end of the last book are starting to make things difficult for the narrative. There are a lot of things going on from the start of this book, and there is not a lot for them to go except for some of them to resolve themselves.

Nicholas and Perinelle meet up with Josh and Sophie pretty quick in this one, and they wander around some places in San Francisco, while the story mostly revolves around the other characters. It may be fitting that the most compelling storyline in this book is the one that John Dee is taking, as he is the one which the book is titled from. He is in the most danger, after his failure to capture either of the main duos, and ends up with a particularly nasty price on his head.

All in all, I think that this book is really flawed for a few reasons. First of all, the previous three books have taken a long time presenting Dee as a particularly nasty character, so centering this book around him is a little stretching it in the first place. Part way through the book, I am not sure whether I should be rooting for him or not. The main villains which we are supposed to be worrying about causing the end of the world are all out against him, so it's somewhat confusing to double down on some of the antagonism. So while he is clearly against these looming bad guys which we have been rallying against while he was their champion, he is suddenly against not only the main enemies, but still set in his ways against the main protagonists of the previous books.

The book also suffers from pacing problems. Part of the problem with starting all of your characters in mortal or near mortal danger is that you really don't have a lot to go from there. The first half of the book it seems like all that is happening is either the characters in the story are staying as status quo (which is not very quo) or they are slowly solving the problems that were all set off in the previous books' blockbuster of an ending. Halfway through the book I found myself not caring that much about the characters, and especially about some of the new characters which got added. It could be that the series is just flawed because it is centered around a group of people who don't die by nature, but there are a lot of people to keep track of at the beginning of this book, and the list doesn't get any shorter.

Even with these flaws, it was entertaining enough once the middle section got a bit less crazy and some of the characters ended up in little groups. Scott coalesced the story lines into just two at the end, both of which I was genuinely interested in because they involved characters that I had come to know from the previous books, and at least one of which I am rooting for in each storyline. There was also some revealing in the middle section which I was happy to see, having the world which is similar but not exactly the same as ours spelled out a bit more.

I think that I will be taking a break from this book series for a while, so that I can get onto some of the other books in my reading list, and also because I think it might be a bit stale partially because I was trying to read them straight through. I'll at least alternate, and then maybe the books will be a little more interesting when I am picking up a familiar character set and revisiting them instead of just continuing what could have been just one long story, but with what seems like the book breaks caused some unnecessary writing acrobatics which may have hurt the story in the long run. Overall, I'm giving this book a C because of the middle when I was very not enthused to continue with reading, and the fact that the beginning was a bit forced in order to get all the characters where they needed to be at the end.

Big Bang Theory Intro #11: Chimpanzee

2012-01-30T23:14:33-06:00

It's a monkey! And something that's genetically related to humans. The original image is in color, and looks pretty nice.

Yes, I'm someone who believes in evolution, which says that humans might be descended from apes. The chimpanzee used to believed to be 99% in common with humans, but more recent studies suggest 94% or even as low as 86%. Technically the chimpanzees are in the genus Pan, and not the Homo genus that Homo sapiens are, but there are some other species in the Homo genus which are less related than them.

They are the types of apes which have a strong social structure, with alpha males, empathy, and use of tools. There are the ones that Dame Jane Goodall were studying for the longest time, and she discovered a lot of things about them, including the fact that they have unique personalities for each chimp, and not just simple social norms. I've always thought that she was a good person, but was more convinced recently when I found out about this far side cartoon. It was originally opposed by the Jane Goodall foundation, but then the woman herself thought it was amusing and put a kibosh on the smackdown. There's nothing like a sense of humor in my book. Now they sell a shirt with the cartoon on it.

Closer to home, the Como Zoo is building a habitat for some apes that will be done in 2013 that they're calling the Gorilla Forest. This is a big improvement to the current habitat that they have for the big apes. They also have a bunch of other monkeys and apes in the primate house. The designs look like the visitors will be able to get pretty close to the gorillas, which will be interesting to see.

Apple's iBooks Announcement

2012-01-28T21:50:30-06:00

This may be a little late in order to actually make any dent in the massive amount of news and opinion that came out about the iBooks Author announcement and what I actually think about it, but I have a want to express my thoughts anyway. Hopefully it's not too stale.

The iBooks Author Announcement was about a week and a half ago now. I watched the liveblogs and then heard all about it for a week (and the follow up is still going) on the 5by5 podcast network. I usually agree with most of the people there (with the exception of Gruber, which I am usually either laughing at or yelling at), since they have reasonable opinions. There are a few points that I haven't read about yet though.

Firstly, this is obviously about hardware. They may be giving away the software, but no one thinks that this won't sell more iPads in the coming years. A few people brought up the notion that they are selling the iPads to young people, in order to get them into the hands of kids - then they grow up, and they want to continue using their iPads. While the iPad has gained some major inroads into business, most of the major computing still gets done on Windows computers on Office, and even when you're using a Mac you're probably connecting it to an Exchange server somewhere. This is very similar to the type of thing that happened before though, where Apple was dominating the education market, especially at the primary school levels. It didn't work then, and I don't really think it will work now in the long run unless some major things change in the business landscape.

There is still a great thing for Apple in the hardware angle though. Parents are a little leery about buying the iPads for their children now, maybe because they think that they might be spoiling them, or may be they think that they will be more apt to break when the kids get their fingers on them. Now, they have an excuse which definitely pushes them into the "buy" column for many of the parents in the country. School districts will want to look like they are high tech and they want to get on this bandwagon, so they might buy the iPads for the kids themselves. Apple just made a killing on iPads in last quarter's earnings, and selling to the academic market will certainly not hurt those sales. They're practically giving the books away (and are giving away one decent section of one, which I'm sure they paid a nice fee for).

Secondly, I think that this is about hardware in another, more brilliant way. Getting an iPad or an Android tablet might actually become something that you will have to ask yourself a question about in the near future. Right now it's a foregone conclusion, because unless you have a specific reason to get Android (for example, if you're like me and don't really like iOS), reasonable people will be buying an iPad if they want a tablet. It has a better selection of apps, and the hardware has been historically better built, plus the speed is fast enough for everything you might want to do. However, the fact is that the Android tablets are starting to look pretty good. The hardware itself is getting better, being much faster, and the screen quality is starting to climb as well. Android tablets are starting to look less like toys that are clawing for a slice of the non-iPad market and starting to look like real competitors. It's my belief that in two to three years, there will be a set of iPad competitors that will look great in comparison.

So when is the best time to start giving people reasons to use the iPad over other tablets? It's right now. Leverage the market position that you have now in order to create exclusive content that is required in some way, or at least greatly improves the experience of the user. If you're a college freshman, and you could buy an iPad and a bunch of books for iBooks, or you could buy a bunch of books and buy an Android tablet that won't have any of your books on it, you're going to choose the iPad every time. It doesn't matter if the Android tablet has a better screen, longer battery life, better accessories, and a great selection of apps and games, because you just got a huge tilt in the iPad direction because of the iBooks exclusive component.

Thirdly, people got a little mad at Apple because of the EULA on the iBooks Author saying that the books that you write in it can't be sold in any other medium except the iBooks store. Many people have already commented on this, and I believe that it's their prerogative what they say people can do with their software (as long as the content itself can be ported over to another book and they're not claiming that - it would be overreaching), but I think there is a second reason other than the want for awesome software to do what they want. Apple started using language like the rest of the corporations that spout bullshit that people don't like. They began the presentation talking all about how the US isn't great in education, and we can help the students learn better with this awesome new iBooks tool. The problem is that they are speaking one thing, and doing another. If Apple really was being altruistic like their speech acts like they are, they should not care where the output of their awesome tool goes. If it makes new textbooks that are better for other people, then it's great, and if you can get some money, you should consider selling in our store. You're advancing the education in the world by using iBooks Author, and they would be happy about it. That's not what they want though, they want to use your content to sell more iPads. It's the kind of doublespeak that you would expect from other large tech companies, and exactly the kind of thing that makes every actually read the fine print when something comes out from HP or Microsoft. I don't mind Apple acting like a for-profit company, I just don't want the doublespeak with it - people want better from Apple.

How's the Thesis? - Putting the Hours in

2012-01-25T21:59:13-06:00

This week's thesis work is Windows focused, which means that I was working in Windows 7 all week long. It was going a bit slow earlier, but I made a lot of progress today, and I almost am at the stage where I put the portable app together and start beta testing. There's a bit of server work to do still, but I think I should meet my goal of opening to the public in early February.

Today has been quite productive, getting the client to the stage where I am comfortable packaging it up. At the same time, it was quite frustrating throughout the day looking at the clock and seeing that I wasn't making the progress that I wanted on my hour goal. The goal for today was to get 8 hours of real work done on the project. I think that I am counting today as about 7 hours, even though I only logged 6. At the same time, I worked from about 10:30 am to 9 pm, with only a couple breaks.

If you think that math is a little wonky, it is. Even if we take out the breaks that I did take -- half an hour for lunch at around noon, and an hour and a half for my regular run around the neighborhood, it should be eight and a half hours of work. However, I'm using an interesting bit of math for counting my work on most normal days, and I was trying to continue it for the "thesis day" that I have scheduled each week.

I mentioned this method before, the Pomodoro technique. I have my intervals set at 30 minutes for the work time, and 5 minutes of break. It usually works, and I'm not exactly not thinking about my work when I walk away from the desk to do something else. I also have a long break every 4 pomodoros I do of 15 minutes. Today, I have performed 12 pomodoros, which equates to 6 hours of real, focused work. I don't check email, I don't do Twitter, Facebook, and I even am a little short with anyone who is walking up to me (sorry, honey!) when I am on a work interval.

The breaks do add up though, and it makes my time calculations a little bit weird. 12 pomodoros have 9 short breaks, and 3 long breaks in them. This means that I have an extra hour and a half that I'm on a break, doing something else which is not related to the work. That means that those 6 hours of focused work add another hour and a half of scheduled breaks, which I really believe make the focused work better.

If I add those to my "real" breaks that I took in the day, that comes to nine hours. I don't really know where the remaining hour and a half disappeared to. I am guessing that I was a little lax in getting back to the desk right away on some of the rest breaks and took a few minutes here and there, or maybe my lunch was really an hour and not just half an hour.

It's really teaching me that getting real work into the project is difficult. I've decided that I am going to count my scheduled break time as 2/3 of normal time on the days when I do enough to make a long break, which will make today count for 7 towards my 12 hours a week goal, but keep my 1 hour thesis days at a real, solid hour because I won't count any of the break in the middle, which I often take my daily run between, making that one much longer than the five minutes.

There's still nothing more frustrated than looking at my pomodoro count at 12 and the clock at 21:00 though. It's like I feel that I could actually finish at 16 for the day, but I would have very little time to myself. Maybe I'll try to get started earlier next week, and the wallclock time won't get on my goat as much. In the meantime, you can watch my progress towards the 12/week goal on my beeminder graph.

Big Bang Theory Intro #10: Woolly Mammoth

2012-01-23T21:00:07-06:00

It's our first subject with fur!

It's a Wooly Mammoth! Look at how huge it is. Wait, the cropped version here doesn't have a good sense of scale - maybe you should gander at the source image from photos.com, where there is a friendly scared dude with a spear to see how big this guy actually was. They could get almost 10 feet tall. Unlike everything up until now, there is actually some evidence that humans, or neandertals were around when the mammoths were walking around, because there are some cave paintings.

One of the most interesting parts about these large creatures, are that they often aren't fossilized, but just freeze in place, so you can end up finding one just frozen solid. I've thought sometimes in the Minnesota winter that I might end up in a similar fate. The latest one was found less than five years ago. They are often still found with their soft tissue intact. This means that there might actually be a real-life Jurassic Park situation, where they could extract the DNA of a frozen specimen and make up a clone. It doesn't look like there is an actual clone coming anytime soon though.

It'll be fine if you drop it!

2012-01-19T17:15:30-06:00

I spotted something on the Verge liveblog of the Apple event today.

Remember, kids:

Books are not durable.
iPads are durable.

Thoughts on the non-iPad Market

2012-01-19T00:06:20-06:00

Lately I've been thinking about tablets, partially because I ended up with a iPad over this Christmas season, and partially because the tablets that are coming out that I actually want are starting to heat up and look a lot better. I have a rant which has been working around in my head for a while about this, and it's not really going away.

Part of this is my own fault, because I'm one of those crazy people who reads a lot of Apple focused tech blogs even though I don't (or didn't recently) own any Apple products. Recently, it seems like every time someone in the mainstream tech press talks about the competition in the Android tablet market, some snarky examination and explanation of the many reasons why we shouldn't care happens in the Apple blogs. John Gruber, being the most prominent of the bunch, brings to mind the most examples in recent memory, although Marco Arment makes the point earlier in the year.

It's not that I am disagreeing with these stories, or their viewpoint that non-iPad tablet sales are much smaller than iPad tablet sales. That's pretty much written in black and white on the reports that the news stories draw their numbers from. The thing that is irking me is the implication that the stories shouldn't be written at all, or they should more focused on how iPad is dominating the entire area.

There clearly is a market for non-iPad tablets. Using the same report that the most recent spat of articles (and echoing on each other's linkblogs) is using, we see that the headline is that non-iPad sales are at 1.2 million tablets. That's a big market. Let's have some fun with numbers ourselves.. Assuming that those tablets are selling cheaper than the iPad 2, let's say maybe $300 on average, the market size is around 350 million dollars in the first three quarters of 2011, that makes the non-iPad market almost half a billion dollars a year. The same report states that non-iPads are selling once for every 10 iPads. (btw, let's look at the trend - in August Gruber estimated one for every 20)

It's pretty boring to just focus on the winner, especially when there is no competition for the best tablet for the general consumer. I can easily admit that the iPad is winning hand over fist, but the exciting news is in the competition, which is pretty heated in the Android field. CES this week brought us announcements of Asus Transformer Prime, Acer Iconia Tab and Visio VIA. All three are quite interesting and in direct competition with each other. Which one will sell more? That's a question that you might not know the answer. You know which tablet will sell more than all of them? The iPad 2. I don't care because it's an obvious conclusion considering the state of the market.

There's a lot of competition, and a lot of different options, because Android is a lot more open than Apple is. When I shop for an Android tablet I need to pick what size, what resolution, whether I want mobile data, which manufacturer, colors, and many other options. The only choice on an iPad is what size I want, or whether I want a 3G modem. They're all essentially the same. Let's compare the iPad to the iPad. Boring. On the other hand, comparing a Galaxy Tab 10.1 to a Motorola Xoom is something where you might actually learn something.

The tech press is reporting on the non-iPad market because it's where all the interesting stories are, and they can actually contribute to the discussion, and there is an actual market there. You only need to tell me once that the iPad is a great tablet. What if I don't want one? What do I buy then? Now you have a question that I need to look into.

(I'd also like to hammer about how market share is somehow important for tablets, but not important for phones now, because the iPhone is losing the market share battle in phones but winning in tablets, but it's getting late. Maybe another time.)

January Diet Report

2012-01-15T12:57:21-06:00

It's only been a couple weeks since the last report, but I have a full column in my tracking notebook so I guess I'm getting back on track with these reports. I've mostly been on track for the month, with a little blip around the holidays as expected. Exercise has been going well, which is really encouraging to me in many ways. I've also added a new style of workout to my schedule that I will work in as I can.

Looking first at the weight chart, it's pretty obvious that I took a week or so off from caring about what I eat, right around christmastime. This isn't really a big surprise because we went on a stay-cation for the holidays this year, which involved a bunch of room service and eating out at the same time. It was quite relaxing though. Lately I've been pretty happy with the progress that I show on the scale, and able to ignore it when a day or two goes blipping above the trend line.

Little changes in my weight and trend look really big on these graphs now, which is actually a good thing, meaning that I'm not fluctuating or going all in one direction, keeping to my weight maintenance goal that I've been doing for the last couple months. My resolutions call for a loss of at least 12 pounds, which comes out to about 212 at the end of the year. That's not a lot of weight lost compared to last year's 75 pound loss, but I really don't want to push it and really want to be able to keep this weight indefinitely.

I've been good at the exercising lately, which is actually somewhat viewable on my beeminder running graph. I'm on track for my goal of 100 miles in each month, with 47.7 miles so far that should climb to above 50 when I finish my workout today. The training plan has been working out well, as yesterday I just upped my interval running time to three minutes. I'm still taking two minute breaks, which means that I will be lowering the walking break time in the next time I change the intervals, probably two weeks from now. Lately I've also had a few runs with a sub-45 minute final time, which means that I'll probably change up the route a bit in the next month so that it is longer.

Weather was something that I was worried about when I started running around the neighborhood, because I do actually live in Minnesota, meaning that it can get very cold and the snow can definitely pile up and cause some problems. I promised Diana that I would not run when it was exceedingly icy or piled with snow outside, but this year we have had a mostly mild winter so I haven't had to worry about it that much. There are some patches of ice around sometimes on the sidewalk that I have to be on my toes watching for, as the case may be. Mostly I've been worried about the cold, which hasn't been overbearing, but has gotten in to the single digits a few times. Lately I just finished up my gear by buying some running gloves which should keep me from frostbite. There were a couple days before I acquired them that I ran insidje on the treadmill in order to avoid injury though.

I outlined my running schedule in the last month's report, but part of the treadmill running gave me an idea for a different type of workout that I can do on my non-training days. Last Wednesday on one of those indoor days I did what I call a "pacing run" but is probably more accurately referred to as something else. I set the treadmill to the average pace that I run in one of my training runs, and just left it there for the majority of the run. So instead of running 8 mph and then walking at 4 mph on a rest interval, I run 6.5 mph the whole time. I was somewhat worried that I would just get tired and wouldn't be able to continue even at the slower pace.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to keep such a fast pace through twenty minutes of straight running, completing more than two miles without stopping at all. I didn't really know how to run slower, as it were, until I had the treadmill keeping the pace. If weather encroaches in the future and the treadmill is open when I show up in the exercise room, I think I will use the equipment to my advantage and have these runs to try to teach my body to run a consistent pace for a long time instead of the running / walking intervals that I normally do. I am definitely more bored when I am just running and not doing intervals though, I may need something to distract me from the monotony. Maybe it would be different if I was outside and the landscape was falling by, but I don't really have a good instinct to run at that slower pace continually yet.

I still haven't written about how I keep warm, but I think I'll put that off until next month's report. Lately it's been in the 40s here, which means I haven't even had to use much of the cold-weather gear that I have around, just walking around in shorts and long sleeve shirts. Even if it doesn't get too cold, I'll write about keeping warm in the next report though.

Big Bang Theory Intro #9: Stegosaurus

2012-01-13T16:50:37-06:00

More big dinosaurs in the next Big Bang Theory Opening picture.

This time I could find the source image on jupiterimages and many other sites. The original is in color, and looks like an interesting diorama or claymation setup. Since the Apatosaurus was in the last picture as well, I'm going to focus on the foreground beastie.

The Stegosaurus has long been one of my favorite dinosaurs. I always liked how his fins on the back looked, they were spiky but they didn't have a lot of stuff. Also many times they are depicted as having a spiky tail, which I just thought was cool. I learned that there is some debate about whether they could actually use the spikes on the tail as a weapon.

I also learned that they have two brains, one stored in the tail, which was mentioned on Fringe, one of my favorite shows. The second brain was not necessarily used for extra storage, like posited on the show though, but more likely as some type of extra brain processing like an extra core booting up when they were in a dangerous situation.

Until researching for this post, I didn't know that there are states with official state dinosaurs. The stegosaurus is the oldest state dinosaur, which Colorado designated in 1982. Denver's Museum of Nature & Science has one of only 6 on display in the country. The fossil is in a super-awesome display where there is a mother and baby Stegosaurus being attacked by an Allosaurus (T-Rex).

How's The Thesis? - Anonymity and Consent

2012-01-10T21:26:01-06:00

This week's thesis work has focused on client work and website work, and has brought up some interesting conundrums about consent, privacy, and self-run studies. I thought that I would share some of the things that I'm working through right now, because it's one of those topics that you don't think about when you are first starting thinking about a thesis topic or your experiment in general.

First, a little background on the experiment I am running. I have a self-run experiment, where the subject will download a client onto their computer and run the experiment, and the program will gather data on the interactions between the user and the program and then submit it to a web server application for later processing and analysis by myself for the purposes of proving my hypothesis. I ran a study in a similar way last year titled Selection and Movement Methods for Multiple Mobile Agents. (The study server is down, so you can run the program, but no additional data is collected.)

In order to make the subjects want to participate in the study, I would like to let the subjects enter their email in the program which will then be submitted along with the data, and have a random prize drawing for participants of an online retailer gift card. This brings up some concerns for me as an ethical researcher, because I don't want to have a list of emails just sitting around after the prize is over. It's a privacy concern that I'd rather not deal with, and it relies on a level of trust that I will not use it for some nefarious purpose.

I am technically competent enough to assign each user an anonymous identifier and keep it separate so that I can delete all the emails without losing any important data (the user can run the program more than once, and that could provide even more useful data about training times and such). At the same time, I know that anonymizing data is hard and would like to avoid any issues with that as well.

The main conundrum at the moment is this: to get consent to monitor the user, I want to have a click-through title page at the beginning of the program. I need to word this in a way that clearly says that I'm only monitoring them for the purposes of the study itself, and will only use their email for the drawing and will delete that data later. I also need to be careful that this page isn't too scary so that a lot of people don't decide right then that they want to bail. Adding to the fun is that I need to be somewhat vague about what I'm actually testing, so that I don't spoil the results. The wording is.. delicate.

As if that isn't enough to think about, there are two special bonus rounds which are complicating matters further! First, I am going to get an IRB waiver for this study, so the review board will be reviewing my "consent form" that I am presenting, and will need to give it the OK. There really is a large amount of oversight for any study which involves subjects, including making sure there isn't gender bias and many other things, but that's another discussion. The second bonus round involves fancy statistics which I think that the subjects themselves would be interested in. Personally I think it's nifty to see a page of your stats at the end of the thing, and would want to let each user see how they did, possibly in comparison to the rest of the subjects, or to earlier runs themselves.

So some part of this week will be nailing down the exact wording of that page, which is only a tiny fraction of the program itself. Because I have a study website to avail myself of during this, I am probably going to include a sample piece of data that they can look at if they're curious exactly what I'm collecting, as well as an explainer page that is somewhat reassuring. I'm hoping that I can finish the site and client soon, and start the study in the next few weeks, so that I can get a decent amount of data to crunch before February, because I can then wrap this section up and move on to the rest of the thesis of doom.

A lack of sleep

2012-01-08T19:15:38-06:00

I don't get much sleep. When I tell people that I get to work at 5:30 in the morning most days, they are usually surprised, and often afterwards they ask me when I go to bed. When I tell them, then they are even more surprised. The answer that I give is between midnight and 1am, which is true most of the time. Lately, I've been trying to get into bed before midnight, but I still often don't try to sleep until after the witching hour (?).

I don't really seem to have a problem keeping up this sleeping schedule on normal weekdays. There is some leeway on the amount of sleep that I get on the weekends, but usually my to-bed time isn't changing, but rather just the wake-up time. My alarm is set to 9am on the weekends, but I'm also not worried about it being right next to my head most of the time, so commonly I will sleep until 10 or 11 on Saturday and Sunday. I've read a few articles that say that you can catch up on sleep, but then again, there are others that don't believe it.

If I go through and do the math, these weekend sleeps aren't really balancing out the score though: on an average weekday I will get between 3 and 5 hours of sleep. On a weekend, I increase that to 8 to 9 hours, and sometimes up to 10. Doing the math, that's only about six and a half hours per day when it comes to the end, still less than the recommended amount of eight hours.

I've been confused as to why I can do this for a while now, especially during the weekdays when there is so little sleep time. I've read about polyphasic sleep and REM cycles, which suggest that I am perhaps getting a single full sleep cycle in, and it just happens to be convenient for the time that I've chosen to get up and head to work in the morning.

Ever the experimenter, I tried napping during my lunch break for about a month last year. I would have my lunch out of the office, and then start sleep now to wake me up half an hour later. I did it because I read that just a short nap can actually improve your mental condition for a long time if you take it during the day. It didn't work out for me, I just ended up feeling no better or groggier than I did before. Possibly it was because I was doing it in the full sunlight, as there is some evidence that you need to have a dark room for good sleep.

Alternately, I could be actually detrimental some part of my day, penalizing the work that I do in the evening towards my thesis, or making it that much harder to concentrate on the programming that I do on my spare time. Then my lack of shut-eye could be actually hurting my life. It's just one more thing to worry about, so I usually just keep doing what is working for now, and maybe worry about it later.

December Diet Report

2012-01-02T04:55:25-06:00

Okay, so it's not December anymore, but the data and charts that I'm presenting in this post are, so it's still the December report. I am proud to report that while most of the month is already done I have been on track. I've been watching what I eat less, mostly because of holiday treats in the office and various social functions, but I haven't been super off my game, and I've been able to make sure I don't go overboard too often.

The chart still says that I'm losing at 1 pound a week, but the data itself is showing me a lot of red points which I haven't been really that used to seeing in the last year. I should be expecting to see it a lot more as I switched from losing weight to maintaining in October. The closest I've come to giving up the ghost has been 229 shortly before Thanksgiving, and I haven't come close yet. At this rate it looks like I will succeed with my goal of being below 230 at the end of the year.

The yearly image still makes me look good, with the lions share of the year losing and being on a straight trend downwards, and with the last few months showing the kind of straight across line that I should be seeing when I am maintaining weight.

Exercise has been going as well as can be expected, and I still don't have a good way of graphing my runs or anything, so no fancy graphs, but I have been improving. My average was 10:17 per mile a month ago, and the last run that I did was at 10:07 per mile, which is not bad of an improvement. I've kept on schedule for the interval increases, which means that now I'm running for 2 minutes 45 seconds and walking for 2 minutes still. I think that when I get to 3 minutes and am comfortable, I will try reducing the walking time instead of increasing the running time.

This month I'd like to expand a little on the workouts that I do, and my plans for improvements in the next year. Each week, I run or walk five days a week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, I run the Five Parks Goal Loop, so named because while I am on it, I run past or through Audobon Park, Deming Heights Park, Cavell Playground, Waite Park, and Windom Park. The route itself I would rate as pretty hilly, if only because of the monster of a hill which just precedes the Deming Heights - I took a picture on one of my off days of this 80 foot climb. Lately I've been finishing it in about 45 minutes, and when I am consistently finishing it in less than 45 minutes, I'll be changing up the route so that I am running farther.

So that's three days of what you might call "training" a week, at about 4.5 miles. On Thursdays, I am starting to do something that I am going to call "run as you like day", where I run and walk at the intervals that I feel like instead of in the lock step of the timed intervals on my other days. Lately I've been going around Columbia park during these, but that might change in the near future as well as I want to be able to shake up the routes every month or so just to keep things interesting. In the most recent one, I've been pretty happy with the pace that I kept up. Usually I try to get some longer distances on this run just because, and I have been able to run for almost a mile straight, which is pleasing.

Sundays are my day where I am really giving myself a break, because it's between two "training" days, which means I don't want to strain the system too much. Usually it's the same route as Thursday but I am very restrained, walking almost the whole route. I usually end up trying to keep a pace which is under 12 minutes a mile though, which I consider to be a fast enough walk to get the heart rate up. On Tuesday and Friday, I have actual rest days where I don't exercise at all.

In summary form:

Monday: Interval running, 4.5 miles
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday: Interval running, 4.5 miles
Thursday: "Run as you like", 4.8 miles
Friday: Rest day
Saturday: Interval running, 4.5 miles
Sunday: Walking day, 4.8 miles

Every week this ends up being about 23 miles total of running or walking. I'm hoping in 2012 to increase this to about 25 miles a week so that I can make my goal of 100 miles a month. I don't actually have to that much because of the extra few days beyond 4 weeks in a month, but I will probably be doing it anyway, because I like my interval running to last between 45 minutes and an hour, and lately I've been under 45 minutes so I need to make the route longer.

I don't know if this is a great training program, but it's been the one that I can keep to for the last few months, so I am happy with it at least, and I've been improving my times. As the weather gets colder, I have had to gear up in order to avoid freezing my extremities off. Next time, I'll be writing about how I keep warm.

Twelve in Twelve

2012-01-01T14:55:17-06:00

As the new year dawns on us, lots of people like to take the time and make some resolutions, or plans for changing habits throughout the year. Usually I will make a few of these, and historically I have been pretty bad at keeping them. I'm pretty sure that this is not an uncommon phenomenon.

Last year I made one grand resolution which I had many paths to success at. It was something which I believed would make a big difference in my life - I wanted to make more money. Usually something like that would be considered not really fodder for a new year's resolution, but it wasn't just greed which was driving it. I could see potential and skill that I had, and I knew that I could do better for the both of us. I am happy that I actually succeeded in the goal for the year, and I think that both Diana and I are happier for it.

This year I have decided to take a different approach, and make a bunch of small changes which will hopefully add up to a better life overall. Partially this is because I was thinking for the last few days about how 2012 is convenient for splitting the year, due to our calendar system dividing 12 into somewhat equal months.

So I'm taking the theme through all the resolutions this year. Most of these are small, but some will be more difficult to accomplish. Some are things that I want to do, and some are things that I think I need to do. So because I'm taking the theme all the way, I have twelve resolutions for this year, in no particular order.

Read 12 books

In the past few months, I've acquired both a e-ink reader and a tablet. There isn't any excuse for not carrying around at least one book with me and getting to reading it. The list of books which I will read is mostly fiction and just for entertainment. I've noticed that I like to read though, and there is definitely a big pile of books to read. This is quite a modest resolution, only one book a month, and I think I should be able to get that done.

Lose 12 pounds

Last year, I had a focus on weight loss, which I've reported progress on monthly. It wasn't a resolution as much as something that I wanted to do for myself. I was pretty successful in 2011, losing almost 80 pounds over the year and feeling better about myself. About a month ago I switched from a focus on weight loss to a more fitness-related goal and maintaining the weight that I had taken off. This goal is more about keeping the weight off than it is about losing those few extra pounds, but I do want to still be on the right trend.

Work 12 hours a week on my thesis

It's been a long time coming, but one of the top things on my list for this year is finishing my Ph.D thesis. I have a clear path to the end, and I want to defend it this year and get on with the rest of the things in my life. To this end, for a while I've been working on it at least one hour a day for every day in the week. It's working, and I'm making progress but it is slower than I want to, so I'm going to increase the amount of work that I'm putting into it, and spend one full day in the lab as it were getting the work done.

My justification for the 12 number here is that I still want to work on it every day of the week, but I also want to get a full day in, so this is one hour every weekday, except for one day which I will put in at least a full eight hour day of work.

Run/Walk 1,200 miles

This is in the same vein as my other fitness related resolution, but it's a bit more ambitious. I've been running and walking for exercise and to stay fit for the last few months, and I want to continue that for the next year. This number represents 100 miles in a month, which should be possible because that's only about 25 miles a week, or 5 miles a day if I am exercising for 5 days a week like I am now. It's only a little more than what I'm doing now, and it's a nice round number which pleases me. It may be a bit difficult to keep doing this when I am getting to crunch time on the thesis work or when I am on vacation travelling but I feel like I could make up for those days in the long run, so to say.

Blog 12 posts a month

This should be pretty straightforward. Three posts a week should be doable, especially when I have some things already put in place in order to get some stuff. Not all of the posts are guaranteed to be on the base0.net blog, because some of them might be movie or TV reviews, and I would put them on the wherestheclicker.com site. I still have a bunch of easy posts in the form of the Big Bang Theory Opening posts anyway though.

Publish 12 Android Apps

It's been a long time where I have wanted to start publishing Android Apps in to the market and get some of my ideas into the world. This goal might be the hardest one for me this year, because I am going from zero to one a month. I believe that I can do it though, and I think it will be a good way to expand my skill set a little more. I'm not coming from nothing though, I have some code started on a couple of apps and a lot of ideas for ones which I will be pulling from.

Meet 12 new people

I've been going to a couple of networking events approximately monthly for a while now, both ruby.mn and lately also the AUG.mn user groups. Historically I have been shy and somewhat reserved at the events though, and really I want to expand my group of professional and personal contacts which is the reason that I started going. This year I want to meet at least 12 people from these groups. There are also minnebar and minnedemo events throughout the year, and various other geeky events, so this shouldn't be too hard as long as I get over some of the social anxiety that I experience.

Watch less than 12 hours of TV each week

I'm an avid TV watcher, and I really sit down in front of the thing and try to pay attention to the shows that I watch. Lately it has been taking a lot of time and I haven't really been enjoying the shows as much as I feel like I should. I am going to try to limit the TV to the shows that I actually enjoy watching. This one should be somewhat synergistic with the other goals, because reading, programming, and working more on the thesis are all ones which take up free time which is currently probably going to television.

Inbox 12

My email inbox represents something that I look at a lot throughout each day, and I carry around with me on my phone. I want to keep the list of things on a single page, which I've been able to do for the last few months, but I want to extend that so that I have less than 12 things in the inbox at any particular point in time, which I hope will get rid of some mental clutter.

12 Dates

I always want to spend more time with my wonderful partner Diana. This one is pretty straightforward - just go out on a date night once a month. I'm trying to decide if built in ones like Valentines Day, birthdays and other holidays count. Probably not. Dinner and a movie is fine, but I'm hoping we can do some museums, theater shows or other things that we both enjoy for these too.

Meditate 12 minutes a day

In the past, I've experimented a bit with meditation for relaxation and some contemplative time. I should be able to find at least 12 minutes a day for some type of meditation. Usually I go for just mind-clearing and breathing, and that can be done almost anywhere.

Call my parents 12 times

One of the things that I've been unhappy with myself in the last year has been how much I've kept in touch with my family. I want to call and keep them in the loop on things, and talk to them about what's going on so I can stay connected, but I have been busy or used some other excuse. I think that this is a doable goal, which is important, and it's also something that I want to make time for.

So there we go, it's 12 resolutions for 2012. 12in12 is the uncreative name that I have given for it, and I hope that I can do all of these numerically-themed things this year. I'll be reporting back on things as the year goes on, and I'm also tracking a number of them on beeminder as it makes sense to do so. Some of them are not really suited to the site, but here are links for the ones that I've setup so far:

November Diet Report

2011-11-20T22:20:43-06:00

It's been almost a month since October's update, and there are a lot of exciting things happening. I've been working pretty hard at keeping track of my weight as well as kicking my exercise into high gear and doing something akin to training.

In terms of diet, I've been completely lax on what I've been eating, but I've been working pretty hard at keeping an idea of how many calories I've been eating though. I've been watching and recording exactly what I eat for most days, and according to the BMR rates that are available basically everywhere I am eating at about 500 calories below the rate to maintain weight. While my goal is to maintain weight, I wanted to be sure that I wasn't going to start gaining again, and ensure that I stay below 230. So far, it's been successful, as you can tell by the chart.

The chart says that the 500 calories that I was below the maintenance calories weight is actually accurate, according to the trend line. However, I think that I'm not going to change my diet goals until 2012 rolls around. Partly because it's the holidays coming up and that causes a bunch of extra eating that I can't really track, and also I'm not really sad about still losing some weight at the lower rate that I am now. I'll be happy to eat some less in order to make up for some of the awesome pumpkin pie that is the sign of the season.

Speaking of eating a lot at occasions, I am trying to eat more intuitively lately, attempting to get a good gauge of when I am full and don't need any more food. I've tried a few times now, and it's been a bit hit and miss. Some times I will eat a lot less than I should, and be overestimating the calories, but I am just not hungry or something. Usually those are the days where I was actually eating less in preparation for knowing that I will have an unknown amount of food later in the evening. Other times, I will still be hungry, or at least have a hunger feeling, and then I will be eating more than I actually need to. One time I actually ate to the point where I felt sickly overfull. I'm trying to learn to listen to the body signals so that I can train myself to eat without watching every single calorie. I'm going to try to do it more throughout the holiday season, because it is definitely the season where there are a ton of these events where you can't exactly ask for a recipe or nutrition facts.

This month, I had my yearly checkup at the doctor's office as well. There was only good news in the experience, and every person that I met was complimentary and seemed happy. The receptionist said that I lost weight because of the difference in pictures on my license. The doctor's assistant who took my weight, blood pressure and height was entering the stats into the computer, and she asked "You've lost 26% of your body weight in the last year?" kind of quizzically. The computer was actually alerting her that it might have been a typo because it was a large change from the last year, she showed me the screen. Finally, the doctor himself was highly complimentary and asked about how I lost the weight, and used the word "impressive" to describe the weight loss a bunch of times.

Speaking of the doctor's visit, I got some weird looks at the office because I was there in a running outfit. I took advantage of the relative location of the office in order to get a run in that wasn't one of my normal weekly runs, and took this route home. Running has been my main exercise goal since I started focusing on it more intently in the last month, and I've been rocking it out over the last month.

While I stated last month that I was going to start focusing on exercise instead of diet as much, I didn't expand on how I was actually going to get it done. My current training plan is focused around cardiovascular interval training, with a goal to run some 5km races without stopping under 30 minutes in the spring of 2012. In order to increase my endurance, I do a fairly simple routine, of a 5 minute warm-up walk, followed by a set of intervals where I walk for 2 minutes, and then I run for some amount of time. Right after I finished my last report, I was running for 1 minute 45 seconds. Every two weeks, I increase the amount of running time by 15 seconds, which means that my most recent runs were for 2 minutes 15 seconds.

As I run for longer, I am getting faster as well, probably just because the percentage of running time is going up. I've increased my time on the standard running route from almost 50 minutes to almost 45 minutes, which is a big deal for me, because 45 minutes is a threshold point for me to shake things up a bit. This is getting a bit long, so I think I'll make it one of the topics for next month.

Amazon's eBook Competition

2011-11-07T23:23:38-06:00

Lately the e-ink and eBook readers have been gaining popularity, and the price war has been heating up, with Kindle dropping to $79 and Barnes and Noble following suit with price cuts. It really is the next stage in the book reading experience with finally the electronic readers being in the "buy it to try it" price range. Diana and I both have e-ink readers and I like mine so much that I am actually considering getting another one before this one is even a year old. The e-ink is really nice on the eyes, and it's nice to know that I can toss it in the bag and always have someting interesting to read. The Kindle itself is enhanced completely by Instapaper which is a kind of way to port the tldr reading on the web to a format where I'm actually more apt to sit down and go through it. It also has the advantage of splitting the content from the ads most of the time.

Because I like to read books on the Kindle for many reasons, usually when I am surfing around and I see a book recommendation, I'll check it out and see if it's available for the e-readers that we have in the house. As Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper and ad-hoc e-ink reader reviewer noted recently, the library advantage of Amazon has been going away recently.

The thing that annoys and confuses me lately is that the Kindle price is most often several dollars more than the cost of getting a paper copy delivered to my door. Let's look at the same books that Marco looked at:

Book	Kindle	Physical (new) & Type
Walter Isaacson: Steve Jobs	$14.99	$17.88 Hardcover
Steven King: On Writing	$12.99	$10.88 Paperback
Nicholas Sparks: The Best of Me	$12.99	$10.19 Paperback
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex	$9.99	$9.48** Paperback
David Simon: Homicide	$9.99	$8.98** Paperback
Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore	$11.99	$10.85 Paperback
George Carlin: Last Words	$9.99	$6.00 Paperback
Thomas Sowell: Basic Economics (4th Ed.)	$17.68	$19.99 Paperback
Scott Berkun: Confessions of a Public Speaker	$9.99	$11.55 Paperback
Michael Lopp: Being Geek	$9.99	$16.48 Paperback
Steve Hagen: Buddhism Plain and Simple	$9.99	$9.60 Paperback
Don Norman: Living with Complexity	$14.72	$16.47 Hardcover

In more than half of the 11 cases where you can buy the book on the kindle, it is actually cheaper for me to get a new physical copy that I can carry around, and more importantly, I can give away or resell later. These aren't even the most aggregious that I have seen in my searching, since they are skewed toward some newer books. If we really want to go crazy, some of these books are available at the bargain price of $.01 (plus $3.99 shipping of course), which is less than half of the cost of the Kindle book if I'm willing to get it in the horribly used state of "Acceptable". Something is wrong with this model - it is encouraging me to buy the book in a form which is less convenient for me, certainly more cost to the publisher, worse for the environment, and most paradoxically at more cost to Amazon itself.
Amazon doesn't like this of course, most of the ones where it's cheaper to get the copy physically have displayed prominently This price was set by the publisher. It's becoming clear to me that once these lower prices start making e-readers more ubiquitous, the competition isn't the Kindle versus other readers, who have all almost have a price parity nowadays, but versus the physical copies of their own books.

Reader was failing me before Monday

2011-11-04T23:04:58-05:00

Last Monday, Google deployed a redesign of Reader.
The Internet was not happy. There are a bunch of problems with the new design in my opinion. The design takes up too much space with headers, not enough space for content, and forces anyone who wants to share to use Google+, jumping out of "the flow". People are rebelling, even going so far as to build a clone of the previous version and offer their services to fix it. Aside from the problems with the new design, though, Google's Reader has issues, and they were broken far before Monday.

The biggest gripe that I have with Reader is the performance. For what looks like a basic page, it's remarkably easy to overload your browser with it. I regularly use Reader to browse through thousands of articles at once. Because of the infinite scrolling feature, the reading pane can get very long, and even the best browser can start cranking the CPU cycles. With the old design, I would reflexively hit the "R" button (to reload the page) every hundred items or so. If I didn't, it would freeze up and sometimes crash the browser.

Not that it's much better in the new design either - performance is at least a hundred times worse than it was before. In addition to the infinite scrolling, they decided to add a bunch of other new features. The page itself pegs one of my CPU cores with less than 15 stories on the scroll list, and reloading easily can take half a minute if I don't catch the slowdown fast. The worst offender seems to be related directly to the new Google+ sharing feature. Every story has a "plus one" button attached to it, and takes a round trip from the browser to plusone.google.com to find out how many other surfers pressed the little colorful button. For the company which invented SPDY, there is something wrong with expecting a browser to round-trip hundreds of times just for a glorified counter. I added the domain to the blackhole in my computer's /etc/hosts file and the new design got faster immediately. I'm still reloading easily every 50 stories though in order to make sure that the browser doesn't crash.

I'm no javascript application expert, but it seems like the major problem is the length of the reading pane. One solution which I think could be tried is to remove the large selection of 'read' stories from the page completely. It is a method that Cullect used when it was in service, and it worked well. It was user-triggered then, but I think it might be possible to make the removal of stories that you are far past automatically in the same way that stories are added automatically just slightly before you get to them on the page, making the infinite length page a little less infinite in length, and making the performance a little more tolerable. For bonus points, make it possible for me to have only one story visible at a time, and load the next or previous story on demand when I use the magic "j" or "k" buttons. After all, the browser is going round-trip to Google's servers already.

Project 52: Week 40, 41, 42, & 43

2011-11-02T20:18:40-05:00

Got quite a ways behind on these, again. I'm cheating on the last one, because I somehow didn't take any interesting pictures.

October Diet Report

2011-10-23T17:28:12-05:00

I've been a bit lax in the updates on the diet that I normally post monthly. I have some good news to report and then a new challenge for the future. The hard part starts now.

The last two months have been a continued vigilance of what I am eating, and how much I am eating specifically, and my weight has been reflecting it. I didn't reach my goal before the vacation that I was hoping for in the August update, but the first international travel that I made after this whole thing started was a lot more comfortable this time than it was before. The airplane seats were marginally more comfortable, and there was nothing that I was really regretting about the whole thing. The seats are still too small for me, because I am a tall as well as a big guy still.

The low-carb diet itself has gone completely out of the window lately. I wasn't even trying to keep it while I was on vacation, and I kind of kept not keeping it after we returned from the vacation. I have still been keeping track of my calories when I can, and trying to overestimate when I can't keep track of what exactly I am eating. It continually is a struggle, because Diana is a great cook, and we have a comfortable enough life that we can go out to eat at least a couple of times a week. These meals are really fun to go to, but are the hardest to budget for on my diet because rarely do they include nutritional information on the menu, and most likely not even on the website for some of the more local places that we like to frequent. The calorie counting is doing okay for me still except for these types of meals that I can't keep track of. If I have some warning that I'll be having one of these "untrackable" meals, I'll try to eat significantly less throughout the day to make up for it.

The big news for this month is that I've succeeded at my first stage goal for weight loss. I now weigh less than 230 pounds fairly consistently over the last few weeks. This means that I am 110 pounds lighter than when I started focusing on weight loss almost 22 months ago. Right now, I'm planning on making this a stopping point in my weight loss, and trying to maintain my weight at this stage until the end of the year at least. This means that I will be upping my calories, and actually eating more, and also replacing a bunch of my clothes as they were getting comically large on me at this point. I'll still be tracking my calories as closely as I can. I've been promising a more up to date picture, and some of them leaked out last month during the vacation, but here is one from today, juxtaposed with one from last summer - not exactly the start of my diet, but close enough.

That looks pretty good, partially because I was actually eating in the first picture, but I can't really find a better "before" picture for myself. The before and after pictures are available in full size too. I'm also wearing my new jeans in this picture, which are size 38. Compared to my old size I've lost about 10 inches. The shirt I'm wearing is a size Large, and the before picture I'm wearing a 3XL shirt. It's pretty great, but feels strange when I'm wearing clothes that are so small now.

So I've decided that I'm done trying to lose weight, and will try to maintain my current weight until the end of the year. I've started already by increasing my calorie budget by 500 calories. Technically that's still a diet, because I was cutting 1000 calories below BMR before, but I don't want to overshoot and start gaining weight again. I'm going to keep it at this level and then reevaluate whether I am losing or gaining and adjust as necessary.

More importantly, there is another goal that I will be focusing on from now until then is my fitness. I've been exercising all through this diet trek in order to give myself some headroom on calories, but now I'm doing it in order to get a bit more fit. My first goal is focused on running. I've been running around the neighborhood, keeping this running course so that I can measure my progress. I've been getting faster lately, with my best pace being 10:30 per mile which was just about a week ago. That's about a minute per mile pace gain since August.

Last month I ended up skipping the update, mostly because I was just lazy, but this month the graph looks good. Last month looked pretty good as well. You can see some of the stability at the end of the graph once I hit the 230 goal that I have been working towards. I'm hoping that I can keep that line straight or going slightly down in the next report that I end up posting.

The yearly graph still looks great. There are only a couple of extended red areas, which both correspond to vacations. These graphs have been keeping me on track, even though I only look at them once a month. The daily deficit is based on the best-fit line that is shown here, and fed into my idea that I shouldn't be too hasty to increase back to the BMR.

So there's my first intermediate goal met. If I am still at or under 230 at the end of the year, I'll claim victory and re-evaluate my health and my goals for my body for the 2012 year. I'm still somewhat not happy when I look at myself, but my fitness goal I think might help with that a bit by reshaping my body a little more instead of just making it smaller. If you're interested in tracking my progress, feel free to follow me on dailymile or runkeeper.

Project 52: Week 36, 37, 38, & 39

2011-10-02T22:13:37-05:00

Got quite a ways behind on these.

Paris: Day 7 - The Two Types of Vacation

2011-09-27T21:59:51-05:00

It's almost a week after the events of this post happened. The last day in Paris was mostly spent not in Paris though. There wasn't a lot of time in the city on the last day because of various travel concerns. We woke up at our "normal" time and did our last bit of packing and a sweep of the room before we checked out. We went straight to the RER, because Diana was rightfully worried about getting to the airport on time with the addition of the train travel and all the stuff surrounding that.

We got to the airport on time, and then there was the big line at the gate (apparently there were a lot of people flying Iceland Air that day). We got to skip the line thanks to us checking in the day before - even though we couldn't print the boarding passes, we could still skip and just check in bags. CDG Terminal 1 is really nice once you get to the final gates, and it seems to be set up in a nice way, where there are a lot of little nodes of nice plush areas which have about five gates each. Once we finally found our gate, we sat down and had breakfast, a croissant and apple pastry, which weren't as good as the other patisserie stuff that we had, but I can't expect much from airport food anyway.

The flight was mostly full, but we did a good job of selecting our seats in order to maximize the possibility to have a row to ourselves - I chose the aisle and the window seat in a single row which left the unhappy middle seat, and there wasn't anyone there after the plane filled up. One thing that has been nice in both directions is the plane seats. It is probably slightly because of my weight loss over the last year, but also it seems like the Iceland Air over-seas flights have more room between the seats. At any rate we got our own row for the flight.

The layover in at Keflavik Airport was pretty short, but we had to go through a whole maze of gates and stuff. It is interesting because they have to corral the people who are headed out of the EU, but they still have all of the gates on the upper levels, so they end up making us go downstairs just to have us climb up the stairs again, and walk in the same hallway except separated by a glass partition. It could be very disorienting, making the airport seem larger than it is. We picked up some dinner while we were there though, just packaged sandwiches from the café, and our last calorie-laden drinks that wouldn't have any corn syrup for a while.

On the second flight, I managed to snag an exit row near the front of the plane, but miraculously it still had the normal non-stationary seat armrests, which meant it was easy to fit into and not uncomfortable for either of us. I think that they just crammed these two seats in row 8 when they discovered that they had the space. There wasn't any reading light or air though, so they would be pretty bad for someone who couldn't sleep on a overnight flight. The entertainment on Iceland Air was not bad in either direction. I watched The Adjustment Bureau on the way out and What Happens in Vegas on the way back, as well as some random TV shows. Mostly I ended up reading books on the Kindle though, which has increased it's value in my eyes after reading on a plane - it really is so much easier to read and bring on travel, I recommend it if you take at least a couple flights a year and normally read, because there is no page turning and the page is nice and big but it is very light. I would seriously consider one of those DVD rental service type of things where you rent them for the flight, but kindles with books loaded up instead. That's probably not allowed by the Kindle user agreement and DRM though.

In the last couple of days of the trip and over the last few days, I was thinking about how I seem to be taking two different types of vacations lately. The first type is the kind that we took here, and has a similarity to the trip to Portland last year. They are the type of destination trip where we want to see a bunch of things. Paris was very much a busy vacation, with so much to see that it was impossible to see everything in the same trip even given the six full days that we had. The second type of vacation is the type like when we went to Kauai for our honeymoon, where we want to really just get out of town, go somewhere beautiful, and then relax in a chateau or on a beach for some time.

The different destinations are telling of the type of vacation that most people are taking to that locale, including the types of activities available. Paris is in some ways the ultimate "busy" vacation -- it seems like it would be possible to take an entire year of vacation there and still never see everything that there is to see. There is something about the city that makes it just have so much to take in. Most cities would qualify for a good location for a "busy" vacation. Most of the "relax" vacation areas are geography-dependent in some way, because they are in a tropical locale, where it's just that much easier to relax and enjoy the weather. They are also more situated towards coasts than other places, because it's just that much more relaxing, I guess. The types of things that you would do on the "relax" vacations are more likely to be physical, like swimming, surfing, snorkeling, hiking. The types of things on "busy" locations are more likely to be cerebral in nature, looking at museums, visiting historic sites, and taking in art and culture.

While some people seem to take more of one kind of vacation than the other, I am thinking that I might want to try to even them out for a while. Paris was definitely a relaxing vacation, because it was different from the ordinary and a joy to see and experience a foreign country, but I can't say that it was more relaxing than a beach for a week, or hiking around some foothills. It is hard to say that I like one more than the other. Another thing is that both of the types of vacations tend to have a time limit for me. I don't think that I would enjoy staying in Paris for two weeks for example, because I would just not be able to process it all. At the same time, I end up getting antsy and wanting to get some stuff done when I stay too long at a relaxing locale.

I'm thinking that this dichotomy between vacation types is the reason that sometimes people can get to the point where they need the "vacation from the vacation". Maybe the best way would be to schedule something busy for the first half of a trip, and then relaxing for the second half? When I travelled to Greece, the first half of the week was in Athens, which is definitely a "busy" location, and the second half on the island of Kos, which is beach-laden and mostly a relaxing locale. It might have been the perfect combination.

For now though, I am working back into the swing of things, and almost catching up on the work that all needs to be done since I have been gone. The next vacation I think will be "relax" though.

Paris: Day 6 - Montparnasse Pontoise

2011-09-21T16:12:09-05:00

For our last full day in Paris, I only had one goal for the day, and that was to see as much of Paris as I could at once in the same shot. Also, we were getting even more tired by the day, so it couldn't really be asked for us to do a lot of running around, even as much as we did the day before. We got up at our usual time, and started the day out right with a breakfast stop at a café around noon. It was the same café that has some merengues in every flavor you can imagine the size of your head. Diana was very entranced by them, thinking they would collapse in an instant with some stuff.

The café experence was still pretty stressful - but less so, because we are finally getting used to it. A café is a little easier on the manners because most of the time you can sit down and just order what you want, and they don't mind if you just have some coffee with your meal. At a restaurant or bar they look at you weird when you ask to have a coffee before the last thing in the meal, even after dessert. I had a café crema which is similar to a cappuccino at least and a ham and cheese sandwich that was pretty good but not too filling. I am a little worried about how badly I will end up off track for the diet plan when I get back. I only have a couple of days until my next report, so you all will know soon.

Our next stop was Montparnasse Tower, which is a building in the south part of Paris which is otherwise pretty nondescript except that it is very tall. Of course, because it is tall and in Paris then they can make a decent amount of money just carting tourists up to the top to take pictures off. It was 11,50 € a piece to get up there, which I didn't really mind but still seems like a lot. I really like high places and vantage points that are above the cities, so I was not balking too much, but if the cost had been a little more, I might have thought differently.

The view from the top is spectacular, and really if you had a great camera it would be the best place to take a lot of pictures on your trip. They have two levels, one which is completely enclosed by the building, but you can also go onto the roof of the building which is surrounded by glass but open to the top! It was pretty amazing to go onto the top of the tower and look around the city. Diana commented that we should have done it on the first day of the trip, because it really gave her a sense of how large the city was. For me it just solidified my thought that Paris is really a urban city - for every direction that you can see, there are buildings which are at least four stories tall, and it is only broken by the large gardens which are spread throughout the city itself. It was actually a great day outside, possibly the best day to be outside on top of the building, because it wasn't really chilly up there. I took at least 100 pictures with my cell phone, it worked out great.

When we were done on the top of the tower, we went down and looked at some of the shops which were in a shopping center that they call Galleries Layfayette. It was mostly just like a normal mall, but there were dotted within it some French like shops like a chain patisserie and such. The brands were different but otherwise it could have been a mall in the US. It was the first time that we saw something similar on our Paris trip, so I don't think that they are all that common. We sat and had a drink for a little while and talked a bit.

We wanted to see if we could see the Catacombs of Paris because it was in the same general area of the tower. We walked past the cemeterie which is a real working cemetery, and down the street looking at the shops. When we got to the catacombs (at least the part open to the public), they had some people at the end of the line which were telling people that it was iffy if they queued up now whether they would get in. The last entry was at 4pm, and it was almost 3:30 at that point. We decided that it wasn't that important to see. We walked down the street for a while and saw some more shops, and stopped and bought some things that we couldn't get in the states. That area of town was a lot less touristy than the areas that we had been in so far - we actually met a shopkeeper who didn't speak any English! It was the first time, but Diana still got what she needed.

We took the metro back to the hotel and hung out in the room a while, having a siesta of sorts. I was still set on going to a real French restaurant and getting le menu. I had picked out Le Petit Pontoise, but I was at this point not caring too much about it, and didn't call for reservations or anything, I figured that we would just see if it was possible and if it was then great, and if not, then we would go to a fondue place that we had spotted on the way home. I did the blogging for the day and took a nap, and checked into our flight which was just the next day by then. We also pre-packed as much as we could so that we could have a smooth getaway in the morning.

On our way out of the hotel to go to dinner, we got stopped by the conciergé and he mentioned another restaurant which he recommended, and was very insistent. He gave us a card and called ahead for us. I said that we would check it out, he was quite insistent. So we walked up to the Quai next to the seine and checked it out, but it was 45 € for le menu and that was a bit more than I had planned on spending. Also we got a bad feeling because there was basically no one there and the other restaurants on the Quai were pretty full at that point. We decided to head to Le Petit Pontoise after all.

That was possibly the best decision of the night, because the restaurant and the meal were absolutely wonderful. It was possibly the best meal of the trip, and definitely the most French of the trip that we had in the whole thing. It was 37 € per, but completely worth it - we had appetizers and main course, and dessert with it. Diana finally tried Fois Gras, which I had a little bit of and is insane, insanely rich. I couldn't have even a little bit more of it. I started with some honey ravioli and then had some shellfish risotto. We ordered a bottle of wine which was fantastic, and the waitress was really great. The decor in the restaurant was really cute as well, with a lot of boat pictures on the wall. It was a small room and there was another large party, we had a great time there and talked about our trip. I had my first creme brulee for dessert, which is super sweet and almost too sweet for me.

We were tired afterwards, and it was late - we started dinner at about 8:30pm, which is typical, and we ended up leaving around midnight. I only wish that we had had as great a restaurant experience every night that we were there. It was expensive though, so possibly not. ;) We went back to the hotel, apologized to the pushy concierge saying that it was a bit too expensive, and back up to the room. Our last full day went well, I think.

Paris: Day 5 - Eiffel Triumph

2011-09-20T10:54:45-05:00

We're taking a short siesta here on our last full day in Paris, so I will post the day before the last day now, and then write up the last day later this evening. I'll probably have some time to write a retrospective of the whole trip on the plane. It was a day mostly filled with seeing the sights as they are more traditionally done in Paris.

Each day that we're here we take in more of the city and we get just a little more tired, so the day's plans get less and less full as the vacation goes along. It's probably better that way anyway. Our goal this day was to see the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triomphe, and possibly go up some of them, then I had my sights set on making the Museum pass worth the money by visiting the l'Orangerie and seeing what we could of the rest of the Louvre. Now that I think about it, it was a pretty full trip.

We started the day around 10h again, which has been completely fine by me because I am staying reading up until late in the night lately. Our first stop was Breakfast in America, which is a restaurant which is set up like an American cafe and serves breakfast all day long. I don't know if it was some weird version of homesickness, but it was actually pretty nice to sit down to an American-style breakfast for a while. The menu was even laminated just like a cafe in the states, and the waitresses and staff talked in English most of the time. I guess it works. We went to the one on Rive Gauche because it was just a short walk from the hotel. I had a cheddar and ham omelet that I swear was more delicious. I think that all the food here in Paris has just been great for some reason.

We walked toward the metro and tried to stop at a magic shop on the way, but it was closed, only open for about three or four hours each day. I wasn't surprised but still it would have been nice to poke around inside and see some things. There are a lot of comic and sci-fi shops right in the district of the hotel, and we walk by at least three bookstores on the way to the metro station every day.

The ride on the metro to the Champ du Mars station wasn't that bad, and we took a short walk along the seine towards the Eiffel Tower at a leisurely pace. The tower is bigger than you picture it because it's usually taken from very far away. It really is as tall as a skyscraper. The queue for going up to the higher levels of the tower was too long, so we just walked underneath it and took some photos, and then stopped on the Champ du Mars for a little while and people-watched some tourists. Afterwards we walked underneath the tower again and up the Jardins du Trocadero, which was a nice uphill climb but we got to see the fountains go off, which was a nice sight to see right in front of the Eiffel Tower. It is also a pretty good picture shot.

I wanted to see the Arc du Triomphe, so we got on the metro at Trocadero station and off at Etoilé station. It is definitely an arc, and it's in the middle of a huge roundabout. We didn't fancy going up a lot of stairs to the top, so we basically just went in a little loop around it and then back to the metro to visit the Musee du Parfum, which was mostly a lot of things used in perfume making - it was all true stuff but it was all attached to a perfume maker's shop so it wasn't as well kept as perhaps a real museum. I'm not complaining any though because it was free and the things there were actually pretty neat to see all of the methods that are used in order to get the fragrance out of the flowers and other parts of things. There was no pictures, but that didn't make that much sense, there wasn't much there that was really picture-worthy anyway.

Afterwards we were getting hungry again, so I wanted to seek out a shop on the way. We both were getting tired of the whole rigamarole around eating at a Café, so we stopped at a fast food boulangerie and had a sandwich and some stuff. I was happy because I got to order a formulé which was actually a lot cheaper than the ingredients separately. Leave it to me to be happy about ordering a happy meal. I got a suissage sandwich and strawberries with a drink. It was actually really great, filling enough but it only took about half an hour to eat and was less than 10 €! If we come back to Paris I think that we will eat from these small shops during the day more, because it is much cheaper.

Afterwards we walked through the Opéra district and scoffed at some of the fancy shops there that had super overpriced things that are all available in the US, and are just expensive because you're buying them in the shop in Paris of course. The same brands that you would find at a high-end shopping mall in the US. We reached our goal for resting in the afternoon around 2PM which was the Jardin des Tuileries. There are a lot of flowers and a bunch of places to rest, which we did. It was a nice day outside and the sun was shining. I decided to give up on l'Orangerie for the day because it was going to just be not enough time to do both of the museums, and we went to visit the Louvre again. This time we saw all of the antiquities from the middle east and just a few of the pictures from some French and Dutch painters, and a lot more of the sculptures which were on the other side of the building.

We decided that the street lunch was so successful that we should try it for dinner as well, which we did by getting some sandwiches and panini from a street vendor which was on the way home after another ride on the metro. The sandwiches were not as good as the ones we had at lunch but they were still pretty good and they didn't come with having to deal with a waiter and French table manners again (major plus). We also got some snacks and drinks from 8 à Huit to go with it.

I conked out again and we just ended up staying in the hotel room for the rest of the night because I woke up at around 11pm, and thought it would be a little late to go get anything for dinner or even a market because the markets seem to close early-ish. There isn't a 24h/24 market anywhere around here from what I can tell. It turned out to be pretty nice to see some of the sights and visit the Louvre again to see a little more, and I was actually pleasantly surprised to walk through a couple of the Jardins here in Paris which are very nice. Again I was able to do some fun summer reading of The Magician which is all set in Paris. It is interesting timing at least, and makes the book a little more interesting.

Paris: Day 4 - Orsay what?

2011-09-19T16:06:29-05:00

I realize that these blog posts are getting later in the day every single day that I'm here. The city is starting to get a little more reasonable to navigate every time and we are seeing a lot of things every day. I like to see a lot of stuff while we can, and we had a four-day pass which will be expiring at the end of what will be Day 5 here.

In hopes of using our museum pass to it's fullest and also to see a bunch while I was here, the plan for the day was to visit the Musee d'Orsay and then get a Paris lunch, and walk along the seine to the Archaeological Crypt of Notre-Dame. We woke up fairly late by our standards again, crawling out of bed at about 10am - but if you can't sleep in on vacation, when?

It was Sunday, so the patisserie which was just down the street was closed when we walked by, but there was one which is closer to the Saint-Michel Notre Dame station which was open, and we again got some croissants and some other sweets for breakfast. Diana isn't happy with the breakfasts that we've been getting here. We had planned to go to Breakfast in America on Sunday, but it was a bit late to get started. We sat down in a park and had the breakfast foods instead of eating on the Metro platform like the day before. There were some pigeons which came around and obviously are being sustained through the fact that croissants are super crumbly. I have to admit that I will be spoiled for croissants from anywhere else after having them in Paris - they are super crumbly and delicious. Just bread has no right being that delicious.

After the small breakfast we headed to the Orsay, which I wanted to see mostly because it has some more recent paintings and a great collection of impressionists from the beginning of the last century. Unfortunately there are no pictures inside the Orsay, which I have to say doesn't please me to see in a museum but the whole place would be infinitely worse if there were people taking pictures of every painting in the place. It is an old train station which has been re-purposed into a museum and it is beautiful inside, but there are many side rooms that are small and while they hold plenty of people in them, the addition of cameras always seems to make a room that much fuller because of people avoiding the camera's line of sight.

The paintings inside were all pretty great and I was very pleased to see many of the impressionists paintings where the paint actually takes on more of a 3D quality and you can see the strokes of the artist more. They also appeal to me because they seem somewhat similar to some other styles of art where you are trying to get a lot across in a very small information, like pixel art. There was also some pointillism there which has even more similarities. I also was interested in the Van Gogh part of the collection that they had there, which was great. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that they had a good collection of Rodin sculptures which were displayed outside of the paintings rooms. We spent a couple of hours there and then decided to head out to find a lunch.

I made a big mistake planning to find a meal "on the way" to Pont Neuf from the Orsay museum, doubly so on Sunday. We walked through a part of the city which was mostly made up of art boutiques and galleries, but they were all closed. We also spotted a number of restaurants and brasseries that we would have stopped at on a normal day but they were also closed. After a long walk and stopping at a convenience store for something to keep Diana going (she was getting very hungry, understandably), we found Les Bistrot Mazarin which looked like a good place to stop.

I have to admit that I was quite hungry and stressed out at that point. I was hoping to find a place for lunch with a menu that we could order directly, because I was hoping for an experience which was a little cheaper than our normal la carte dining so far. The meals here have been pretty expensive, with each lunch and dinner coming to about 50 € each time. It's okay because we have the money, but if we can get a menu at 20 € per person, it would be better for us in the long run. There wasn't any of that here but I was tired of walking to find a place. The menu that we got was in French, and I could have asked for one in English but I was actually trying to understand the one in French because it is somewhat important to me that we try to actually speak the language. It didn't work out that great, because somehow I ended up ordering a cornish hen (or similarly sized duck) and while delicious, I find whole or halves of poultry incredibly difficult to eat with a fork and knife. I am ordering some buffalo wings this coming Sunday for the football game in defiance.

The meal was wonderful though, and the dessert that we had afterwards was great. I finally got the dessert du jour which was a cream cheese fruit tart thing which was actually delicious. Diana got the first creme brûlée of her trip, which was equally great.
In true Parisian style we had coffee after the dessert. Despite the negative reviews, I was really happy with the bistrot. At the end of the meal, I was fed and much happier, and the waiter was actually willing to put up with our broken French.

After the meal, we walked up to Pont Neuf and onto the Île de la Cité. We've thought about taking a seine sightseeing tour, but haven't been able to have one yet. There is one which takes off from Pont Neuf, it would be the closest. We walked through the island and past the Palais de Justice de Paris which is decked out in gold. We headed along a pedestrian street across from it and then headed to the Archaeological Crypt.

The crypt was very interesting because all of the rocks that were there are mostly in the same place, or at least that is the illusion that they are trying to keep up in the museum. It was very dark but it had a lot of information on the sides about the history of Paris, which I was glad to read in English and pick out the words that I knew in French as well. The exhibits were more interesting because in most places, there is a dual exhibit, of when the island was used by different settlers in different ages. They had different parts that you could light up to see the changing ruins and point out the areas which were different. There were also a lot of little models to show what you were looking at in a little less crumbled style. It wasn't a long tour which was also appreciated.

When we were finished with the crypt, we headed topside to see Notre Dame in full light (and with all the tourists of a normal day). There were plenty of people on the square getting their pictures taken. We decided to walk through. They were just starting the night Sunday service, but we were just walking along the outside to see all of the large stained glass windows and such. We had a pass to see the towers, but it was just after the last entry to them, and I don't think Diana would have been game for a long stair climb anyway.

Even though it was only about 6pm, we were really tired from all the walking. We went back to the hotel room for a little break before dinner, which is also held late in Paris - we headed out at about 9pm. It was starting to rain and quite cold when we went down the street. We stopped at Cluny Bar which was on Saint-Germain and seemed reasonable. They also didn't have le menu but I mostly didn't care because it was cold. I had rum steak with pepper sauce and fried potato slices, and watched France get beat by Spain in a FIBA basketball game on the TV. I also had a white beer which I have rediscovered here and really enjoy.

The waiter in the restaurant brought us English menus right away which was actually unwelcome. We know that we're American of course and don't expect to not be noticed as American, but the waiter was being it seemed very patronizing to us and a lot over the top. I think it might just be a little more than normal though, because I observed him being somewhat silly with a couple that he very clearly knew well (they did the French kiss-greeting).

When we were done with dinner, it was straight back to the hotel, rushed on a little by the fact that it had started to rain in earnest by that point. I read until I was falling asleep and then turned out the light. Another full day in Paris.

Paris: Day 3 - Versailles

2011-09-18T12:14:04-05:00

Internet has been a little bit flaky in the last couple of days, so I'm posting this in the afternoon of the fourth day. Yesterday we ended up waking up earlier than we planned, even though we were up late. I was a little worried about getting to Versailles early so that we didn't have to queue for everything while there. We had enough time to stop at the patisserie Parisien and grab a couple of Croissant and some macarons for later. We went right across the street and into the station which was only a little bit away, and got the tickets allez-retour to Versailles. I keep trying to practice my French, but it doesn't work out that well - I tried to ask for the ticket en français, but she was confused. I think that I need to speak slower, I keep trying to say things fast and probably mispronounce it.

After we got to the station, we ate our croissant and got some advice from a nice lady at the platform about which train to take, which wasn't the next one at the station, but the one after. I wondered whether we should really be eating on the platform, because I didn't see anyone else eating there. Maybe it's more common to have a croissant and coffee at a Cafe in the morning.

The train trip to Versailles was nice, it was almost empty which I thought was good because there wouldn't be so many people. The trains are very quiet when they run, because they have been running for a very long time I guess and the tracks are all worn down. There is almost no noise like there is on the trains in Minneapolis when there is a curve. I can see how some people would fall asleep. It only lasted about half an hour and I passed the time looking at the sights on the way. We passed Microsoft's Paris Offices, which had a big advertisement for Windows 7 on it.

After we showed up at Versailles Rive-Gauche station, it was a short walk to get to the palace and get inside. The tour starts right away and there wasn't really a shop that was open early in the morning. I should have taken some time to stop and get something while we were in Versailles (the town) because we hadn't had enough for breakfast. I gather that breakfast isn't very popular here. Diana wasn't happy about walking through the whole palace without any coffee or anything to eat. There was a small snack shop at the end of the walk through the main palace and we stopped to get some drinks and coffee. Everything inside Versailles was pretty expensive by American standards (probably by French standards too). Coffee was about 2 € and the drink was about 3,5€.

The main palace was quite resplendent and the hall of mirrors was nice and large. There were so many rooms and they all had different colors of wall coverings. In some ways it was a bit too much, so much gold. The ceilings were quite interesting as well and the advice to keep looking up from Diana was well taken. She got most of the pictures inside the palace itself, but I was taken by the Museum of French History's Galerie des Battailles with it's paintings along both walls chronologizing the great French battles going through the ages. They were all floor-to-ceiling renditions and covered from way in the past up to pretty recently.

After seeing the palace, we went outside to the part that I was excited about - the gardens behind (in front? Which is the back?) of the palace. After finding out that they were going on, I scheduled the trip on a Saturday so that we could witness the Grandes Eaux Musicales when the fountains run and there is music set around them. The fountains themselves are pretty spectacular, and there are about 30 of them to see. They weren't all running because of drought conditions, but the main ones ran from when we got there at about 11h30 until they all shut off at 12h00. The gardens themselves are also quite amazing even without the fountains, They have tall trees that are groomed to have really tall (20m?) walls and foliage around the areas with sculptures. Each area was fairly unique.

There are many restaurants on the garden grounds and it was about lunchtime, so we stopped at one and had some lunch to pass the time. I was convinced that with what amounted to a normal length lunch at a Brasserie there we could eventually wait out the break in the fountains, because they were starting again at 15h30. The lunch was very nice, I had some sausage with fries and Diana had the duck confit, something which the waiter said was "traditional French". The meal was good and there were about four or five different cats who obviously lived off of table scraps.

We walked through a couple more gardens and saw the Mirror Fountain display, which runs all day long every 10 minutes and is choreographed to music. It was pretty great, and then we walked to a small boutique and considered going to see the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon. The walk was just a bit too much for me and definitely so for Diana though, and I didn't want to pay for the little train 3,30 € to go there for only half an hour or so. We were le tired from all the walking. Again another French sight seeing monument that has defeated us by it's massive size! We only got to the start of the Grand Canal. Right before we started on our journey back to the palace, the fountains started flowing again.

I charted a course through the other side of the gardens that we hadn't seen before, and tried to keep it short-ish but still see the unique gardens. I'm glad because there were three very interesting ones in the trek back. There was the Encelade Grove with a Titan being punished in the center, and then the Grove of Appolo's Baths which is in a very different style than all the others, with curving paths which winded through the garden instead of geometrical ones. Finally the grove of the three fountains which had no sculptures at all and was very long with multiple levels.

After all of that we walked back through everything and past some of the flower gardens on the way back to the main gate and then the station. Diana wanted to stop at the Starbucks in Versailles and see if they had Pumpkin Spice Lattes, which they didn't have, and the barista was very interested. "They're spicy lattes?" she asked. I think she thought they were spicy hot. Di just got a coffee and relaxed for a little while before we headed back to the train. I was getting quite tired as well on the way back and almost fell asleep a couple of times.

After getting off at the station, we stopped at a grocery store and got some snacky cheese and water for nourishment, and then noticed that the Fromager was open that we wanted to try out. We stopped and bought some cheese that we will have later - they were vacuuming some so that they would be possible to take on the plane home, but we didn't get ours because we will have it here. Super tired from the trip, I ended up sleeping until about 23h, at which point we didn't feel like going out for the rest of the night and stayed up reading and fighting with the unreliable internet wifi at the hotel for a while. I ended up reading The Magician, which just happens to be set in Paris. I wonder if I will spot any of the monuments.

Paris - Day 2: 5e & Louvre

2011-09-16T17:53:42-05:00

The second day of Paris was just as interesting as the first, with a lot of interesting things seen. We woke up and started the day late, still recovering from the jet lag of +7 hours. We walked around the 5th Arrondissement, going for a little walk in the direction which we had gone before, but when it was darker we couldn't see a lot of things, and of course many of the shops are not open in the night when we were walking. It is an interesting place to walk and we stopped by the famous store Shakespeare and Company before having a lunch at Creposuk. I had the Gargantua which was ham and cheese and an egg in the middle. Diana had a dessert crepe which had some honey on it. Both were very good.

After that, we walked down in the other direction from the hotel toward the University in Paris, and stopped at a couple of shops to buy some things and look around. Diana found a store which sells a lot of perfume oils and supplies, pretty much exactly tuned to her likings because of the small business of custom perfumes and she bought a few of them. We kept walking, saw a lot of the area around the university and made a small stop at a Cafe and had some Cafe au Lait for an afternoon small treat. A man who teaches business English chatted with us and helped a little with the order although I already knew about the things there. Sitting at the bar looking at some French people and students walk by was interesting.

We walked back to the Hotel for another nap, passing by the other side of the Saint-Nicholas du Chardonnet while we went. I noticed that while we were by the university there were a lot of gaming shops and comic shops, which I guess could be expected. There were some stores showing off their Warhammer minis and how they were painted. It was interesting to see such a familiar sight in the middle of this fairly foreign country. We had a short hour nap or so before heading off to the Louvre.

After walking across the Ile Saint-Louis, which had a lot of interesting looking shops and restaurants (note to self: try out some of these restaurants!) and a great view of the other side of Notre-Dame (see above), we took the metro for the first time since the trip from CDG airport, and I was happy to find that it is much easier once you know a little bit about how the system works. We got to the Louvre pretty easily since the station was only a couple of stops down the line.

The Louvre is humongous. I am glad that we set aside two days to see it more on a second day, and that we got the Museum pass so that we don't have to worry so much about getting tickets each time. Just starting from the outside it is situated on truly spectacular grounds where the trademark pyramid sits and there are a ton of statues on the whole structure. I took a bunch of pictures outside and there was interesting people watching as people just kind of sat on the area there.

We got there at around 6pm and then started our self-guided tour, which is nice because we can take it at our own pace. The "big things" were all marked out on a map but there were specific areas which we wanted to see first and make sure. Diana was interested in the ancient things from Greece, Rome and such and we went right there, after we saw some of the moat that used to be part of the castle that the Louvre is built on in the basement. The collection that they have of the ancient sculpture is super, with a lot which are in pristine condition. It took us nearly the whole time we were there. I wanted to see some of the large-format paintings which were on the top floor of the same wing, and they definitely live up to their namesake. Most were taller than I was and while I don't know much about the paintings themselves, they were all well preserved and good. We walked past the Mona Lisa, opting instead to gaze at The Wedding Feast at Carna which is another massive display.

Honestly it was a lot to take in, and both of Diana's batteries went out during the trip there. We marked on the map where we saw so that when we go back we can see some of the other things. At about 8:30pm we were quite hungry having only had the crepes and some cafe au lait from earlier in the day to eat. We walked down the Rue de Saint Honore and stopped at Cafe Saint Honore about a block away. The waiter there was nice and the food was really great. I ended up having half of a chicken which had herbs on it with french fries. It was filling but hard to eat with a fork and knife, so I think I want to avoid having something so complicated to eat in the future. I was kind of hoping to find a restaurant with le menu available for this evening but we have another 4 days here so I think it will not be a problem. We had dessert as well which was more Crepes for me, this time with chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Fantastic!

At this point it was about 11pm so we headed toward the hotel, taking the Metro almost the entire way this time with a change in the middle to get on the one that goes right by our temporary place here in Paris. There was a small restaurant / cafe on our way and we decided to stop for some wine and maybe fromage. We got seated right away but didn't tell our waitress that we were just having drinks and she got somewhat mad at me when I tried to order off of the wine menu and didn't get anything else. I wasn't very good at ordering, and it put me off a little, I didn't know that I was supposed to say something on the way into the restaurant that we just wanted drinks. The wine was pretty good though, and she treated Diana okay when it was more clear that we don't know French that much. It was the first real screwup in Paris, although I don't really know what I could be doing differently. :( Maybe when we get in, we should say deux pour dessert, which might give them the right idea? I couldn't seem to find anything in to say "just drinks". Maybe we should just go to the Cafe when we just want drinks.

At any rate, we got back at the hotel pretty late, and now I need to get some winks in because tomorrow is our trip out of town to Versailles. I'm a little worried about getting the correct (return) tickets on our way out, because we don't need any tickets to the palace itself, and I hope that the station ticket offices are open.

Paris - Day 1: Metro Jazz Fusion

2011-09-16T03:56:12-05:00

We landed in Paris about 24 hours ago. Getting off of the plane I was starting to get ready for the trip ahead to the RER and then the Metro and then our hotel, and to see Paris for the first time. The airport is quite nice at CDG, and we didn't have to go through any additional screening or a passport check when we landed. I thought for sure we would need to get our passports checked again. Oh, by the way, we ended up going through security in Iceland for the EU, which was similar to going through it in the US. Similar enough that I almost ended up dropping my pants for the inspector because I had to take off my belt and my shorts don't exactly fit snugly anymore.

After getting to the Notre Dame station, I realized that I was entirely confused by the Paris metro signage. I had known on the map that I looked at before we left that we needed to go to the Cluny-La Sorbonne station and then from there on to the next station down to minimize our walking to the hotel, but I couldn't see the words Cluny-La Sorbonne anywhere and there didn't seem to be any indication of the correct color-coded on the signage as well. I also was a bit nervous because at that point we were walking down the street with everything that we had brought to paris including our museum passes and all of our clothing. I was feeling a bit exposed. We ended up finding both the way to the wrong metro track (the one that goes by the Eiffel, I found out later) and the other RER track before I finally figured out by the stations marked. I should have paid more attention to the fact that the lines are marked with their terminal destinations rather than their colors most of the time. I also could have figured out the numbers that I was supposed to run, because it was pretty clear once I figured I was supposed to be on line 10 headed toward Gare d'Austerlitz.

So after minor trouble, we finally arrived at our hotel - Hotel Abbatial Saint-Germain, completely jet lagged and tired. Our room is quite small, but the hotel is about a block from the seine and Notre Dame, so I think it is a good location. It is also clean and everything seems to work, which was a problem the last time that I decided to book a hotel in a metro area in Europe. It will be a good base of operations. We unpacked and put the importants into the safe, and promptly took a 3-5 hour nap.

After we were a little more rested, we changed for going out to our first Paris meal. I was a bit worried that I would get everyting wrong, picking up the wrong forks, sitting down at the wrong spot, ordering incoherently, and such. I steeled myself for being horrible at Paris. We walked down the street to the Cafe du Metro which is fairly nice and open to foreigners with an english language menu even available outside. I ordered the beef steak with fries and Diana got ham sandwich with cheese on top. I'm not exactly sure that she was supposed to have cheese on top as well, but it was definitely delicious from her review. She also got some fromage on a plate which was very delicious (she kindly shared).

After dinner, we decided to walk around the neighborhood a little. I wanted to see our first monument as Notre Dame was definitey within walking distance. As we walked toward the Seine, some people were behind us and seemed to be in a hurry. Diana asked "sorry, are we in your way?" Immediately the response came back - "I don't know, what is your way?" from a quite happy it seemed Frenchman. He explained quickly that he was headed to a jazz club to see his friend in a jam session, and would we like to come to see his friend? Normally I am quite wary of people being this friendly so quickly, so I was wary, but I figured that I still had my wits about me. So we walked along the Seine and around the neighborhood looking for the bar that his friend was going to play at, and got to know his friend Lisa, who was really happy to be meeting someone from Chicago originally.

We ended up in the La Guillotine Pub, or more specifically, downstairs in Le Caveau des Oubliettes. True to the man's word, there was a bunch of Jazz being played in the basement, which was a 19th century cellar at least, and it had a lot of stuff on the walls. We each had a beer and listened to the band play out the rest of it's set. Somehow, we had accidently stumbled on one of my goals of visiting a jazz bar while we in Paris. Still a bit tired so we did not stay long, also the drinks were quite expensive (€ 7 for a small beer).

Afterwards, we walked and saw Notre Dame up close at night. I took some pictures with my phone. It was a successful first day in Paris, I think I'm already going to like it here.

Paris - Day 0: The machine of travel

2011-09-14T22:20:35-05:00

Everything is amazing, and I am thrilled. I'm writing this blog post in the first day which I've been out of the country since 2007. We just passed the last land that I'll see for about 2 hours as I share a trip over 30,000 feet in the air with about 100 others on my way to Paris. I am happy that I am taking this trip, that it's even possible for me to travel so far in so little time, and that I am able to experience this all with my partner.

The first day of travel is always the one that I freak out on the most. I get worried that I'm going to forget something crucial at home, that the flight is somehow going to go horribly wrong, that something big will happen that could prevent me from going on the trip. From the moment I woke up this morning, I could feel the weight on my chest of all the things that could go wrong in the day, holding me back, keeping me from taking that first step out of the covers.

It's important that I make that conscious decision to start the day, and to get all of the obstacles that are in my way out of the way before I can enjoy myself wherever I am going. Usually I start the day on autopilot like most days, and then I make two lists. The first list is the one in my head of the things that could go wrong and cancel the trip. The second list is on paper, or on the whiteboard, which is a kind of anti-list for the other one. If I accomplish everything on the second list, I will have done all the reasonable things that I could have done to counter the first one.

The longer and more foreign the trip, the longer both lists get. Part of this is just because of the added complexity. There are more moving gears, so it's easier for someone to throw a wrench in the works and screw something up. Add an extra set of identification that I need to keep track of, and the complexities of foreign currency, and other languages into the mix and we've graduated from simple machines into the renaissance.

I've felt that weight on my head every time that I take a trip, and I have noticed it consciously in the last couple of long trips where the cogs start to pile up. This time has been the most trying yet, with the triple whammy of travelling with my partner, out of the country, and to a foreign country.

So far, everything has gone according to plan in this trip, starting from the time when the decision was made, many months ago, through foreign language classes to get some basic French, financial planning to make this all possible, and this morning and early afternoon's work all falling into place. As the machinery works, the lists get smaller, and the weight gets lighter. As big chunks of what could go wrong fall off of the first list, the second list fades to nothing.

Usually by the time I am in the hotel, I am ready to explore a new place, making memories that I treasure. It's a wonderful time, and it's only more exciting every time I get to go. I am so grateful that things are even better with Diana. It's a joy to see new places with her every single time, whether it is around the corner or around the globe. She helps me set up the machine - she was the one who thought up the language lessons - and provides torque to help get me in gear.

In 6 hours, I'm going to be stepping on the ground in a city half the way across the world, where I can see great works of art, sample fine cuisine, and explore a city which has so much to see. The weight will be lifted, the machine run it's course.

I'll do it again as soon as I'm able, because I live in an age where it's possible, and the reward at the end is great. And with experience, putting together the machine gets easier.

Project 52: Week 34 & 35

2011-09-12T23:19:27-05:00

When 1 hour is not 1 hour, again.

2011-09-08T23:57:20-05:00

If you've been following my twitter stream lately, you might have noticed that I am posting about once a day with an update on my thesis work. I've been working for a while at a particular piece of the puzzle, making slow but steady progress. The key has been partly due to the fact that I'm forcing myself to do it every day, and not slack off. It's a big productivity booster, and I think it has been helping me get more done for a while now. There are a bunch of reasons why I think it has helped me eek a bit more than an hour out of that work every day.

The first is that I am making myself culpable after the fact about what I have done in that day. While there is some evidence that telling people what you're going to do before you do it is detrimental to finishing, it's a little hard to keep something like a Thesis a secret. I've compromised by switching the rules around a little bit, and posting what I've done after I do it. It helps me stay on task by reminding myself that I will have to fess up to not doing anything if there is nothing that I accomplished in the day. It also helps me look back on my progress for the day and gives me a little review - reminding myself where I was if I lose track as well.

Another facet that I've been gaining from is that when I'm in downtime, I'm never really not thinking about my thesis work. Everything that I end up doing at work and especially the pieces of my work which are related are keeping my mind on task and making me think about what I need to do at the end of the day. I also make a point of trying to split my work in half for the day, and take a walk while I'm still thinking about stuff. Lately I've been listening to some podcasts on my daily exercise, but I am convinced that there is still some part of my brain working on it, especially because I know that I'm only halfway done with the day - I am thinking about what I want to accomplish in that second half-hour of work.

Related to the half-hour nature of my time management, I also use the Pomodoro technique in order to time the intervals. I'm specifically using Pomodroido, which works quite well for Android. The advantage of using the pomo as a timer is that I don't think about looking about how much time is left, I know that I will get at least a 5 minute break between sessions, and it also has a nifty progress bar and levelling-up system which gives me a great sense of accomplishment. By looking at how many pomos I've done in a week, I can confirm that I did my work for every day. I've used the pomodoro in the past for general tasks, but I have a harder time when I'm not able to focus on a single task. Using it for something as focused as "thesis work" works out well for me.

Lastly, I think that the timing of my work is a big factor. I do my work at the end of my work day, which means that my mind is still in the productive mode from being at work all day long, but I also do it in a different environment, so I am training myself to think about other things. There is also somewhat of a "thinking about it outside the timebox" which happens because of completing the work nearer to the end of the day. I haven't actually experimented, but I am fairly convinced that if I did it at the beginning of the day, I would get less done.

Working every day on my thesis has been a big boon to making progress on it in the last few months. I am making real progress which is shown by the fact that I'm almost ready to run my first experiment. Using the timebox in the way that I do, by using a specific timer, splitting it in half and doing something else in the middle, and putting the work at the end of the day, has been a big help to getting a lot more out of an hour of work every day than I would expect. I'm hoping that I can take these tools and apply them to other projects as well - I'm wondering about how well they would apply to something like my consulting when I have a project that needs to get done. I'm also wondering if I can add another hour to the work in the day to "ramp it up" for the last parts of the thesis when I'm in crunch time.

Big Bang Theory Intro #8: Apatosaurus

2011-09-07T22:09:51-05:00

From lizards last week to the big lizards this week. These are the peacable kind, well, as peacable as you can expect from a gigantic lizard.

I spent a little bit of time looking but I couldn't turn up the source image on any of the normal sites (or any of the new ones that I found to sift through either). It's probably not original though, it looks like a drawing of some kind or a painting. It might be one from a museum like the one at Dinosaur National Monument where they have found some other bones as well.

This particular type of giant lizard is called an Apatosaurus now, although I learned it as Brontosaurus when I was growing up. They lived in the Late Jurassic period, making the ~7000BC way off the mark of course by about 140 million years. Lots of these are in big museums, or replicas, with their heads craning upwards kind of like a giraffe, but recently people have been saying that they would never be in that position, because it would be impossible for the circulatory system to pump the blood to the head when it was up - they would put it at the max horizontal from the center.

I remember seeing a lot of these on the side of the road in the past, next to Sinclair stations where you could get gas. I always thought that it was a cruel tip to the ultimate source of the oil that you were buying. They are legitimate roadside attractions and I'm pretty sure that I've had my picture taken to them some time before.

Book Review: Microserfs

2011-09-02T21:52:44-05:00

It's been a while since I read this book, having picked it up at Powells on our Portland vacation last year. It was sitting on my shelf for a while before I read it, but when I finally did get to it, I was pleasantly surprised at the discovery. I had originally picked it up because I liked the title, the blurb on the back, and the lego man on the cover (the current version is less lego-y), but it was some good fiction, and strangely relevant to today's times.

The book focuses on a group of software developers who are working at Microsoft on the bottom rung, which isn't necessarily a bad place to be, but in the 1990's when this book is set it meant that you were basically a geek of the highest order and didn't really have much of a real life. The main characters are staying in a typical of the time "Microsoft House" which meant that they were all workaholics and sharing a house with a bunch of other Microsoft employees.

After a couple of character-establishing chapters in which we are introduced to all of the characters and all of their quirks, the whole house gets recruited to Silicon Valley to become part of a startup which will be revolutionizing the industry and making something that has never been made before. The product they are building is a kind of object-oriented block-building world, with procedures and things that you can attach to everything. It is very reminiscent of something like Second Life and eerily similar to Minecraft when it is described in the book. The product and company itself goes through some interesting transformations and pivots, but that's not really what makes this book any good.

It chronicles from the perspective of Dan, who could be called the main protaganist. It reads really like a geek blog, with time passing between chapters and things happening that are discussed in the past tense. Every chapter brings new things, and like a blog, it can meander from subject to subject from times. It also contains some of classic blog-style interdictions of "computer thought" which are really just some random words which are placed strangely across the page and make you think because of their placement between the chapters, about what is missing between these tellings of goings on.

It's grounded in the reality of the 1990s and the dot-com and tech boom which happened around then, so there are the main players like Sun and Apple which are marginally involved. The style of writing really makes you feel like you are reading from someone who is inhabiting this world of startups, high ideas, spending money and coding sprees. True to form, the startup company begins in a company house and then moves to an office which has it's own style later on.

There are somewhat of a group of plots in the book, each riffing off of each other in strange ways and connecting at various points. One of the group at the original house didn't leave Microsoft and there are various little interludes to keep us up to date on what is happening with him, and the main character gets hooked up and a love story develops with another of the developers at the company. There is also a lot of family dynamics between Dan and his parents - his father is one of the older generation who worked in the valley when it was just getting started and doesn't know what to do with himself.

All in all, I would say that this book is surprisingly relevant and a clear look into a geek culture which exists even today, even though the pages of the paperback that I got were yellowed and frayed, almost 15 years after it's publication. The main storylines are connected and the characters are written very true to life. Some of the references are dated but you could place these same people in a similar situation at a company today (although Microsofties have grown up quite a lot I think) and it would be believable and just as compelling.

The only downside of this book is that it feels like it's lacking any type of closure. You get to the end of the book and there really isn't anything resolved, and while you've though about some interesting things along the way and the journey was great, there really is no destination that the author takes you to. Some would say that this is a bonus, because there is a lot in the story about how life is always evolving, but it still felt like there was a chapter missing at the end for me for some reason. I give it a B+ because it could be better, but it's extremely satisfying in it's own right.

Standing for work

2011-08-31T10:42:23-05:00

In the last two months or so, I've been working a different way when I am at my desk computer at home. On July 7, I converted my desk from a traditional desk into one where I am standing up while I work. I had been a bit curious about standing for a while, owing it to a couple of people I know who had tried it out. They claimed that there were a lot of advantages to working while standing, not the least of which was that they felt more productive than they were when sitting down all day.

After reading their accounts, I was thinking in the back of my mind that I had somehow worked out the perfect system for my desk where it would be easy and free for me to try out this new form of working. When I originally moved to the Twin Cities for the beginning of grad school, I needed a desk, and somehow got it into my head that it would be a very cool thing to have a massive work area to work with. Someone introduced me to the idea of wire shelving, and I eventually put two and two together and acquired with great effort a 3 foot by 5 foot sturdy wire shelf, which I covered with a Lexan sheet and use to this day as my main work area. (Diana uses a second one - incidentally at the time I had to buy them in pairs.) One of the great advantages of using a wire shelf as a desk is that you can adjust it to be as low or as high as you want, in one inch increments. This meant that for the majority of the time that I was working or playing on the computer -- something that takes a significant portion of my life -- that I was sitting at exactly the right height for ergonomic purposes. It also meant that I could do this transition without too much trouble:

I moved the main desk from 25 inches off the ground to 40 inches. It wasn't exactly as simple as pushing a button, which some more fancy standing desks use in order to make it easy to sit for some periods of time as well, but I figured that if I was going to give it a try, I should really go all in and try to stand all the time. I still had a sitting desk at my day job, so it wasn't going to be all the time I was standing.

Directly after the transition, the first thing that I noticed was that I was a little more attentive, and was just a little more comfortable. This was despite the fact that I had miscalculated the height which should be comfortable by about a third of a foot, which meant that I was standing with a wide stance in order to be the right level to type and look directly at the screen. I moved my chair to the other side of the room and didn't even look back, starting on work right away. It was refreshing to be standing. I also felt that I had a better handle of the situation for some reason. I felt pretty productive that first night, but got tired pretty quick and retreated to the living room and my laptop on the cumfy couch.

I tried it out for the majority of a month, working at least an hour a day at the standing desk every night, for most of my thesis work and a bit of other work as well. When I am working at the standing desk, I am much more likely to do a little bounce to the music that I'm listening to, which I think will probably be good for me in the long run - I'm not really standing statically and stoic. Even when I am not listening to anything, I feel like I am more active than when I am sitting because I will shift from one foot to the other, just to even out the weight or get a little more comfortable. When I am in a chair, I am content to just get comfortable and sit there for a while, but when I am standing, I seem to be unconsciously vigilant about how comfortable I am at each given moment, and adjusting to make it that much easier to work.

After about a month, I remedied the situation of the four inches suboptimal placement of the original desk, and it just became more comfortable than it was before, and I can stand there for much longer periods of time. When I had to wide-stance in order to work there, it wasn't bad but it was still somewhat uncomfortable, and now I can just walk right up to the desk and start typing on my computer. I've played games for hours on end there with no trouble at all, and I will spend a significant period of my day standing there working when I can.

One of the side benefits that I haven't heard people write about before is that when I do decide to sit down, it's a much more relaxing experience now. In the same way that cutting out a lot of sugary sweets from your diet makes the chocolate cake that you eat on your birthday that much more tasty, standing for most of your work makes it just that much more relaxing to sit your ass down on a cushioned couch and watch some great TV.

So I'm two months into the experiment, and I feel confident saying that it's been a success so far. I would recommend trying standing for anyone who can wrangle a way to get their work space up to that level. I think that it's definitely not for everyone, and there are still a few bad things about it (I think that I need to get a standing mat now), but the advantages in productive work and just general active feeling for me have been great.

Project 52: Week 33

2011-08-29T20:50:20-05:00

Big Bang Theory Intro #7: Iguanas Basking

2011-08-28T15:52:55-05:00

We're continuing to zoom out into bigger and bigger viewpoints through these first seven images in the flashing montage at the beginnign of the show. Today we are seeing some amphibians, just like the last image:

This image again is available in source form, and in color, through Jupiter Images. The title of the image is "Marine iguanas on rocks", which is exactly what this image depicts. Marine Iguanas are unique in the world, and are only found near the Galapagos islands. It relates really closely to the image from last week, because it can forage and live off of the sea, not needing any of the things on the land. This image might be the first hint of a slant (other than the obvious timeline with billions of years) towards an evolutionary angle, as they were commented on by Charles Darwin when he was on his visit to the Galapagos.

They are protected by the Equadorian government, and are considered threatened by many becuase their food source is affected and these rocks that they bask on in order to raise their temperature (they are cold-blooded or course) are both affected by the El Nino effect.

August Diet Update

2011-08-27T21:32:58-05:00

It's been a quiet month on the blog front, mostly because I don't have a lot of organizing energy lately. I should be able to put these up once a month at least, so true to the promise to myself, I'm putting this one up now.

The last month has been pretty good to me in my diet. There has been a lot less roller-coaster-ness than there was in the previous months, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel that I might be able to hit my goal before I head off on vacation in the middle of September. That would be nice. In regards to my diet, I've been mostly still keeping with the keto diet that I have been on before, focusing a lot on the protein and fat portions and limiting myself when thinking about carbs. Lately I have been loosening up on the restrictions of the diet lately, and not watching the ketostix as much as I did when I was hard-core on the diet. Now I just am kind of passively trying to stay below 50 or 75 carbs a day by not eating any bread in general, and counting the carbs along with the calories that I'm eating.

Lately weekends have been a pretty good deal for me, because I told myself last month that I was going to start letting myself eat a little more freely over the weekends. So I get to give myself a treat on Saturday before we go out to the farmer's market here in town and have some pancakes or hash browns. I've found that some of my tastes have changed though, since the last time that I have been eating out "normally". I'm ordering a lot more things with peppers and tomatoes in them, and with cooked onions. They are pretty tasty and give an otherwise bland breakfast omelet some more zing. I've also been avoiding a bunch of carbs by having pancakes with sugar free syrup. Almost every restaurant which serves breakfast will have some kind of sugar free syrup available, which means that you won't just be pouring on the carbs when you eat your cakes. I am likening it now to asking for diet soda - because I have the sugar free syrup, I can have a couple of pancakes.

In the last month or so, I've decided that I need to start upping my exercise. I mentioned last month that I had a new course for my training, and I started interval training. I've stuck with the running course pretty religiously, because I think it has a good mix of hills and slow climbs along with some falls, and goes far enough afield that I can feel accomplished every time. It also helps that it goes past five of the parks here in northeast Minneapolis, so I get to have a little bit of nature on the walk.

The running pace has been going up a little bit, but I am staying with the type of training I was doing before, which is a two minutes walking to one minute jogging or running throughout the whole course. You can see some of my intervals on RunKeeper (look me up and add me if you want). I really like the graphs on there, because it shows how fast you run and it is really nice. I am still logging at dailymile as well, because I have more people cheering me on at that site. At any rate, my best pace has been improving dramatically lately, with the best pace dropping over a minute in the last month to 11:25 per mile. I'm really happy about the fact that there is such a tangible improvement from these runs. I'm hoping that I can make my goal of doing the course in less than 45 minutes by the end of the year.

After a rocky graph last month, it is heartening to see that most of this month's graph is green. I have a little blip above the line at the end of the first week of August, but it is working out pretty well for me, and the weekly loss is spot on to what I have been aiming for on the calories scale, so it works out overall. I am somewhat terrified to see what these will look like when I start ramping it down and eating a little more. I am worried that my body will rebel at the idea of eating more foods and start gaining weight instead of just going to a steady state. I am really, really close to the "before and after picture" goal that I set for myself, and with any luck I will post it with next month's report.

The yearly graph looks great. I have even apparently sped up my weight loss in the last two months, despite the heavy upwards blip around the fourth. I'm slightly worried that my next vacation will have a similar uptick, but a graph like this will make me just get right back on track and lose any gained pounds.

I've mentioned my transition to a different period a couple of times in this month's report. I've decided that I want to get comfortable where I am for a little while, at least when I get to the next goal that I have set for myself I will start focusing on toning and being more fit instead of losing weight necessarily. If I'm lucky, I'll still lose some of the pounds just because I will be getting rid of some of the excess fat rolls that are on my body. I'll still be posting monthly on my progress, but it will start focusing on fitness and such instead of just the diet itself. I'm hoping that by keeping really close track of everything, I won't have a problem staying at around the same weight until the end of the year.

Big Bang Theory Intro #6: Leaving the Sea

2011-08-20T22:47:30-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time. Maybe I can do these weekly like the Project 52.

This is our first image which I couldn't reliably find on one of the stock images sites. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but I just can't search through the millions of fish images and amphibian images out there. It's set in the timeline on the screen at about 10,000 BC.

It's meant to depict the evolutionary link from sea to land, one of the Tetrapods who have similarities to the frogs or lizards of today. I think it looks most like the Tiktaalik. There is a nice image on the Wikipedia page which shows one walking out of the sea. Of course the 10k BC number is off by a ton, as the Tetrapods were all from more than 300 million years ago or more. Then again, things haven't really been that accurate up to now (and I don't really expect them to be more accurate).

For the longest time I remember that the evolution deniers saying that they hadn't seen any fish coming up on land, but they just didn't like to look at the amphibians or something. There was always the "those don't breathe water" things about them though. I also think that those Darwin stickers that people put on cars are cute, but I wouldn't put one on one of my cars. For some reason I am quite timid, and that seems like a pretty direct jab at christians. I believe in evolution, but I don't want to be hostile about it.

Project 52: Week 32

2011-08-10T20:50:20-05:00

Project 52: Week 31

2011-08-10T20:50:20-05:00

Project 52: Week 28-30

2011-07-31T14:16:20-05:00

I got behind again. I need to take more pictures.

July Diet Update

2011-07-25T23:26:05-05:00

Well, I've been a bit lax in the updating of this blog lately, and it seems that I've let an entire month go by without updating everyone on my diet status. I'll try to be a little less flaky in the future, but for now, you get two, two, two months in one update.

The last two months have been the most roller-coastery of the entire diet so far. Even so, I've managed to keep an average steady pace in the weight loss domain and keep eating the foods that I love while avoiding the ones that would cause problems. I've still been keeping mostly to the ketogenic diet, which is very low-carb, but I have been able to be a little bit more lax in this month than I have been able to in the past. Partially this is due to me actually measuring when I am in a state of ketosis (that is the state when the liver is breaking down fat to produce glucose). I've been using these Ketostix in order to measure when I am in ketosis and when I am not in it. They are a clear indicator of when I need to keep a better eye on the amount of carbs that I am eating.

In the last month I took my first long vacation from the diet in a while (when I was in Spring Green, and I had a big jump in my weight right away because of it. Luckily I think it was mostly water weight and "shock weight" because after a couple of days of being back on the low-carb diet I was below the trend line again. I am somewhat concerned about it now, because I do eventually want to turn back to a more natural eating style where I can have a greater amount of carbs in a normal day, although probably not the unrestricted amount of carbs that I was having before.

According to many, the ideal amount is 55% of your calories from carbohydrates, and then 30% from proteins, and 15% from fats. Ketogenic diets turn this on it's head, with as few as 5% of of the calories from carbohydrates a much greater percentage from the "good fats" that are in animal meats. I think I will try doing something different like maybe swapping the proteins and carbohydrates, and making sure that more of my carbohydrates come from good sources like beans and grains. One of the main things that I didn't realize how much of was in my diet before and I am coming to terms with now, was how much refined sugar I was having. In a typical day I would have more than 100g of refined sugar, which is pretty appalling considering how little I have now and is super sweet. I was convinced that I was not going to be one of those people who would shirk at the sweetness of things (I've always had a sweet tooth, and still do), but after just a little of a sweet thing, I can't have much more. It could also be a big factor in the blood sugar levels, which make a big difference for me now.

I've been pretty consistent with my exercise in the last few months, with most of the exercise coming in the form of outside walking around the neighborhood. I've started taking pictures of these little lions that are situated around my neighborhood, that I didn't notice before because you just notice more things when you are walking at 4mph instead of driving along at 25mph. I am maybe going to map them out and see what I can do. In the month of June it was pretty much straight walking, and I tried to cover the map with my walks, making sure that I walked every street. I got a decent amount of it covered, but there is only so much wandering that I can do with the limited amount of time that I gave myself each day. I still think I did a decent job of covering the neighborhood.

In the month of July, at least for the last couple of weeks, I've been keeping a consistent path and trying to see if I can get my speed up and start going faster. This all started when I took a longer walk than normal and saw a tiny lake which was nearby. The walk itself was quite enjoyable and actually walks nearby five of the local parks, and is of a distance that I feel like I am accomplishing something every day that I can exercise and do the whole loop. I've been doing it pretty consistently every time that I go out. Since it is mostly straight lines, but it is still very much variety on the walk, I can make sure that I go the right way and it gives me something to measure against when I try to go faster. Lately I've been trying to incorporate some short jogs into the runs, with intervals like 2 minutes of walking to 1 minute of running or jogging, and have been getting faster. Right now it's my goal by the end of the year to be able to do this course in the 45 minutes that I had been allocating to my exercise before I started the extended walks. That would mean that I am very close to a rate that is a 10 minute mile. Right now my best pace is 12:30 a mile, which is still much faster than I've ever been able to run as I can remember it.

This is probably the worst graph of diet progress that I've been able to present this year. The hump in the middle represents the shock of those many cheat days on the vacation. They are also estimated by the graphing system here which is those open graph marks. I've still been steadily going in the downward trend nowadays though which is great, and I have had a solid week of all below 250 pounds which is a good milestone to be happy about. If I keep going at this rate, I'll get to my first major weight goal before the end of August, and then things will get more interesting as I try to maintain the weight until the end of the year. I also promise a before and after picture of me when I get to that point, if only to remind myself that I want to maintain the smaller me.

The year to date graph again looks pretty nice, with a net loss of about 50 pounds since the beginning of the year, and only one major blip there at the beginning of this month. Even with the bump it looks like I'm right back on track already and haven't really had a major setback.

It's an odd month, so let's look at the graph showing all of the progress from the beginning of me trying to get fit, exercise and lose weight. I'm almost 100 pounds down from my previous weight of 340. This graph looks great. One part of this graph which is encouraging to me is actually the part that probably looks pretty bad to you, which is the time right around October 2010. In this period I was able to just stay at the same weight for a very long time, which suggests that it will be possible for me to do it again. I'm thinking about that because it is what I will want to be doing soon.

Project 52: Week 24-27

2011-07-13T23:51:18-05:00

I'm a bit behind. Have fun.

Spring Green Minivacation - Day 3

2011-07-11T05:16:48-05:00

(This post is part of a series on a short vacation that I took with my partner Diana Rajchel at the beginning of July 2011)

Fortunately, after a couple of days in Spring Green, Wisconsin, finally it looked like the weather was going to turn into something more like comfortable vacation weather. Unfortunately, half of our vacation was over. After waking up for the second day in a row without an alarm clock and completely rested in the Usonian Inn's lovely Room 11, we had a day of actual touristy things ahead of us for our last full day.

The first thing we needed to sort was breakfast though. We went into town and stopped by a coffee and pastry shop that we had tried to stop by on yesterday's walk through the town. It was closed when we had stopped before because we showed up at around 12:30 and the owner was on his siesta. He was in, and so were a couple of locals. We got some coffee and donuts for the breakfast and sat down. The locals wanted to know if we were in town for Taliesin, which we had considered going to but hadn't yet. I had two donuts, both of which were very nice and obviously made in the bakery. Diana chatted up the locals a bit and some left and others appeared while we tried to get online via the tethering on Diana's phone. It worked to an extent, more in the coffee shop than it did in the hotel room because there is slightly better reception in the town.

After breakfast, I had at least one thing planned, but there was no real schedule for the day, which is something that I really like to have while on these kinds of relaxing vacations that are not really to a touristy place, but are really a getaway from everyday stresses for a while. I wanted to head to the Cave of the Mounds and do a tour, along with a short drive because it was about half an hour away. While on our way there, there was a scenic overlook which we stopped at because we didn't have any particular time table - it was looking basically straight at the House on the Rock which was an option for later in the day if we had time. We also stopped to get some more supplies at the Walmart in Dodgeville. Cave of the Mounds was a decent drive from Spring Green, but it was not too long, only about half an hour. That's about the maximum that I would go while on vacation to see something - I feel like that if it's an hour away by car, then we should have stayed in a different location. We did spot a couple of hotels that we might try out if/when we came into town again - one being the Don Q Inn which has a plane parked out front and a big Q mowed into the lawn.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Cave of the Mounds, because I hadn't been there before. I had been to other caves as a child on family vacation trips, but I was thinking that a lot of caves can be very different and this one might not be as impressive as the one that I was at as a child because of either my less-than-fantastic memory of the cave and also the fact that this seemed to be a tourist location in Wisconsin, which isn't exactly known for it's caves. I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it was to be guided on a short tour of a relatively small cave. I got a lot of pictures with my cameraphone, although not all of them came out great. Diana got a bunch of photos with the much better camera which I haven't seen all of, but what the picture above is taken from. There were some areas where the guide takes you through some narrow patches and you go up and down almost 70 feet in the cave while you are walking around. I correctly remembered before that you shouldn't touch almost anything in caves because the oil from hands will prevent the further growth of the stalactites and stalagmites. There was a short section where there was natural phosphorous as well, which they activated with a bright lamp and then let us see it give off it's glow. One thing that I remember from the child trip to a cave which was very different in this trip, and probably will be different for all time now, is that there was a section of the tour where the guide plunges you into complete darkness, the kind where there is no light and your eyes will never adjust to the darkness. I remember being amazed at the time when I couldn't even see the hand in front of my own face. Alas, that won't ever happen again probably - when the guide tried it in this tour, a bunch of light sources came out in the group, mostly from cell phones and LCD displays from cameras. The tour was really fun and Diana enjoyed herself too, so I think we might go see some other caves if we visit areas of the US where there are some, or if we are on a road trip and see some as a roadside attraction.

After the cave, we drove back into Dodgeville to check out a place that we had driven by before, but it was closed the last time. It is a small coffee shop and bistro called Cook's Room. At that point in time we were pretty hungry because the breakfast that we had acquired before wasn't exactly the strong breakfast that we got used to on vacation (how quickly do we get used to large breakfast), so we decided to get something for lunch. They had a menu which was filled with some great panini and other cafe like things, and they had thankfully a great selection from the coffee shop as well. I had another iced coffee, which I hadn't had basically ever before this trip, but is growing on me quite strongly as a regular drink. It has the right amount of bitterness and sweet if you add the cream in the correct portion. I had a fairly wonderful chicken panini with some pesto and mozzarella and Diana had a similar panini with some Italian sausages in it.

Before the end of our journey for the day, we had time for one other attraction to see that day. I was very enamoured with the idea of seeing the Taliesin school, so Diana indulged my thoughts even though she was leaning towards seeing the House on the Rock. When we return to Spring Green, I think that we will be going to House on the Rock, but it was not in the cards for this tour. Taliesin is the school that Frank Lloyd Wright started at the end of his career and is an architectural school that's still in use today as students learn the stylings that he has introduced. The tour of the main house was far too long for our tastes, so we took a tour of the hillside studio where the students stay and they are even working while we were there. The building itself is quite unique - there are, in typical style, a lot of sharp angles, but it does not feel like it is a boxed in space at all. One of the reasons that I like the architecture of Wright is that he has different angles than most traditional buildings. I also learned that he is a major advocate of only using material which you can find locally in the area of the structure being built, which is quite interesting. Inside the building, we weren't allowed to take pictures. I snapped a few shots outside of the buildings, one of which is viewable above.

While on the tour, I got a bit uncomfortable with some of the other tourists that were with us as well as slightly with the tour guide, because it seemed like there was quite a bit of hero worship going on. I definitely admire the works of a great architect, but I don't really think anyone deserves the type of undying praise that these people were giving to the person. There were definitely a lot of great rooms and interesting things to see there, but he was not without his faults. Most of his buildings had flat roofs, even in areas like Wisconsin where there is a lot of snow and that was a horrible idea because the melting and freezing would cause them to be quite leaky. Also the studio that we walked through had a strong smell of mold throughout the whole area, almost to the point where we thought the whole "preservation" thing might have been taken a bit too far for a building where people are meant to actually be there continually. All in all, it was a nifty experience though, and I was glad to have been on the tour to see the building.

We went and took a rest at the hotel, and then back to the Taliesin visitor center to have dinner at the restaurant which is situated there. I was happy to get reservations for earlier in the day and we had a nice meal while overlooking the river there as well as a bunch of people who were playing in the river after a hot day across the way. The visitor center was designed by Wright as well, and I can't imagine having it as a home but it works very well for stunning views of the river. I had some lovely local pork and asparagus, with a dessert of Lemon Meringue pie which was a real treat. Diana had some badgerberry pie, which was a berry that I hadn't heard of before, but tasted just as lovely and sweet.

It was our final full day in Spring Green, but we were tired from a full day's worth of visiting places and seeing new things. I always enjoy having a vacation with Diana because she is such a wonderful travelling companion. On Sunday we drove home, and it was mostly uneventful, but I'll write about it separately soon. Until then.

Spring Green Minivacation - Day 2

2011-07-08T05:05:25-05:00

(This post is part of a series on a short vacation that I took with my lovely spouse Diana Rajchel at the beginning of July 2011)

Waking up at the Usonian Inn was interesting, because there are large bay windows that let in the light very well throughout the day, including the morning. Even though they aren't oriented toward the sun, I woke up basically naturally, and then decided that I wanted to sleep for a couple more hours. One of the things that I end up getting a lot more of on vacation than I do in "real life" is sleep. I really relish being able to wake up, look at the clock, and decide that I don't have so many pressing things today that I can't sleep for another hour or two. I think that I didn't have a night with less than 6 hours sleep in the entire trip, which is a significant increase over the amount of sleep that I get on a normal night. That's not to say that I wasn't waking up at my normal times, I would just get up at 4am, and decide that I wanted to sleep some more, and then sleep for 3 hours or more.

After my sleeping in until almost 9am (crazy!), we got dressed and headed to the Round Barn Restaurant, which is one of the places that Diana has been to before on her trips to this area. We at first didn't know what to do, because the dining room is right within the door, and there was no hostess at the station, nor a sign stating to either seat ourselves or wait to be seated. Diana decided to take the initiative and we wondered around until we found a table at a secluded area. It had an interestingly placed mirror, so I took the self-portrait that you see above. The menu was fairly standard fare for a restaurant in the US when serving breakfast, and I ended up having a breakfast burrito. The portions of the meal were quite small, but both of the entrées were less than $15 with coffee, so the prices were also similarly small.

After breakfast, we ventured into downtown Spring Green again to see what the shops were like along main street and the main cross street. We visited a lot of places including what must be one of the final remaining small mom-and-pop department stores in America (no big box store here, except 20 minutes away in Dodgeville), a shop that was quite focused on quilting, and an office supply store. Everywhere we went we were trying to check into Foursquare at these places, and more often than not we did not find a location in the service for the store. Diana was kind enough to add the locations basically wherever we went, and I believe she got some kind of badge for it because of her vigilance in making sure we could document our trip digitally. We also found some interesting benches which were painted in some kind of town square thing.

I didn't catch why these were painted so much, but they were interesting to look at for sure. We also visited The Opal Man, which is situated in a quite small building, but had some magnificent opals that we stared at for a while, including one that was just sheared out of a square of rock, and had some beautiful transparent blue and green flecks in it which reminded me of the types of things that we just wish we could duplicate with the colors on a computer for electronic-y themes.

The heat from the previous day did not dissipate overnight, which meant that walking around downtown wasn't exactly an easy thing - it mostly involved walking to the next store while we were sweltering and hoping that it contained an air conditioner to relieve the amazing 100 degree heat and high humidity of the outside. It made us use the car when we would normally just walk around, and that made me somewhat sad but I was happy because our air conditioning in the car was just chugging away like there was no problem. It could be considered probably one of the largest tests of the car's air to turn on for 5 minutes while we drove and then turn off again and have the car subsequently heat up like crazy. One of the ways that we combated the heat was to stop in the Arcadia Book Store which also included a coffee shop, and get some iced coffee and juice. On the trip in general I would say that I had iced coffee more than I've had in the past five years. Usually I will still drink the hot stuff even if it's really hot outside. The Arcadia is a charming book store that I would recommend to anyone who wants to stop and have a coffee and look at books, it's just the right size that you can easily browse the whole store but had a great selection of books. I already have too many books to read through so I didn't buy any, but true to form, I took down a couple of titles for me to add to my queue of books to read later, as they looked interesting enough for me to try to find later.

We visited some other stores, but then decided that we wanted to take a little break before the main event of the trip, tickets to American Player's Theatre performing The Critic. Back to the hotel to have a short nap. After the nap, we visited Arthur's Supper Club for a meal before we headed off to the play. This restaurant was pretty packed, and had a fried fish and chicken buffet going on. I had some gumbo soup and salad from the salad bar, but decided to just order the fish and chicken from the menu. It was mediocre at best, and I didn't even finish the meal.

The play itself was staged interestingly and was a play which was split into two acts which were quite distinct. The first act I dare to say was the better of the two from an intellectual standpoint - it was centered around a character who was a patron of the arts in the sixteenth century. His wife finds this insufferable because there are more important matters of the world to think about. The main character has a couple of friends over and there is a quite great scene with an artist who just cannot take criticism (I've met a few petty much exactly like him), which was possibly the best performance of the play. There is also a large section on the various types of advertising (or poofery as it was called by the character espousing it's virtues), many of which we would be keen to see today, including a few "all publicity is good publicity" angles. Also there was a hilarious scene with some lost-in-translation type humor with English-French-Italian things, and a small slapstickish dance number which was funny. In the second act, all of the characters so far travel to a dress rehearsal of a play which one of their friends is the writer/director for. The rehearsal is fraught with difficulties, and the play itself has a number of holes in it's plot and expositional character lines which don't make sense. All of these lines are of course lampshaded by the audience's surrogate and pointed out to great humor. The whole thing has a lot of pratfall comedy in it which was also enough to laugh at but wasn't as good humor-wise as the first act I believed.

The whole play was still such a fun thing to go see, and it is really in the middle of a forest. The seats I was happy to see were the padded kind, although I really do wonder how they deal with it when it rains, because it's basically an open-air theater on the top of a hill exposed to the elements. It was still incredibly hot and humid which made the play viewing a bit uncomfortable. Normally I would have hiked up the hill in order to get to the theater itself, but because of the heat we took a shuttle bus up the quite steep hill to the top. The APT were also kind enough to provide a bunch of insect spray, which I am convinced is the reason I wasn't bit to smithereens as I was in later days.

It was a quite full day of vacation, although not rushed at all which I was happy to have. In the hotel room we indulged in some sweets and some TV which was a nice relaxing thing after the long, hot, day. On Saturday the heat finally broke, and we did a few more tourist things, I'll post about them in Day 3. Until then.

Spring Green Minivacation - Day 1

2011-07-04T21:09:41-05:00

It's been a while since I've had a vacation, and one of the presents I gave Diana this valentines was a trip to see the American Players Theater which is centered in Spring Green, Wisconsin. There are also a bunch of other tourist-friendly things around that area and Diana enjoys the place, so we decided to take a mini-vacation over an extended Independence Day weekend.

Our first day was a travel day, and our first long trip in the Yaris that we got last year since Christmas. Most of the trips that we take are long enough that we are travelling by plane and leaving the car at home. Since I knew I wasn't going to be getting my normal exercise while on vacation, I got up early and did a walk around the neighborhood. Lately I've been listening to the Critical Hit Podcast while I exercise, because when I have 5 days of exercise a week, I quickly run out of podcasts. Usually I find something to listen to a long backlog so that I don't run out of entertainment. I had a good walk and then we got ready to go.

The drive to Spring Green was pretty nice. It was very hot outside, which made us very thankful for the air conditioning in the car, which actually works quite well in our tiny car, and didn't seem to impact the mileage that much. The last part of the trip took us off of the highway and through some of the highways around the country in Wisconsin, going through some of the tiniest towns that I have seen in a while. It made me think about how these tiny towns actually pay for things, because they have some pretty nice streets and like streetlights (well, one streetlight) in some of them. Regardless, there was some nice views on the way to the hotel.

We're staying at the Usonian Inn, which is unique in the world for being the only motel which is built in the Usonian style of architecture. Looking at it makes you think that it is not really nice on the outside (although that is debatable), but it looks very nice on the inside and is quite interesting with lots of straight lines. Even with the small room that we picked, there are a lot of interesting elements. I took some pictures. The hotel itself is also a very eco-friendly hotel, and is one of the only ones in the areas which is kept on a couple of the green registries. While it's a little more expensive than a run-of-the-mill hotel, I think I would stay there again.

After we got situated, we wanted to get something to eat, so we drove along the road looking for stuff. We did a little random driving and went through another tiny town -- Lone Rock -- which was a little depressing because there wasn't much there. After we got through the town we drove over a couple of nice bridges though which took us over a river (which was quite high) and a drive along a cliff which provided some quite nice views of the Wisconsin countryside.

We ended up in Dodgeville to get some grub and some vacation supplies. We ate at one of the last remaining Country Kitchens which are rare nowadays. We overheard from the hostess that there was quite the scandal with the CEO or someone high up at the company got convicted for embezzlement and all of the company owned stores had to be closed, leaving only the franchise stores left. There are only a few left - less than 40 I think was the number they said. All of the franchise stores are individually up for sale as well I think she said. It was interesting to hear of this story which impacted quite a large chain of restaurants.

I had some ribs and fries which were just what I needed since I had only had some cheese curds since breakfast. It being a vacation, I'm letting myself eat freely instead of trying to be strict to the super low carb ketogenic diet that I am normally eating. To that end, I ended up getting some sweets for dessert and munching on as well. I'm hoping that it doesn't make a big impact on the scale when I get back on July 4. I'll be going on an extreme carb cut for the first couple days of next week, trying to go actually zero carbs to see how quickly I can start burning the fat.

After some supplies, we were both very tired, so we went back to the hotel and plugged in everything to recharge and watched a little TV before drifting off to sleep. Friday is the day where we will have a full day to spend in Spring Green and see the play in the evening. We might end up going to some other spots, or put them off until Saturday. It's set to be another over-90 day pretty much all day long, so maybe not. Until then.

If congress was run by programmers

2011-06-22T22:57:01-05:00

There was a large confusion when I first decided that I wanted to read an actual law. If you try to read the text of an actual law (here's an example of some text), it's a bunch of really dense text which is all about what is changing in the US Code. It's all about "adding paragraph" or "adding an additional subsection", or "striking out this section".

I was thinking that things would be different but still the same if programmers ran congress. The entirety of US code could be put into a single git repository. In order to propose changes, you would fork the repository and then make the changes that you need. A law in it's current form looks a lot like a patch to the "source" of the US code.

Debate and voting could be done very similar to the github system where you would make a pull request - then amendments to the bill would be more commits which are added onto the pull request. Debate on the floor of congress would be similar to comments on that request.

Once debate and amendments are over, you could put in your voting electronically just like they do now for CSPAN and for the full count. Right now there's someone who's job is to make sure that the code is amended correctly - there are a lot of actual cases where the laws aren't written correctly, and they are amending the wrong part of the code or something. It's the Office of the Law Revision Counsel to fix them. It would be a lot easier with git, because of the automated merging.

Whether this would make the proposal, debate, and enacting of laws is another question. I like to think that it would make things a lot faster of course, because I'm a programmer and I've seen the fact that adding these types of "social code review" features make things a lot more clear and speed up the development cycle.

It's also an idea for an open government project: Keep track of all of the laws which are in congress now in the form of patches to the US code, keeping track via branches in git that are continued based on the amendments to them. You could also see which laws conflict with each other by trying to merge them all together into a single "after all these laws are passed" branch.

Project 52: Week 23

2011-06-22T01:36:49-05:00

No, do this, it's better.

2011-06-16T23:12:23-05:00

I started playing non-traditional board games about the same time that I stated graduate school. That was a long time ago, but it was definitely a good time to start. The non-traditional games that I'm talking about are games like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan and Robo Rally. They're not the type of game that you would have played as a child if you are in the same generation as me. Sometimes they have complex rules (one game took about a half hour to just explain the rules to me recently), and the goals aren't really obvious, and the strategies are complex. Many times there are multiple ways to win, and those ways are in competition with other players. I find these types of "advanced board games" incredibly fun to play and engaging. The strategy is really interesting to figure out and there seems to be almost an endless supply of new games to play.

I used to play these games occassionally with a bunch of guys from the lab, a group which migrated / expanded when the startup spun off and many of us started working there. The go-to game was Settlers of Catan, because it is easy enough to teach people but not so complex that you wouldn't be able to win on your first try. For various reasons the same host isn't hosting the events anymore (one of these days soon I will have to host one or a few).

I've found a bunch of people who are into the same types of games and have about the same unlimited capacity for them on the twincitiessocial subreddit. We all meet at a great event center which always has basically a bunch of open tables waiting for people to come together to play some games. Usually I end up staying about 5 hours and playing 2-3 games (yes, most of them are this long to play). I'm also finding that meeting new people this way is pretty nice, because I have some type of social construct to interact with them other than the normal random chit-chat and that's lead to a couple of casual friendships.

It's really pretty great, but I've been noticing a trend with my play style lately which is starting to be prevalent. I've turned into a "Do this, it's better." player of the games. Someone will be playing their turn, or setting up a strategy, and I'll jump in and try to play their turn for them. Diana first pointed this out to me a month or so back, but I didn't really think it was a problem in my playstyle (Diana usually notices these things way before I do). Now I am rethinking that conclusion, and considering that maybe I'm a guy ruining the fun for someone else. Two or three times ago, I kibitzed on a game and tried to "help" some people out. Last week I was thinking through almost everyone's turns, and in every game I played, I am sure that I made a comment about how to play a turn.

I'm a fairly competitive person when playing (even if I don't win too often), and these aren't cooperative games usually, so why am I "helping" my opponent play a better game against me. I've come up with two theories why I'm doing this.

The first is a strong sense of playing a "fair game". I really think that games are really fun within the constructs of the rules. Most if not all of these games have some type of random component to them - otherwise they usually aren't as fun to replay. Part of me wants to have everyone play the best game that they can, and we just enjoy the experience of playing the game competitively to see who wins. To that end, when I see someone playing suboptimally, I want them to play it absolutely to their advantage.

The second is the idea that somehow by playing it without taking advantage of all the rules, they're "playing it wrong". This comes from a history when I was teaching games to other people. The rules for these games are necessarily complex and there are some twisty turny passages that some people just won't understand the first time they're playing. It's certainly possible that they are making a move and they just don't know that they can do something that is better. If I point it out to them they might be a better player of that particular game in general. This is somewhat tied in with the first season, but has more of a "did you know?" angle. I'm really a minimaxer when it comes to the rules of many of these games, so depending on how twisty-turny the rules are, it could be unnecessarily complex. I have a natural teaching instinct, to you might see this as a dark extension of that in some way.

I don't believe that either of these reasons are justifications for my behavior at the table. I absolutely should be letting the other players play their own turns - the enjoyment that they will get out of the game is going to come from taking those actions and figuring out the plans and strategies of their turns themselves, without my help. Their enjoyment of the game is just as important as mine, and as long as they are playing within the rules, they aren't "playing it wrong" by doing something suboptimal.

I have noticed that it happens more in games where almost all of the information is available to all players. With more hidden information, I obviously can't chime in because I don't know all of the facts of their situation. Seven Wonders is particularly nice for this, as almost all information is hidden while playing. On the other side of things, in Alien Frontiers I have a lot of chances to "help" other players.

I'm hoping that now that I've noticed the behavior, I'll be able to curb it the next time I am at a games night. To this end I'll probably do some sort of introspection throughout the night as well as a review when I'm all finished. One of my desires is to be a better player of these games so that I can make more connections and not be an annoying person to play with. Everyone having fun is more important.

How many languages are too many?

2011-06-09T23:39:49-05:00

In the past week, I've programmed for at least an hour in: - Ruby (with and without Rails) - Javascript - Python - C++ - Embedded C - Java - Non-trivial Makefiles - HTML and CSS (if we want to count them)

If we went back a month, we could add C# to that list, as well as the go language, and the ever so strange awk. If I was pressed to write down on a resume all of the languages that I have programmed in, it would probably take up at least a quarter of a page, especially if they wanted me to list the frameworks that I've used in each of them.

Lately I've been counting about how many languages I use on a regular basis, because it seems like I am a programmer that seems to jump from language to language, using whatever is most convenient at the time. If I want to make something, I just choose the tool out of the toolbox that seems reasonable to get the job done, and start hacking away. I'll pick up Python, Ruby or Perl randomly when I want to get a more-complex-than-a-shell-script thing done.

I don't know why I have this outlook on my language selection, and I was blissfully unaware that it was somewhat bizarre until recently, when I've been noticing more that people seem to focus their programming attention on one or two languages, and don't really delve deep into any others. People will stay in a single job coding .NET applications for years at a time, and not look at any other language. That seems quite bizarre for me.

I've been wondering what this means for me as a professional developer. The resume question specifically is interesting to me. As someone who can legitimately name a product that I've shipped in so many languages, does it make me look better or worse for me to put all of them onto my skills list? Will they assume that I'm just padding the list with languages that I've only tinkered in? Of course, this is all just a curiosity because I'm quite happy in the career that I've chosen now, but it's still something I think about.

I'm also thinking about whether I have been going about it all wrong - would I be better off as a developer if I had a single-language focus? Could I finish more projects if I did so? Maybe I should try to pick one or two of the languages and then convert everything to those, and I will actually be more productive. It's hard to judge these things because I've always been the person who is interested not only in being familiar with a language, but building a decent size project in each one. For example, I've been thinking of building a side project in node.js, not because I have a pressing need to learn a JavaScript-based event-driven framework, but just because it looks interesting.

It seems like most of the developers that I know that are into as many languages also have an interest in compilers - but I'm not that interested in them myself. Parsers of course are part and parcel of any programmer's toolbox, if only because sometimes a domain-specific language is what will be the most powerful and useful, but I have never been interested in taking things down to the machine level myself.

I know that there are other people with at least a curiosity into other languages like I have, because there is a Twin Cities Languages User Group that I've attended a couple of times. It's been a while since I've been back at that group, and my life is a little too busy to attend again. It was a short look at a bunch of different languages, which was pretty great.

I'm not sure that I'll ever stop learning the new languages and frameworks of the times. I consider it a good thing on the whole because I am flexible to do things like start programming an Android app, or pick up Objective C in order to hack away at a iOS app. Whatever next new language is coming around the corner, you can probably bet that I'll be programming something in it eventually.

How to weigh a human

2011-06-09T00:27:14-05:00

I've been dieting lately, which means that I am weighing myself pretty regularly now. I try to weigh myself every day. Because I'm trying to be so consistent, and I don't have some kind of fancy scale, just this cheapo scale, I've had some troubles over the years getting a consistent read out of my scale. I've finally got it working about as best as I can expect out of what I have, so I thought I would write down the tricks that I use to get as consistent as possible.

One thing that I have gleaned from my job working with electronic components and also looking at some hobby robotics and destroying my old scale to see how it worked was how the new scales that are cheap and completely electronic work. The scale itself doesn't have any springs in it at all, just a circuit board with some wires leading out to four sensors, which are attached directly to the feet of the scale. Many times you can see that the feet aren't actually touching the bottom plastic piece of the scale - that's because they need to be attached to the sensor plate. The body of the sensor is attached to the bottom of the scale. From there, the body is attached to the rest of the scale so that when you step on the scale from the top, the entire body of the scale is pushed down and the feet are effectively pushed into their sensors, giving a sensor reading.

The sensors are calibrated to give a reading which you can then use a simple lookup table in a microprocessor to see what it is supposed to represent in pounds. Of course there are four feet, so that means that they're not exactly on, but the scale manufacturer assumes that there is about one fourth of your weight distributed on each one of the sensors. This brings us to tip number one, the most important:

Stand as close to the center of the scale as possible

This means that your weight will be distributed so as to make the assumptions of the manufacturer as correct as possible. Using this first rule, you will get as an accurate a weight every time you step on the scale. If you have to move the scale to the center of the room in order to stand on the center and not tilt yourself, do so. There's a tip later if you have to move the scale every time.

Of course, that's not the whole story, because you want to have a consistent weighing over multiple days. That means that you need to take into account three more things. The first is that more than half of you is water. This means that the amount of water that you drank in the last 24 hours and how hydrated you are right at the moment that you weigh is going to make a big difference. If you're a heavy person like I am, just two percent of your body weight is easily 5 pounds. The second is more obvious than the first, and that is that you will gain a different amount of weight throughout each day based on what you eat and drink versus your elimination. That means that weighing at the end of the day is completely useless. The third is even more obvious: your clothes weigh different amount every day. These three facts bring us to tip number two:

Weigh yourself at the beginning of the day, naked.

Weighing yourself at the beginning of the day in the buff will give you the most consistent reading day-over-day that you can get. This is because after a night's sleep, you are about as dehydrated as you're going to get in the day. That minimizes the impact of the body water that you have around. It also means that you probably have digested most of your food from the previous day, and you don't have clothes tying you down.

The third tip that I use is one that is mental. Many of the dieters that I have conversed with (hi /r/loseit!) have a problem mentally with getting on the scale every day. Getting on the scale every day is very important to me in order to keep the accurate graphs that accompany my reports. To get all of that data, I keep a logbook right next to my scale, and I put my weight in it.

It's a simple book with the date, and the weight that I read off of the scale on that day. Even though it just looks like a weight log, it also doubles as a motivational tool! Because this type of logging lets me see all of the numbers very quickly, it's easy enough to look back a month (it's just one row over) and see my progress every day. The number that's important to me is the number of a month ago minus today, and it's always in the negative. I've never been on the right track and had that number come out positive. Over a longer period of time, all the variability of the last few days goes away.

Finally I have one final tip, which might not apply to everyone. I don't have space in my apartment bathroom to keep the scale on the floor all the time, so I keep it on it's side under the sink. This means that the zero calibration of the sensors will be off the first time I step on it every morning. The solution is simple, and applies if you have to move the scale every day as well.

Place the scale on the floor in the same position every time.

Ignore the first reading that you get - keep stepping on and off until you get two readings exactly the same

If you can't get the same reading from two weighings just seconds apart, your scale is broken. Get a new cheap one and use these tips to weigh yourself consistently.

Following these tips, I've never had a problem with the 30 dollar scale that I use every day to measure my weight.

5 Android apps that I use daily

2011-06-07T05:33:07-05:00

So most people who know me pretty well will know that I'm an Android user. I don't exactly shout it from the rooftops, but I'll bring out my phone when I have any free moment in order to check on something or make sure that everything is working the way that I want it to. I never considered myself to use a lot of applications on my phone though. I have of course the requisite Twitter client available (which I switch out on occasion) and I use all of the Google applications pretty extensively (mail and calendar mostly). I do have a small core of Android "apps" that I use pretty extensively on a daily basis though.

The one that I'll put first, because I use it by time more than probably all of the others put together, is the DoggCatcher Podcast Player. It's one of the first applications that I ever paid for on the Android Market, and I actually paid $10 for it, more than it's going for now. This podcast downloader (or "podcatcher") is easily the main reason that I have my phone - I listen to podcasts on the thing all the time. The interface is well-done, although sometimes it can be easy to accidentally hit a podcast on the list and switch to a different podcast, it's pretty easy to switch back. The author does a good job keeping the application up to date as well, having shipped at least 50 updates since I bought it so long ago. If you're interested in what podcasts I have on my list, I have another post about that.

After that in terms of time used is a newcomer. TagTime helps me keep track of what exactly I'm spending my days doing. It does this by randomly sampling me by buzzing at me every once in a while, and then I respond with what I'm doing at the moment. The original creators have a web page that explains the concept better. I started using this application because it was close enough to something that I had been meaning to build for a while. I recently started contributing to the source as well, and that has accelerated my personal Android development. I'll probably be adding more features to the application soon, since there is an itch that I can scratch myself.

Lately, Pomodroido has been getting more use on my phone. This is a simple timer application which helps you implement the Pomodoro Technique, which is supposed to be one of these "productivity hacks". I honestly use it because it's an easy way to time out half an hour, which is conveniently half of my minimum thesis working time every day, as well as the smallest period of time I feel comfortable billing out for my consulting work. So it is used in a dual purpose to both keep me honest in both of those goals. I had used it in the past at work in it's "hack" capacity and it didn't work that well because I was interrupted too much. Using it at home doesn't seem to have as much of a problem because I can explain to my lovely wife about the "focus" aspect of it.

As most of you would if you've been reading the blog for any period of time, I've been on a diet for a while. That's why MyFitnessPal has a permanent position on my home screen. MyFitnessPal (and the accompanying website is easily the best application I've found on Android in order to keep track of calories. It comes very close to what I would consider an ideal eat watch in the Hacker's Diet sense. It has a nice big number in green of how many calories under your goal you are in the day, which incorporates the amount of exercise you've done (if you enter it, it's not automatic or anything) and the amount of food. If the number is red, you're done eating for the day because you're over your limit. The food database is extensive and it makes it easy to enter foods that you've been eating recently which is great because my diets tend to have a lot of consistency. It also added a bar code scanner so you can just scan the boxed foods that you eat.

Lastly but not least, I use SpringPad as a note taking application. It was quite important to me to have a note application which had some type of online component, because I was definitely not going to back it up enough on my phone itself, and it is nicer to type things long form or add things from the web as well. There are quite a few options out there, but Springpad, and it's website are probably the most simple for my purposes. You can do fancy things with the notes, but usually I am just using them as grocery lists, or lists to remember books I want to read, music I want to purchase, and movies to watch. It's a notebook - I use it for jotting down notes.

I have a bunch of other applications on my phone, but these are the ones that I use the most, and I would say that I use all of them on a daily basis. I'm always looking for more productive uses of my phone though, since I've had a smartphone it's evolved over time. I don't play that many games on it, so it's mostly productivity for me. If you have any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them in the comments.

Project 52: Weeks 20-22

2011-06-05T17:00:06-05:00

May Diet Update 2

2011-05-30T14:23:38-05:00

Due to an interesting fact about how I time these updates, now I have two in the same month. I won't have another until most of the way though June though. The diet has been going pretty well in May, mostly keeping to the ketogenic diet (essentially very low-carb). The scale is still bugging me on the day-to-day, but I've started doing some things which help my outlook directly after the daily weigh-in, so it's not too bad.

One thing that I really like about the ketogenic diet is that I can eat a lot of meat. I've been a meat eater for a very long time now, and I don't expect to go vegetarian anytime soon. My normal breakfast is made up of eggs and some breakfast meat. For most of April and May it was bacon all the time, but I've been mixing it up by switching to some breakfast sausage lately sometimes. I try to make my breakfast a reasonable amount of carbs because I don't expect to eat throughout the day.

Another nice thing about the ketogenic diet is that on the days when I am not keeping strict count of my calories, or when it is difficult to count the calories because I am going out to eat or something, then I can still stick to my diet without too much fuss. I just avoid all bread, potatoes, sugar, and I guaranteed to keep on the diet. Doing it with both the low-carb and the low-calorie seems to be having an effect, keeping me on my 2 pounds a week goal.

Exercise has been pretty consistent this month, consistently hitting my goals of 5 days a week with taking a day off every 2-3 days normally. One of the nicest things about this time of year is that it is not completely muggy yet, and it also is warm enough to walk around, so I've done a couple of nice long walks around the neighborhood. Other than that, I've made a habit of watching some educational videos while I've been working out, a ton of which are available on youtube thanks to google. Google I/O was last month which means that there are a lot of good talks that I've watched that are relevant and recent.

Cheat days have been a little more fast and loose than I have really wanted in this month. My willpower has been a little down lately, and I don't really know why. It might also be that the progress that I'm making is just making me think that the cheat day schedule isn't all that important. I took one cheat day on the day of the Doctor Who Meetup, and another on the seventh. The one on the seventh was almost a whole week early, but it made it so that the one on the meetup day lined up so I didn't care that much.

I feel like I need to plan out my cheat days a little more, becuase twice in the last three times I've made the decision to take a cheat day part way through the day - it feels more like my willpower is breaking than I am actually sticking to a diet plan. There are good arguments that I can make in my head for both of these methods of taking the days. On the "planned" side of things, I can feel more like I'm sticking to a plan, and I can plan out the breakfasts as well -- pancakes are one of my weaknesses with regards to carbs. On the "unplanned" side of things, I can try to stay off of the carbs for as long as possible, and it is more spontaneous, and if there is a full day where there is nothing to eat but something that includes carbs, I don't need to starve myself. I'm still not sure what is the best way. I'm going to try this month to stick to the "planned" method a lot more, and see how it goes.

Practice days are making a comeback into my diet, in the form of says where I don't care that much about carbs, but I still try to make an effort to avoid the big sources - this means no bread or sweets, but I can have maybe one dessert in the day, or maybe I skip all the meals.

The thirty day graph is looking pretty good, with almost all of the points below the trend line. The beginning of the month and the seventh being the blips above the line because of the cheat days within the month. Interestingly the second cheat day in May didn't produce an above-the-trendline day at all, although you can kindof see it in the data points. Overall I like seeing this much green in the graph, and the calculated calorie deficit is looking pretty good too.

Again the year graph looks pretty awesome. The trend line is looking pretty straight and the overall loss of almost 40 pounds is really great. I haven't seen any difference in the speed of weight lost between when I was just doing the low calorie diet and the ketogenic diet. It makes me think that maybe the only benefit of the ketogenic diet is adherence.

Lately I've been using a new service called Beeminder in order to make my daily weigh-in less impactful. I get a graph like this every day, with the trendline similar to the physicsdiet one, but it gets updated every day. Another thing that I like about it is the "yellow brick road". Mine is set to about 0.5% lost per week, which is the semi-default setting. I have been thinking about changing it to be a little more agressive, but because it's a beta service you have to email the owner of the site to change your goals. I interact with it by email mostly, and I look at the graph every day as I'm having breakfast and it reminds me that even if I have a more "up" day that I am still below the trend.

I'm getting dangerously close to my short term goal of 250 pounds. I definitely will keep going until I hit 240, because then I will be 100 down. Before and after pictures will come then. At this rate, I will probably be there either at the next checkin or the one after.

Speeding up factory_girl tests with "Model.first or"

2011-05-26T23:06:11-05:00

Lately at work I've been trying to make sure that I follow test driven development. That means that I'm using rspec with factory_girl in order to make building objects to test against easier. As the amount of tests that I have grows, testing gets longer and longer.$

While this gives me a nice break from working, similar to the compile time that a large program used to give me at my old job, usually I want to see the results of my bugfix faster. Turning on rspec test timing had me confused though, because it was saying that the longest test was similar to this one:

describe Product do

  it "should have a working factory" do
    x = Factory(:product)
    x.should be_valid
    x.save
    x2 = Factory(:product)
    x2.should be_valid
  end
end

There's nothing there - it's all calls to factories that I've built. So I went investigating what was actually happening there by making a simple helper for telling me what was actually being built:

def get_model_classes
  [].tap do |r| 
    Dir["# {Rails.root.join("app/models/*.rb")}"].each do |fname|
      modelname = fname.split('/')[-1].split('.')[0].camelcase
      r << Kernel.const_get(modelname)
    end
  end
end

# shows a count of all of the relevant objects, to 
# determine when we are making too many objects in the world.
def show_object_counts(title = "")
  @@all_models ||= get_model_classes
  print "Objects in existence: # {title}\n"
  @@all_models.each do |k|
    if k.respond_to?(:all) then
      c = k.all.count
      next if c == 0
      print " - # {c} # {k}\n"
    end
  end
end

Adding a call after the model factory showed me that I was making 7 User, 5 Address, and about 21 other support objects in order to simply build a valid Product. There should be ways to eliminate a large number of those. A lot of it comes from using x.association :user in the factory. There are a lot of these in the various factories for this application because I'm keeping track of who is creating various items.

What I really want to say in most of these places isn't "I need a new user that relates to this" but instead "I need a user, any user" So I've started using a construct that follows Model.first or in these places, so x.association :user becomes x.user { User.first or Factory(:user) }.

I went to building exactly one User and Address for the whole test suite, and reduced the suite run time from 5m13s to 1m45s by just switching to this wherever I needed an object and not a new one. I'd suggest it to anyone who is having a lot of slow tests and is using factories, it's saved me at least a couple hours by now considering how often I run tests.

When 1 hour is not 1 hour

2011-05-25T23:46:07-05:00

One of the reasons that I'm waking up earlier nowadays is because I can take my commute an hour earlier. I get up at about 4:30, then finish all my prep in an hour, so that I can be on the road by 5:40 at the latest. This means that I'm using the highway much earlier than the rest of the population. There are still a decent number of cars on the road, but it makes the drive easier.

This week I also discovered that it cuts my commute time for the day by at least one third. I woke up an hour later than normal, because for some reason my alarm wasn't going off that day. I thought I would just do everything an hour later in the day and everything was going good up until I got onto the highway at 6:40. Suddenly there was a lot of traffic on the road, and all of the congestion traffic controls were in effect. It lengthened my commute from a normal 20 minutes to 35, and made me even later than I was in the first place.

An hour later in the morning is 75 minutes. It put my whole day back even farther than normal. I ended up taking an early day because I know that on the other direction it's also at least 15 minutes more when I have left late because I was busy at work, sometimes it's even as long as double. Suddenly my day would be 23 hours.

With the amount of time I have, I am making sure for as long as I can that I will be up on time. Of course, the ideal commute might be from the bedroom three steps to the office - at some point I might want to try that once a week. There are other advantages to going into the office though, especially at my work where there is a whole lab of equipment needed sometimes.

Github branching with feature orthogonality

2011-05-22T22:37:08-05:00

This weekend while I was playing around with stuff, I decided to improve an app that I've been using on my phone for a while. The app is Tagtime, an application which helps me keep track of the time that I am spending on things by sampling me randomly. I was happy to find it because I was thinking of building an app with a similar purpose (although my approach was not statistical but rigorous) and because it was both simple and open source. There were a couple of things that I wanted to improve about it, and the source is right there on github so I could download it and start making it better. Also github is a "social coding" platform which means that I can make changes to the app and then submit a "pull request", requesting that the feature that I worked on be included in the main repository. The basic idea is that people will fork (or branch, the terminology is fuzzy) the repository and then make improvements, and if they are good, then they will be included in the "canonical" version of that repository, and be used by more people. This is the way that things like Linux have worked for a while on git, but it was kind of tricky to set it up until github came along and made it easy.

One thing that github encourages on it's help page on pull requests is that you make a feature branch for your changes, so that it's easy to update the pull request later, and so that it's not mixed in with a bunch of other things. This is generally a good idea, but I hadn't used it in practice until this weekend. I discovered that it's a little cumbersome when you are doing a lot of little changes like the ones I made.

First, you need to know that you're actually working on a feature, and not get distracted by some other feature at the time. Git is actually pretty good at this, because if you find that you're mixing a couple of features together, you can simply not commit some of the files, or even only commit the parts of the files you want. Next you need to actually create the branch of the feature. Thinking up a name for this branch might be important, but it's not as important as later when you actually initiate the pull request. After that, you do the work on the branch, and then commit your changes to your version of the repository that belongs to you. Finally, you go to the github site and click the pull request button. Then you will fill out a title and description for your pull request (this is the more important part). Hopefully then someone will look at it and integrate it in.

Then you go and work on another feature. But wait, what should your other feature be based on? You have to branch from somewhere in step two. Here's where feature orthogonality comes in. If your feature doesn't depend on the one that you just worked on, then you should make another branch from the original fork's master branch. Hopefully you haven't actually committed any on your master branch in the meantime, and it's easy to find.

Maybe an example will help. Originally I branched my repository of TagTime from the original repository. Then I set out to make my feature reality - that is, cleaning up tags that aren't in use because they will clutter my screen when I'm tagging (I mistyped them once and now they're everywhere!). I created the cleanup-tag-button branch from the master branch and then worked on my changes. I committed them (they weren't much, just one commit) and then generated this pull request. Then I wanted to work on another feature - there was a delay in hitting the buttons when it polled me. I rewound my branch to the master branch again, and then created the speedier-tagging branch from the same spot. These features were orthogonal, which means that I could do this without an issue, and test the features in isolation. I did the same to update the icon that is used in the notifications, because it was black-on-black in my UI, adding a white background in the visible-icon branch. You can see how all three branches sprout from the same commit (the most recent commit on the "canonical" repository) in my network.

There are two actual issues that I found when I was working with this model. The first actual problem is that when I was working on this, I wanted to have a copy of the app with all of my new features in it. For this reason I created the integration branch, so that I could put all of my features together. This makes it easy to make sure that my features are orthogonal as well, because if I can't get integration to work, then they are conflicting. It's somewhat annoying to re-merge all of the branches every time that I update it just to get a new copy. The second actual problem was that I was stuck working in the branch for each feature when I was working on the feature. This meant that I couldn't use some of the changes that I made in the other branches and I was somewhat lost when I was testing it on my phone when, for example, the visible icon wasn't there when I was testing that the speedier tagging worked.

I also thought of two theoretical issues that I didn't actually run into, but could have imagined running into quickly. The first was the problem of non-orthogonal features - should they just be included in the branch for the feature that they depend on, essentially making them part of that feature, or should I branch again from that feature branch to go one level deeper. What would a pull request for the second feature look like? I ran into this problem because the canonical repository for TagTime has a bunch of files in it that shouldn't be there, compiled files that I don't expect in the repository. I would have based my branches off of a cleaned up version of the repository, but I didn't want to force that choice onto the original branch, so I was working in the "messy" repository for most of the time.

The other theoretical issue involves publishing, tracking, and rebasing. I would like to say that if the "canonical" repository master changes, then I could rebase the feature branches against it, but if I do then I have to push a non-fastforward of that branch to github, and it looks all strange. If someone had that branch and was forked off of my integration branch for example because they want all of my features, what would happen when I rebase the feature branch? It's unclear to me.

All in all, I was happy with the model. I'm not sure what a better model would be - maybe there is something in darcs or mercurial that would be better for this type of collaboration and wouldn't have the issues of above. In the meantime, I'm going to keep trying to keep my features orthogonal and work with a feature branch model.

Project 52: Week 19

2011-05-18T12:47:44-05:00

A visit to the math factory

2011-05-17T05:28:42-05:00

Last weekend I did something which many people who might know me would think I am completely opposed to, yet I do almost once every two months nowadays. I visited the casino. Visiting the casino isn't strange on it's own, but I didn't go to see a show or have the buffet (although I did partake in the buffet this time), but to gamble my money away.

Usually the games at the casino are set up so that the house always wins. I know that in my mind, and my only hopes on most of the trips there are to spend as much time as possible having fun while losing the least amount of money. Lots of people go there and play poker, which is not actually played against the house (although usually there is a fee paid to the house to play) and they have a lot of fun and make money doing it. Alternatively they'll play blackjack, which theoretically could be actually slightly on the player's side if they played perfectly and were allowed to count all the cards.

I play something which is much more in the casino's favor though - I play slots. The variety of games peaks my interest and I love that I could play each different type for five minutes and never repeat playing the same game twice. They are obviously a big money maker for the casino - they are all over the place, covering almost every square inch of floor which isn't needed for walking or the gaming tables. The only thing that I can think which gets more space is the BINGO hall.

I find two things fascinating about slot machines. The first is that they are basically a rudimentary video game where you can win money. You put your money in, you push the button and you either get more money out, or you lost your money. This is the essence of gambling, without any of the facade that is messing around with cards or playing with numbers. Slots take your money and show you some flashy lights and then they give you the result. It's part of the reason that the casinos like them so much - they have a fast result.

The second reason is that I am fascinated by the math which must be involved with the slots. They are only ever so slightly in the favor of the casino, although they always are, but they have to make it seem like it's possible to win them. The variations on the reels and the combinations for winning the game which is presented are nice to think about. There are a lot of different types of slot games, some of which will give you free games every once in a while, some have wild cards, some have more or less symbols, or symbols in a different order. Also there are many different combinations of winning lines, making it "easier" for you to win a prize on wheels which don't actually line up exactly. The math which must go into the more complicated ones I'm sure is quite complex to prove that yes, indeed, the game is tilted toward the house even when you play with all of the varied ways to win and the bonus games or free spins which show up.

Many would say that it's a tax for people who are bad at math, but I like to think of it as the math factory. You build these games that will return value to you because the math says so. Sometimes it doesn't work out in the short term, but the math factory will always create it's value in the end, just like the factory that produces milk or widgets.

Diana likes to go and play the video poker, which I actually like to play as well, but I'm not as lucky as her. I've been thinking of playing around with some of the math involved, and see if I can figure out some of the games and how exactly they work. They're not exactly opaque but not really transparent either. I might have to take some trips to the factory floor for some research.

Doing Things Super

2011-05-12T23:51:53-05:00

I'm always looking for a better way to get things done, and keep track of what I need to get done. In the past I've used a lot of systems to handle the parts of capturing and completing tasks. I started first with reading a lot of blogs and getting hooked on some systems like the Hipster PDA which was what I tried for a while. I then moved along to something else using a Moleskine notebook, and then shortly for a while using a set of cards which I had written down things on and carried around with me at all times. I switched whenever a system seemed to stop working or just have a big enough backlog pile so as to make it obvious that it is not working for me to actually get the things completed.

I think that there are a few things about a todo system which are important. Ubiquitous capture is very important. That means that it must be available at all times, and the easiest way to do that is to make it paper-based. I have a smart phone with me almost all time so it might be acceptable for a todo system to use that, but I definitely haven't found anything that works well that is electronic. Also, I've accumulated a number of notebooks from various manufacturers which I can use for my various works. Making it easy to capture is the reason that I have abandoned using most GTD systems, because they either require a lot of work putting things in order. This reason was also why I stopped using a system which I brought up with myself which was project-based, but would require me to update the correct card every time.

In the last few years, I've been using a set of systems which I read about from Mark Forster. I started working based on AutoFocus shortly after I discovered it. I was happy with the fact that the way to capture tasks in the system is just to open it to the last page and write down the task on it. With a marker for the last open page, it is basically the perfect ubiquitous capture - always available and no thinking required. I also like it because I don't have to do the tasks in any particular order. One of the problems that I was having with the GTD system was the order of contexts, where I had to sort everything into different zones. It was very easy to go overboard, especially because I have at least three contexts which are mentally separate, but in the same physical location. It's the nature of working on a thesis, running a consulting company and doing housework in the same place. AutoFocus was the first system where I could just take a look at a number of tasks, and do the one that I feel like working on at the time, which is a good thing for whatever context that I'm on.

Since then, Forster has revised his system four times, and then made a major change to it, adding a urgent list in the SuperFocus system. This is the system that I'm using now at work. It works fairly well and I'm thinking of working it into my personal system sometime soon. The urgent column works very well for items that need to get done right away. It seems like not many people know about these systems and they're working okay for me so far. It's easy to pick out something that needs doing that I can do right away, add a new task whenever I need to, and also to remove tasks which I will never do. One of my only complaints is that it's a little hard to understand from scratch, even though it only uses one notebook. Maybe I'll post an example of the working soon.

Project 52: Weeks 17-18

2011-05-11T18:57:44-05:00

MinneBar 6 summary

2011-05-08T00:20:27-05:00

Today I went to MinneBar 6, which seems like it was the most populated one I've ever been to. It wasn't as crowded as the first one that I attended, which was in a much smaller space with less people. This year went off pretty much without a hitch as an attendee. I attended some good talks with some great discussion.

At the start of the day Garrick van Buren gathered a bunch of people in a room and we talked about the Do Not Track thought space. I haven't really been paying that much attention to the area, but it's getting more and more nefarious from the tracking side it seems like. Mykl Roventine brought up at the end a whole new tangled ball that I hadn't thought about in the form of affiliate programs - where sites are giving your purchase information to all of it's affiliate partners in order to have them flag the items that they are responsible for. They'll probably both be interested in the fact that I am running awstats for my own server, and I was previously going to re-add Google Analytics but have decided against it. The server logs are all I really need, at least for this site. There is an interesting trade-off here though, because many users will bring traffic to your site by putting on Facebook's Like button or the Tweet This button, and the advantage of the extra traffic should be considered.

Next there was a good session about getting started with Android, that was in the largest room, which to me seems the least "MinneBar"-ish - the smaller rooms make discussion and question asking a lot easier. Donn Felker of QONQR did a great job of making the room work though, asking for topics before he started and handling most of them. It was not a lot of coding but a lot of focus on tooling as well as the details about monetizing your idea. One thing that I took away from this session was that people should start with the minimum viable product. If it's going to be paid, start it out cheap and people will buy it anyway if they think it's useful. I should have asked about what the change from a 24 hour to a 15 minute refund policy has had on sales of paid apps, especially on the small functionality MVPs.

I didn't see anything all that interesting for the third session, so I fixed a couple of bugs and handled some emails, and talked to Garrick for a couple minutes while the directly before lunch. Grabbing some pizza, I talked to some students from St. Cloud who are just finishing up, and then walk around looking for some other people to talk to. John Chilton found me and we chatted a bit. I'm rubbish at networking at MinneBar. I don't feel like I can sit down at a table that already has a group of guys at it and make connections - it could be that I'm just not great at it, or something about the tables or that there is always wifi available. I see a lot of guys from my twitter followers but I don't tend to actually chat with them.

In the afternoon, Charles Nutter won the award for the most technical presentation of the day, going over almost all of the JVM bytecode operands while going over a short explanation of the stack machine that it runs on while encouraging everyone to learn a little bit about the bytecode that so many of our programs compile down to. A completely full room really indicated to me that there was untapped audience at MinneBar this year who would have accepted some more technical sessions.

Directly after that, the most entertaining session went to Charles again, this time assisted by his son, with an ad-hoc session about Minecraft. I'm a big fan of the game, but I haven't played it in a while so I saw some of the new features, and had a good time chatting with some other gamers in the crowd. That's also another audience that I think could be approached at the next MinneBar - something for the leisure time.

In the remaining sessions, I attended one on gathering your data about your users and plotting it in a useful way, mining the data that you already have in order to get good analytics. This was somewhat technical but quite cool because they sliced and diced the creative commons StackExchange Data Dump to show some interesting things. I seriously consider implementing some of these for my consulting work, they seem like the kinds of data that would be very appreciated to show growth to investors and the like. The last one I went to was more of a discussion about how designers and coders should cross-pollinate a bit when they are learning. Designers should learn a bit of code, coders should at least know a little bit of Photoshop / Fireworks... at least enough to get the job done.

I was pretty tired at the end of the day, so I didn't stick around for much of the beer, also I was driving home and actually had to get some stuff done in the evening. I also just wasn't feeling up to the networking aspect just then, partially discouraged because of my earlier failure to get into it around lunch time.

Overall, I would say that MinneBar 6 turned out to be a great BarCamp, with some wonderful sessions. The ones that I attended were all worthwhile. I didn't "vote with my feet" and switch sessions in the middle of any this year - if I remember correctly I think I actually did that last time. I came across with a couple of thoughts - I'd really like to do a presentation next year about something. I feel like I should be able to contribute something to a conference like this, especially because there is such a wide range of topics presented on. Also, I feel a lot more comfortable getting my networking on in a smaller, more focused group - something like Ruby Users of Minnesota meetings, where I know that any person there is going to have more in common with me than one of a thousand. I'll look forward to going to this next year if I don't have a conflict though, and I encourage the same to anyone else in the tech community in the Twin Cities.

Doing the easy hard thing

2011-05-07T01:03:50-05:00

I've written recently about Health Month and the fact that I am trying to do things on a more habit basis. Last month I had a twelve rules, more than in March and a lot of things to track whether I was doing every day. At the same time, I wasn't getting the important things done. Two of my rules were consistently not getting done. The rules were of course the most important ones - "Make progress on the thesis" and "Read papers for my thesis". These are very likely the most important things that I need to get done, and they were getting drowned out by insignificant rules like "Floss every day" and "Only drink 4 cups of coffee a week".

This month I've decided that my rules are doing to only be the important things that need to change and are actually difficult. This might mean that I have less of incentive to get the small things done which will be a good improvement, but I don't think so - I've been doing those things for two months already and I don't think I will be dropping them any time soon. With this in mind, the rules that I've chosen for May are more difficult, but also fewer:

Do thesis work 5 days a week
Read an academic paper 5 days a week
Stay under my calories every day
Write blog posts 4 days a week
Exercise 40 minutes 5 days a week
Go to bed before 10pm 5 days a week

The "gimmie" rules on this list are still pretty hard, but they are the easy hard things. Exercising 40 minutes a day is easy for me, since I've been doing it a long time, but it's still hard to get myself down to the room every time. It's the easy hard thing - the thing that impacts my day enough that I don't want to do it all the time, but once it's started, it's going to get done. Losing weight is hard. Almost anyone who has tried, successful or not, will tell you so. It's also easy though, because the steps to complete it are straightforward - exercise and eat less calories. Most of my rules have been the easy hard thing in the last few months.

Blogging is the third easy hard thing on the list. It's trivial to write blog posts once I make the decision to get it done, but it's still difficult to wedge it into my schedule for some reason. For me, calorie restriction is also easy hard.

Going to bed is an example of another easy hard thing, but unlike the other two ones, I'm not getting it done. It's extremely difficult for me to go to bed so early, even though I'm waking up earlier I still tend to be awake until at least midnight. Normally I would expect myself to have a hard time waking up early when I do that, but it seems like I don't have that problem.

Unfortunately, the easy hard things aren't the most important things. The rest of the rules are the hard hard things, that I have difficulty getting myself to do. They are the ones that I am really sad about not finishing, and the reason that I cut the insignificant rules this month. Now to actually get some of them done.

Two Ideas About Electric Vehicles

2011-05-05T22:51:43-05:00

I have a serious interest in electric vehicles. I pretty much read anything that goes across my RSS reader about the subject, and am fairly convinced that when I have the wherewithal, I will be getting an electric vehicle at some point. I understand that they are somewhat controversial about how much waste they create due to their batteries, I think that using the same energy for everything will eventually bow to the economies of scale. I've had a couple of interesting things that I've been thinking relating to electric vehicles lately.

The first is me trying to estimate how much money that the United States Postal Service would save by replacing all of it's neighborhood trucks with electric vehicles. I think of this whenever I see one of those tiny trucks that are filled with mail and seem to stop about every thirty feet in order to deliver the mail. It seems like having these use gasoline is a big waste. They are basically the ideal vehicle for electrifying - they are forced to be the most stop-and-go because they need to stop at every mailbox. Gasoline or Diesel engines would need to stay on at these very short stops, but no electricity would be used for these. They are always refueled at the post office that they are based at and usually have routes that are shorter than 40 miles in total. That means that they wouldn't have any problem recharging and that they would not have an issue with range. The vehicles are owned by the postal service, so they have the say on replacing every one of them, which they can roll out slowly if it has a large up-front cost.

The second is a startup idea, which would be good for the current climate. Because electricity is available everywhere, it effectively democratizes the supply of fuel for these vehicles. Electricity is available pretty much everywhere, but people willing to let you recharge your electric vehicle are not everywhere. It would be fairly easy to put a meter on your charger, and then let anyone who is within a certain range recharge their vehicle using your electricity. Using some type of phone application which determined what places within your range were available, and they could also connect with the meters in order to automatically transfer the money. This would solve the "drive and dash" problem that some gas stations would have. I would be interested in how people end up pricing the premium over the electricity.

I'm excited to see what electric vehicles will do to change the way transportation works.

May Diet Update

2011-05-03T11:30:10-05:00

It's been a month since the last diet update. I've been doing pretty well. I started in April doing what would be considered an extremely low-carb ketogenic diet in the last month. The weight is somewhat steadily coming off now, and I'm starting to get a little better on ignoring the scale while still getting on it every day.

I mentioned the ketogenic diet, and I went all-in on the diet for the last four weeks. I've been following a subreddit which has a lot of people trying out the same thing, discussing recipes and how to stay on the diet, and what is possible to eat and the science behind all of it. I'm doing it in combiantion with keeping track on my calories, which is pretty easy to do. One of the major advantages to eating a lot of protein is that I'm not hungry nearly as often anymore. I'm usually having a some type of breakfast meat and eggs in the morning, about 500 calories with real butter, and then I have a snack or two at lunchtime at work, then a big dinner and maybe a snack. This keeps me within the 1800 calories which I have set for myself.

I've been good with the exercise, although it's cut back from last year, I'm slowly ramping up the time. I'm normally doing 40 minutes and a little more - 42 or 43. I like to walk on the treadmill machine which lets me watch an hour long TV show while I'm exercising and complete it without the commercials. I would like to start working out more outside than I have been, especially because it is much warmer outside nowadays. I'm more likely to go farther and also maybe start running some, which is something I'm seriously considering for May or June.

I took a couple of cheat days, once on my birthday, and once in the last week. The birthday one was of course planned out, and I went all out getting donuts in the morning and wonderful homemade cake that I couldn't stay away from for the next three days. It seemed like I took a very long time to recover from it, more than a week over my trend line. After being back on track, I went another 16 days between my cheat days and I broke down in the middle of the week, after there was a lot of days in a row where I was condidering taking the day as a cheat.

I think the cheat days are important because they're keeping me on task. They also remind me that there are a lot of things that I want to eat that I shouldn't really eat and that aren't that great. I tell myself that I'm going to go overboard on the cheat days, but I usually don't. Now it's actually just kindof strange because I am on the low-carb things, I'm considering things like grilled cheese and pizza as cheat day treats, because they are so high in carbs. Even on the cheat days I'm finding myself keeping moderation, because I don't want to have cheat day food around on the days after - for example I'm not going to buy a big package of cookies because it's almost impossible for me to eat them all on one day, and just a single cookie is enough to get me out of my diet parameters in the days after.

One more thing is that I haven't been doing the practice days. They're not compatible with the low-carb diet, because eating "normal" will constitute having some normal amount of carbs, which will make my body stop burning fat for energy. I think that I might take a look into it after I meet my long-term goal.

The last thirty days show me doing fairly well on the scale. Most of the days are under the line. You can clearly see the days after the birthday and the more recent cheat days where I went over, they are the only one over the trend. I am happy with my progress here. It says that I should be cutting about 200 calories out of my diet, but I am not really comfortable with cutting that much more out right now. The weekly loss doesn't look as good as last month, but I don't mind.

The year to date looks wondeerful to me. Mostly green, and the trend line is basically straight. It's interesting to note that there hasn't been a really big change in my slope over the whole thing, especially since I was using two different diet plans in this. I am wondering if by the end of May I will be able to see some type of difference in the two diets.

My goal in the short term is still 250, although I will most likely move the chains to 240 when I get there, because I want to be able to say that I lost 100 pounds. When I get to there, I will re-evaluate and see how I feel. I'm wondering if I can take a breather for a month or two and focus on maintaining the weight. If I can maintain it, then I will feel a lot better about what I've been doing in the last year and a half. When I meet my 240 goal, I promise before and after pics.

Pet Peeve 3: Password Restrictions

2011-05-01T00:23:06-05:00

Passwords on websites are one of the worst things that the distributed internet has come up with. I have to have logins and passwords for hundreds of sites that I need to keep separate and ideally, different in order to be completely secure. I've decided to use a password locker for that purpose, which makes it much easier to remember all of them, because I only need to remember one very secure password.

One of the best features of using a password locker for passwords is that you can generate a new unique password for every site that you need to make a login for. My default setting makes every password something that I could probably not remember if I was doing it on my own: 30 characters, with a mix of upper, lower, numbers, symbols, and special characters.

Of course now we get to the point of this post. Almost every site out there has some type of restriction on the passwords that they allow. Usually I need to drop the number of characters, and sometimes I need to drop the sets of characters to something less secure. I don't really have a big problem with that, although it's completely stupid (in most cases, the underlying technology can support all of them).

The problem that I have is that they have these restrictions and then don't tell you about them, until you've already completed the whole form, generated the password and submitted it. Then it comes with an error that says something like "password must be less than 12 characters" (which I've seen in variants as low as 8 maximum). Another variant is "you have entered an invalid character for this field". That is not helpful. Which character was it? What ones are allowed?

The worst ones are the ones where there are multiple restrictions, but it only tells you about one at once. Three or four times I have to submit the form with more and more insecure passwords. It is not making me want to use your websites, and it's just pissing me off.

Of course the solution to this dilemma would be to have some universal login for the entire internet, but that's not going to happen any time soon. OpenID gave it a good shot, but it didn't work very well overall. Facebook and Google are giving it a sporting chance, and Twitter is a close third, with a number of others who are trying to use OAuth to become a user silo. I'm not happy with any of these, but they're better than having a login everywhere.

An idea to differentiate github forks

2011-04-28T23:28:41-05:00

Lately I've been getting a little more into github. Lately I've converted the blog to jekyll, which has been doing me quite well, but I wanted to add just a couple of features that I couldn't do via the plugins interface, like I did with the amazon liquid filters. The first was adding support for haml, but in a more integrated fashion.

I've used a plugin for haml, that I can't really remember where I got, but I did have to change the jekyll source. Of course the way to accomplish this on github is to fork the repository, make the changes, and then push it back to github. I thought that there might be some of these already on one of the 521 forks of the original source to jekyll, but I couldn't really tell if they were.

The changes I on my jekyll fork are minor in general and not really of note, but I was frustrated with looking through the forks that looked active on the network. Most of them have basically no indication of what has changed at all that is readily apparent. Of course with git you can make a diff of any two branches, but with such a heavily forked source, it is particularly hard to work out the differences.

So for my fork, I made one more change than the functional ones - I've added to the very top of the README file a couple of lines explaining what I did.

It's something that I propose for other people who have forks - adding to the top of the README, which is one of the easiest things to see on the github default repository, what has been changed from the upstream that you forked from. Other advantages would be that you get some type of idea of how many changes there are from the upstream, as well as some idea of the 'generation' of the fork - if you've forked from a fork, there are two sets of changes, for example. The only downside that I can think of is that these are separate changes that you don't want to have pulled to upstream. Because of that, it would be good to keep these changes on a different branch.

I'm going to be doing this for all of my forks on github in the near future.

Allocating Time

2011-04-26T22:13:21-05:00

Lately I've been thinking a bit about how much time I have for projects, and how I will have to decline anything new in the near future until I get some things off of my plate. One of my former colleagues used to be fond of saying that his time sums to 1. It was kind of callous when he was saying it, but it is true that time is a zero-sum game. Multitasking is possible but not efficient usually. I did some calculating today of how much free time I can expect to have with all of my commitments.

168 hours exist in a week. Starting with the basics.
56 hours for sleep, 8 hours a day realistically. Usually I only sleep about 4 hours a night during the week, but I like to give myself the 8 hours anyway. My strange sleep patterns are a subject for another day.
40 hours work at ReconRobotics, Inc.
5 hours are spent commuting to and from ReconRobotics, Inc.
20 hours is how much time I try to spend on my thesis.
15 hours in consulting commitments for Base Zero.
5 hours in administration for Base Zero.
5 hours in time set aside for exercise.
3 hours in time set aside for meditation.

All of these points together mean that I really only have about 20 hours left after it all. That is not a lot of time, only about three hours a day on average. In that time I have to get most of my personal professional development, errands and groceries, household work, blogging and anything else.

I think that the time left is a little low, and I really can't commit to anything more than what I'm doing right now. Usually I have at least a couple hours available for consulting, but I can't look for new work. Some things that I would like to get done just don't get done - sometimes I only get caught up on finances every other week instead of every week like I have wanted to, and lately I have been skipping meditation entirely.

Right now I don't really match all of the planned scheduled time, and some of the more personal goals, like Base Zero work, meditation and thesis work get shorted. One of my goals for May health month will be to spend my time properly.

Project 52: Weeks 15-16

2011-04-26T05:10:16-05:00

shorturl_routes: rails multiple-model url aliases

2011-04-22T22:40:56-05:00

Earlier this week I wrote about my frustration with setting up short urls for rails routing to two models based on attributes, something that I have seen on a bunch of websites, but haven't found a good solution to in rails. Let me describe it in pseudo-cucumber:

As a site user
In order to have easily-rememberable, and easier twitterable URLs
I want to have my user and group models accessible by /name

Scenario: Users can access by /name
  Given there is a User with name "foo"
  When I visit the page '/foo'
  Then I should be on the page for the User with name "foo"

Scenario: Groups can access by /name
  Given there is a Group with name "bar"
  When I visit the page '/bar'
  Then I should be on the page for the Group with name "bar"

In addition to the two scenarios above, I would like all of my other routes to continue to work as expected, with the priority as normal falling from the top of the routes to the bottom.

My previous solution externalized the disambiguation of these routes which are dependent on the models in the database to a controller. I really wanted this to be in the routes, because that is where I feel like it naturally should be.

So I'm introducing today a solution. shorturl_routes is a gem which will give me what I want. Here's the routes that will accomplish the functionality that I explained before.

SampleApp::Application.routes.draw do
  resources :groups
  resources :users

  shorturl ':name', :to => 'users#show', :model => "User", :attribute => :name
  shorturl ':name', :to => 'groups#show', :model => "Group", :attribute => :name

end

It's that simple. With the routes above, if you visit the location /foo, then it is checked against both resources first, but since it's not /groups or /users or any of their generated routes, it falls to the shorturl rule, which checks User.where(:name => params[:name]).first for existence, and if it doesn't exist, then falls to the next rule which checks for Group.where(:name => params[:name]).first. If either matches, it sets params[:id] to the id of the model found, and then routes to the given parameter.

It's more what I was looking for. I've packaged it up as a gem for your convenience, so you can just add this to your Gemfile:

gem 'shorturl_routes', :git => git://github.com/jamuraa/shorturl_routes.git

You might notice the distinct lack of working tests in the gem if you have a chance to try to run them. The method that I'm using for making it work in the Routing model works for the real thing, but I can't figure out how to make it work in the tests. For now, the functionality is simple enough to test by myself.

It also doesn't solve the inverse problem - user_path(@user) will still resolve to /users/:id. I'll be looking at improving the DSL syntax a bit and tackling the no tests and this problem as well in the near future.

Let me know if you find it useful, or want to ream me for bastardizing the routing infrastructure.

Duplicating Heroku on Linode

2011-04-22T05:46:45-05:00

Well, as of this writing, there has been a major disruption in what you might consider to be the cloud infrastructure of the internet. Amazon EC2 has been having issues in one of it's major data centers for almost a day and a half now, which is what you would say is something of a catastrophe for a service that's only supposed to be down for 4 hours in an entire year. Reports are spotty, but most people should be seriously looking at other options at this point.

The reason that you can be reading this right now, is because I'm not running my blog or most of my other sites on anything that depends on EC2. However I do work on a couple of sites that use Heroku, which is one of the services effected by this downtime. Heroku is what some people would call a PaaS, or Platform as a Service provider. They work with mostly Rails applications and make it dead simple. Just to illustrate, the process for deploying a new Rails application to Heroku is something like this:

Run heroku create appname
git push git@heroku.com:appname.git master
Run heroku rake db:migrate

That's it, there is no step 3 if you don't have any initial data. Heroku handles all of the web serving, the gem fetching, and the database creating and configuration for you. It's such a great service that I really want to have something like it around for ever. Until yesterday, I was content believing that Heroku would be around to provide that purpose. There are a couple of other PaaS providers out there, but Heroku is the model that I want to emulate.

Today I am contemplating what exactly you would need in order to duplicate the easy-deploy functionality that you have on Heroku on personal dedicated or VPS server. So far the services that I know that you would need are:

Apache + Passenger (or Nginx + Passenger) for serving rails applications
Gitolite (or maybe gitosis) for handling the git repositories
Postgres database
RVM for handling the possibly different environments that each application needs.
sshd setup on the server
A fairly complex git post-receive hook.

It wouldn't be too hard to create a simple script (or one of Linode's StackScripts) to set up all of this software with a single click / bash command once you have the basic server setup. In fact, this script is probably a good starting point, as it sets up nginx, passenger, postgres and Ruby Enterprise Edition.

The tricky part is the post-receive hook of course, which needs to do the heavy lifting of forking what was just pushed, setting up rvm correctly, running bundle install on the application, and resetting the server.

There are a bunch of features of heroku that aren't duplicated by this type of a setup, but I think that this would cover the 80% case. It also has some advantages like having persistent local storage available that aren't available on heroku. If this outage goes on for very much longer, I might end up setting up this stack just for one of my current clients. If I do, then I'll probably share the setup instructions here.

One wrong way for rails multiple-model url aliases

2011-04-21T05:38:25-05:00

In a couple of the projects that I've been working on in the last few months, I've wanted to have a set of aliases that I can't really set up with the Rails routing DSL. The main problem is that I can't route a path to two models based on a property of the model.

In order to have a cogent example, let's say that I have a User model, and a Group model, each of which have names, that I guarantee is unique based on validations. I want both of them to be able to access their pages via the url http://host/(name).

The pseudocode that I really want in routing is:

if User.where(:name => :id) then
  {:controller => UsersController, :action => :show, :id => :id}
elsif Group.where(:name => :id) then
  {:controller => GroupsController, :action => :show, :id => :id}
else
  404
end

This is, as far as I know, not possible with the Rails routes that are available in either Rails 2.3 or 3. To complicate matters, I don't want to redirect the URL becuase I want the browser to show the http://host/(name) as the canonical URL. Getting user_path(@user) and group_path(@group) to return this shortened url path would also be very nice.

I've so far solved this problem in two ways, both of which I'm unhappy with. The first is through routing everything through a controller where I can then check each of the models for existence of the correct property:

# config/routes.rb (at the end)
match ':id' => 'home#disambiguate'

# HomeController

def disambiguate
  @user = User.where(:name => params[:id]).first
  render(:template => 'users/show') and return if @user
  @group = Group.where(:name => params[:id]).first
  render(:template => 'groups/show') and return if @group
  render(:template => 'common/404', :status => 404)
end

I'm pretty unhappy with this. For one, if I put anything into the actions for User#show or Group#show (counting hits or something) then they need to be also included in Home#disambiguate. I haven't had to do that so far. Also the 404 is being rendered here, where I would really rather just have it at the bottom of my rails route just like my other rails apps.

I've used another solution that I don't like for this problem that solves these problems, but I'm still unhappy with. I'm thinking of a third solution, which I might code up and present later this week. Have you solved this problem in a different, better way? I would be interested to hear.

Amazon liquid filters for jekyll

2011-04-19T23:52:23-05:00

One thing that I really enjoyed when I had a short stint blogging with s9y was the great Amazon plugin that it had. It would work with the affiliate program and put links to the items and put them in a nice table. I wanted to try to get that back when I switched to jekyll for my blogging engine just a month or two ago.

I spent some time thinking about how to accomplish that, and I came across Ruby/AWS which looked like exactly what I was looking for. It's ruby which means it's a good fit for a jekyll plugin and it puts in my affiliate link without too much work. It takes a little to set it up.

Originally I was going to do something dumb and modify the liquid syntax or something, but I realized pretty quick that it's much better as a liquid filter. So you put something like { { "B002I0JIQW" | amazon_link} } into your post, and a link like Liquid error: key_id may not be nil comes out. It's quite handy. The magic number sequence there is the ASIN of the article, which can be found on every page in the URL. It's pretty easy to spot. There's also image links of various sizes:

Liquid error: key_id may not be nil

Also I've included some other random metadata that you can grab. Right now I'm using it for the reviews layouts, which puts the title and the actors and director, like you can see on the review of Paul I recently did on the blog.

The rest should be pretty easy to figure out. Here's the code, just drop it into your _plugins directory on any recent enough version of jekyll and you should be good to go.

require 'amazon/aws'
require 'amazon/aws/search'
require 'cgi'

module Jekyll
  class AmazonResultCache
    def initialize
      @result_cache = {}
    end

    @@instance = AmazonResultCache.new

    def self.instance
      @@instance
    end

    def item_lookup(asin)
      asin.strip!
      return @result_cache[asin] if @result_cache.has_key?(asin)
      il = Amazon::AWS::ItemLookup.new('ASIN', {'ItemId' => asin})
      resp = Amazon::AWS::Search::Request.new.search(il)
      @result_cache[asin] = resp
      return resp
    end

    private_class_method :new
  end

  module Filters
    def amazon_link(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      url = CGI::unescape(item.detail_page_url.to_s)
      title = item.item_attributes.title.to_s.gsub(/ \[Blu-ray\]/, '').gsub(/ \(Ultimate Edition\)/, '')
      '<a href="%s">%s</a>' % [url, title]
    end

    def amazon_authors(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      authors = item.item_attributes.author.collect(&:to_s)
      array_to_sentence_string(authors)
    end

    def amazon_medium_image(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      url = CGI::unescape(item.detail_page_url.to_s)
      image_url = item.image_sets.image_set[0].medium_image.url
      '<a href="%s"><img src="%s" /></a>' % [url, image_url]
    end

    def amazon_large_image(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      url = CGI::unescape(item.detail_page_url.to_s)
      image_url = item.image_sets.image_set[0].large_image.url
      '<a href="%s"><img src="%s" /></a>' % [url, image_url]
    end

    def amazon_small_image(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      url = CGI::unescape(item.detail_page_url.to_s)
      image_url = item.image_sets.image_set[0].small_image.url
      '<a href="%s"><img src="%s" /></a>' % [url, image_url]
    end

    def amazon_release_date(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      item.item_attributes.theatrical_release_date.to_s
    end

    # Movie specific
    def amazon_actors(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      actors = item.item_attributes.actor.collect(&:to_s)
      array_to_sentence_string(actors)
    end

    def amazon_director(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      item.item_attributes.director.to_s
    end

    def amazon_running_time(text)
      resp = AmazonResultCache.instance.item_lookup(text)
      item = resp.item_lookup_response[0].items[0].item[0]
      item.item_attributes.running_time.to_s + " minutes"
    end

  end
end

Project 52: Week 14

2011-04-17T18:57:30-05:00

According to ISO-8601 week numbers, I'm one week behind right now. I'll try to take two pictures this week.

Five podcasts that I listen to

2011-04-14T21:00:51-05:00

Ever since I got my Android, one of the first things that I used for it was to listen to podcasts. The touch interface is perfect for selecting podcasts and it was one of the major advantages of the Android platform that you were allowed to write podcatchers. I've used DoggCatcher as my preferred podcatcher since the beginning, dabbling with Google Listen every once in a while just to see if it works any better.

Over the last few years, I've been listening to mostly the same podcasts, introducing some and removing some as appropriate. Since I am running out of ideas for good blog posts, I figured I could write a list of the ones that I listen to and why I like them.

	This is the first of two podcasts which overview the week's news, and they also make it funny as well. I used to watch the Daily Show regularly for some news and funny in the same package, but I started falling behind and it wasn't very interesting. I really like the Friday Night Comedy podcast because it rotates between The News Quiz and The Now Show. One gets old and then it's over and the other begins. It also covers different news than all of the US-centric outlets that I would normally get my information from, which makes it a little more interesting.
	Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is NPR's answer to the BBC radio quiz show, and it's sometimes funny and sometimes not. A lot of the people that I seem to converse with online think that it's a bit pretentious and not very funny, but I find myself laughing every once in a while. The questions are way too easy and most of the stories are way too easy to spot or figure out. I might stop listening to this soon, but it's only once a week and it's still somewhat entertaining.
	Back to Work is the second most recent addition to my podcast list, and the one that I look forward to the most every week. Merlin Mann is consistently funny as well as giving useful advice and important insight for people in the creative field. My day job isn't exactly in the situation that I would need all of his advice, but a lot of what he talks about on this show seems like it speaks to me regularly. Dan Benjamin is a good co-host to Merlin and does just the right amount of keeping on track and steering back to the topics that they were talking about. If you check out only one podcast from this list, check out this one. It's the only one on this list that I've recommended for other people to listen to. The quality of this show is actually making me think of trying out some other shows managed / co-hosted by Dan.
	If you see me listening to a podcast and you ask me what it is, the most likely answer is going to be Buzz Out Loud. It's not because it's all that interesting or funny, but it has five shows a week, which means it's the most frequent of the shows that I listen to. It covers tech news, and it's usually aligned with my views, and sometimes they cover news that I haven't noticed before. It's nice to sometimes hear the news, and if I'm busy at work during the day, I will catch up on all of the big stories of the day.
	Economics is a tricky subject, and it's hard to understand under the best of circumstances. Planet Money is one of my go-to sources for explaining what's happening in the global economy in terms that I can understand, educating myself on the various terms and viewpoints that are being talked about when people are discussing economic matters. One of the nice things about Planet Money is that the episodes don't really have an expiration date. I've listened to episodes many months later than they aired and the information was still quite useful to me.

I have a few more podcasts that I listen to, but not as regularly as these five. I'd recommend checking these out once, and see if they're something you like.

Everything's Waking Up Something

2011-04-13T23:23:10-05:00

I've kind of stumbled onto a habit recently, which surprised me because usually I have to work at my habits for a while before I can really make them work for me. Overall, it's been a positive thing in my life so far, but I would probably not say it's for everyone or even for me unless I keep it up for a while. Lately I've been getting up early, and going into work early as well.

It started last week when I had to travel down to lower Minnesota for a trip for my work. The trip down takes about two hours, so usually when people go down they leave at 7am in hopes of getting in a full work day or close to it and getting back into the cities at a reasonable time. There isn't anything wrong with that for me - normally I would be getting into the office around 7am anyway. However this time there was some confusion about whether we were going to visit at all, and because of that confusion I had to finish up some things at the office before we departed. That meant getting into the office at 6.

So I set myself for getting in at 6am, and put my alarm back another hour from where it had been set before. I was happy to find out that my whole day went a bit smoother when I got up around 5am instead of 6am: my commute was easier, my work got done quicker than I had planned (although still not done on time, I had to code on the trip down), and there was very little distraction. I decided that if I could get up so early for a single day, then it was possible that I could do it for everyday. I resolved to make it a daily thing, and I've been getting to work at 6am since.

The benefits magnified when I wasn't under the pressure to get everything done before 7am as well. Being the first to get into the office meant that I had to make the coffee, but that meant that I could make it and get the first cup, and enjoy a bunch of uninterrupted time. As many people have noted, programmers like myself abhor the interruptions of a normal office environment, and it as been stated that it might even be a 15 minute setback every time someone asks a "quick question" because you need to get back "into the zone".

Another benefit is leaving earlier from work, because I still usually stay for my prescribed 9.5-10 hours, which leaves a decent chunk of time between leaving time at work and the time when most things are scheduled at night. Having those two hours between "get home" and "social time" makes it a lot easier to work on my thesis, or get some consulting work done, making my day more accomplished even when I do have something to do in the evening, instead of having to set aside whole nights of my schedule for those activities.

There are a couple of things that could threaten this early wake-up time. If Diana doesn't like it in the long run, or it's too disturbing to her sleep cycle for me to get up at such an early time, it's a no go of course. If people at work start complaining, I might push back a little bit saying that I get the uninterrupted time, but if they are a little insistent I'll probably cave and switch back to a 7am show-up time. It might start grinding on me differently than it is now, and I could decide to change my habits on my own again. For now, it seems like I've stumbled into an early riser habit.

11111

2011-04-12T17:36:35-05:00

So today I seem to have survived another cycle around Sol, so now I'm one year older than last year. It hasn't been a bad year overall. In the last year I've done a bunch of things:

Quit my job at Honeywell, and went to work full-time at a startup that I helped co-found. I'm a programmer there doing basically all of the programming they need to do. It's much more rewarding to me than the other job was.
Put some of my hobby work on my github, Gatherling, a php project that I inherited and then put a bunch of work into which helps track free tournaments on Magic Online, and unsilent-assistant, a bot written for hosting those tournaments.
Hosted 37 free tournaments on Magic Online, providing prizes and having a bunch of fun playing virtual cards with real people.
Made over 500 commits to various git repositories, touching a ton of lines of code, that I can't be bothered to count right now.
Started an LLC (Base Zero, LLC) to contain my consulting, which has made me some side money that is nothing to scoff at.
Wrote 51 blog posts, including this one. Most of these were made in 2011 as part of my challenge to write more blog posts. There are more than 20,000 words in these posts.
Lost more than 50 pounds, which is supposedly a good thing, but I can't really quantify changes in my life other than a diet change and clothes fitting looser.
Bought a new (used) car for us, and gave away the old (broken) one for charity.
Took a trip to Portland with my beautiful and wonderful wife and had a great time.

There is a bunch of stuff that I'm sure that I've forgotten and will remember later, or I just don't have the time to find the stats on right now, or I'm leaving out because I just don't want to be that public with my life story right now.

Of course, there are still things that I wish I would have done better, including getting my thesis completed and a Ph.D under my belt. I am still planning on finishing that, and hopefully this year. There is a lot of work still to be done for it, including the writing of it all, and the experiments that I need to complete. I need to get working on it more seriously.

Overall I think that the last year has gone decently. There were some ups and downs, but I am still for the most part happy and healthy, and making the money that is required to keep both of those on the right side of things. I'm hoping that part of my blogging this year will give me a better idea of what is going on when I start looking back and thinking about years past. I've got what could be termed a horrible memory for things.

For now however - What day is today? It's Michael's birthday! What a day for a birthday! Let's all have some cake!

Movie Review: Paul

2011-04-11T20:36:53-05:00

Title: Liquid error: key_id may not be nil — Liquid error: key_id may not be nil — Rating: 7

I went to see Paul this weekend with Diana, and we were treated to a completely empty theater. It seems kind of strange whenever this happens, like everyone else got tipped to a really bad review or something. To add to the confusion, during the previews the vertical stabilization or something went off on the projector, and it was jostling up and down giving me a headache. I missed the opening titles. Despite these hiccups, the movie was quite enjoyable.

Paul is a movie about a couple of english guys played by the often seen together Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who also did Liquid error: key_id may not be nil and Liquid error: key_id may not be nil together. They play classic sci-fi geeks who are going to comic con and then taking a extended RV trip to all of the famous places in conspiracy culture, like Area 51 and the black mailbox, While they are on their way, a mysterious black sedan crashes in front of them and they are introduced to Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a little green alien who is rude, unexpected, and has mysterious powers. He is also running from the law.

The rest of the movie follows them running from two sets of mysterious and funny agents, played quite well by strong supporting actors Jason Bateman, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. A chase across the country and some zany situations follow, and a couple of twists near the end keep the whole thing interesting.

I felt like Paul got a slow start, but it really worked it's way into a groove and soon the laughs were coming regularly. Cledd and Pegg play against each other well, and the situations they get a little into the unbelievable, but the alien addition to the cast make the whole thing work really well. There's also a lot of callbacks that are funny to the die-hard sci-fi fan, but out of the way to the person who wouldn't notice it. An example is the cantina band song from Star Wars being played in a country-western manner in one scene. It enhances the movie for those in the know but the whole scene is still hilarious without being tipped off.

Going out of this movie, I found myself unhappy that we were the only two who were seeing it that night - it certainly deserves to have an audience. I'd rate it at a 7.

Two RSS Reader Features I Would Like

2011-04-07T21:20:36-05:00

More than a year ago I wrote a couple posts about Cullect, currently the best RSS reader that I've ever used. Since it's shut off, I've had to make due with Google Reader for all of my RSS needs, since it's the next best thing. Since then, I've been thinking about building my own reader and thinking about features that I would love to have in a reader.

The first is OPML subscriptions. For a while now, I've tried to follow a number of blog aggregates, including Planet Debian, Planet Ruby on Rails, and a couple others. Many of them include a OPML download of all of the feeds in the planet, in order to make it easy to subscribe to all of them at once. The model for this would be a number of source feeds going into a single node, and then a single RSS feed coming out. You can follow the planet's RSS feed and see all of the items from all of the feeds, or you can use the OPML list to subscribe to all of the sources. I would like to have a reader that would periodically poll the OPML download, and add or remove the feeds that were added or removed from the planet. Ideally it would also tell me what I was subscribed or unsubscribed from.

The second is Link collections. I've been following the Hacker News Firehose Feed, and a number of other tech blogs. Because it's the firehose feed, there are a lot of links submitted, and a lot of them are duplicates. Some of these links are pointing to items that I will see later, or have seen before, or items that I have already read. The feed reader should be smarter about the items that it shows to me, analyzing the links that they point to and grouping them together. Ideally it would try to find the end of those links, and show me the most relevant feed item, along with hiding the ones that just point to the most relevant one, and marking them all as read when I read the item. For bonus points, it can mark new items as read if all they do is point to the item that I've already read.

I am fairly sure that Link collections are more useful than OPML subscriptions, and they would actually also provide some important data about which items are the most important. It's also possible that this type of analysis is not being done because it requires too much processing power. If we look at the importance angle, it suddenly sounds very similar to PageRank. I am not sure if I will ever get around to making that RSS reader, but if I do, it will definitely have both of these features.

Project 52: Week 13

2011-04-06T11:46:30-05:00

Experimentation

2011-04-04T23:05:31-05:00

Astute readers of my blog might have noticed a change in content in the month of March. Five times a week I was writing short fictions and posting them here, for all of the 10 readers to see and read and enjoy. I wasn't really doing it for any reason except for experimentation.

Lately I've been playing a game online with a few online acquaintances. It's a website called Health Month, a little site by Buster Benson, the same guy who did 750words which helps people write words every day. The website makes a game out of doing things every day which might improve your health. At the beginning of the month you choose your rules and you're placed into a level, organized by how many rules you have and how hard they are. Rules are hard or difficult based on how hard you say they are as well as how important they are for you.

Over the last three months I've been playing with about 10 rules. As an example my rules for March were:

Creative Writing of at least 250 words at least 5 days a week (the fiction posts)
Take a multivitamin every day
Floss at least 5 days a week
Allow 1 soda a week
Eat breakfast every day
Allow 4 cups of coffee a week
Read a book for at least 30 minutes 3 days a week
Exercise for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week
Drink at least 58 glasses of water a week
Meditate for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week
Stay under my recommended daily calories every day
Do meaningful work at least 3 days a week
Study Human Robot Interaction papers at least 5 days a week

(You might notice that last rule is a little specific to me. It's a custom rule, everyone can put in a custom do or don't rule.)

Health Month is the gamification of habits, which is why I like it. You start with 10 life points, and you lose a point for every day that you don't do one of your things - for every one of your things. If I went over calories, didn't read, and missed meditation, I would lose three life points. People can give you life points if you plead for leniency, and you set rewards and penalties if you end the month with less than 1 life left.

I have really been enjoying playing, there is a group that I am in and we all encourage each other when we get down and also help each other out with healing each other's life points.

I think that I enjoy Health Month so much because it makes it easy to set up month long experiments, like last month's fiction writing, as well as focus on things that you should be doing every day like the flossing or limiting my cups of coffee.

I've been prone to doing these month long experimentations to myself in the past - for example last year I spent a month recording everything that I did in Field Notes notebook, and I switched up the exercises monthly before that trying to find a good route for walks, or finding a way to entertain myself in the gym. Experimentation is just part of my nature in this way, and it's one of the ways that I strive to make my life more happy. If I try something for a month and it makes my life happier, then I will keep doing it. If it doesn't work out, I only did it for a month, and I can say that I've really tried it and it wasn't for me.

This month's writing rule is to keep updating this blog, this time with meaningful blog posts instead of random fictions from my head. Let's see if I can keep my points.

April Diet Update

2011-04-03T23:39:41-05:00

So the diet has been going pretty well this month, I've been keeping to my calorie counts more and also not having as much of an issue with keeping the weight off. There are less ups and downs and that is a good thing. I still have some days when I weigh mysteriously three pounds more than I did the day before, despite only eating the prescribed amounts. I'm doing pretty good at just letting it go by though.

My daily diet has changed a little since the last time that I wrote. I cut all of the carbs out of my breakfast about halfway through March, partially to lower the caloric content of the meal, and partly because I was planning on trying a low-carb diet starting this month. I've started and been on the diet a week or so right now, and it's been pretty good. Most days I'm trying to figure out how I can get to my calorie limit instead of seeing how I can get under it. Especially on days when I am exercising, I usually have to down an ounce or three of peanuts to make my calorie deficit goal.

Speaking of the exercise, it's been pretty good to get back to it after taking the month of February off. I'm going five days a week for thirty minutes now, and that seems to be a sweet spot for me in terms of time taken and enjoyent. One of the things that I was really unhappy during exercise in the winter was the hour long sessions really dragged on my psyche. I always would be thinking about what I could be doing instead of exercising. I re-started with thirty minute sessions instead which was a great call - they are much easier to fit into a day because if I only have an hour free I can still fit in a workout, and I don't have an issue finishing them. I also feel a lot more accomplished when I go a little extra, going 40 minutes or 45 minutes.

I don't remember the exact cheat days that I took in March, but I'm sure that I was on form. It took a little bit longer to institute the "practice days" that I talked about last month - I had my first one last weekend as I was on a short day trip out of town. I ate like a "normal" day and ordered off the menu as if I wasn't on a special diet and wasn't sweating the calories. I think I came in just under the amount of calories I wanted.

I've been thinking lately that it's more important how you feel about how you ate on the practice day instead of how you actually did on the calories. I know that when I was having too much food at lunch and then again having too much food at dinner, I was actually not happy with myself when I was finishing the meal, but I would keep on going because I wanted to finish the food that I had ordered, and I didn't want to waste something. Alternately I was unhappy an hour later or later in the day when I was eating my dinner but realizing that I wasn't actually hungry and I was just eating because it was good to eat with my wife for a dinner. It is most important to me on those practice days that I don't have those feelings at all. Secondary feelings to avoid would be the ones where I feel over-full, like I have had too much to eat. I used to have that feeling all the time, and I barely ever have it now except on cheat days and practice days.

The thirty day graph looks good from here. It's the best weekly loss number since I've started making these posts monthly. I'm dangerously close to the two pounds a week that I've been trying to hit since I've started logging my weight again. I'm also doing it by hitting my calorie goal now and not shorting it by 200 like I mentioned last month. That's fine. I only had a day or two above the trend line, although I got closea few times.

The yearly chart looks pretty damn good as well. You can really see the trendline take the dip that I was hoping during the end of March. There is a nice number at the bottom of the y-axis too, I'm hovering around 270 now, making the mini goal that I had made before. I'm hoping to be hovering around 260 when I make the next report. I'm still aiming for 250 by the middle of this year, and then I will be making the big decisions about whether I'm stopping at that number, or if I will keep going. I never really had some solid goals when I started this whole thing, except for being a healthier person in general.

Twenty Two

2011-04-02T00:22:23-05:00

An arrow whizzed by his head as he ran the other direction. Usually there is a warning before they start with the shooting. He bounded around the trees and down into a hidey-hole. A couple of constables went past his head and kept going down the path he was on before. Carefully aiming with his pistol, he fired and one of them dropped.

The other one couldn't locate the source of the shot for a couple of seconds, and that was all that he needed to bolt in a new direction. Left, right, and quickly down the side of a hill. The ground was soft and he barely made a sound as he went across the creek.

He needed to go to the other side. The longer that he stayed here, the more people would be looking for him, and the more people would be hunting him. Everyone on this side wanted their kind dead. He couldn't find a place where he could jump though. Pulling the device out, he listened intently while he waited for the search to finish.

300 yards almost due east. Putting the device away, he gazed toward the sunrise and started on the direction indicated. The forest got thinner here, and he would need to be careful. Surely they had the forest surrounded by now, and the general alert would be out letting the villagers know that they should be dropping everything and looking for him.

Fifty more yards. He had to go out there, there wouldn't be another jump for half a mile, and the more that he waited, the greater chance of losing his life here. He grabbed some courage and sprinted toward the spot. As he ran, he prepared for the journey, and he could hear the guards notice him. There wasn't anything he could do but run as fast as he could toward the point.

Twenty One

2011-03-29T23:57:52-05:00

She pulled the car up to the lot, pushing the button to get in to park the car. Normally she would have had the valet take the car, but this was a "see and be seen" event, which meant that there was a paparazzi line, and that means that her Honda Civic needed to be parked and she was sneaking in the back entrance.

In the back of her mind, she was happy that she got to drive herself everywhere, and didn't get pampered with limos - if it meant that she didn't have to deal with standing on a red carpet in front of some backdrop filled with logos to her her picture taken. At least she didn't have to worry about the tabloids wondering why she has some random guy on her arm instead of a up-and-coming boy toy.

As she walked across the skybridge to the theater, she felt an intense out-of-place emotion. She was decked from top to bottom in a gala outfit, with a smooth shiny red strapless designer dress and the shoes to match, and carrying a handbag that cost more than most of the cars that she passed on the way. There was a guy kind-of mingling out here, looking profoundly normal. She reminded herself that she had both her taser and mace on her.

As the door opened to backstage for her to sneak in, she wondered if she could have skipped this event entirely. Someone would probably notice if she didn't show up. Then she wondered if she could sneak out during intermission. Probably not. She sighed and put on her best smile as she walked into the lobby, with all of the rest of the stars.

Twenty

2011-03-28T23:45:14-05:00

He stared at the screen, not believing his eyes. They were just numbers, he told himself, as the screen read "trade complete". Earlier today he was just a guy who was down on his luck, and now he had.. he counted the zeroes.. 5 billion dollars.

Two weeks ago, Manny sat at his cube and processed papers. He stared at the inbox pile that never seemed to get smaller, and the outbox, which just happened to be the shredder for his current job. Data entry - it was one of the lowest jobs on the totem pole that he had been forced to take since getting fired from his cushy union job.

The union wasn't exactly the best place to work, but he thought that he would be at least secure and have a pension to look forward to after some grueling time fixing the presses. Then everything went digital and there suddenly weren't any poster presses to fix anymore. Xeroxed out of a job.

As he grabbed another of Form R-11-USV-01 from the pile, and brought up the terminal, he couldn't think of anything but how he would be spending his lunch break on the roof, in the wind and the sunlight. It was the only good thing about this job - the amazing view on his lunch break. He looked at the clock again. 8:05am, only 5 minutes in.

Just then Jeff came around and tapped on his half-high cube walls, and asked him to meet with him in his office. It was the first, and last time that he would be in that office. Ten minutes later he looked toward his cube, realized that there wasn't anything personal at it, and just headed out the door.

After walking the half mile off the bus, he kicked the sign. "Make money at home! Call 610-555-1201." He had seen it three times before, and kicked it down. Someone was putting it up. He decided to give them a piece of his mind, pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

Project 52: Week 12

2011-03-27T22:39:50-05:00

Nineteen

2011-03-27T21:33:06-05:00

The sign on the door said I was on my lunch break, but she walked in anyway. I had my feet up on the desk, I was trying to take my traditional afternoon nap. When she walked in the door, I tipped up my hat and took a look, then sat up and situated myself.

"Are you a detective?" she asked.

"That's what it says on the door, doll" I replied. I got a good look at her. She was all curves with a white blouse, a black skirt and silk stocking legs that went all the way down to the floor. She was definitely a working girl - I could see the black from the carbon on her slender hands as she took a manila envelope out of her purse.

"I need help with my husband," she stated, "I think that he is in some trouble."

Looking at her, I couldn't imagine why he would ever jeopardize himself. If I was going back to that, I would definitely be looking both ways when I crossed the street. I grabbed the envelope and let the contents fall right onto my already messy desk.

"What do you think he's into?" I asked, but there wasn't any question. I could already see that he'd gotten in with a bad crowd. The receipts on the desk were hand-written and of the kind that would cost you your kneecaps if you left them unpaid.

"Gambling. I was worried when he started coming home late from work that he was cheating on me, but then I found these." Her voice was like a well-tuned clarinet, intoning the melody straight into your heart.

"I'll see what I can do."

I gathered the papers back into the envelope and grabbed my notebook and a pen from the drawer that was permanently stuck open.

"Tell me the whole thing from the beginning."

Eighteen

2011-03-26T21:08:29-05:00

Vernon wasn't the kind of person who would normally go on a game show, but he really liked watching this one. When he got the letter in the mail asking him to be on the pool of contestants he was extatic. There was even tickets to the event center that the show was filmed in. He was going to get to see the actual set and talk to Manny Moola!

When the day came, he took the bus down to the city center and got a new suit just for the day. There wasn't a big chance that he was going to be selected to play, but he wanted to be sure that if he was on the show, he looked good. The bus ride to the game center was a bit tricky because he didn't want to get anything on the suit that would ruin his appearance.

The game center was a massive complex, that held not only Mad Cash, the show that he was going to be on, but a number of other shows at the same time. Game shows had kindof exploded after all scripted television was outlawed. People liked to see the good fortune of others and reality TV was always suspicious because of the scandal last year, so the networks filled their programming with hosts giving away prizes.

The set was exactly like it looked on the TV, with the flashing lights and the clear cubes that the contestants sat in before they were either chosen or not chosen. As he climbed into the cube before the show he couldn't get it out of his head that it was his destiny to be on this show today, and he was going to go away with the big bucks.

Seventeen

2011-03-25T18:31:45-05:00

She sat at the bar and sipped on her red wine. It wasn't spectacular, but it was the best that this wine bar had, and after all she wasn't here to sample the alcohol selection. The white daisy sat in her hair and displayed her intention to whoever was doing to walk through that door and recognize her.

Online dating wasn't going that well for Lisa, the problem being that most of the guys who she met on the site were either losers who weren't worth her time or were just cruising for some simple casual sex. Not that she didn't enjoy herself with some of the latter kind of suitor, but it wasn't her final goal anyway. After six months of nothing serious, she was about ready to move on.

Jeremy's profile wasn't different from the rest of the ones that she had set up with before: typical active guy picture with him throwing some frisbee in a park, interests like sports, gaming, and comedy TV shows. The thing that set him apart from the rest was his communication. She couldn't put her finger on it to begin with, but it was somehow more sophisticated that the rest of the people she had conversed with.

It started with the usual "you're cute" type of message but quickly progressed until he was talking about philosophy, the universe and human nature. She started checking her email in the mornings before work just to see if there was something there. It was the highlight of the day when the email noise dinged and she saw that it was more words from his mind to her.

The little bell rang, and the door to the wine bar opened, and Jeremy walked in to her life.

Sixteen

2011-03-25T00:47:13-05:00

The lights blinded him instantly. He knew in his mind that they were only dim bulbs, but after a week in total light isolation, he couldn't stand them at all. Usually the transition was better for him, this time it was a little bit harder. He wondered if the administrators were hurrying him out. Must be a tricky capture.

He was only outside of isolation for two reasons: monthly checkups, or the hunt. There wasn't a checkup for another two weeks, so he knew that a hunt was waiting for him once he could stand the environment. The administrators paid his family quite well for him to stay in isolation for the rest of the time.

After an expedited adjustment process, he sat in the third stage room and waited for his instructions. They should be coming on the screen any moment now. He was already sharp and ready for another trip out into the wilderness to get the fleeing suspect. They were always called suspects until he captured them.

Suspects usually turned out to be guilty - there was only one that he captured and wasn't brought to justice swiftly. He could still hear him sometimes, pleading for his capture after the hunt. It was a grueling five days that time, by far the longest capture mission he had been asked to complete. When he was finally captured, he couldn't walk and had blood all over his body from the harsh environment.

The instructions came shortly. He didn't pay that much attention. Usually they were basically the same. Suspects had escaped from confinement, or while they were on a transfer from one facility to another right before trial. Sometimes they were aided by accomplices. Not this time.

As the hatch opened, he wondered how long it would take to bring this one down.

Fifteen

2011-03-22T00:37:27-05:00

He blacked out during the impact. At least, that's what he thought happened. There wasn't any memory of the impact or just before it, just the people hurtling towards him and then his teammates hovering in the air, asking him how many fingers there were. There were two. There were always two. You would think with a couple hundred times of doing this, they would think to hold up some different number of fingers.

The coach and the injury team soon followed, concerned about his health, and then the referees came over and asked nicely for them to cart me off the field so that they could continue in the game. He didn't have much memory of the trip to the sideline or the check-up there, but sure they happened because they always happen.

Now he was in the locker room, clutching his head and trying to remember the events that led up to all of this, hoping that he didn't have to sit out too many games, because he honestly couldn't afford to now that he was living the extravagant life of a professional player. He thought about his wife at home, and the new house by the lake that they just got in order to celebrate the promotion from backup to starter.

His head was throbbing, and didn't seem to be getting any better. Why weren't there any doctors here? Why was no one checking him out now and seeing if he could go back onto the field? He had to be able to go back on to the field. Trying to stand, he stumbled to the next bench, and then to the room with the recovery and health beds. The game wasn't even on the TV. The game was always on the TV.

Then he saw the clock. Apparently he had blacked out longer than he thought.

Fourteen

2011-03-21T00:49:33-05:00

One. Four. Six. Ten.

Good, it is climbing again. Things were touch and go there for a while. I wasn't sure if things were going to start over again or if they were going to be stuck at zero for a while. Last time it was stuck at zero, lots of bad things happened all at once - the storm, and then the quakes, and the zombies.

The zombies were the worst of the zero-day tragedies, because they effected the most people in the world. People still are talking about the days when their children, husbands, and brothers were taken from them. Only males were zombified for some reason. It wasn't noticeable as much at first, because men by nature can kind of have a low vocabulary to begin with, but soon the signs were unmistakable.

The first attack came after eighteen hours into the zero day. From then on, it wasn't too bad. Only one half of one percent of the men on the planet were zombified, so it was pretty easy to quarantine. Some were eradicated of course, just because people didn't know what to do at first. Then the rest were quarantined because we didn't know if they would turn back when the meter went above zero again.

It finally did, but they never did turn back. Now they have their own island in the Pacific. Once a year a visual survey is taken to see if they are still surviving, and once a year we see them still thriving.

This time we were only at zero for a couple minutes though. Hopefully nothing went wrong.

Oh crap, the phone's ringing.

Project 52: Week 11

2011-03-19T20:54:46-05:00

Thirteen

2011-03-19T11:18:38-05:00

He stood on the edge and wondered if he should take that final step into the abyss. He wasn't sure how he got here, and really wanted to continue on and succeed like the others. They said that there was nothing like standing at the top and seeing the world for what it was. The only problem was, he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Of all of the people who should be making the journey of the initiation, he wasn't the likely candidate. He was much older than the normal candidate, and there were much stronger and younger people in the pool. He was hoping that he would not have to go this year, and therefore be spared of it forever.

He was also pretty happy with his life. As a baker, he was well respected in the community and got his fair share of credits from the sale of his goods to the other cities. There weren't any other bakers in the county, and he wondered how much his neighbors would have to pay this week for their bread to have it shipped in. A good job and bringing in some money for the city all added up to a pretty good life from his point of view.

He was chosen though, and he wasn't halfway through the journey that would change his life completely. If he gave up now, then he could die without having to deal with both the rest of the journey and the epiphany. He sighed, and kept trudging on.

Twelve

2011-03-19T01:17:15-05:00

It didn't mean anything. He just went out and will be back soon. At least that's what I'll tell myself for a while. It makes it easier to deal with the reality when it does finally settle in. The whole time I'll really know deep down that he is gone, just like the others.

It is dark here, and safe. The darkness is strong and cold, but it was the known, and there wasn't anything that could hurt me here. The light is blinding, and is encroaching on the darkness more every single minute. Soon I may have no choice. For now, I stay where it is safe and cold though.

All the others have left now, because of each of their reasons. They all had different reasons. The first left because none of us knew any better. We all watched him go and then dissapear in the light. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it. We waited a long time for him to show up again, but he never did.

The second left because she was brokenhearted. She was the one who came to the Arena with the first, and didn't last too long until she couldn't stand going on without him. We all said goodbye and she walked the same way that he did, and dissapeared in almost exactly the same way.

Slowly, the rest went for their reasons. Three and four decided to go together, after almost a week of surviving in the darkness. They were weak, compared to the rest of us. Five ended up being thrown out in anger. Apparently she got in a fight with Seven - I was on a sleep cycle at the time, but Six and Nine told me they disagreed about, well, the only thing to disagree about here, the light.

That was a week ago. All nine others had gone now into the light.

I am alone.

Eleven

2011-03-16T12:52:54-05:00

Mark sighed as he walked down the driveway. There wasn't anything he could really do about it. His boss was about to fire him, he was sure of it. Smashing the other bags down, he wedged the trash into the oversize can and rolled it out onto the curb in the right spot for the automated truck to pick it up and dump it out.

The project was not going well, and it had been not going well for a very long time now. He was about to have to actually show some progress, and there was almost nothing to show. He had made up some bullcrap about progress with research into the field and the evaluation of their different options, but he was pretty sure that the truth would come out.

Mark wasn't a particularly good manager. He was typical when it came to dealing with people, which meant that he really was just jovial when he thought that they were indifferent towards him, and attempted to reciprocate when there was some extraordinary admiration or loathing involved. That didn't make him a good manager because you had to be mean to people who actually liked you. At least that's what Joe told him.

The team consisted of a couple of programmers, a designer, and himself, so it wasn't even particularly large. Meetings had taken up the first couple of weeks, but when the spring break hit - a particular curiosity of the company they were all working for - they didn't really pick up on the planning when they returned.

The blame rested on Mark, of course, for not whipping the team into shape. So now he was going to be fired. Just another Monday.

Ten

2011-03-14T18:13:57-05:00

It was very loud in the library. Kids were running around and screaming, and there was nothing that she could do about it. She sat there just staring at the horrors that were happening to her sacred space.

Just three hours earlier, she had heard nothing about the beasts. She was working at the reference desk, one of her favorite jobs in the library. Books needed to be re-sorted and people needed help getting on the internet as well as working on papers or looking up some interesting things online. Every once in a while someone needed help looking for a book.

Libraries weren't really common nowadays, but this one would be around forever as far as she was concerned. It was used by most of the city at one time or another, and thanks to an anonymous grant that showed up on schedule pretty much every February 14. No one knew who the benefactor was, but it was apparently very important that the library continued.

At least that's what she thought two hours ago. Now, the entire fourth floor was burning, with all of the periodicals and the maps going up in flames. Still pausing incredulously, she turned and ran. There wasn't anything she could do against flying, fire breathing.. things.

Ironically, the dragons plowed through the fantasy and sci-fi young adult fiction, and lunged up the stairs, knocking the brass railings on the sides as they continued on an upward rampage thorough the books. They were gaining fast on her, so she took a quick turn, hoping that they wouldn't be able to turn with the large wings attached to their backs. The wings that were even now tearing out light fixtures in the hung tile ceiling.

They kept going on their path to.. what, the roof.. for now, while she hid. She hid for hours.

Nine

2011-03-14T01:02:07-05:00

The wrench floated weightlessly as he worked on the console, trying to get the computer to actually spark to life. These things were always breaking down, and the idiots who made these modules put them on the outside so that they couldn't be worked on without doing an EVA.

EVAs were the worst part of the job. Not because of the concern over safety - that had been handled a long time ago by the universal tether. It was marginally more dangerous now than doing run-of-the-mill repair work on a newer model of sattelite. The problem was the suits. He didn't have his own suit yet, so he had to use the loaners that were on hand with the company. The loaners were always in disrepair, and smelly.

He gave the panel a little smack and surprisingly the lights blinked on. DIagnostics swam across the screen as the targetting and navingation systems started up again. He waited for them to finish and then ran a couple of tests specific to the actual work order that he had. Everything seemed fine, and the fins moved to the commands from his universal remote as well, so he grabbed the wrench which was floating next to the panel and started replacing it.

He was almost back to the work ship when he saw the light flash. It was brilliant in the sky, and strangely red in it's nature. Then the others started flashing all around him. He wondered why they all got set off for a couple seconds, looking around to see the ship that they were firing on. He quickly located a mhato cruiser that was slowly being turned to dust. In a spin now, it wasn't going to last much longer.

A blip on the panel came up warning him that there was defensive activity in the area, and he remembered that he was in a bad place right now.

Eight

2011-03-13T00:47:57-06:00

"Damnit!" He screamed as the screen blinked out.

There wasn't anything left to do, though. The server was dead and his hopes went with it. He was hoping that he would have gotten at least a couple more hours out of it, as a shield to the onslaught that was going to come down on his head in short order.

Management wouldn't be happy about the failure, especially when it only lasted a couple of months. Then again, they were the ones that wouldn't splurge for a proofed firewall. They can't have expected it to last that long. He tapped on his bonecomm and called up his direct superior.

"Thomas here," the man replied after a couple of rings. It sounded like he was in a tornado.

"It's down," he said. "Only lasted about three hours once the hive found out about the open jack. What do you want me to do?"

"Crap. Miles isn't going to be happy with that. Hold for now, I'll comm back in a bit."

He started pulling the cables out of the rack, knowing that there was going to at least a replacement put in place, and if not that, a scrap order. There wasn't anything to do with a server that had been hived out. Any time you connected it back on the 'net it would be seeking out the hive and joining in whatever plan they had going on at the moment. His head buzzed.

"Okay, plug it back in, they say," Thomas's voice rang loud and clear.

"Huh? Are they crazy?"

"Well, apparently this was the plan from the start. They weren't that happy that you actually tried to defend it in the first place. Put it back online."

That sealed it: they were nuts.

Project 52: Week 10

2011-03-13T00:19:30-06:00

Project 52: Week 9

2011-03-13T00:17:33-06:00

Seven

2011-03-11T18:16:03-06:00

He worked very slowly, not wanting to disturb the process and ruin a day's worth of work. There wasn't anything particularly hard about the process up until now, when the sigils required got very complex as they interworked with the rest of the anchors that he had put down in the preparation for this moment. If the spell succeeded, he would have full control over the fortress, and things would be safe for another year.

Every year he had to repeat this spell, the renewal of his control over the living stone that made up his tower. Preparation was very specific and time-consuming, but it was a small price to pay in order to ensure that his studies were not interrupted for the rest of the seasons. Plus, it was in the winter, and he didn't have much else to do anyway.

The floating gem pulsed with a dim light, growing stronger and stronger with every passing minute. There wasn't much left now but to finish with the force of will imbued into the preparations. He closed his eyes and felt the anchor points that he had placed: six points outside in even spaces about 30 yards out, five cornerstones of the tower itself, the four defense gems which hung magically in the window, an emerald, ruby, and sapphire surrounding the room that he was currently in, and of course the pulsating diamond that centered the entire spell. With all of these points in his will, he started pulling at the Source.

Power started coarsing through him and the anchor points, reaffirming the protection of his home until he would repeat the spell. The center gem erratically started rotating on one axis, and then two, and then all three in a flat spin, accelerating until it was just a translucent orb of white light. As he was connected, he could feel the power cascading down to the other anchors from the cornerstone.

Done with the spell, he checked the now orb-like floating energy ball in the middle of the room with his meter. Fifteen fourty five. He was pleased, that might even last until the summer after next.

Six

2011-03-09T21:46:16-06:00

She walked with a determination that would be altogether unfamiliar to her friends on the other side. What would they think of her walking down this hallway, with pillars of marble and a floor inlaid with actual, real metal? It seemed so far away from what she was doing now and yet the problems of there seemed somehow intertwined and familiar to the ones that she had here.

Nothing worked the same over there of course, and the orbs lighting her way were a constant reminder, being as they were all over this world. As she joined her troop, she steeled herself for the coming storm. The windows showed the battle that awaited them, and there was no turning back now.

As a group, they headed down the helical stairway, wondering how many of the thirty would come back, if any at all managed to survive the day. Everyone else seemed to be in the same mood. She slowed as she approached the door at the base of the tower, and took a breath before turning the handle that would signal to the other side.

Clanking of steel and a smattering of gearworks filtered through the heavy iconclad door before it swung open without a sound of it's own. The roar of the rain and wind seemed to set the mood practically perfectly.

Charging out and standing aside, she counted their numbers silently as they marched onto the rocky plain which surrounded the rampart and lined up to the final pause before steel met flesh in the coming hours.

"It is dangerous out there today. I want you all to remember your training. It is vital that we hold the enemy, because there is little resistance that the others can offer. You were not all hoping for this, but it is now time to put your skills into action. Let's move."

The battle had begun.

Five

2011-03-07T23:09:50-06:00

Joe wasn't all that great of a guy, but we all liked him okay, so when he left for his usual Wednesday lunch to the coffee shop across the way, we all sprang into action.

I was the lookout, which was fine because I wasn't very active anyway, and everyone else ran around the office putting streamers over the exposed rafters, and putting signs up on the walls. Joe's cubicle got the worst of it - it was packed with balloons that someone was hiding in a nondescript box in the back. I don't know how they expect him to get any work done for the rest of the day - but then again I suspect that no one expected him to get any work done anyway.

It was hard enough to get him to come in for the day. We had to schedule an impoertant meeting that everyone needed to attend when we found out that he was planning on taking the day as a vacation day. I made a mental note to self - take a vacation day for my birthday and don't listen when there's an important meeting that you need to go to.

I sat at the receptionist desk, making sure that Joe's car didn't start down the long drive to his reserved parking lot and absentmindedly surfing the latest world news. A balloon must have gotten too close to the staple remover or something because a loud popping noise came from Joe's cube and all the pastel balloons shuddered a little as Mark was putting the clear tape over the entrance so that they wouldn't all pour out.

"Any sign yet?" Harriet asked when most of the decorations were done.

"Nothing yet, but it shouldn't be long now, he's almost never more than a half hour." I replied. It had been 25 minutes since he left. Most of the office was quiet now, and people were just kind of milling about, except for Beatrice and Paul who were cutting the cake and putting out the disposable silverware respectively.

I spotted the gray sedan and gave the signal. Everyone in the front of the office returned to their normal working position, and I scooted off to the back.

"Have a good lunch?" Harriet asked, just like every Wednesday.

"It was very relaxing, thanks." Joe said without stopping.

Four

2011-03-05T20:47:14-06:00

Click.

I couldn't keep track of things anymore. They got a little too.. busy.

Click.

The car was a mess now, and it was maddening because it was just detailed a week ago. It was all shiny and new before, and it would barely pass for a demolition derby failure at the moment.

Click.

The gun was empty. I'm not really that angry, but shooting always puts me in a sort of meditative state. The range was unusually quiet for this time of day, so noone noticed when I went off into my own little world of concentration and thoughts. I looked at the target. I wasn't a good shot when I was zoning out.

It's a really bad idea to be unaware of your surroundings when you're handling a firearm, but when you're covering your ears with muffs that are specifically designed to block out 120 decibels and focusing on hitting a target 50 yards away, it's a daunting task. I released the magazine and considered loading up again for another 17 rounds. I counted the bullets left in the box. Probably not.

I crawled into the passenger door before sliding over the gearshaft, since the driver's side was fused shut now. As I rode across town, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to get in any accidents. There was only so much a guy could take in one day.

The full moon was out, which meant that there were more critters out than usual. Bunnies and squirrels scampered across the road at a red light. Too many bunnies in the neighborhood.

Someone was tapping on the window. I looked out and down the barrel of a shotgun.

"Freeze, just get out of the car," the masked man said, "I just need a ride away from here."

I rolled down the window.

"Buddy, you picked the wrong car."

March Diet Update

2011-03-05T16:50:11-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about food, which is unsurprising because I'm on a diet or whatever you would like to call it. I'm calorie restricting, which means that I am eating less calories than my body needs in order to force it to use the fat reserves that it has accumulated over the years. It occurs to me now that I don't exactly know how many fat reserves I have in me, which would be calculated using some type of body fat percentage. I should probably get it measured in some way - possibly as a reward for hitting an intermediate goal (270?) I should go to a local place that has a Bod Pod and find out exactly.

The feel of myself has been better in the last month or so, which I've been happy with. I don't know exactly when I started noticing it, but I've been gradually getting too small for my pants, and I should really go out and buy some new ones. I really want to wait until I am at least one more size down though, because I will then be out of the "extended sizes" that are offered by the retailers and clothes will actually be cheaper. I got some new work/casual shirts a few weeks ago and they fit well enough, and I was happy about that. I also recently bought a new belt, not because the old one was too large (although I have one of those), but because it had broken and lost a screw or something holding it in. The new one should last me while.

There is a question which has been on my mind quite a bit recently, because of the steady progress over the last few months. What happens when I am done losing weight? I know the correct answer to this question is that nothing happens - you are meant to have changed your life forever by losing these pounds, and you will need to be vigilant about your diet for the rest of your life. The problem is that I am unhappy with that response. Seriously, I'm not even at the point when I need to think about it yet, and I am actually depressed. It almost feels like I will be cheated out of all of the hard work that I have put in to making myself thin, because there will be no end -- it's just the button, you have to keep pressing the button, or you will gain weight again and your life will be shit.

To that end, I've been thinking of supplementing the "cheat days" that are built into my diet plan and alternating them with a new type of cheat day: Practice Days. On practice days, you should not keep track of the calories that you eat throughout the day. Try to eat "normally". Eat when you are hungry and then stop eating when you are full. Order the amount of food that you think is appropriate for how hungry you are, not because of how many calories you think are in the meal. This may mean that you actually avoid eating at places that you go to frequently because you know how many calories are in the sandwich.

After the practice day but within 48 hours, you should go back and think about how you did on your practice day. Attempt to estimate how many calories were in the food that you ate, and compare it against your metabolic rate not your diet calorie target. You want to be right around the number that would keep you at the weight that you are now, or maybe lower. For me, that means that practice days I can eat 1000 calories more than I would normally eat on my diet. Sit and think about what diet decisions that you made that day, and how you would make them differently in the future - but would still keep you happy with the day as a whole.

I think for psychological eaters or people who have a mental imbalance that made them fat in the first place, this will be very hard. I'm planning on doing it for a month or more, with the goal of them to have to not be in constant vigilance about my diet when I am "done" losing weight. If I succeed, I'll be able to just eat when I want, because that's what my body will tell me it wants, and what my mind will tell me it wants too.

My chart for the last 30 days is looking pretty good. I am happy with my progress. There was one day where I was above the trend line, but I am still on a steady decline. I would like to be closer to 2 pounds per week, but I can live with the numbers that I'm putting up now. The calorie deficit means that if I want to hit the 2 pounds per week goal, I should short what my calorie counting website is telling me by about 200 calories. I'll try that for a few weeks.

This time, the yearly chart is telling me that I am losing faster than during the month. It's pretty nice to see this one, that I have lost 15 pounds since the beginning of the year. The fitted line shown, if I keep it up, means that I will be at my goal of 250 around July. That is my next major milestone, and I want to actually re-evaluate my decisions around weight around then, and actually think about where the "done" point is.

Three

2011-03-04T00:24:20-06:00

Standing in front of the door, he thought over the events of the day so far, and pondered whether he should continue. The day wasn't exactly going swimmingly, but at least it would be extremely unlikely for it to actually get worse than it was - or at least he thought that was the case. It was, in fact, a bad idea when he rapped at apartment 405.

"One minute!" said the girl's voice from inside. He could hear the steps approaching and straightened himself up a little, nervously, and stood back. He could tell when she looked at him from the dimming of the interior light through the peephole. Locks worked themselves and then the door opened to reveal a dark blue dress, blonde curls, and a beautiful pair of legs in stockings.

"I was just about ready.. running a little late. Wait here." He stood nervously while the door closed again, and he heard the girl moving around again inside. About half a minute later the door opened again, and the whole outfit was completed by a handbag and a set of matching blue heels. She locked the door and tossed the keys in the bag.

As they walked down the hall, he wondered if he would be returning to the same place later. Then he thought it was probably better to not be thinking about it the entire night, so tried to put it out of his mind. The distance from the apartment to the elevator was long, and the silence was awkward. The silence continued to the car.

"So, what do you like to do," he asked when they were on their way.

"Well, I really am enjoying this, and I seem to be doing it a lot lately," she replied, "but I really don't do much of anything. I guess I just like watching TV and chick flicks. I used to do a lot of stuff with my ex, but he's out of the picture now."

Just at the end there, he chanced a glance away from the road, and thought that he saw an evil glint in her eye. Probably just my imagination.

Two

2011-03-02T22:44:46-06:00

The supernatural isn't always as picky as they have been today. Usually they want something shiny, and are willing to take whatever is lying around and maybe return it later. Tonight was different though, they needed specifically something for their machinations. I was still in their debt, so now I'm awake at three in the morning.

How I got in debt with the sidhe is a long story that I'd prefer to not get into at the moment. The result is that now I'm their errand boy whenever they have a need for something that's out of their reach, which means it's on an island or behind some type of iron gate. They are for some reason repelled by these locations. I thought about moving to an island, but the real estate in the center of the city isn't exactly in my price range.

Today it was both at once - some fancy mansion on the island that I would definitely never be able to afford, and probably would be turned away for just loitering around the outside for too long. As usual for these "missions", I'm dressed in dark clothes and have a dark ski mask on so that I can avoid the surveillance that is omnipresent nowadays.

Strangely there isn't ever a problem when I am successful at one of these even though I'm sure that I've been caught on some cameras a couple times. Maybe my contractors are messing with the evidence or something so that I am available in the future.

Somehow I don't care as I finish picking the locked double French doors and quickly grab the small golden gnome statue that was requested. I'm in and out less than a minute from when I knelt down by the door to pick the lock. As I flee across the garden, I think about how I'm actually getting good at this.

Project 52: Week 8

2011-03-02T07:45:53-06:00

One

2011-03-01T22:27:22-06:00

She sat on the bench in the park, enjoying the lunch that she had packed that morning. There wasn't anything special about it. Chicken salad, chips, juice. The juice was fresh-squeezed, but it was always fresh-squeezed because the got it from the cart just thirty feet away from the bench that she sat on, munching on the sandwich that she packed last night and stowed away in the fridge so that she would be able to spend this very moment.

She liked to take her lunch hour in the park. Parks were fun places, places where it was almost impossible to be sad or lonely. Even when it was a cloudy day, or if it was raining, somehow the park took it all in and made things okay. People would sometimes ask her questions about where something was, like the ampitheatre or the carousel. Usually it was just a nice quiet time with herself and her lunch though.

Today seemed different, though. She couldn't put her finger on it before she sat down, but she was fairly sure even before she was crossing the street, waving goodbye to her coworkers who would head to the Subway or the Pizza Shack. She could feel it in the air. She had decided to enjoy her lunch anyway.

It was just normal park things, going on, so there wasn't anything to be alarmed about. A dog was running around in the grass across the path, and there was his owner, tossing a ball and waiting for the faithful return every time. A couple runners making their way through the circuit training course, skipping the ones that they deemed not worthy of their attention. The trees were swaying in the breeze and it was warm but not bright outside.

It happened so quickly that she almost didn't notice it at all. Then a bike sailed past her at an alarming speed -- with no rider. Carlos at the juice stand was gone. The dog was gone, and it's owner too. The ball tossed smacked her bench, splaying her chips all over the sidewalk.

It was quiet, and they were all gone.

Project 52: Week 7

2011-02-22T23:29:07-06:00

February Diet Update

2011-02-21T22:55:49-06:00

Okay so this is a little later than it should be. In fact the charts are about two weeks old at this point, but I thought that I would write about it anyway. My diet has been going pretty well. January was a pretty successful month on the diet front, and pounds are coming off. My plans for exercise were working well and there was nothing really to complain about. Normally I have a pretty hard time keeping on the diet in the early part of the year because of all of the things that seem to coalesce and keep me from doing what I want to do.

This time it was no different, but I was more determined to stick with the diet because of all of the progress that I made all of last year, and so that I can make my goals this year, to be a smaller me. The things that all pile up in the beginning of the year are mostly just one big factor, and that's people who are trying to lose weight. I know that it's kind of hypocritical to be annoyed at people who want to trim the fat just like I do, but the problem is that they take up a lot of the space in the exercise room and make it too busy for the rest of us. I think that I am going to try a different tack in the next month.

Another thing that frustrates me about the new year is that there are a lot of holidays that come up and you want to eat at them. Usually the one that I have the most trouble with is Valentines, because there is so much chocolate around, and also I really like to spoil my sweetie with a big dinner and some candies and other gifts on Valentines. This time I will be scheduling a "cheat day" with the outage, so it won't be that big of a deal I hope.

I've been a little less frequent on the Loseit group recently, mostly because I have been busy with client work that I hope that I will probably be blogging a little about soon. The stories there are still very inspiring and honestly the thing that I was bitching about last month with people who just want to lose a few pounds isn't that bad. Reddit is a pretty good community, and loseit is an excellent example of that.

This chart is my triumph for the beginning of the year. An entire month with no red marks at all! I have been losing for the whole month according to my stats at PhysicsDiet, and that makes me happy. The calorie deficit is pretty nice, too, and the average weight lost per week is exactly in the range that I've been setting for myself. If I can just keep this up, I will make my goals nicely.

The yearly chart is a little more conservative on the account of me having those days at the beginning of the year where I was above the trend line. It's still pretty nice though. I am not going to include the all-time chart except at major milestones from now on.

For February, I'm doing a new experiment with my diet. I'm forgoing the exercise completely in order to get a good gauge on how many calories I need to be eating to lose weight. That means that I'm going to be counting calories pretty religiously, trying to figure out how many calories are in things that are home-made (and estimating high when possible). I've been going on net calories right now, which means calories in minus calories exercised, and I have suspicion that the machines may be telling me the wrong amount. We'll see how the graph looks later this month.

Because of a trick of how often I'm updating now (whenever one of my columns runs out in my weight log), I will probably update again in February on the diet. See you then!

Project 52: Week 6

2011-02-21T22:40:30-06:00

Project 52: Week 5

2011-02-09T00:10:51-06:00

Project 52: Week 4

2011-01-31T00:39:59-06:00

Project 52: Week 3

2011-01-24T13:35:14-06:00

Not sure what I want to do with these posts yet. For now I'll leave you with just the picture.

Project 52: First two weeks

2011-01-17T23:06:22-06:00

I've been reading Planet Debian and noticed David Watson, Michal Čihař and Evgeni Golov are all doing a thing called Project 52. I've been trying to get myself to do something like 365 project for a while now, but I have failed every time I tried to start. Well, one picture a week seems a bit more reasonable to me, so I'm throwing in as well. Here's the first two weeks of pictures. I took them on the weeks I was supposed to, but I just haven't gotten around to posting on the blog yet.

Week 1

Week 2

I'll be posting every week. Should be fun.

January Diet Update

2011-01-09T03:11:00-06:00

It hasn't been a whole month since the last update, but I am going to try to make these updates when I finish a column just to make it easier for me to remember, and so that there is less clutter in my weight log book.

Since the last time that I updated on this, the year has ticked over. Usually, there is nothing that is worse for a diet than the holidays. There are is a lot of food around, and in the office there are lots of candy, cookies and chocolate which are sent around from other companies or brought in from home. It's pretty difficult to maintain in these circumstances. As a bonus, usually you're on the road for the holidays, making it more difficult to exercise or go to the gym. I was strong throughout this time, and only had a breakdown a couple of times. When I did end up eating some sweets or having a bunch of free food, I was careful to keep the calories counted, and either extend my workout or just eat less (which was the more common option, and easier). As a result, I didn't make any major backslides. I also gave me free reign when I was off the reservation so to speak, which made me just enjoy the holidays instead of having to worry about how many calories were in the cookies or the turkey that I was noshing on.

I've still been frequenting the Loseit reddit group, and profiding some advice and encouragement when I feel like I can contribute. Sometimes there are progress pics on there, and I was thinking of adding my own after a year of diet and exercise. Usually I am not too thrilled about the posts that have those in them though. Sometimes there are people who are only trying to lose a few pounds - a guy at 160 or girl at 140 or something, and it is a little annoying to think that they are literally half my weight and they are still not happy with themselves. I'm slightly worried that I will get to my goal weight and just be unhappy with myself still, and continue down. There's no real problem with being lighter than I am and still unhappy, losing half of myself is a multi-year goal. However, there are also the people there that are my weight or more and it increases my feeling of camaraderie there.

This update's 30 day graph looks better than the last few updates by far. I'm getting closer to the one pound per week goal that I want to be at for a minimum. I am guessing that counting my calories with myfitnesspal is making the biggest difference, because I can't kid myself about the calories that are in the food that I end up eating. I'm happy with the amount of green on the chart, but still dismayed at the red lines. I have the excuse of the holidays this month, but it would be nice to have a whole month of green.

Here's my whole year of weight loss. The final weight on December 31 was 296lbs, making me 44 pounds lighter at the end of the year than at the beginning. I'm pretty happy with that progress, and want to have another year with that speed or better. This graph looks great to me though, I would be just as happy if next year's graph looked the same.

Here's this year's budding graph. Progress looks pretty good so far. As new years resolutions go, I'm not really making one for the weight. It should be a lifestyle change and not just for the new year anyway. I am switching up the exercise for 2011 - I've been thinking about weights for a while, and I've decided that I want to work on getting a little more strong while I lose the weight this year. I think it will also be better for two reasons. The first is obviously that I will get stronger. The second is that I will be exercising off less calories on the days that I am doing weight lifting. I've noticed lately that I work off about 700 calories at a time, and that basically amounts to a whole meal's worth of calories. This means that I am really eating more than I should, and if I am going to do less cardio in the future, I will need to get used to eating less. Hopefully I will just be less hungry too.

Are you making any weight loss goals for 2011?

48 hours with the Cr-48

2011-01-03T00:07:46-06:00

About a month ago, I was happy to hear from Google that they were finally going to release their Netbook OS, Chrome OS. They held a press conference to announce it, and invited people to sign up to be lucky and receive a laptop which would be loaded with Chrome OS to try out. I thought that was a pretty awesome deal, so I jumped at the first chance I heard of it, filled out the form with my information, and basically thought that I was still too late, until I got a package that I wasn't expecting from FedEx, and I opened it up to find this:

That's right, whatever magic process that they used to pick the people who were getting these laptops picked me. I was pretty stoked about it, and went about setting it up and playing with it for a few hours right after I got the box. After a couple of days of playing with it, I went back to using my normal laptop for almost all of the things I used my laptop for before, and the Cr-48 is used for guests and is sitting waiting for some movement on a project.

There are plenty of reviews on other sites about the laptop, but I thought I should write about it anyway, since it's a neat thing that happened to me and that is ostensibly what this blog is for anyway. Also, my sister played with it while she was in town and gave me some feedback.

Let's start with the things that I viewed as positive. The OS is basically only a browser, which means that you can do anything you want to on the web about 10 seconds out of the starting gate. I didn't have any trouble connecting to my wireless AP. The keyboard is one of the modern keyboards that you would get on a MacBook or one of the Apple Keyboards that I really enjoy. Lots of people are talking about the keyboard missing a CAPS LOCK key, which I was happy about, because I've replaced that key with a Control on every OS and keyboard that I get my hands on. Really, it's overdue for being replaced with something useful anyway. I don't know that the default replacement of "new tab" is a great replacement because it might be even more jarring to be typing along and hit the key and suddenly be typing in a search bar instead of the field that you were composing your email or comment reply or something in. Another nice touch is that the keycaps have lowercase letters on them instead of the upppercase ones.

The rest of the hardware is a bit sparse. I don't really know what CPU is in it, but there's a SD card slot, one USB slot, and the charger plug. Next to the plug is a little light that is green or amber based on the charging status of the battery. The included battery lasts a long time, even when surfing on wifi I got about six hours out of a full battery, and the battery came half-charged just like a Li-Ion battery should, so I didn't even have to plug it in until late into the first night.

The screen itself is just gorgeous. I want to remove it and put it in my main laptop, because it is matte and bright and I never have any issues reading on it. I am now convinced that I want a matte screen for all of the laptops I have from now on, because there are no glare issues at all, and from what I can tell, colors are still just as bright and colorful as on my normal laptop. I also discovered that it has a light sensor right of the camera, which means that if you're in a darker room, it will automatically turn down the brightness of the LCD so that it's not super bright, or if you go into a lighter room, it turns it up so that the screen stays about the same brightness compared to the surrounding environment. I thought that it was a nice touch - I was worried that the camera was on all the time in order to do this for a while, so I covered up just the camera but that didn't do anything - the sensor is in the black section around the camera just to the right when you're looking from the front.

It's not all roses though. This being a beta test, I am willing to let some things go, but as many others have noted, the touchpad is possibly the most horrible mouse replacement known to man. After changing some settings, it is passable but still not as good as the fairly basic one that is available on any laptop. The whole touchpad is a button, which would be fine with me, except if you try to use it like a normal touchpad, then you want to click in the lower left corner, and if you do this, then you move the pointer before you click. This means a lot of misclicks. The way that I ended up fixing it is turning off the tap to click, and pressing on the pad with the "active" finger then I want to click. It works okay, but the middle click is still tricky because you need to press two fingers down. I just avoid middle clicking on the Cr-48.

The CPU is the other hardware problem. It's not really beefy, and while it keeps up normally, I have some pretty heavy browser use. Just as an example, right now I have 17 tabs open, and it's not uncommon for me to have more than 30 tabs waiting to be read when I am going through my RSS feeds. After about 15 tabs in Chrome OS, there is a noticable lag switching the tabs, and anything with some javascript use will be lagging a bit. This is mostly due to the CPU I am sure.

In terms of software, I decided to try something that should be supported by a Cloud OS: uploading my photos from a SD card that was in my camera to Flickr or Picasa. Unfortunately I discovered rather quickly that while the SD card mounts automatically, you have to trick the browser into letting you use it. The normal file browser, for uploading photos for example, is replaced by a temporary area which is on the hard drive. The browser is a little flaky though, so sometimes I could get the real OS file open browser up. I ended uploading a bunch of pictures to Flickr, but I couldn't get access to the SD card when I was going to upload to Picasa. You definitely need to be able to access that memory card if you want to be able to have a Cloud OS. I hope that some upgrades of the OS in the near future might handle this differently. It also doesn't work that well when you are at an open access wifi spot that requires an agreement clickthrough. You need to login as a guest, then clickthrough the agreement, then log back out so that you can access your normal profile. It doesn't take that long, but it is a couple extra steps.

It's about the perfect loaner laptop for a guest though. I gave it to my sister for use while she was visiting, and she didn't have any issues logging into her google account from the start, and playing with Facebook, updating her status, and messing with some book reading site that she was signing up for. It was javascript-heavy and the pages lagged when there were 100+ books on a page and she was doing something, but I didn't look too much into it. She echoed my concerns about the touchpad, and was pretty insistent on making sure that I actually note all of these things so that I could post them and maybe Google would pay attention. Honestly everything that I've said on here was said before somewhere else.

Overall, I would say that it is a usable netbook, and most people would have no problems getting on the internet. I use it when I'm too lazy to go to the other room when I've left the laptop somewhere else and I'm watching TV, so I can check into miso or tweet about something. I want to cannibalize the screen, because it's damn nice, but otherwise it's a fine netbook. It does have a 5.2GHz 802.11n client on it though, which made it the first 5.2GHz device in my household and tested out that band on the router (it worked fine). One of my projects for this year will be to use this laptop in some of my research, so it will be interesting to see what some of the subjects will think about it when they try to use it.

Big Bang Theory Intro #5: Fern or Tree

2011-01-01T23:30:30-06:00

Let's restart these, shall we? Today it's kind of boring though.

This image is the second in a row that is just tangentially related to history. The source image is in color of course, and it has been put into black and white to make it look like it's from.. about 30,000 BC here. It's of some random tree in a jungle somewhere, honestly the original is a lot easier to see what it is.

Because we're talking about prehistory here, the producers were probably trying to refer to prehistoric ferns or plantlife. Paleobotany is the study of plant remains in fossils. I remember finding some of these in parks when I was a child - they seem to be some of the most common type of fossil laying around when you're on a school fieldtrip. It would be pretty easy to find some of these ferns around my neck of the woods right during the lava from the last scene. Of course these fossils are pretty important to figuring out that evolution actually happens, since it takes thousands of years in the best cases.

December Diet Update

2010-12-11T15:17:24-06:00

This month I have gotten back on track in terms of actual metrics. Keeping on track is making a difference. Last month I was trying to find a community to keep me motivated and to share my experiences with, and I think that I might have found something similar, I've started following the people in the loseit reddit group. There are a lot of people there who are also trying to lose weight for good, and while there are a lot of before and after pics, there are also a lot of people who are seeking advice about dieting and exercise, without focusing too much on the exercise and with just some sensible advice for dieting. Along with that there are some other nifty things like a spreadsheet tracking the weight loss of everyone. I think it has been a good thing so far.

There are a couple of changes that I've made in my diet the last month. First, I've started counting my calories more closely, owing mostly to the fact that I carry my Android phone with me all the time, and I have signed up with the myfitnesspal app. We're getting very close to the proverbial eat watch which is postulated by The Hacker's Diet. I put all of my exercise and food into the application, estimating when necessary, and it gives me a number of calories over or under the target. Based on that, I can tell whether I can eat a snack at night or not. I use the estimates from the treadmill, which is where most of my exercise is coming from nowadays. The second more recent change is to cut out all of the soda that I've had. This change was more recent, but I think it has caused the change that you'll see in the last couple days. I've switched to coffee for my caffeine intake, but I only really have one large cup a day. I think that the reduction of sodium from my diet might make a big difference.

According to the graphs, I'm accelerating my weight loss. Weekly loss is the highest over any 30 day period since I've started blogging here. After the basically zero progress for the last two updates, it's really encouraging. I also think that I am solidly below the 300 pound mark now. Also the precipitous drop at the end of this month is also great, but of course I don't expect to keep the rate of >1lb per day up.

This month also looks really good on the yearly graph. And the weekly loss over the year is up as well of course. Reading a lot into both of the graphs, you can kindof see a weekly repeating raise over the trend line. It's probably one of my days off.

Exercise hasn't been too bad - I'm still doing almost all of my workouts on the treadmill. For entertainment, I've started watching the UK Top Gear, as well as watching the US Top Gear as it comes out. The UK version is much more entertaining. I've increased the intensity of the workouts recently by raising the incline to 8. I don't know what 8 means, but it's a lot more difficult in the hill sections of the workout. Diana and I have also started with classes on dancing from the Arthur Murray school. It's been really fun to do, as well as being some good exercise while practicing and during the lessons. I've been a bit worried about my sweat issues while doing the lessons, but I have some handkerchiefs now that will help me keep the wetness to a minimum.

Goals for this month are to make sure that I keep sure I don't have any diet soda for a while, and also keep tracking all of my calories. If I can keep up that, I believe that I will stay on the slow, steady progress. Hopefully I'll have more good news in my 2010 roundup which will probably come sometime early in January where I will be mostly looking forward.

November Diet Update

2010-11-20T18:37:37-06:00

It's time for yet another update on my progress in losing a bunch of pounds off my hulking frame. This month I have been frustrated at the progress just like last month. I have been seeking some motivation in the form of a community for a while now. I've looked at SparkPeople and Traineo as well as places like dailyburn and dailymile. They were all places which were useful for recording what types of exercise I did and following along a bit more. Some of the later ones like dailyburn and dailymile are more like "twitter for exercise", which were better but not very good because I don't know anyone local who is exercising, and also I am usually exercising alone.

Sometimes I wonder why I exercise alone. My usual excuse is that I don't know anyone who exercises in the same way that I do. Actually I fear that it's because I'm not as good as others at exercise. I'm a quite large guy, so that means that it doesn't take as much to get my heart rate into the fat burning, or aerobic range. Usually just a brisk walk will get me into it, although I've been told that I walk at faster than most (usually 4 miles an hour). Sometimes I wonder if I had an exercise buddy, if I would do better. The problem now is that I have worked into my exercise a number of solitary activities. like listening to podcasts and watching television or anime. Even if I had a partner to do exercise with, I feel like I would just be exercising alongside them, not really as a group activity.

Anyway, let's look at the progress over the last month, shall we?

This month I really got into the stagnation as you can see. In the last month I've actually GAINED almost a quarter of a pound on average. It looks like a rollercoaster but it felt like a bad time every time I was weighing myself. Part of me wants to let myelf off for this month, because during a good part of it, I was on vacation and totally skipping my exercise, but it means that even if I just give up on exercise and stop watching my diet as closely as I am, then I am going to be gaining all of the weight back. I was hoping that at some point, my body would adjust to the changes and I would naturally want to eat fewer calories. I'm not going to be happy if I can't make some permanent progress.

The yearly graph looks better, but it now looks much worse at the end of course. More red at the end means that I should work even more at my exercise. This month I'm going to keep track of my calories as well, trying to maintain the calories in / out deficit that has worked well for me in the past. I really want to go below that elusive 300 mark. Seeing the first digit of the scale change would be a big motivator for me.

I'm also thinking of switching up some of my exercise for the winter months, because of course I won't be able to work outside anymore. There is a exercise room in my complex, which I used when I was exercising and it was raining outside or when there was something that prevented me from exercising until it was some ungodly hour and didn't want to go outside. I don't want to exercise in the snow, although it might be a bit of fun. Maybe I'll try it once or twice. Does anyone else exercise in the winter? What gear would I actually need?

The new Macbook Air and my alternative

2010-11-03T22:12:48-05:00

I was actively avoiding watching the "Back to the Mac" event that happened recently, because I usually end up being non-productive when it is going around. Apparently that was a good thing, because the event was super long and was boring for me until the end part. I'm not interested in the Lion stuff because I don't run OS X anymore - and I didn't run it even when my MacBook was working. At the end there was some new hardware though, which was very interesting to me.

New Macbook Air line is very interesting because usually Apple has excellent build quality. On the face of it, they are netbooks which are built by Apple. 11 inches and 13 inches, with a SSD hard drive but otherwise normal hardware for a netbook of that size, including a Core 2 Duo processor. Camera and USB ports, but as a trusty netbook it has no DVD drive, and only USB ports. They are super light, starting at 2.3 lbs. These are all great things, but they are basic things that you would get in any mid-range netbook. Unibody design is a little less common, most of the netbooks are made of plastic now.

It's not all rainbows and lollypops though. The battery is sealed in the compartment, not user replacable. This might not be such a downside nowadays, since most users won't be replacing the battery anyway and the previous iteration of Apple laptops didn't have replacable batteries either. It's still nice to have the option though, and all of the other netbook manufacturers seem to have figured out how to make the removable battery work. Also, because the SSD isn't in the shape of a normal hard drive (in order to save space, Apple says), you can't replace it with something larger on a whim, but you will need to purchase special parts which will of course be more expensive than the normal SSD cost when the price goes down (and it is heading down in that direction quickly). Then of course there is the Apple tax on hardware, meaning that you will pay at a minimum $1000 for the cheapest 11" model, and more for the larger. That kills the whole thing for me. I understand that Apple needs to differentiate and doesn't want to cannibalize from it's $500 iPad, but it is just too expensive, and I'll tell you just how I know that.

I bought the perfect netbook which rivals and surpasses the new Macbook Air, and I did it almost half a year ago. I bought an ASUS UL30VT-A1, which is a 13.3" netbook. My modified version has specs to rival the Macbook Air:

Thing	UL30VT-A1	Macbook Air
Screen Size	13.3"	13.3"
Processor	Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz	Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz
Hard Drive	128GB SSD	128GB SSD
RAM	4GB	2GB
Weight	< 3.7 pounds	2.9 pounds
USB Ports	3	2
Graphics	NVidia G210M + Intel GMA 4500MHD (switchable)	NVidia 320M
Battery Life	11 hours	7 hours
Total Price	$1035 ($706 + $329)	$1299

It's a little hard to believe that I bought this computer five months ago, and it beats or matches the Macbook Air in all of the categories except for the processor and the weight. It came in at $200 less total cost, and I have an extra 500GB 2.5" drive sitting around that's nice and useful with a cheap enclosure. The UL30VT also has a HDMI out and a VGA out instead of one of those idiotic mini displayport connectors that noone except for Apple uses. With the VGA and HDMI I can connect it to any presentation system on the planet without needing to remember an adapter at all. The double memory is also very nice. I don't mind the less than a pound of extra weight. The processor is not as big of a deal as you would think, usually you aren't processor bound when you're using your computer, you're memory bound or disk bound. I don't know the specs on the SSD that Apple has included, but the one that I have in my laptop is a performance one and it lets me go from totally off to a graphical login in about 15 seconds, including the 5 second wait at GRUB for it to timeout. It also came with a copy of Windows but I'm not using that of course and just running Debian on the thing. I can vouch for the 11 hours of claimed battery life, as I've gotten about that amount while off of a battery and actually working on the machine. You can't be recompiling a kernel or anything, but if you dim the screen and aren't too crazy with the processor I easily get 11 hours out of the thing. It has a long enough battery life that unless I'm leaving for a very long time, I don't even put it to sleep, just opting to close the lid - even if it's not plugged in. Oh, and it has a removable battery so if I wanted to be off the grid for a whole day I could easily just get another one to swap out.

Everyone is raving about how fast it boots and how fast programs run, but I've been having that experience for about half a year now and while I can say yes it is a great experience it is definitely easy to get with a PC that you can get for a cheap. I would recommend the option that I took to anyone - the machine that I ended up getting is great for everything that I have wanted to do on it, including games and flash video, 1080p videos from disk and even simulations I've ran for my thesis work.

October Diet Update

2010-11-01T23:48:45-05:00

Okay, so this is a little late. Almost a month late actually. I figured that I should get it out before I have to make the next month's post and explain the mysterious missing section of my logging. Last month I was struggling to have the weight come off, stagnating on the scale even though I was working just as hard. I'm happy to say that that trend has continued to some extent. I'm still doing exercise, but I am moving it around some more, doing it in the mornings and sometimes in the evenings depending on when I get time. Morning is what I did mostly in September, which was a lot easier because the evenings are free more often.

Football has started, which means that I have a good workout time for Sunday, or Monday, or Thursday, depending on what day of the week the Vikings play. Usually I make it an "endurance" day, meaning that I try to walk for an hour and a half at least, at a lower pace. It works out well because I am actually burning more calories (according to the machine) and I get to watch more of the game without having to bother Diana. If I only cared more about some of the other games, I would have a structured time three times a week instead of just one. I really don't care about other teams' football though, so while sometimes I will watch the Sunday game and exercise if the Vikings play on Monday or Thursday, I won't watch the Monday or Thursday games without my favorite team.

Outside was really nice in September. There were a lot of beautiful trees with leaves falling down and turning colors all over the neighborhood. I didn't vary my route that much and I still got to see a nice progression of the fall colors in because of the differing types of trees while I walk. Entertainment was usually audiobooks again. I started and finished listening to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and started The Girl Who Played With Fire. I got a little bored with it, and started to lean on the podcasts some more.

Let's take a look at the graphs, shall we?

PhysicsDiet.com is working again, which is great news, because I don't need to figure out another way to get these graphs. This graph really is what amplifies my frustration. The loss of less than a quarter pound a week is about a fourth of the weight loss that I'm hoping for. There is a lot of red meaning I was over my trend weight, essentially gaining points on those days. Strings of three above the line are not what I am aiming for. At least the linear trend line is still going in a downward direction.

This graph is my savior. It shows that even after a significant plateau, I can continue on the exercise and make progress again. You might notice that April looks disturbingly similar to September. In fact now that I am looking for it, you can see somewhat similar trends right before April and right before September as well. It's promising.

There are a bunch of breaks in October, including a trip to Portland where I wasn't exercising or tracking my weight, and probably some time around that. The next post in this series will only be in about a week though, since this one is so late.

September Diet Update

2010-09-08T11:15:50-05:00

My slow decline into a smaller me is continuing nicely. I've been exercising five times a week, skipping usually thursdays and sundays. Sundays are nice because I can spend more time with Diana on the weekend, and Thursday is good because of the free tourney I run online every week. I don't know how I would exercise otherwise. Because it's the summer, I'm taking more time outside lately, which is improving my morale, even if I do end up taking the same route every day there is enough variation just because it's a living, breathing environment than otherwise. I still end up doing at least a couple days a week inside though - some days it's just too late to walk outside, and I'm just not that comfortable with the neighborhood even though it is a very low crime area. Usually when I am inside I am walking on the treadmill so it is basically the same exercise though. I have been thinking of splitting inside workouts between a couple of the machines lately - 30 minutes walking on the treadmill and 30 minutes on the crosstrainer, etc. I used to do the crosstrainer regularly and was fairly proud of it because it seems like it kills a lot of people but I seem to have the endurance to just tough it out.

I'm still having issues with sweating a lot. Doing the walks outside has helped a bit, because it evaporates some more than when I'm on the treadmill. I still have to hang my shirts before putting them in the hamper, lest the sweat infect the other clothes with it's smellyness and wetness. I was hoping that when I got into the exercise routine that something would change in order to reduce the sweating but it hasn't happened. I have a sweatband, but I forget to wear it a lot and the sweat gets in my eyes.

What I do to keep me entertained has shifted a little bit. Originally in my workouts I was listening to podcasts, and then I shifted to watching anime on the flat screens in the exercise room, and from there I ended up alternating between watching TV on my phone and listening to podcasts again. Then I got into reading and started listening to audiobooks, which I have been enjoying a lot lately. In the last two months, I ended up listening through all of the Dresden Files, from the first to the latest book, and now I am most of the way through Daemon. Audiobooks have a lot of advantages, it's pretty easy to follow along with the fiction books and I can also continue listening to them on my commute if I want to. I joined Audible briefly but decided it wasn't worth the money when I could just get these books from the library.

On to the charts:

The monthly chart shows my progress getting a little better this month, although the weekly loss is still at a single pound per week. I'd like to work on that so that I can get it up to two pounds a week which is a little faster and will get me to my goal quicker. I've been trying harder to stick to a pretty low calorie diet lately, which has been working as you can see quite well at the end of the month. I'm getting pretty close to my original goal of being under three bills, so I will have to set myself a new goal soon in order to keep me on this path.

I also have been having a problem ignoring the daily weigh-ins, being sad when I am for example suddenly three or four pounds heavier when I weigh in. It has an interesting effect on my mood, keeping me vigilant of my diet - that could be a good or a bad thing though. I've been trying to keep my progress on a website called Dailymile as well, but lately I have not been adding my workouts there, because I don't seem to have anyone that I know in real life, and also the people who are on there seem to be more of a fitness crowd instead of a weight loss crowd.

This is the graph that makes me want to keep going. Seeing the weight just go down, down, down is really strengthening. I just need to keep going and soon enough I will be a much healthier and smaller person.

Magical, Revolutionary, Evolutionary, Upgrade

2010-07-20T00:30:26-05:00

Lately I've been thinking about getting a new smartphone, so I went to survey the landscape. I'm keeping track of the Android phones and of course it's impossible to ignore the iPhone 4 as a contender in the Arena. Apparently the difference between holding these phones in your hand and seeing them on a video is considerable, so I decided to take a look when I had some time to kill at a local mall which has both Apple and T-Mobile stores. I had already decided to look at the iPhone 4 because it has the retina display which is far and above better than everything else. The other phone I went out of my way to get 3-5 real-world minutes with was the Samsung Galaxy S series, specifically in this case the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant.

Let me give some perspective on the whole "review" angle here, because I think that a history with smartphones and phones in general might tint the experience a bit. I was late to the cellphone game by my normal early-adopter standards, getting one when I first moved to the Twin Cities in 2002. My first cellphone was a Nokia brick which I could basically run a truck over and have no trouble with. After a few years, I was getting a bit more advanced, I got a Samsung SGH-509 which was my first camera phone. It was super thin which I was happy about.. people were commenting on the thinness of it a decent amount. I think I had another phone in between but it was just a basic flip phone from AT&T. I went from my super thin phone to a G1 when it came around, my first jump into the smartphone area. That was 2 years ago (actually a little bit longer now) and now I am up for a renewal of my contract, which means some serious subsidies on a phone.

I picked up the iPhone first, and it was immediately awkward in my hand. It felt about as thin as my SGH was, which is pretty damn thin. I know it isn't because the specs don't match up, but the G1 is a weighty phone in your hand, you really cup it. I have also been told I have reasonably sized hands, so maybe bigger phones are just for me. The other thing I noticed was that it was all glassy. I usually don't like glassy, because I do tend to drop my phone about once a week. My G1 has held up admirably to the drops, landing mostly on it's back but sometimes on the screen. I've seen some horror pictures of the glass on the new iPhone breaking but wanted to hold judgement. It may hold up to more abuse than it feels. I took a look at the screen, and it might just be because I am nearsighted, but I didn't really see an immediate difference from the G1 that I am currently using. I went to the browser and zoomed in a bit just to see a smooth curve or something.. then I zoomed out and I kindof saw what people were talking about with the higher resolution, but it wasn't immediately like "wow this will make my life better". I'm also a guy who likes to code with Profont 9pt on a 1600x1200 or better screen, with coworkers regularly coming by and asking how I can even read the code that I'm writing, so it's not like I don't like me some high density display. It just wasn't something that I was going to drop $200 on. On top of these, though, I can't seriously consider the iPhone 4. It's not because of AT&T (which is atrocious here) or because I'm an Android fan, but because if I'm going to buy an phone that's practically a computer, I want to be able to program stuff for it, and the last Apple computer in my house got sold a month ago when it broke down.

So I walked around the corner (no really, the stores are about 50 feet apart) and picked up the Samsung Vibrant. It was much weightier in my hand, but it is still thin. It wasn't as much hefty and large in my hand as it was just weird to hold the phone with the crazy security device that they had on it. I'll give something to the Apple store, their security straps really don't get in the way of you checking out the phone. The iPhones were held down with a small, silver sticker thingy on the back. All the phones in the T-Mobile store had the old stand-type security devices, meaning that if you want to hold it, you have a 1.5" pipe sticking out the back of the phone. Not exactly the best way to see if it's the right size for your hand. I wasn't serious enough in my designs to ask a clerk if I could hold one without a security thingy on it. It still seemed large. The other thing about this security device thing was that it made it seriously hard to find the hold / on button on the phone. It's on the side, in a not so bad place actually because you could activate it with one hand and still be able to swipe your pattern in, but it was almost covered by the security thingy.

Enough complaining about the phone display quality. The Vibrant itself was quite snappy. Faster than my G1 by far, and the screen was bigger, but it doesn't seem to be the same increase in resolution as size. I browsed to some of the same sites on the Android browser and did the multitouch zoom to the same curve as the iPhone 4, and it looked just as curvy as I had seen just minutes prior. The Vibrant display was more... well.. vibrant as well, it seemed like the colors were brighter and the backlight a bit brighter. It wasn't any easier to read, mind you, just brighter. I'd probably turn it down in real life to save battery. It looked a lot like an iPhone 3, with a curved back and a nice big screen covering everything. It's a good style, and I like it possibly more than the iPhone 4's solid lines and such because it makes it easier to cup it in the hand. There was one big turnoff for me about the Vibrant though, and it was the useless tinkering that Samsung did with the launcher / home screen thing. It wasn't overbearing or anything but it was obviously different. The most jarring was the browser, which had a new "home screen" which I wasn't pleased with, and the browser was renamed "Web" which I have nitpicks about. Anyway it was a good phone, but it was also above $100 (there's a deal for $150 that I know about) and I wasn't ready to drop that kind of cash for what amounted to an upgrade.

That's the deal with these phones now. The jump for me from a Nokia brick phone in 2002, to a flip phone in 2004, to a cameraphone in 2006 were just small steps in cell phones for me. Each phone had just a small difference that was completely approachable compared to the previous one. This one is easier to carry. This one has a camera. This one is thinner. They were all basically the same device though, a phone. The switch from a cameraphone to the G1 was such a change in how I conduct daily life it isn't even comparable. It was a revolutionary change in my computing style. I carry a single device that handles my email, music, reading, todo lists, and on-the-go browsing. It's a small computer, and that's the problem with the new phones I was looking at. It's just an upgrade from what I have already. Switching to an iPhone 4 now is not going to change my life again, even if it has a screen with 300 dpi. Switching to a Vibrant now isn't going to change my life again, even if it is two times as fast. Those changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary. An upgrade is much less appealing.

Eventually my G1 will stop being upgradeable. (I'm currently running the 2.2 software on it, and it's pretty snappy) Or maybe I'll drop it and it will actually be broken one of these days. Then I'll buy a new phone. Until then, I'll continue having a great experience with a truly revolutionary phone, at least for me.

Losing some pounds

2010-07-07T19:10:36-05:00

I've been classified as "overweight" for most of my adult life, and people who follow my blogs very closely may remember that I was on a diet for a while called the Hacker's Diet, using a running average. The diet focused on caloric intake, trying to figure out your basal metabolism based on counting calories and weighing yourself daily, using a running average to determine the calorie surplus or deficit, so you could make decisions to change your intake accordingly.

I had an issue with the program, because I like to go out to eat with my lovely wife fairly frequently. This means that I am constantly trying to calculate the calories in meals, constantly overestimating or underestimating. Fast food is generally okay, because as a company gets larger in size more people will start asking for the nutritional facts. Of course marriage actually adds a lot more problems with the scheme because Diana likes to cook (and she cooks delicious meals), and those also don't usually come with calorie content.

It wasn't working out, so I ended up basically quitting after a while, because of the frustration with both the calorie counting, and I didn't have an accurate scale. A scale that you can depend on across the weighings is very important. Luckily I fixed the second part of the equation. I still haven't figured out how to fix the first part, so I ended up giving up and modifying the diet.

My current plan is reliant on the weighing system, but doesn't deal with the calorie counting. So I weigh myself every day, and keep track of the average just like on the original diet. Additionally, I'm adding an exercise component, in order to burn more calories off and make sure that I am calorie negative. Of course, exercise has other benefits beyond just burning calories. Getting out of the house and walking around helps me with listening to the podcasts that I want to, as well as some audiobooks.

I started the exercise at the beginning of the year, exercising on the treadmill and on the crosstrainer in the newly installed exercise room in the apartment complex. My normal schedule was an hour five days a week, with a break day Thursdays and Sundays. That was great and helped with my determination by having the days off. Everything was working for a while, but I think I started unconsciously eating more calories, compensating for the exercise, and I started to see stagnation. To give my diet a kick, I started watching my intake as well, and that seemed to have the intended effect.

From the last month:

So just like the last time, I am using the tracking tools on physicsdiet.com to generate pretty graphs and give me the trend lines. Actually, I'm keeping track of my weight daily in a Field Notes memo book that I got on special and which is about the perfect size to keep right next to the scale, and then I transcribe them to the website about once a month. You can see here the time where I was stagnating at the beginning of June, and when I started watching my intake where the trend line starts going down more smoothly.

Entirety of the diet:

Here the stagnation is a lot more apparent. I was still making progress, but it was much slower from mid-April to the start of June. Overall though I like this rate of weight loss. One pound a week is what most people would call sustainable weight loss. My short-term goal is to be below 300 pounds, which looks like it will occur this year. I don't know what the long term goal is yet. I'm hoping to make a post about once a month, if only to keep myself reevaluating myself.

Cullect.com: Part 2 - Skitzophrenia

2010-02-18T01:40:29-06:00

I recently praised Cullect.com for being a pioneer in the feed reader arena. The Importance metric made sure that you were reading things that were interesting to read. It all but eliminated the 'tl;dr' syndrome for me. Unfortunately, it was not always rainbows and lollipops with Cullect.

Cullect was very focused around sharing your list. It had a number of options for sharing to services like twitter, del.icio.us, facebook, whatever you could think of. That is fine for sharing individual items, but the real gain would come from sharing a whole list. You see the importance rank can work for you: it will make the best items from all time come to the top. In this way, you put Cullect to work as a curation tool, hiding things that are irrelevant, and recommending items that you would like more of. As a bonus, you can have multiple people who are curating a list, recommending and hiding items as they see fit.

Now we get to the skitzophrenia though, because a list couldn't serve two purposes at once. If you have a reading list, you would hide items as soon as you had read them, because you've already seen the information. Even if it's the most important item tomorrow, you won't want to read it again. If you're curating a list however, you never want to hide the most important items, making it a pain to skip past the ones that you've read every time. Even on the most active topics, the most important items are static for hours or days. If I'm curating a list, I always switch to the latest feed, so that I can look at the newest items and bump them up by recommending them if they are good. Multiple curators make this an issue though, because my fellow curators may hide items that I could recommend.

You have two tools: a great reader that you can just sit down at and read for 10 minutes and know you're reading new, interesting, "important" things, and a excellent tool for showing the best content in a particular area. You can't have your cake and eat it too though, which might be a feature that could push it over the top. You can fix this by splitting the "read" and "hidden" flags in the database, so that curators can choose between the "important and not read" view and the "important all time" view. You might even extend the concept to allow a user to decide how to time-limit the importance view. This type of time-limiting is a powerful tool - you could build feeds that only show a single item from each day (or week.. or month), just the one that is most important.

This "concept problem" has been bouncing around in my head for a while now, but it's still not fully formed for some weird reason. It could indicate that I'm just not seeing the forest for the trees, or that I'm getting a little too hazy on the problem because there is so much which was done right with Cullect.

Next, I'll talk about a feature that I've been wanting for a while in any reader, that seems like a slam dunk for Cullect.

Cullect.com: Part 1 - Importance (and Google's Magic)

2010-02-11T00:40:47-06:00

This is a series of posts that I've been meaning to write about the site Cullect.com, which is currently on "extended hiatus". For those of you that don't know about cullect, it was an interesting beast of a website developed by Garrick Van Buren, a local developer. It was plagued by downtime near the end of it's life, and I think it was right to take it down for a while and work on it. Garrick may have abandoned it for now, but I'd like to explain some of it's features, because they are innovations which I wish I would see more of the aggregators take a look at. It was one of the few feed readers out there which had some real innovation under it's hood, and I was thrilled to be using it.

The first of these features, and the one which was most visible and that I want the most, was the way that it made reading a lot of feeds a trivial task. This was because it included a recommendation system that would rank the stories that you hadn't hidden (which is somewhat, but not exactly analagous to "read", a topic I'll take on in a later post). It used the fact that you liked some feeds better than others to put those at the top. I don't know the whole algorithm, but there was a hidden social aspect as well - if some other people "recommended" the story, then it would get more importance. This was brilliant, because you could spend ANY amount of time looking through your feeds, sorted by importance, and be sure that you weren't missing the big story of the day. When you got bored with the stories, you would just leave, knowing that you wouldn't be missing anything that was more important.

Some other aggregators would like you to think that they have something similar, sorting by something like times recommended, or amount of comments, or votes, but they are not the same. Importance score was tailored to each post, and to each Cullection (a set of feeds). This made it personalized to you, and presented the things that YOU wanted the most. Unfortunately, I think that one of the reasons Cullect ended up shutting down was because recalculating all of the importance scores was very CPU consuming, and it was taking too many resources.

Since the takedown of Cullect, I've been using Google reader as a passable replacement. Recently (as in, like the last year?) they added a bunch of new features, including "liking" a story, sharing stories with friends (another thing which Cullect excelled at), and "Sort by magic". It's not exactly the same as sorting by Importance I am sure, but it is the most likely the closest thing out there. It seems to have a little more in common with the "popularity" indices that other aggregators are using, but I was happy to see something at lease somewhat similar show up in the reader that I ended up using as a replacement. Still, I hope that Cullect can come back in some form in the future, as it was hands down the best reader that I had ever used. That's not to say that there weren't problems with the site, though. I'll cover some of it's disconnects in part 2.

Garrick is still making cool new properties. I'm using kernest on this site to get fonts that I like out to every modern browser with little effort.

Random thoughts on the iPad

2010-02-01T01:11:53-06:00

If there is one thing that has caused quite the stir, it's the announcement of the iPad last Wednesday. Everyone seems to have an opinion, and of course I have mine as well. Apple fans are saying that it will change the paradigm of computing, including splitting people into two worlds. There are of course a lot of grey areas here. People are tying major issues to the lack of flash, which isn't really a big deal if you ask me. Eventually Flash was bound to fall, because it's a closed system at it's core. You can make some Flash things without Adobe, but they can always change the game on you. Of course, the Apple App store is just as closed as Flash. You can't put anything on the iPad without the magic bits from Apple saying that it's kosher. There are already a bunch of invalid reasons that they have for rejecting apps, including the very anti-competitive practices of rejecting anything which will be competing against their own apps. Will they reject word processors for the iPad which compete with iWork? How close does something need to be in order to be rejected - will OmniGraffle's outline making tools be too close?

Because I love the iPad, it's such a great piece of tech. I can even buy into the "new world" of non-multitasking (noone really multitasks anyway) and non-filesystem world. I can see building apps for it, but I don't want to work in the closed system which is the Apple universe, where everything is gatekeepered by a process which has been opaque at best. It's all of the arguments against the iPhone's development model, except on a larger scale. There were companies who wanted to develop software for the iPhone that were niche apps - things like warehouse inventory systems. The iPad is larger, it's about the perfect size to walk around with and read stuff off of. 10 hours of battery life means it lasts through the whole workday.

Of course, there is a back door into most of the new apps - the web browser. The best part of this may be that you can use it perfectly as a portal to a web app that can build you anything you need. Apple may be getting what they wanted at the start for the iPhone with the iPad. We all remember the few months before there was an SDK when the party line was that you could do everything with web apps? It's much more likely with a nine inch screen and a blazing fast browsing experience. Web apps are also the end-around of all the restrictions that Apple places on their "approved" apps. You want a picture of an iPhone in there? It's just a GIF. Want to put some "adult" content in? HTML5 video to the rescue! The only thing you can't do is background processing, but you can't even do that with real apps. There's no API bugs to work around. It's not exactly the same as a real app for low-latency things like gaming.

At any rate, I'm still going to develop web apps, and I think that the iPad will be the kick in the pants that the industry needs to make a decent tablet. Android phones are getting better, and accelerating, in large part because the iPhone changed the smartphone ecology forever. If the iPad does the same to the tablet market, it will be a very exciting future.

Kauai - Day 1

2009-12-17T15:03:26-06:00

Well, we have finally tied the knot, and now we are on our honeymoon. It feels great to be here at all. The first day was of course mostly taken up by flying from place to place, on our way here, and then taking the hour long drive to the condo. I'm going to call that Day 0 because it doesn't really involve anything other than travelling. We checked out the internet (cable modem, not bad) and went to sleep after finding some groceries which were quite expensive. After a pleasant sleep in the condo, we were happy to wake up to a beautiful view:

The ocean extended out into the horizon, and we sat on the patio (lanai) to eat breakfast which today was cereal with milk. It is quite relaxing and especially knowing that I didn't have anything really planned for the day. We decided to make this a little excursion day, finding the nearest large-ish town and looking around. We drove down to Hanalei which is the nearest town of any size. The road down is pretty steep and includes a one-lane bridge, saying something about how many people are around here often. It is obviously one of the less-populated islands. Hanalei itself is a fairly small town which borders a very large beach. I would estimate that it is about the same size as Pella, Iowa.. maybe a little larger. It's hard to gauge because it is very spread out along the beach. We stopped for some lunch and looked around the shops for a while. Then I bought some sunglasses because I lose every pair that I own after a max of a week.

Afterwards we decided to explore the small condo complex that we are staying in. The pool was found, and is open from 7am-7pm. The hours are a little strange, but it is not lighted, so I guess it is better for the night to be swim-less and also accident-less. I had heard about Sealodge Beach that is near the complex, accessible by trail and wanted to go down there. The trail was marked with a sign saying that it was steep, slippery, and dangerous. Thinking it was only to ward off liability, we started down the trail, which was immediately quite steep. There was then a little creek and then a steep hill that we went both up and down the other side. It was really like hiking through the jungle. The path was quite beaten though so it was well-travelled at least. After the hill we came to the ocean, where the coast is covered with huge porous lava rocks. At this point we either took the wrong way, or the trail got a lot more treacherous. It was very narrow and right along the dropoff which was rocky. People with little hiking skill shouldn't really take the course. I didn't realize until later how scary it was for Diana, and now I wish we hadn't gone farther than the first view of the ocean which was spectacular and much less scary. When we finally could see the beach, we found our way to the end of the trail which was a quite large drop (>4 feet) before the beach was accessible. I think we either didn't see the right path, or we were supposed to take some other way down the rocks. In any case, we didn't have the right footwear for this hike - we were both wearing our sandals at the time. I think that Di got some good pictures of the hike before it got to the scary part. We went back to the scenic look of the ocean and relaxed a while, and then again back to the condo from there with some rests. We warned a couple off the trail who was also wearing sandals on the way down, and told another of how it got much harder down the way. I also lost my newly-purchased sunglasses somewhere on the way back up, setting a new record of about 2 hours from buy to lose. I'll need to buy another pair. I'm still thinking of trying to make it there again. Knowing the way makes it a bit less scary, because you know that you can get there. I don't think I can convince Diana to let me head down there though, she was very scared for our safety near the rocks.

After the hike to the beach, we relaxed for a little while and then decided to head for some dinner. We drove again to Hanalei and spotted a pizza place called Tiki Man Pizza. The wait was a bit long, there were apparently some large orders (the man mentioned something like 8 pizzas for one group) but it was worth it. We had a pork pizza with pineapple and extra cheese. It was some of the best pizza I've had in a long time. The sauce had just a little sweet barbeque in it, which gave it a nice taste. There was music at the bar next door as well, but it took a turn for the "frat boy" as Di put it, so we decided to go to another place for dessert and drinks. We ended up heading to Bar Acuda which had an interesting atmosphere which seemed a bit more high-class. We had some cocktails and wine and a nice dessert chocolate ice cream.

It being about 2am our time at this point, we headed back to the condo. It started to sprinkle a little bit and we walked out on the lawn to see the Kilauea Lighthouse flashing it's warning to boats (although we have seen exactly zero boats in the water off the coast so far). The rain didn't come in the condo so we just left the windows open even though it could get a bit cold at night as we found out our first night. Anyway that was Day 1. We're headed to the lighthouse again today I think, and maybe to the beach to try some snorkeling and swimming, and relaxing.

Check out Diana's Post for Day 1

Big Bang Theory Intro #4: Lava Erupting

2009-07-30T02:26:49-05:00

Today we come upon our first picture in the montage which doesn't have a lifeform in it. It's lava! Dynamic! BOOM! Eruption!

This particular image is kindof hard to make out in the black and white which it was modified into to make it look old. The original is a little easier to see the actual lava which is flowing from an eruption happening in the center to another pool of lava rock.

There are four different types of lava, which are based on the chemical composition of the lava itself, but that correlates with the temperature. It is of course, extremely hot, with the coolest form of lava being at least 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. A lot of the lava which is in the US is in Hawaii - it would be nifty to see some of it, but hopefully not the quick flowing kind. We're heading there on our honeymoon later this year, so it's a possibility. One of the things that has always fascinated me is Pillow lava, which is when lava is extruded under water and instantly cools and solidifies partially. It also looks really cool. I found out that it is also used as a way-up criterion because of the way it is formed with the ridges normally on the top.

Big Bang Theory Intro #3: Radiolaria

2009-07-23T01:19:53-05:00

Travelling through time in the Big Bang Theory opening barrage of pictures, we are only on the third of the total 110 pictures in the visual collage. It's going to get a little more interesting after this, but this one seems more interesting than the last two. Feast your eyes:

This is a microscopic picture of Radiolaria. Again the image comes from Jupiter Images. They represent a species which has been around for a very long time, since the Cambrian period, so basically 500 MILLION years ago. Because they have been around for so long, but not forever, finding fossils of the Radiolaria are important for dating things.

Radiolaria were popular with amateur scientists in the victorian era thanks to some elaborate drawings that are now part of wikimedia commons. Some of these cellular organisms can become very complex and beautiful. They are still inspiring artists today, as seen on the art page at Radiolaria.org.

Wonderful.

Big Bang Theory Intro #2: Magnified Roundworms

2009-07-15T03:13:39-05:00

We continue our jaunt through the microscopic world from Onions to some higher lifeforms. This time we are still seeing mitosis:

The image in question comes from Jupiter Images stock photography, and is labelled as "Ascaris bivalent mitosis magnified 200x". Ascaris is a roundworm, which can infect pigs or humans. It lives in the small intestines and produces lots of eggs. This reminds me of an episode of the Soup where they had some stupid reality show doctor clip about getting tapeworms because of bad sanitation, which is where you would get these. Ascaris lumbricoides is the most common worm infection, affecting more than a billion people.

Just one more reason for me to wash my hands.

Big Bang Theory Intro #1: Onion Mitosis

2009-06-18T03:12:28-05:00

The first picture in the Big Bang Theory Opening after the initial 3D universe expanding is very recognizable by lots of people, even though they might not know what it actually is:

This is an image of mitosis - specifically, the Anaphase of mitosis. You can see what I am pretty sure is the original stock image here - the one on screen is monochromed and rotated. Mitosis is what makes life possible - without cells splitting to create new cells, we would not have any life at all. In single cell organisms, it is the entire reproductive process. In this way, I think it's a pretty good image to start it all out with. This specific image is probably of onion tip mitosis, which produces cells which look pretty much exactly like this. You can tell it's a plant because there are some really nicely defined cell walls there.

This is the first in a (hopefully) long series of posts in which I am attempting to identify all of the pictures in the opening credits of The Big Bang Theory. I've done some minor searching on the web for something of this nature but haven't found anything, and I'm always wondering what the heck all of those pictures flying by in the second half of the intro are actually. I've decided to start at the beginning, mostly because the pictures will be easier to identify.

About

2008-05-07T18:01:58-05:00

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

Invisible Sharding and MTGO

2008-02-03T16:34:18-06:00

Lately I have been playing a lot of Magic: The Gathering. While most people who play the game are content to go to a shop and play with paper cards, I'm much more geeky than that, and don't really have the time to go to a game store. I play on the Magic Online. I've detailed before how the server architecture of the Magic Online servers is not good - there is a single, monolithic server which is handling most of the game functions which users take part in. Because of this horrible server architecture, Wizards of the Coast decided to make a new version, throwing out the code base that they had before. While this is not necessarily a good idea, I understand why they did it.

They can solve the problem of their server setup by using the Invisible Sharding method, and they are possibly one of the only games that can do such. Sharding is when a game server is split into multiple servers, which are separated from each other. This is why there are many different "realms" on World of Warcraft, and many of the other MMORPGs. Servers can only handle a certain amount of load at once, and splitting all the users across multiple server lets you still have a Massively Multiplayer experience while being infinitely scalable to more users. It works out pretty well, but it comes with some problems as well. If I want to join World of Warcraft and play with my friends, I need to know which server to start my character on in order to join with them. This can cause problems due to the way that social networks are very tightly wound. If you take you and three levels of friends, you have a very large amount of people. As a game grows, more people want to play with their friends and that means more people are on the same server. I heard that recently Blizzard had planned to migrate people from one server to another, which was a major event and then they improved their servers so they cancelled that migration. In a perfect world, no migration would be needed - everyone would be on the same server.

MTGO is the perfect world, but they suffer from the problem that the MMORPGs would have if everyone was logged onto the same server now - they have a server overload. So how do you solve this problem? The solution hinges on the good parts of the current architecture: games are separated from the main server. The main server can now be separated from the games, and we have a situation which is similar to a distributed consensus problem. The solution is to reduce the size of the data which needs to be consensus. There are two ways to do this. The first is to reduce the overall size of the set by limiting interaction between players - this is the sharding solution. The second way to do it is to be more intelligent with the data that you choose to pass between your servers. MTGO is unique in this respect because there is really a small amount of data which needs to be replicated in order for the system to run smoothly.

Version 3 of the program is launching in less than 2 weeks according to the timer - here's hoping that they got the new architecture right, and we can see many thousands of players on at the same time.

Five TV shows this season that I don't miss

2007-11-13T22:44:51-06:00

TV shows are something that I haven't really been concerned about much lately, but there is still a great number of shows out there that are very good, ad some surprising shows from the new season which are very good. I'm sad that much of this good work may be negated in the coming months by the writer's strike, but I understand the side of the argument for the writers and agree mostly with them. That said, these are the top five shows that I will never miss throughout a week of TV (thanks TiVo)!

Chuck - it's on on Monday nights right before Heroes, which makes it get good ratings no matter what. It also helps that the protagonist is a geek and has been thrown into a situation that he's unfamiliar with. This creates a kind of coming-of-age story in which he slowly learns about his newfound powers and abilities. I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories, so it was a hit for me to begin with. "Greatness thrust upon them", I say, is more interesting. It also has an excellent soundtrack and wonderful opening sequence which is just a joy to watch. If you haven't seen this show yet, I highly recommend. Added bonus, it has Adam Baldwin in it.
Heroes - wow, big surprise. This show continues to impress, creating a very good story continuing through this season. I like how the seasons themselves stand pretty much alone, with some references to old seasons. I also quite enjoy the comic book like writing of the show, as it fits with the supernatural nature of the characters. Still a top contender.
Pushing Daisies - this is Diana's favorite show of this season. This most recent show by Brian Fuller doesn't fail to impress - if you're not familiar with Wonderfalls or Dead Like Me, they come highly suggested just as this does. The wonderful stylings which are reminiscent of any Tim Burton filmwork is enough to keep me glued to the screen even without the wonderful premise. The protagonist is someone who has a strange power, which lets him bring people and things back from the dead. Unfortunately, there are a few rules on the power he has - the first is that if he touches the reanimated ever again, he/she/it dies again, and the second is if he doesn't kill he/she/it again within a minute, something of similar "worth" dies nearby. We don't know quite all the rules on the powers yet, but it makes for very interesting storytelling, especially with lovely thematic kitch thrown in. This show is really a triumph of the artform if you ask me, and everyone should be watching it.
The Soup - it's on cable, and it's brain candy. Joel McHale takes everything that I wouldn't watch on TV because it's completely horrible and depraved, and mocks it lovilingly in The Soup. The humor is not to be understated, and the subjects deserve the humor tossed at them to boot. Definitely a half hour that is worth the TiVo.
How I Met Your Mother - I started watching the show because it had a hook - Neil Patrick Harris. Honestly, NPH was enough to be the hook not only for one cheezy funny movie, but a SEQUEL TO THAT CHEEZY MOVIE. The show is set as one gigantic flashback, with the main character telling his kids how he met their mother. We haven't met fabled mother yet (and the kids in the future are getting pretty bored after a season and a half), but the premise actually kindof works as a gimmick. That said, the characters are actually good, and the actors are nothing to shake a stick at either. I still think that Allison Hannigan has great comedic timing. I can only hope that this show doesn't go down the crap with the writers strike.

There are a bunch of other shows that I catch when I have the time or am bored. Diana is really the media junkie in the household, and uses the TiVo much more than I do. I have been trying to cut back on TV so as to make more time for other things such as editing my thesis proposal. However, it is important to lay back and enjoy some quality tele every once in a while.

On happiness

2007-11-13T22:19:47-06:00

I was viewing one of my most favorite speakers today, Lawrence Lessig, talk about copyright, giving a speech that is very similar to one that I have heard a few times online, but Lessig presents it so well that I end up watching it over and over again. This particular speech was given at TED. The nice thing about coming across a TED talk is that it is almost always enlightening in some way. Lessig's speech is enlightening enough, and it reminded me that I should watch something of his since he has switched to fighting corruption instead of copyright.

Another nice thing about the TED talks is that they are all sitting on the same site - so they are all interlinked with similar topics and they also include the new videos which are being posted fairly often. Sometimes I don't have time to watch more than one talk, but today I was blessed with a surfeit of time, so I clicked on another link which interested me. This talk was from Dan Gilbert and was coarsely about happiness, and more importantly synthetic happiness and how our brains work. It started with talk about the foundation of our evolved brains, of which the most important fact was considered the Impact Bias. Gilbert talked about the Impact bias as a primary result of the evolution of the mind from earlier man to modern man - it is the ability of our mind to predict the future without actually trying it. It is the reason why you have an aversion to a food that you haven't even eaten or don't think you will like a movie that isn't even released, or the opposite. I believe that the impact bias is very important to the psychology of human beings - while it may not actually be very important to the state of the world that you eat a pastrami sandwich today instead of a salad, it must mean something to you, or your life will end up seeming meaningless and insignificant. Gilbert focuses on the impact bias in the dual - that choices that we are given to make ourselves will eventually have an effect on our overall happiness. The experiments explained in the video show that, if a choice has been made, the user is more likely to be happy with that choice later, especially if the choice is an irreversible decision. In the talk he talks about simulated happiness and actual happiness, and that the mind is incredible at simulating happiness when placed in a situation where it did not come out for the better - some famous examples include people who are in jail for long times feeling that they are better for their incarceration after being released (or even while incarcerated). One important part which I think wasn't really touched upon by Gilbert was the fact that while the mind can produce synthetic happiness, in the long run the difference between synthetic and "real" happiness is actually rather small - over the long run all the happiness produced tends to even out, and the mind doesn't distinguish about really being happy or not. For a third point, it is a very interesting conclusion (and probably a significant jump) that most people strive to be happy overall, and most people succeed. This means that even though there are people in many different levels of happiness from an outside perspective, it is worthless to look at someone who is rich and happy and someone who is poor and happy and say that one must be happier than the other because they have more of the "real" and less of the synthetic happiness. Happiness is not a zero-sum game - everyone can be happy all of the time, and noone loses out. This may be an interesting ideal to reach for and may seem impossible to achieve considering all of the hate and rage which exists in the world today, but I believe that it is even possible yet - especially considering this "Happiness Bias" which seems to exist within everyone.

How long until we have laptops with no moving parts?

2007-11-12T19:07:59-06:00

Today I was reminded about a thought I was having earlier this year by a twitter from Garrick Van Buren about the new ultra-thin MacBooks. It seems altogether likely that the next laptop computer that I buy will have no moving parts. Currently the only moving parts in the MacBook that I have now are in the optical drive, the fan, and the hard drive. This is of course not counting the moving parts which I move myself - the buttons to actually interact with it and the lid. Apparently the optical drive in the laptop is going the way of the floppy drive in laptops, so there is only the fan for the CPU and the hard drive. Hard drives are also heading toward the realm of non-moving parts with solid state drives gaining acceptance and size. You can now get a 32GB solid state flash drive for pretty cheap, and they are sure to go in the direction all storage goes - faster, larger, and cheaper. That only leaves the fan which cools the CPU. It is not impossible to run a high-end computer without a fan nowadays, but unfortunately the heatsinks required in order to keep the most crucial part of the computer without burning up. The OLPC hardware is already in some ways the wave of the future - there are no moving parts at all. Unfortunately it is also completely underpowered and it's not possible to run a ton of programs on it. I'm not sure that a solid-state laptop for the general public will ever be possible with the general increase in computing power, but if it happens, I would bet it happens in the next 5 years.

People will be pointing out that the optical drive being missing is a new and novel concept and that Apple is pushing the boundaries of laptops, but they are hardly the first ones to ship a laptop without a optical drive. The world of sub notebooks have been taking out the optical drive in their smaller models for a while now. One model that I've seen around quite a bit is the Sony PictureBook which got quite a lot of press because it featured the Transmeta Crusoe chip. There are also a number of other sub notebooks which don't have a drive. However, I don't believe that the drives will be replaced by flash drives or network installs - there will always be a need for boot media for completely broken computers. The common solution in the sub notebook world is to just have a drive which attaches when it's needed, in the mode of the first drives. The solution which uses flash drives is not likely to happen anytime soon - software isn't getting any smaller, and the cost of flash media isn't falling quickly enough to catch up with the cost-effectiveness of pressing CDs.

Writing and keeping at things.

2007-11-01T19:07:00-05:00

Life for me lately is a constant struggle between things that I want to do and things that I have to do - then again, this has been the truth for much of my life. The current thing that I have to do is edit my thesis proposal. Some of you may remember that I had a plan to write my thesis proposal over the last two months, and then I would use these last two months of the year to finish some actual pre-thesis work and edit the proposal down to size. I didn't have a problem writing the thing - the work went quickly and spreading it out over two months was definitely the way to go. However, now I have a 18,000 word thesis proposal breathing down my neck, waiting for me to do more research on it and edit it down to a more reasonable 12,000 to 15,000 words. I also need to come up with a good schedule which is reasonable and doable. I get the feeling that I am going to have to tone down my actual thesis work as it would probably take me more than a year to complete what is actually proposed in the thesis. I also feel like I will be at school doing lots of work over the next couple of months getting it edited to just the right amount - I feel like editing is a job which is never done, and I could actually work on getting it just right for a long time.

November, while also being NaNoWriMo, is NaBloWriMo, which is focused on people writing in their blogs. I like this idea because it's much more casual and easier to do. Writing my thesis has shown me that it's pretty easy to write 500 words a day, and I feel like that's about the perfect size for a blog post, so I will probably try to keep each post around 500 words, without pastes and pictures and the like. So look to see a bunch more posts from me - I already need to catch up, I'm 4 posts behind. Diana is also doing the NaBloWriMo, but she is actually doing it on both of her blogs: Magickal Realism, the one for her business, and Fat Chic, her fashion blog. I hope she can get her posts written, and it works out okay.

In the past I have tried to post once every other day, and that didn't work out very well, even though I had a bunch of ideas which were floating around waiting for a blog post. After a while I figured that I just only had a certain amount of writing in me per day, so while I was trying to power out my 500 words a day for the thesis, I couldn't really blog. It was a pretty bad excuse, but it worked for me because honestly the blog is less important than the thesis. It might happen again, especially if I am spending a lot of time honing the thesis down to the bare minimum. That would be okay though, it'll just be the norm for a NaNoWriMo attempt - a strong start and then not much useful at the end, and at least I'd be working hard on things that are important.

Hey hey hey it's magic, you know..

2007-10-31T13:05:41-05:00

Life is pretty hectic around here with multiple jobs and consulting gigs, as well as personal research to do. I find it's pretty much a requirement to have something to go home to and relax and take some time off. In the past I've used lots of different games in order to accomplish that, but recently one of my labmates reminded me about Magic: The Gathering, the most popular CCG on the planet basically which I used to play a lot. I went to a local shop and played a draft, which was a lot of fun, but a huge hassle. Then I remembered that I still had an account on the online version of the same game. After some confusion over which email I had used to sign up for the service, I re-logged into the account to find that I still had a few cards left, and the game was pretty much just as I left it two years prior. Lately I have been playing it and amassing another collection of cards. Some people are concerned about paying for virtual objects, but I don't have such qualms, as I've paid for virtual objects before (ever buy software?) and the fact that my account was still around so long after I had originally used it and with all the same cards intact is quite a good sign. I also have a small deal going where I am a minor dealer in the game, buying low and selling for slightly less low, making some tickets (the de-facto currency of MTGO) in order to fund my habit. So far I have made back the money that I initially put into the game and have a bunch more cards.

Soon after I started playing the game again, I discovered that there was a new client and server being developed. You see, the Magic: The Gathering Online servers have a problem - they don't hold up to pressure very well. From what I have gleaned from the forums (which the developers actually read and respond sometimes) the architecture currently in use looks like the diagram here.

Anyone notice a scalability problem? Would it help to point out that every single client is connected to the "main" server, and absolutely everything that doesn't involve logging in or gameplay is done through that server? This includes trading, chatting, and just navigating to other games. Apparently the previous company who created this server structure didn't think it would grow too large, or they were using it as some type of insurance. Because of this horribleness, the servers crash a lot - sometimes close to daily. The developers at Wizards of the Coast have been working on stability lately and the uptimes have improved. Still, lag is horrendous when using the main server -- at least it doesn't affect games. I'm glad that they're replacing this bad server design with something that is better. I've been playing in the beta the last few weeks, and the new servers held up to a stress test with a large number of actual users -- around 700-800, depending on who you ask -- and a bunch of bots which were simulating a much larger load than a normal user. There wasn't even a blip on my radar. It gives me some hope for the future of the game.

A leaf on the wind.

2007-09-13T09:34:51-05:00

It's meme Friday, which I'm bringing back from.. never doing it. And it isn't Friday.

You scored as Hoban 'Wash' Washburne, The Pilot. You are a leaf on the wind, see how you soar. You have a good job, and a stunning wife who loves you (and can kill people). Life is good, which is why you can't help smiling. Now if you can just get people to actually listen to your opinion things would be perfect.

Hoban 'Wash' Washburne

81%

Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye

69%

The Operative

69%

Zoe Alleyne Washburne

69%

Shepherd Derrial Book

69%

Simon Tam

56%

River Tam

56%

Inara Serra

50%

Capt. Mal Reynolds

44%

Jayne Cobb

25%

Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Other Twitter Bots that I use

2007-09-04T23:19:45-05:00

Earlier this year I blogged about using the twitter bot for Remember the Milk. I still use it fairly well, even though the SMS messages from the RTM come late a bit. It's working for me in order to get a good chain going for the thesis proposal. There are a couple other bots that I'm using which are on twitter as well.

The first bot that I use is the bot at timer. The timer bot will let you set a timer (surprisingly). You only need to send it a direct message with the amount of minutes as well as a reminder for you about what it was set for. For example, if you want to remember to plug the meter before it runs out in 40 minutes, just twitter 'd timer 38 plug the meter' to timer and in 38 minutes it will inform you that your timer is up. You can have multiple timers running at once, which is useful if you are perhaps having tea at a coffee shop while you are parked on the street.

Another bot I use is the gcal. Gcal is a connection to your google calendar through twitter. You can set up new appointments by messaging the gcal bot with something like 'd gcal Pick up joe at 7pm' or 'd gcal set up web application for judy tomorrow' and it will add it to your calendar. I use it in the morning to track my weight. I just pull out my phone while I am at the scale and SMS 'd gcal my weight is XXX', and it adds the event as a day event on the day it was sent.

The last bot I will go over today is the mymm bot. It is slightly more complicated but still useful. When you're at the pump, you can direct message mymm a little info and get back the MPG that you have done since the last fillup. It helps me keep a tab on how good or bad I'm driving, which is a good thing. The car we drive usually gets about 24 MPG, but I learned through this that when I'm carrying a bunch of crap in the back, the MPG drops 3-4, so it's better for me to have an empty trunk.

I'm sure there are a bunch of other useful bots out there (ququoo is one, which I may cover in another post), but these are the most useful that I've found so far. Twitter is turning out to be much more useful than just random status updates.

Editing sentences and code

2007-09-03T16:13:39-05:00

I've spent the last week on editing the past week for a major paper, and I realized that I am horrible at editing. I can't edit myself worth a damn - I miss every mistake that I've written, and I am horrible at cutting pieces of text. Wishing that I could have a good method for editing like I do for debugging. I suppose it's probably because I do debugging more than I do editing. It may also be because editing doesn't really have a defined end - when you're debugging, when it passes all the tests, it's done.

This one had a defined end date set by a deadline, and beings me to a point. I believe that it is the reason that I tend to put writing projects off until later in the process, almost too late. I end up writing up to the point where I need to ask someone else to do the proofing and editing for me. When I am set by a deadline, I tend to get the writing done even if it's a crunch. It's not the same with coding projects, which will be short-cutted and work worse when I let them go to the last minute. The coding style that I've developed allows for progress in short chunks, a little at a time, incrementally improving. Editing, I understand, should happen the same way, but it is something that I don't really have enough practice about.

This week I start on my progress on my thesis proposal, on the writing part. The writing part is the easy part for me at least. For the next couple months I'll be slowly writing the proposal and then the hard part will occur in the editing. Hopefully a bit of hard work and more time than I usually have for editing will make it work.

In my own head consume, I sit down in my room

2007-08-30T07:06:42-05:00

Lately I have been tasked with a lot of writing to do. I'm writing a chapter for a book on the field that my research is in, which is a good thing for me to get done, but I started it quite late. I had to finish a 9,000-12,000 word chapter in 2 weeks. Here's how I set it up:

For the first week, write 2,000 words each day.
For the second week, edit the words already written.

The first half of the schedule was easier than I thought it would be. In general, writing in my field doesn't usually happen that fast, but the subject is something I'm pretty versed in, so it was not too hard to get 2,000 words out. I had a clear defined goal for each day that once I met, I could feel okay about not working on the project for the rest of the day. I also only had to write 6 days, and I was able to take the seventh day off. Both of these combined made it a lot easier to not feel guilty about being behind.

Editing is a bit more abstract and ongoing than the writing part, so it's hard to tell how well it's really going. There are some easy parts like fixing grammar and proofreading to make sure you don't repeat yourself, but there are also a good portion of hard parts as well, like which sections to cut a bunch of words in, and which word choice should be made in a particular spot. I'm at the point where some things NEED to be cut because the document is too long, so I have to make some hard choices.

I also met with my advisor last week and we discussed my progress toward finishing my Ph. D. I had been thinking about this problem for a while now and was glad that it was also on his mind as well. We agreed that I would set the goal for having my orals done by the end of this year (christmas). I am thinking I will use a similar tactic to the chapter that I am writing, but on a much slower schedule, so next week I will start writing 500 words a day, and do that for a couple months. This will leave me with 30,000 words that I will then edit down by quite a bit, reducing it by almost half. Hopefully this will make the process easier as it has for the chapter.

If writing my thesis proposal works well this way, I hope I can use a chunk of it for the final thesis, which I want to finish one year after my orals, putting me on track for graduating at the end of 2009. I'm looking forward to that.

Movie: Hairspray

2007-08-25T21:27:48-05:00

AMC Southdale 16 8/11/2007 Score: 7

We were actually hoping to see Stardust when we went to the movie theater. It was about 2 hours after we showed up, so we decided to see Hairspray instead. I think we still would have rather seen Stardust. Hairspray is a classic musical movie, similar to Grease or West Side Story in some ways. People are singing with somewhat no reason, and others don't notice. That is the way of musicals however, and this one is pretty good.

Tracy Turnblad is a high school student (because really, what musical isn't set in high school?) who wants to be a dancer on the Corny Collins show in Baltimore. Her dad runs a comedy shop while her mother, played by John Travolta, runs a laundry service. Auditions end up being soon enough, and she tries out and fails miserably. That's okay though, because at a school dance she gets spotted by a star who overrules the producer of the show somehow and gets her on. She's a hit with everyone in the town and very popular, much to the chagrin of the other girls on the show and the producer who didn't think she had the talent.

The show evolves from there into a story about the desegregation of the show, which Tracy is all about. She's had a friendship with some of them since she's in detention all of the time with them. They are planning a march because even the one segregated day of the show has been cancelled. They end up doing it and things develop from there.

Nikki Blonsky has a good showing here as Tracy, and for the time she is on screen, she pulls it off wonderfully. James Marsden as Corny Collins is also very good. Travolta plays the part well, but it feels like a gimmick in order to get another star on screen. Allison Janey also has a small part which is just hilarious as a ultra-christian mother, whose daughter is a little crazy. Overall the acting is pretty great, and the feel of the film is perfect for all of the small parts of people you recognize to show up and not be jarring at all. However, my favorite role has to be Christopher Walken as Wilbur, Tracy's father.

There is one particular scene with Walken and Travolta which is very strange to watch, but enjoyable just the same. The songs are just about the right length apart, and are catchy enough that you'll be humming at least one on the way out. Hairspray has a good number of jokes and laughs too, and the ending just wraps it all up nice and neat. Hairspray holds up with a 7.

Things That I Wish Remember The Milk Had

2007-08-19T21:48:53-05:00

A little bit ago I blogged about how I was using Remember The Milk in order to get some things done around the house and to remind me about stuff that I want to do. Things have been going pretty well on that account, I have been using it to great effect for basically everything that I need to do outside of things that I need to get done at Honeywell (I keep a separate todo list for there). However, when using it these past weeks, I have noticed a few things that I wish it would have or things that could be improved upon, I think in a big way.

I think the twitter interface should have some enhancements. For example, it is impossible currently to mark off an item that repeats through twitter, because you always have more than one of them on your list. I would love to do this with daily tasks so that I can mark them off as soon as I finish them with a few button presses on my cell phone. Also it would be nice to be able to add things to lists and not just the INBOX through twitter. Possibly another command starting with '!' that takes a keyword.

Remember the milk has as a major component the map of locations that items in a list can be placed at. There are a couple improvements that I would like in this area. The first is to have multiple locations that are all just as valid in order to complete the task. Remembering the Milk (the actual task) is a great example. There are literally hundreds of places that I could get milk, and two or three of them that I use regularly, depending on which one I am driving by at the moment. If you could place these three markets in a group of some sort, then they could all be associated with the item and you could see it on your mobile or however you're viewing the map.

The other map improvement is fairly simple - offer to give me directions from one place to another. I don't know how to drive to a random location I've just put in because it is where I need to drop my car or pick someone up or whatever, and a small link to a google maps directions would be nice. Even just a link to google maps (where I could then click on the "directions from..." link) would be a big improvement.

The last improvement that would be nice is to be able to click on the URL or visit the site in the URL field for tasks in some way. Currently the URL field is pretty useless as a URL, because there is no way to click it and actually visit the site. If I click on it, the editing field pops up and I have to do all the hard work myself of cutting and pasting the URL into the location field. It's also a mis-cue because the URL looks like a link before I click it, just like I could click on it as I want to. A keyboard shortcut for visiting the site would be nice as well since I do use the keyboard interface quite a bit.

These improvements I think would make a big difference to RTM users. The map improvements alone would be a big upgrade in my opinion. As for now, I will continue to use RTM whether these are implemented or not - it's a good way to keep an online list in any case. It's kept me writing blog posts at the rate of about once every two days. Not sure if that's a good thing or not yet..

Got a camera rolling on your back

2007-08-18T11:35:51-05:00

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to participate in Project 365. For those that don't know about it, it is the idea of taking one picture a day in order to accomplish.. something. I'm mainly just doing it for fun, and in order to improve my picture-taking skills with my camera phone. I have it walking around everywhere basically, so when I see something interesting, I try to have my phone at the ready. Some times I just take pictures of random stuff, but others are more interesting.

I've found that it's pretty useful for me. If you see the set, you can almost notice a perceptible increase in quality of the photos. It may just be because I'm taking 2-3 photos per day and choosing the best one, or I may be actually improving in my photo-taking abilities. Hopefully by the end of the year, the set of mine will actually have more than 300 photos in it.

The idea of taking a picture a day is quite interesting to me, if only because if you asked me what I was doing last year this time, I would probably give you a general idea because my life is basically boring - I work in an office, even when I'm at school. This way I might have some idea or get reminded.

I do have a couple of kinks that I would like to work out when I'm doing it though - when I download my photos through Bluetooth using my phone, it sets all of the creation dates to the time that I transfer the photos instead of the time that I took the photos. This means that I need to fiddle with the "taken on" date when I finish uploading the pictures - there's no way to use the Flickr Uploadr to set the date. This, and the horrible VGA camera that I have in the phone make it tempting for me to buy a new phone with a better camera and tools for transferring. Also, some days I just stay in, and don't do anything interesting, so I don't have anything interesting or different to take a picture of. I'm thinking of just taking a self-portrait on those days, but I'm not sure that it would be interesting enough.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2007-08-15T21:34:16-05:00

Riverview Theater 8/9/2007 Score: 3

When I finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was really mad. I thought it was such a cheat to have so many story arcs open when the movie ended. It was obviously leading into the third movie, but I still thought it was cheating the viewer out of a good movie. There were not enough arcs closed in the second part. Unfortunately, the third installment was a huge let down.

The same old cast of characters is back in what is thankfully the last in the Caribbean trilogy. Unfortunately, the first half hour of the movie is focused on just reintroducing all the situations that the characters were in at the end of the last movie. Jack Sparrow is dead, and he needs to be rescued. Somehow the Black Pearl is in the other world as well, but it's stuck on an island. The rest of the crew procures a vessel from a random "master of the sea", and they head off to get him. The way there is peppered with some interesting one liners.

After they get to the land of the dead, they need to use a random map in order to get back, and of course Jack figures it out the riddle, right after they see it. Crazyness ensues and they return to the land of the living. The rest of the plot revolves around getting together captains from around the world in order to complete a random strange quest that Barbossa decided they needed to be on.

I had some high hopes for the plot when they introduced a goddess and played up the story. Unfortunately the huge buildup is just playing with you - it has no resolution, which doesn't make any sense because it was the main goal of the entire first half of the movie. The second half is just a ride that you need to watch yourself through. Flashy fight here, one-liner joke there. The special effects are played up far too much, and the acting just gets worse and worse as the movie gets closer to the end.

At least this movie closes all of the story arcs that were opened by the second part of the trilogy. It at least counts as a guilty pleasure. The small in-jokes are littered throughout the movie and give you a chuckle or a groan every couple of minutes, even when the special effects budget is showing. It doesn't make up for the not-so-great acting and completely predictable ending to many of the stories, and the complete lack of resolution of the most interesting story line that fizzles out and the completely boring last half hour that made me happy when I was at this movie's end. It gets a 3.

Don't you (dun dun dun da dun dun) forget about me

2007-08-12T22:32:59-05:00

Recently I've been using Remember the Milk to remind me to do stuff. In the past I had used the service briefly on my search for an online GTD tool. I discarded it because it was too hard then to add new lists, which I had planned to use for each project. I also was turned off by it because I wasn't keen on requiring the Internet to work.

A couple of events has recently made this decision change. The first thing that happened was my addition of messaging to my cell phone plan. I did it mainly to interact with Twitter while I was on the road. It's something I never saw myself using before, but now that I am, it is really nifty and I can see why people use it from their phones.

However, with their recent introduction of a Twitter bot, it is now much more useful. The bot lets me add things to my Inbox list from anywhere, unchaining me from the Internet. All I have to do is text 'd rtm whatever' to twitter and it automatically adds a item to my inbox, which is where I keep everything I need to do. I have it setup as a template in my phone, so that I can even avoid typing the 'd rtm ' part. Remember The Milk also has notification settings for phones, so at the beginning of the day it will message me with the things due that day. Having it turned on reminds me to do most things, because I check my phone quite often, even though I don't get any calls.

I've stopped trying to use the lists for separate projects. I now use the Inbox as a main list, not caring how long it gets. I also have separate lists for categories of things that I'd like to do, but I don't care what order or when they get done. For example, I have a list for the pizza places that Diana and I might go to on our pizza place tour of the cities. I also have a list of cheaper and more expensive restaurants that we haven't been to, so when we want to go out to eat somewhere but can't decide where, we can just grab one off of the list. Remember the milk is particularly decent for lists like the two described because you can associate a geographical location with any element on a list, so I can see where the restaurants are instead of having to look them up.

There is one special list that I keep which isn't of the two types above - the projects list. This is the list of projects that I have committed myself to. It has one entry for each project, with a note on each entry explaining the past-tense result of the project. It is used in my weekly review, in order to populate the list if I have for some reason marked off a part of the project and not added a task for the next action in the project. I find that it keeps me honest because I can't mark off something from here until the past-tense description has actually come true.

Generally my workflow now goes like this. I add the task to my Inbox list either from the road or from the web interface. Then it gets moved to a special list if it is of a special class like the "Eating out" or "Pizza Places" lists. If it has more than three or four steps, I will put it on the project list instead and create a new task on the Inbox list that is doable and is the logical next action for the list. When I do something, it gets crossed off the list and then I go on to the next item. I know that if I don't have anything left to do on that day in remember the milk, I can just do random stuff from farther down on the list without a due date.

I've been doing this for a couple weeks now and its working out just fine. I was happy to have everything work out together so that I could use Twitter and Remember the milk, and I am being more productive than any other system that I've tried. This may just be an example of Using What Works. I thought I would share just in case it can help someone else find their workflow to get things done.

Movie: 1408

2007-08-10T22:41:44-05:00

Riverview Theater 8/7/07 Score: 8

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, with it's boasting of being based on a short story by Stephen King, I was skeptical about having a good time. It was, although, quite a coup-de-force for John Cusack, with good acting and some twists and turns that were hard to spot in advance.

1408 starts in a hotel that is definitely not the hotel whose room is the namesake of the movie - it is much too small to have 13 floors. Mike Enslin (Cusack) is a paranormal writer who goes around to hotels that claim paranormal activity and sits up in them reviewing, checking out their creepiness factor ("4 skulls", on a sliding scale of course). He is a skeptic about the paranormal, as the standard character is. Adding to the list of check-off qualities is divorcee and devoid of purpose in life. He returns to his home in California somewhere and picks up his mail to receive a postcard with the words "Don't enter 1408" on it.

1408 adds up to 13, and also resides on the 13th floor of any hotel, as they skip the 13th floor for superstitious and sales reasons. As it is part of his job and is piqued to his interest, he tries to call the manager (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and is turned down. Suffice to say he finally gets in the room after quite the ordeal.

Now up to this point, the movie is typical horror movie schtick setup. Oooo, scary room. But soon after the room starts turning on our protaganist is when this movie takes a turn for the better. Cusack is absolutely perfect cast in this role and he plays the part quite well, and considering he is the only one actually shot on the film of this set for a very long portion of this movie, it is quite the feat and shows a lot of his range.

1408 sets up with what would seem like a cookie-cutter horror movie, and has some predictable twists, but has some surprises up its sleeve that are completely unexpected and had me jumping in my seat. The room effortlessly destroys itself trying to kill Enslin, to the point that you ask yourself how much longer can it go without losing any semblance of a room. Top it all off with a brilliant performance by Cusack and this movie gets a solid 8 on my scale.

UI Peeves: Locking, Proximity and Purpose

2007-08-08T22:37:54-05:00

I have had, on occasion in the past, a reason to use the wonderful TortoiseSVN software. It is, by all standards, a really great solution for someone wanting to use SVN in a MS Windows environment, and uses the official svn client in order to leverage open source as much as possible. Recently I have been using it a bit more as I work at Honeywell as a programmer. I've come across a couple things that bug me about the interface.

The first is that some actions inexplicably lock the place that initiates that action. The best example I have of this is when I am looking at the window for an Update, and want to see what happened in the log, I click the button to open the log, and I can't use the window while the log downloads. Sometimes this can be an issue because the server is pretty slow at producing logs for some reason (it's beyond me, and NotMyProblem(tm) because I'm not in charge of the admin). This makes it irritating because I can't inspect other files while the log is downloading. Strangely, the server actually will return other requests quickly, like the request needed to see the diff between the working copy and the tree. It would be much better if the windows were separate - they're not related to each other in effect, so the locking of the initial window is completely useless. I could have called up the log from another action, that would leave the update window perfectly usable, so I know it's possible.

The second problem that I have run across more than once relates to the proximity of actions in the right click menu while committing a change. Take a look at the screenshot of this menu.

TortoiseSVN commit context menu

There have been many times when using this window that I realize that I forgot to add a file that I need to commit, so I right click on the file and move down to the "Add" menu item, only to miss and click on the "Delete" item. "Delete", when used on a unversioned file, performs a windows delete, causing me to curse at the (now missing) entry in the commit log and go running to the recycle bin to retrieve this temporarily lost file. These two options in the context menu are entirely too close to each other. The "Delete" and "Add" actions have completely opposite meanings and effects, and having the program do exactly the opposite of what you expect is what I consider to be a Very Bad Thing. I would move the "Add" action up to the top of the list (it is, by far, the most common reason for me to use the context menu), or at least place another menu item in between.

I'm feeling like I'm being very unhelpful here, complaining about these issues in an open source project and not producing a patch to fix these issues. I may produce one in the near future - unfortunately when I'm not at Honeywell, I don't really have a Windows development environment setup.

Ελλάδα: επίλογος

2007-07-05T20:42:47-05:00

Well, the last day in Greece went swimmingly. It was mostly just relaxing, playing on the Internet, chatting with lovely Di, and working out logistics of taking a long flight back to the United States. The only strange thing about it is that I haven't slept since the last post, which is away from the norm. It's a kind of forced all-nighter caused by the bad scheduling that I made for myself. The flight from Κώσ to Athens happened at 10:20pm in the evening. This was the latest flight that I could get and assure that I could get to the Athens airport in time for my 7:20 flight to Madrid, which connects through Chicago and back to Minneapolis at last.

I've spent a total of 10 days outside of the United States now, the longest time since I have been alive, according to my knowledge. It has caused some interesting results. I realized that I am inextricably connected to the people who I am familiar with in my life, and being without them decreases my mood significantly, and without contact to them decreases my mood sharply.

I am not alone in this fact. There are many studies that show that people who have more social connections lead happier lives. I am lucky in that I am technologically ept and can connect to my near and dear in a number of ways, and be resourceful in finding other ways to contact them if necessary. I feel that I am lucky to live in a time which it is possible for me to spend so much time apart and still be in connection with people. I am also lucky that I was born in a geological area which enables me to be as such.

At the same time, I am sad to leave this place. It is a nice area, with good food and a very long history. As Nikos reminded me the other day, it is the birthplace of Democracy, which I hold to a fairly high regard. It is also the birthplace of modern medicine, and a significant portion of many early sciences. The wealth of the nation as a whole and as parts is clear to me, and I wish to return.

I've learned part of the language while I am here, and it has made me more cognizant of communication with other cultures. People in Athens seemed put off when I tried to talk in Greek, but in Kos they were at the worst amused at my attempts. The language may not be as romantic to learn as French or Italian, and may not be as useful in the long term as Latin, but it would be interesting to speak nonetheless. I am tempted to start working on some of the i18n Greek QA issues in Debian -- It would help me learn the language more, and also keep me aware of the issues in software when you start working with other countries' characters. I have been lucky to be using a MacBook this entire time with decent Greek support, allowing me to type at least some greek while I was here. It helped me understand even more of the language - I now know mostly the numbers 1-9 at least.

The trip has highlighted for me something which is highly lacking in airports: power. Every airport that I have been to has prominently displayed the signs of wireless access, and has people using their laptops in almost every direction you can look (I am one of those), but they are sorely without power points for people who are using those laptops. This may be a designed flaw in order to save energy, but I don't really believe that 50 or even 5,000 laptops at 65-150W will put a significant dent in the power grid at somewhere as large as an airport, where LCD screens are running 24/7 with ads and bright lights illuminate every corner for all to be seen. I won't even start talking about the airplanes themselves.

All in all, the trip has been a happy one, and I would very much repeat it. I will make different decisions on lodging at some places and probably plan a shorter trip. I however wholly endorse Greece as a vacation spot, and even would consider moving here if offered a position (that would depend highly on Diana as well, obviously). I find it entirely favorable. I hope that this small series on the site has caused you, the reader some pleasure at least, even if it was at my expense.

Now begins the long trip home, on three planes and with 14.5 hours in the airplane and 18 hours in total. It'll be only 10 hours counting local time, unfortunately -- the jet lag will, I'm sure, be horrible.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα εννέα

2007-07-05T15:59:11-05:00

Yesterday was pretty much a long day of preparation and presenting. The day started with no internet, possibly for the entire island of Kos, I wasn't really every that clear on the whole of it. Apparently there are 2 underwater lines coming to Kos island and both had been severed or put out of service by someone. This was a bad thing, because I had intended to finish some final experiments and do some statistics on results, and Excel wasn't working. I suspect it is because I hadn't installed the updating tool of Office 2004 for Mac. Anyway I could do what I needed to do with R or Gnumeric, but they were both not installed yet. No internet = no new applications.

I finished the experiments and data gathering and the internet came back on just in time for me to download Gnumeric and get some of the stats working correctly. The final presentation didn't change that much, only changing on one slide and adding one small table, but the added result was significant enough to justify all of the work that it entailed. Indeed, it proved that the entire premise of the paper and simulation was valid. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The talk was at 3:30, the first in a session which was mostly unrelated papers. I don't feel as bad because many of the other papers were kind of a hodge-podge as well, and we were probably all placed in the session because we didn't really fit anywhere else. I met a nice researcher who was chairing the session because the actual chair was presenting in another session (something we had worked out with software in the ICRA2006 schedule, but apparently wasn't taken into account here). The actual presentation went well, and Nikos lent me his laser pointer which added a little to the presentation I believe. Nikos said the talk was good, but I also got a comment that it was well-presented later in the day from a unrelated researcher. I was so-so about the presentation until I got the unsolicited comment.

After the talk I called up Diana on Skype and chatted for a while, but the network was too flaky at the conference, so she called my cell phone. Using Skype is one of the things that I have done more in this trip than I have done before ever. It is really a wonderful program and network for people who are far away from each other, and it actually has much more impact when you consider the costs of calling home with other methods. I estimate I saved about $200 in just three days of Skype calling instead of regular calling, even with calling to cell phones in the US every once in a while, and with Diana calling my Hellenic cell phone when my network was flaky as well. It is much more of a disruptive technology in the non-US world where every call isn't already paid for.

The banquet was next. Usually I don't like going to banquets, but this was set up different than the normal ones that accompany these conferences. Instead of a large service crew bringing out fancy food to a large set of tables, it was setup in a buffet with a large selection of Greek food so you could pick and choose your favorites and even go back for more food if you liked. I ended up trying a large variety of foods and discovering some new tastes that I hadn't had before. It was throughly enjoyable especially when listening to the others at my table of which three or four were Greek.

Then it was back to the hotel by bus, and an early bedtime in order to stock up on sleep for the long hours in the next day. Today I plan on just relaxing, sleeping a bit when I get tired, and maybe trying out some local snacks. I've already arranged for a Taxi. The last installment will be written from the Athens airport tomorrow.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα οχτώ

2007-07-04T08:06:33-05:00

The actual conference was not too difficult to get to - I ended up waiting for the bus much longer than I should have, sitting about 30 minutes. That was kind of annoying, but more annoying was the issue that I had to make a connecting bus, but it wouldn't show up for another 40 minutes after the first one dropped me off. This was just intolerable. Luckily there was someone else who was going to the conference as well, and we both decided that waiting was not our cup of tea, and split a cab. The cab was too expensive for 1 but just right to split, between the actual bus fare we would have to wait to pay and the imaginary unreasonable price to pay in order to get that far.

Unfortunately when I got to the conference I was unhappy to discover that the wireless problems I experienced on monday were not fixed by now, and it was completely not working. This is frustrating because a much smaller conference got it down just fine, and we also managed to get it right at ICRA06. Granted, this is a much more remote place, but they had many days to at least get the wireless access points working. One of the main reasons that the wireless wasn't working was because every point was on channel 11, except for a few, that were on channel 10 and broadcasting the same ESSID. This causes insane interference because the channels are very close to each other.

Anyway I was pretty fed up with that, but it was time for some talks. Lots of the talks yesterday were on things that were covered a long time ago in robotics, but are now just being completely formalized by the control people. It's not really my crowd of engineers. The different applications were interesting at least though.

I went to get lunch downtown and was reminded again of the "have to ask for your bill" thing when I well, had to ask for my bill. Carbonara for lunch was decent, but just blandish and not great. Back to the conference for some more talks, but the internet was partially working so I made a stop in order to check email. By the time I got up to the room, it was right to some papers that I was actually interested in. Unfortunately none of them were there. I decided to call the conference a day and go back to relax a bit.

I caught the bus to the hotel and then relaxed quite a bit, enough that I took a short nap. Also I chatted with Diana over Skype a bit, and that was pretty nice, but we got cut off again. I discovered that it's just the link to the repeater that gets severed. I think if I wanted to make a career setting up wireless networks correctly in Europe it would be a definite moneymaking endeavor. None of them seem to be setup correctly, except for the ones in airports and actually the one at MED07 worked fine as well.

After some relaxing time, I went out to eat at the same restaurant as before. There was some interesting motorcycle racing, and the food was again superb. I am kind of sad that I won't be able to go back there again this trip. The banquet is tonight and I will be there, and then I will have to go back to the airport in order to head home. The hotel isn't sure if I can get a late checkout on Thursday so I don't think I will come to the conference then, just stay in my room for a bit and possibly check out the town some more. Today, I give the talk in a session of unrelated talks. Hopefully I will do okay.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα εφτά

2007-07-03T07:03:15-05:00

Waking up in Kos was altogether pleasant, especially because I put the very effective air conditioner on in order to alleviate the high humidity. The room was nice and dehumidified, although I feel bad about using the air conditionar as a glorified dehumidifier. I suppose it is better than using it as a cooler to a temperature that is too low. I walked out of the hotel and down the street, stopping to gaze upon the grassland and goats that were on my way to Kos town. The walk was very long, and I was sweating quite a bit by the end of it. I believe that I will be taking the bus to Psalidi and the conference hotel tomorrow.

Kos is an insane tourist island, very filled with shops where you can buy anything you would need on a vacation to a beach - sunglasses, maps, ice cream, etc. There are also far too many restaurants and coffee shops. They are literally every block or so, and sometimes even more frequent. The restaurant I found last night is definitely not the exception, but they do make good food. After arriving in Kos town, I walked around for a while, and looked at the Hippocrates Tree that they have here (he was born here apparently), and then found a bus stop and waited for the Bus to come by. It was a good thing I did, because Psalidi and the hotel were still another 5-6km down the road easily.

Noone was at the conference center, being closed for registration, so I used the conference wired access shortly (wireless wasn't working) and checked email and enjoyed the cooling power of the AC. After that I walked across the street and had lunch at a small taverna. I had a gyro pita but it wasn't very good at all. Usually I have gyros without tomato and onion, but on this trip I decided that I should try one with everything. Not only didn't I like the tomato and onion, but the meat was very dry and tough. I wish I hadn't had the meal there.

I got a snack from the store next door, and then waited for the bus and went back to the Gaia Garden. I hooked up with Diana on Skype and we got to talk for a while after we worked out some issues with her mic. That was really great because I was able to use my MacBook's camera and she could see me while we chatted. I could be called an early adopter, but skype and video have been together for a while. I still think we're on the leading edge of the curve though. Video for long-distance chats is a big plus. It's not as useful for ordinary conversations done every day on the phone, but I can see a major advantage when you can't really physically see the person for a while.

One thing that I noticed about Greece (Ελλάζ) is that there are very different rules about restaurants. As far as I can tell, you walk in and sit down wherever you like, and then you get a menu and order. I was very not used to this at first, but I am now preferring it to the American style of being seated in a specific section. The meal then continues basically as normal until the end. When you are done with your meal, you have to ask for the check. This is different, but it bugs me somewhat. When I am done with my meal I want to leave the restaurant. From a restaurant perspective, it doesn't cost them anything to have you sitting there for a bit longer, so there's no real rush to get the check to you - unless they are full and people are waiting. The restaurant looks more busy, and you might just decide to order something else. However, after years of training that asking for the check is rude to the waiter/waitress, I can't get used to asking for it every time. It' just grates on me. It doesn't help that I don't know if I'm actually being rude or not. I assume I am not because I've sat for 15-20 minutes without getting the check before.

I went to the same restaurant yesterday that I went to two days ago, and at about the same time. It really does have good food, and it is not busy when I want to eat which is around 10pm, and they also have some interesting sport on the monitors (volleyball tournament, track and field). The server was surprised when I ordered the dishes in Greek (ΦΙΛΑ ΚΑΡΙ and ΠΟΡΤΑΚΟΛΑΔΑ, in this case) and asked me where I was from, and whether I had been to Greece before. Also where I was staying. I was happy that he was surprised and at least seemed pleased. He asked if I wanted coffee or ouzo after I finished, and I apparently got some coffee free - the coffee was excellent too. I think I'll go back again today.

Today, the actual conference. Hopefully they will have the wireless worked out by then.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα έξι

2007-07-02T22:11:47-05:00

Getting to the Athens airport was easy as pie. Well, easy as buying pie. A short walk to Victoria station and then buy a ticket at the counter for 6€. It is more than a normal ticket, but it's way cheaper than the 30€ or so that you pay by taxi. The ride is just like any other Metro ride, except you have to wait for a special train at the last station on line 3 after you get off of your terminal train. It took about 45 minutes from Victoria.

They say that this airport was built new for the Olympics, but it is not that great. It is like a normal airport, with some extra things because it was built recently. There is still surprisingly no power outlets. I love how all the new airports advertise that they have wireless internet, but they are crap for power. The security checkpoint is very near the gate, which is good because you can get in and wait for your flight, but bad because you can't really estimate how bad the wait will be at security, and there is nothing to shop at or eat after you get through your security. I wish they would just put the security near the ticket counters, like normal airports have, then you would at least be able to relax knowing that you had gotten through security and could definitely make your flight.

The flight was changed gate after I got there (less than an hour before my flight) and also delayed, I assume because the plane wasn't ready or something. When I finally got to the gate and the plane was going to take off, we got on a bus and rode it out onto the tarmac. It was interesting to me because I hadn't ever been on a plane where you had to board it from the tarmac before, but it was just like a normal plane inside if a little less luxury. The flight was full to the brim, partially I am sure because of the conference - the guy sitting next to me was for sure going to ECC07, and there were other passengers with a ECC05 bag so they were probably going as well. It was at least short at about 45 minutes. I watched an episode of anime, and they came by with orange juice and pita chips with cinnamon and sugar on them that were rather good. I may see if I can find some at a shop in Kos.

Landing at Kos was smooth, and looking over the Mediterranean was nice as well while flying. The airport is really small, but still prominently displays that it is an international airport - then again, you could probably swim to another country from here. Baggage was no problem as it was the only plane landing at the time. I got a cab and rode 25 minutes or so to my hotel in Lambi.

After the stay at the horrible hotel in Athens, I was pleased to arrive at Gaia garden and find that they had my reservation on hand and didn't need any proof. Also I didn't need to pay until the end of the stay. The difference in a 45 minute flight's distance and 10 euro of room fare is amazing. The room is nice, with tile floors, and well kept. There is a large pool and a bar in the hotel that has free drinks (from a limited list) for guests. The hotel staff are very nice and explained to me everything, and even walked me to my room to show it to me. There is still a thing that you need to put your key into in order to turn the power on, but I am completely happy with it as it works every time and I don't need to worry about it. The bathroom is well-kept and they were even very nice to me when I broke a glass on the floor shaving. I can not recommend more highly the Gaia Garden hotel in Lampi, Kos. I will definitely return if I take another trip to Greece. I may post pictures on Flickr of both hotel rooms if I can figure out how to get pictures off of my phone (it was working earlier, but is not working now).

The best thing about this place is that it has free wireless internet. It is blocked by a WEP password, but it is easily attainable at the desk. I can use Skype in my room and talk to Diana for 0.01€ instead of 0.98€ If I was running the hotel, I would sign up for some VoIP service and offer free international calls - it has cost me about $1 since I got here to talk to Di for ages, and it has helped my outlook nicely - they should be able to charge $5 more and make money on the deal. The Internet is not completely reliable, but I don't mind that much at all - it's just slightly annoying if I get cut off from Di while talking and don't have a chance to say good bye.

I spent a bunch of time in my room using the Internet, and then walked down the street at about 11pm. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find anything, but found a restaurant which is very nice that was open and had very good Souvlaki. Then back to the hotel to try Internet again, and go to sleep. It was very relaxing. I know why people come to the islands of Greece now: it is much more relaxing than Athens was. I was worried about everything in Athens, and on edge. Here I am very relaxed. Today I will try to find the conference hotel, and look around Kos town a little. I plan to walk a decent distance, and judge the bus service here so I know how long it will take to get to the conference on Tue-Thu. Then relaxation some more, and I think I will visit that place again today late. That was nice, this island is very nice at night.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα πέντε

2007-07-02T07:34:34-05:00

Acropolis was pretty exausting yesterday, so I didn't get to write before I got to Kos (Κωφ). I took the long, very steep way up to Acropolis, on the east side. The hill was very steep, but there were plenty of coffee shops and such in Plaka there, and the architecture was very well preserved. I walked past the church of the metamorphasis, but didn't look inside as there were plenty of tourists blocking the way and I wasn't really keen on using the camera on my phone. I got to the ticket sales office and bought a ticket (12€) and started the long climb up to the Parthenon. The downside of coming when I did was that most of the buildings were under renovation, and they had a bunch of scaffolding around them. Despite this, the buildings were wonderful to look at. Perhaps better than the (very old) buildings on top of Acropolis, the views were very amazing. The walk back was easier, but it was very hot (35 C/95 F) and I was getting somewhat dehydrated. The shop at Acropolis had a nice cold frozen drink for me, which was very nice after a long walk in the hot sun, if a little overpriced.

After that, I went down and saw Ancient Agora, which was mostly just a big piece of land with ruins on it at this point. The remains were interesting in relation the pictures that they had of the place when it was still being used, but otherwise the only really interesting building was the remaining temple which was well preserved. I was supposed to meet with Hyeun at the station at 3pm, but it was only 2pm, so I walked through the flea market near Monostiraki station a little bit, and discovered a much more convenient Germanos store where I bought a bunch more talk time for my Cell phone, and had them put the code in because I couldn't understand the greek instructions that the phone company was telling me. I had 66€ more talk time at that point, so I texted some nice things to my honey at home.

After that I met with Hyeun at the station and we walked around for a while looking for a restaurant, and finally settled on one where you could see Acropolis from the chairs. The clouds then came rolling in and we experienced some rare rain in Athens, but it was nice. The meal was expensive in comparison to all the other meals - almost 35€. It was worth it though, because I hadn't had anything really to eat that day. Hyeun expressed interest in going to see the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and since we both had valid tickets (the tickets work for.. 6 places I think) we went to see it. It was a short walk from Acropoli station and interesting to see because of the standing and one fallen Corinthian columns. We stopped at a cafe near there for a drink and then went back to the hotel. I talked to my sweetie and then played some games for a while, and then went to sleep rather early, all used up from my extensive walking tour.

One thing that I noted was that the so-called "bad" part of town that I was in, and the "good" part of town (near Plaka) were not incredibly different. If you got off of the main tourist drags, they could be confused for each other easily. Breakfast at the Hotel, and then the Flight to Kos. Goodbye, Athens, for now.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα τέσσερα

2007-06-30T00:57:18-05:00

The good news is that the talk went really well.. The bad news is that I was dead tired afterwards, so this post will be very short and somewhat uninteresting. The talk was attended by a few, including a Slovenian that I had met at the banquet the night before. I don't know if he enjoyed it much, because I wasn't able to talk to him afterwards. After the talk, which Nikos and Hyeun said was very good, I went to a second session which was on robotic swarms. Unfortunately, there were only 3 speakers out of 6 that were there! This was very disappointing because it was the session that I looked forward to the most.

Afterwards Hyeun and I went to a restaurant that we hadn't been to before and I had more σουβλακι. The meal was good but not as good as some others that I had been at. Hopefully I will be able to get to Psiri and at least one ouzeri while I am here. After lunch, I was dead tired from working on my presentation at the night and also waking up earlier than I usually would. I decided to go back to the hotel and talk to Diana a bit, which was very nice because I hadn't had much time to talk to her the night before. I ran out of minutes though, and need to buy more. She was happy to hear from me and clearly through the new phone. Even with the cheaper rates of the pre-pay cellphone I only get about 45 minutes per 33€.

The rest of the day and night was spent sleeping - I don't think I had slept so much in my entire life! The thing is, that being in a foreign country with a foreign language is very psychologically tiring for me. I am always worried and self-conscious about trying to speak the language and I think that everyone who I even attempt to resents me for even attempting it. So I only try in small bursts, and then retreat into my shell a little more until I get the courage to try again. I really wish that I had someone who knew Greek that I could practice with so that I am not so self-conscious. That is one thing that I think I will do differently when I travel again - I will try to find someone via Skype that talks the language and wants to practice english, and also is willing to put up with me trying to learn basic conversational whatever.

I woke up around eleven and played a game or two, but then went back to sleep again. Breakfast was later because there is no conference to go to today. I was planning on spending the day in, but I think I will go to Acropolis and look around, and possibly go to a museum which is on the tourist map I got at the airport that advertises some Escher paintings in it's permanent collection - I would very much like to see those as I am a great fan of his work. I feel kind of bad going without Diana, but I am sure we will return and go. It is a nice place after all, and I think would be even nicer if I wasn't staying in such a horrible hotel. I hope to have cell camera photos of the hotel for you tomorrow on my new phone.

Now I am sitting at a Starbucks, getting ready to walk a while to Ακροπολ. The only reason that I am here really is to be on the Internet for a few minutes - it is a place I know that I can connect. One thing that I have been very pleased with while I was here was the availability, ease and general cleanliness of the Μετρο (Metro) - it has been enjoyable every time, except for one trip I took yesterday where it was packed to the gills and a tourist family was taking up a lot of space. I would be more incensed with them, but I remember that I am also a tourist and probably am annoying everyone around me, although hopefully not as much as them! Anyway the Metro is very nice here, and they use a similar system to the Minneapolis light rail where you buy the ticket and get it validated, and then you can ride without having to go through turnstiles or whatever. There are people apparently who check tickets for validation every once in a while, but I haven't seen them. The tickets are also a very reasonable 0,80€, which amounts to about $1.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα τρία

2007-06-29T02:08:13-05:00

(I recently learned that I may be naming these posts incorrectly. If anyone who knows Greek can tell me, please do)

After the ordeal on Wednesday, I had a mission Thursday: get a phone that would work in Greece. I wasn't all that interested in the talks that were being given that day, so I figured that it would work out. I meant to stop at one of the stores that I had previously walked by on my way to Viktoria station, but they were all closed at 9am - stores open kind of late here, apparently. I gave up on the search until later in the day.

The next stop was the national gallery, which has a lot of very nice paintings in it. I was particularly took by a fairly small painting of a girl at a window - I don't know why but I could easily look at it for a half hour or more I feel. There was also many Greek artists' work, and some very large work there. I was there with Hyeun for about an hour looking at everything. Hyeun noted that there wasn't much from before the 18th century there. I think she thought we were going to go to the archaeological museum.

After that, we went to the conference hotel where I posted the previously-written posts from yesterday (parts one and two) and then went to lunch at a bistro near the hotel. I'm somewhat surprised about the price of some things here, they are very different than in the US. Here a 500ml coke bottle is 2-3€ or so, but a large Carbonara plate is only 5€ where it would be about $9-$10 in the states. So I have spent much less than I had anticipated.

After lunch, I took upon the cell phone task yet again. The conference hotel directed me towards a cell store ΓΕΡΜΑΝΟΣ, which was about a mile away. I expected it to be quicker and wandered around looking for it a while, then went back and asked to see where it was on a map.

I found it and looked at phones for a while, and finally settled on a Motorola L6 for 135€ which is tri-band and I believe unlocked as many of the phones that were available were. The seller was kind enough for me to switch it to English so I could use it. I had to charge it for a while before I could use it, and it seems to be working fine. I am hoping that I can sell it to someone else for a reasonable recoup if my old phone is actually still usable in the states. I did look it up and I should be able to use this phone in the twin cities if my old phone is broken. Also, I can't find my old T-Mobile SIM anywhere. Does anyone know if I can get it replaced easily?

After that walk, I was sweating like crazy so I stopped at the restaurant in the hotel where everything is very expensive - a 250ml soda was 5€! I then did boring thing like work on my talk for Friday and also check email, but I managed to meet a nice french guy named Guillame and another guy who works in robotics. They were generally nice and interesting to talk to, so I sat near them at the banquet which happened later that night. The banquet was basically standard fare for conferences, not excellent.

It was quite late when we finished, so I shared a taxi with Hyeun to get back to the hotel. The driver turned off the meter at the end and wrote a handwritten receipt while charging us more than what the meter showed when we stopped. I think we might have gotten scammed because many sites say that you should get a official receipt from the meter. At that point I was very tired and just wanted to go to bed.

Today I need to give my talk at 9:30, so I am working on movies at the last minute of course. It is the last day of the conference, and I am much more tired than I expect to be at this point. I hope it is not something serious and only exhaustion based on lots of walking and the heat.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα δύο

2007-06-28T01:16:59-05:00

It was a fairly uneventful day at the conference today, with quite a few talks on robotics, and working on my presentation for Friday. The conference hotel is large and fancy, reminding me why we didn't stay there (it is >100€ a night). There was some confusion at registration, because I was using Nikos' registration, with him not using it much at all. There was one very interesting talk about robots with switching batteries, and some other interesting talks about mapping, although it was all grid-based mapping which is not as much in use anymore (although Stage uses a grid-based map). The conference had precious power and free internet, so I got to bring you the prelude (προοίμιο) of these posts there, and as it is free, I believe that I will be making all of my posts from there.

Lunch was at a reasonable restaurant near the hotel (the one in the hotel was very expensive and also looked horrible). I got a mixed plate of meat, which came with some pita and fries, and also had along with some very tasty sauce which seemed to be a mix of mayo and mustard, although I am not sure.

The conference lasted until about 7pm, and after meeting with Nikos and talking a while it was easily 9pm. Hyeun and I went back to the hotel, stopping along the way to get some drinks from a shop. Fanta orange-ade seems very popular here, and it tastes very nice - it is a orange-like still drink. After that, I needed to stop at the cell phone shop again, because it appeared that the charger that I bought previously was not working. The shopkeeper tested the charger, and then got another charger and tested that as well, and the phone still wouldn't charge. This is a bad sign - the phone is hopefully not broken completely. Thus begins my decline into desperation.

You see, Greece is fine and nice, but I have a desperate need to stay connected. I realize this after I was so happy to have the internet at the conference, and use it in the Internet cafe the night before. I was looking forward desperately to talking to my lovely, and now it looks like I won't be able to. I try to buy a new phone at the shop, but it is nearly 10pm now, and they are closing for the night. I walk back to the Hotel, and for the first time since I arrived, I feel completely disconnected from everything near and dear to me. It doesn't help that the shopkeep doesn't speak english, but it is not her fault. I break down, and feel a deep sadness and futility rush over me for a while. This is not good. I need to be able to talk to my sweetie.

I try to dial the phone in the room, at this point willing to pay the crazy charges that I would have to pay in order to at least tell Diana that I can't call her tonight and will have to try tomorrow. It doesn't seem to work at all, and the phone is dodgy in the room anyway. Calling down to the office, I discover that I cannot (or should not) use the phone in my room because it is very expensive and will need to buy a card from the kiosk down the street. Walking to the kiosk and getting a card, I discover that the card is a pay phone card, and I will need to use the phone outside. I was shown by a nice man how to use the phone, and tried to dial to no avail. I try many times, pushing random buttons before trying to call. Nothing works - I either get a message telling me I dialed incorrectly, or the phone saying Greek words I don't understand at me. I go back inside the hotel to talk to the owner about how to dial, and he doesn't know how. I try again in futility a few times, and then ask some students upstairs who are from I don't know where, but are speaking English anyway, and they tell me I need to dial 001 + number.

I go back out, and wait for the phone to be free again, and dial my sweetie. Voice mail. I need to talk to my honey, and she's not available. Maybe she is talking to someone. It doesn't seem to work for call waiting. I try again after a minute or so just in case she is not near the phone. Voice mail again. I leave a message, and go back inside.

The temperature is 110 F (45 C) by the way, which isn't helping my mood at all. Also not helping is the fact that the metro police are saying that there may be a city-wide blackout, so the hotel manager advises against using the elevator. I wait inside for a while, and try once more. Voice mail still. At this point, I am feeling still very disconnected, but at least I was able to leave a message, so I go back up to my room for a while and lay on the bed a bit. After a bit, I return down to the hot street and try once more. Finally! I get to talk to my sweetie, and the world is right again.

Today's ordeal has taught me a lot about myself and my comfort zone. I have been helped by the hospitality and graciousness of many people. My world is rooted in connectivity -- at least to the people that I hold near to my heart. For a couple of hours today, I was alone in a sea of people, and the world was a horrible place -- a living hell. Tomorrow I will buy another cell phone for use here, and the world will have righted itself once again.

Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα ένα

2007-06-28T01:04:35-05:00

Well, I arrived yesterday at Eleftherios Venizelos airport around 4:30pm. I finally found some power at the Madrid Barajas airport next to some nice chairs, and plugged in, I didn't have any problems. I'm still surprised how few are available. The only thing I can figure is that most people don't use the power too much when on vacation. After arriving in Athens, I took the metro to a station close to my Hotel, the Filoxenia after getting some cash.

The hotel is cheap. Very cheap. Granted, when you pay 35€ a night, you can't expect too much, but there isn't even an alarm clock in the room, and the shower isn't really a shower as much as a bath with a convenient shower handle. The power for the room is completely off when you are not in the room, probably to keep people from running the AC all day. The one small favor that this room has is that - the AC works well, cooling the place to a chilly 68 when it's left on for long enough. Otherwise, the room is basically a place to sleep and clean yourself. The owner expected me to bring my reservation, which I hadn't thought of because everywhere else I have been the reservation was handled by verifying who the person was who made the reservation, and then having them pay.

After getting to my room and dropping off my stuff, Hyeun and I took a walk outside to find some food. We eventually went to a place recommended by the owner of the hotel - they had menus in english, and recognized us as tourists pretty quickly. I had a large σουβλάκι (Souvlaki), which was actually very good even with the tomatoes and lettuce. When supper was over, it was time to take the task of finding a charger (which I learned the greek word for: φορτισή) and SIM card for my phone so that calling home wouldn't cost me $1.40 a minute, and also finding the best way to get to the conference hotel.

There was a internet cafe just across Αχαρνον that had reasonable rates, so we went there for some precious connectivity. I couldn't plug in or log on to the wireless there, so I had to use one of the computers. I am always wary when using someone else's computer to log on to the internet, especially so when I am trying to check my own email and do things that I wouldn't want some random person to go to. I also couldn't use my USB drive which has secure pocket versions of Firefox and the like. After the net surfing session we walked back to the hotel, and on the way I found a cell shop that I was able to buy a SIM card and charger at. They don't speak English there, but they were very helpful and I was happy that they were friendly with me standing there very confused and patient when I was trying to find the greek words for things.

After we got back to the Filoxenia, we sat in the lobby while I tried to show Hyeun how to use the SIM card. Unfortunately I had forgotten to call T-mobile back after I put in my request to unlock my phone, so I had to call them back (at high prices) in order to unlock the phone and use the new SIM card. When I was done with them, I put the new SIM card in and tried to call someone, but the service started talking to me in Greek, so I was confused. The manual that came with the SIM card was only in Greek and I couldn't seem to get anyone but this Greek voice when I dialed. After a short trip back to the Internet Cafe to read instructions in English at the Cosmote] website, I learned that I was just not patient enough - if I waited for the Greek to stop, it would talk to me shortly in English (telling me to dial 1313 for English support) and then connect my call. I assume it was just explaining the legal ramifications of using their cell network or something.

I was able to call home after that, and talk to Diana for a short time before the minutes that came on the SIM card were used up. It was time for sleep then, and I was completely jet lagged and tired, so I slept from ~10pm to 6am when we were meant to meet in the breakfast area before going to the conference.

Having got my bearings when going to the Filoxenia, finding Victoria (Βικτορια) station was pretty easy, and the ticket machine was simple and cheap for a single trip, only 0,80€. I'm at the conference now, where English is the lingua franca.

Ελλάς: προοίμιο

2007-06-27T01:17:44-05:00

I've started on my first trip to countries that aren't English-speaking today. I don't really have any time at my destination today, so it's a prelude to the real deal. I'm headed to Greece - Athens and Kos in particular, for a couple of weeks in order to attend MED 2007 and ECC 2007. My advisor is from Greece originally, so we usually send at least one paper to one of these conferences. This year we have two papers at MED and one at ECC.

I have a built-in downside of having two separate stops before my destination on this trip, mostly due to the ticket being much much cheaper than it would normally be. This means at least 8 hours in airports, waiting for another plane to board or standing in line. It seems like most of the day has been spent charging the laptop, or looking for power.

One thing that I have noted is that when you travel in airports, you need to be wary of power plugs. There are very few available, even it seems in modern airports. Surprisingly, the Iceland airport we stopped at last year on our way to england was much more accommodating for the traveler. This is very frustrating when you land with a dead battery from working on a flight after 7 hours or so, and you can't charge up for your next flight. I found a wiki online which is trying to map the power available at some airports, and I added a couple entries on my travels just today.

I took a gamble on purchasing wifi from Boingo earlier, and I may sign up again with the "world unlimited" plan before the trip is over. Apparently the plan that I signed up on is 0.12 euro a minute at most locations in Athens, and I can easily see spending more than the ~30 euro it will cost for the month of unlimited. As an added downside, you can't see your minute charge right away, so I don't know if I have logged off here at Madrid.

I hope to take a bunch of bad camera phone pictures, but first I need to find a charger and SIM card for my phone. You can keep track of my travels on twitter, I'll probably be updating it more often due to the high price of internet and relative cheapness of SMS. Suddenly texting has a whole new appeal to me.

Do it better, Make it faster

2007-06-27T01:06:26-05:00

Apple released Safari 3 for Windows and Mac a couple weeks ago, and of course as the early-adopter that I am, I was trying to download it before it was even actually available. I've been using it for the last weeks, and I'd like to boast and bitch about some of the features and misses that Apple seems to have missed.

The first thing that I noticed about Safari 3 is that they still haven't fixed some of the bogus behavior that is present in Safari 2: the behavior of tabs. They have a preference that is selectable to make links that are clicked from other applications open in a new tab instead of a new widow, but any random site can create a new window by using the target="top" or target="new" tags to links. This can't be a hard fix (there may be a way to do it in Mac Safari), but it is a major usability oversight in my opinion. At the very least, I would like to be able to ignore the targets that make a new window.

One of the biggest jarring things about moving from Firefox, my normal browser, to Safari for a couple of weeks, is that there is no Adblock Plus extension - meaning I see all of the ads that I would normally have completely blocked out. Some ads aren't horribly bad, and I have even clicked on a few and learned something about a product or service I didn't know about before that was actually useful. Unsurprising to me that almost all the ads that I ended up following were Google Adsense ads. Unfortunately, most of the ads on the web aren't simple ads that just advertise, but they get in your face and flash and sometimes even make sounds that are unwanted. Most of the annoying ads are Flash ads - I feel like if I could only selectively run flash, the ads would be fine. They are highly annoying, and possibly the sole reason that I will be switching back to Firefox after this.

However, it is not all bad - Safari lives up to the advertising on it's page. It is easily the fastest rendering browser that I have ever used, and I have used almost all of them. The speed is nice, and it's something I need to get used to not having. It makes the web fast again, like it was before all of the new-fangled stuff. It is also pretty quick on startup, but I think that pre-loaded IE is faster on windows at least. The other good thing about it is it brings good font rendering to windows. I've been working on my Mac for a while now, and I've gotten used to the fonts that some people call "fuzzy", and I actually prefer them that way. Working in windows is hard when I'm trying to squint through ClearType's bad font hinting that makes reading a pain. The inline search is also fairly clean and nice with the animations. It is something I would gladly be happy with in Firefox.

The good isn't enough to outweigh the bad, however, so it's back tox Firefox (and iceweasel) for me.

Ask the Interwebs #1

2007-06-16T12:19:18-05:00

Lately I have been thinking about switching source code management systems. In years gone by, I have used CVS, Subversion, arch, and most recently bazaar-ng for managing all the source code that I have to change. Lately I have been unhappy with the speed that bazaar takes to get some things done, and after watching a Google talk by Linus about Git, I thought I would give it a look.

I was surprised to find out that it actually models the way that I work normally slightly better than the bazaar model does. The main thing is that a repository holds a bunch of branches, but the working directory only has one of those branches checked out at any point in time. I use bazaar with about 4-5 branches per project, and only work on one of them at once (normally, sometimes I want to transport a bug across a couple branches) - so the "working space replaced by branch you want to work on" actually works out OK for me. I also need to collaborate with a bunch of projects at school and work that use other systems including CVS and Subversion, which Git seems to make it easy to do.

I did run into some questions that I don't really have a good answer to, however, therefore the new segment on the blog: Ask the interwebs. Normally I would just ask on some IRC channel, but the Minneapolis public library doesn't seem to allow anything but HTTP out. On to the question!

When using Git, how do you manage having multiple computers (at multiple locations) that you work on? I have approximately 5 different computers that I use regularly. Luckily I have enough space to have git installed on all of them, and I also have a web server that I can use WebDAV on if necessary. What I would like to have is a repository that I can pull from before I start work (if I am connected) and then push to when I finish so that the next computer I sit down at I can just pull again and get everyting. I would like this to include any branches I may have made on the first computer. Is this possible, hard, or easy for Git users? How much do I need to worry about slowdown? My WebDAV server is in the cloud, and I would prefer to be able to get up and go on say, a minute's notice.

I'm also interested on what your workflow is like even if it doesn't match the model I just described. I'm open to changing - the bazaar-ng to git change is big enough that I can probably incorporate a new workflow as well.

MSPizza Places: Clicquot Club Cafe

2007-05-21T22:32:26-05:00

Today Diana and I went to the Cliquot Club Cafe for our weekly pizza place visit. We discovered this place on a long walk we took from our apartment on one of the recent lovely spring days, and decided to visit it today. It is situated slightly hidden, about halfway between Lake street and Franklin. The place looks and feels like it was an excellent coffee place that graduated into a happy cafe. Their menu is extensive, serving breakfast, paninis, pizzas, salads, deli sandwiches and even some more fancy fare. In contrast to the well-designed look, the atmosphere is very laid-back and inviting. I felt comfortable as soon as I walked in. We were greeted quickly by both the cook / barista and the server, and directed to sit "wherever, inside or out"

I had Pepperoni, because I wasn't feeling all that adventurous, along with some green mango tea. The pizza was cooked on excellent crust with and tasted very good. It was cooked well and wasn't too hot. The red sauce used on even my run-of-the-mill pizza was excellent and I was quickly finishing the individual-sized pizza. The waitress was always around and served well without being too invasive. I'll definitely go back for another slice, coffee, or even breakfast.

Cliquot Club Cafe is situated on the corner of 25th St E and 30th Ave S in Minneapolis. Map Website Prices for Pizza + Drink: ~$10

MPAA claims they own this number.

2007-05-02T08:11:01-05:00

I can write a program that counts up to 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but apparently that would be illegal, because whoever owns HD-DVD claims they own the number. Perhaps the DMCA has gone too far when numbers are copyrightable?

Engage!

2007-05-01T19:04:33-05:00

Your results: You are Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard		70%
Spock		67%
Will Riker		60%
Worf		55%
Data		54%
Uhura		45%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		45%
Geordi LaForge		40%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		40%
Chekov		35%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		35%
Beverly Crusher		30%
Deanna Troi		25%
Mr. Scott		25%
Mr. Sulu		20%

A lover of Shakespeare and other fine literature. You have a decisive mind and a firm hand in dealing with others.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

Steve Jobs sets insane goals..

2007-01-10T11:13:46-06:00

..or he's not telling us something. If the multi-year exclusive agreement is true, then the goals are probably unachievable. In the keynote yesterday, Jobs put out there that almost a billion phones are sold each year to consumers. Granted, most of these are regular phones without the whiz-bang and special features of the iPhone -- and are usually free to the consumer, subsidized by the contract agreements. Still, he set what most would consider a modest goal, of getting 1% of the cell phone sales - 10 million phones, by the end of 2008.

However, lets do some napkin math. A very small percentage of phones out there today are smart phones. C|Net says that 37.4 million smart phones out there. This is probably a pretty conservative estimate by now -- the Gartner study was released in October. Let's give the smart phone people the benefit of the doubt and say that usage triples by the end of 2008. That makes about 100 million smart phones out there. 10 million is ten percent of that market.

Let's look at the math another way. Cingular has 58 million subscribers. Assuming that they gain 20% per year, they will have 68 million at the end of 2008. If Apple is aiming at 10 million phones, that is one out of every seven Cingular customers. Next time you walk down the street, notice count 7 people that you can notice have a phone. If Apple makes its goal, one of those 7 people will own a iPhone, and will have shelled out at least half a grand on it.

These are amazingly high goals for a company that is new in the market. Granted, the iPhone is pretty revolutionary, but I don't think Steve is that crazy. I'm betting that he has something up his sleeve that will help him meet or beat this 10 million goal.

Why the iPhone is the next iPod.

2007-01-09T19:45:11-06:00

It's not the reason that you think. Sure, it includes a bunch of iPod functionality, but that's not what I'm referring to. Not the least of which is, absolutely everyone is talking about this device. I haven't seen this much buzz over a device in a long time.

Buzz is definitely nice, and warranted, but that's not why either. Back in the day when the iPod was released, everyone thought that it was going to flop - because it had a hard drive, and almost all of the players at the time were using flash. The iPod changed the mp3 player from a device that had a tiny screen that you could display maybe 2 lines of text (if you were lucky), and that you needed a course in computers to use, to a high-resolution screen, easy to use device. Nothing else at the time was even close. It succeeded because of it's complete rethinking of the user interface, and that is why the iPhone is the next iPod. This got pretty long, so I'm cutting it. (Sorry, people who hate clicking!)

UI is the key

The new iPhone changes everything about the smart phone but the phone, and it heaps a bunch of features on that as well. The interface is easy to understand. If I picked up a iPhone from the ground, I would be able to figure out how to use it instantly. There's a bunch of buttons on the front, clearly labeled, and waiting for you to press them. When you press something, it has a visible effect - even when you're browsing, and it's just going to zoom in, it blinks to give you a response. It's excellent feedback, and quite useful.

The problem with all the smart phones on the market today is the keyboard - they either don't have one at all, in the case of Palm devices where you use graffiti, or they have a chiclet keyboard that takes up at least 1/3 of the total front of the device. There is no stylus on the iPhone - you can do everything with your fingers. This means that you don't need to worry about losing a little thing, because everyone has fingers. The keyboard is a well-known layout, not some strange one like FasTap either. It shows up when you need it and goes away when you don't.

"The phone is the killer app"

iPhone is a phone, but it's different than most phones that anyone has used in the past. There is no keypad getting in the way, and it's not hardware, so people can use features that everyone has on their phone, but they never use. Looking at the interface while you're in a call, the buttons are clear in their meaning, and I would bet anyone could use them. I have had hold functionality on every single cell phone I have ever owned, but I've never used it (intentionally). It's because I don't know what button to press. I'd have to read the manual and make sure, and even then I need to make sure I can get the person I have ON hold, OFF hold. With the iPhone it looks easy - Pause. Hit the button and it puts someone on hold. Call waiting is similar, with labels clearly explaining what is going to happen. Conference calling is another disused feature that's easily represented on the UI: Plus for adding someone. Using features you've always paid for but never understood is what makes the phone the killer app.

The other reason that the phone is the killer app is because you now don't have to carry your phone. It's one less thing to keep in your pocket, with one device replacing your phone and iPod, which a lot of people carry anyway.

The downside, and why it's not such a big deal

The big downside with the iPhone is that it's locked into the Cingular's craptacular service. I know some people will say that Cingular is a good player and in much of the US they have good signal and work great, but in my neck of the woods, Cingular is really horrible. I don't know what they're saying when they talk about the network with the lowest dropped calls, because I would estimate that 90% of all calls that I have made on Cingular drop. It's not the phone, because this happens over the 4 different phones that I have tried on Cingular. The network here just sucks.

However, it's not that big of a deal. There are enough Apple fanboys out there that are on other networks - there will be a hack sometime that will allow you to use it on other GSM networks. Besides that, I'm betting that this is going to change the smart phone landscape - Apple was not a big player in this industry until today, and they made a big splash. The repurcussions are going to be felt all over. I'm guessing that Palm at least is going to try to give Apple a run for their money with the smart phone market, and I can't imagine Motorola not giving it a go as well.

Also, the iPhone has Wifi. How long do you think it's going to take for them to release a non-cellphone model that works over your AirPort (they snuck an update to that under the radar) with VoIP?

Things that would make the iPhone the best thing since sliced bread

Even with the iPhone being the best thing on the market today, there are some apps that would make it just rule. The biggest thing that this is poised to do is stomp all over what is supposed to make the Zune better than the iPod. It has WiFi - it shouldn't be hard to let you share songs with other iPhones. Other sundry things that would make the iPhone just that much cooler

Playing your iTunes Music to people who are on hold
iTunes Ringtones - say goodbye to extortion for ringtones
VoIP Phone
Video recording
Games
- Two fingers = strange new interface, sparking new thinking for games
- Wifi = multiplayer games

Learned Bad Ideas

2007-01-08T19:44:57-06:00

There are some things that I have learned over the years as bad practice. There are some that I have learned through reading and contemplation, and a little experimentation. One of the categories of bad things that I have learned is visual aids for statistics. There is basically one cardinal rule for data presented in a graphical form:

Let the user see the actual data.

It seems kindof obvious, doesn't it? I'm presenting data, you should be able to see it. If you want to show me that there are 450 widgets, and 230 whazits, and only 210 whositz, then you should show those. The simplest way of doing this is by just listing them out in a table:

Type	Amount
Widgets	450
Whazits	230
Whositz	210

That's simple, isn't it? However, it doesn't help the viewer any. They're pretty good if you want to know exactly how many of something there is, but not great at other things that you want to do with data. How do you find the minimum (or maximum) of all of the values? You scan, remembering the highest one you saw so far, and then go back to that one and find out. If the goal is to somehow compare, the viewer will be helped out by using a graphical display of some sort. One thing that humans are good at estimating is length. Quick, tell me what we have the least of:

That was easy, wasn't it. Bar charts are good - they can still be abused by people in evil ways, but most of the time they're pretty useful.

All of this is working up to pie charts. What's smaller, Whazits or Whositz here:

Is Widgets half or more than half of the pie? Pie charts are the bad seed of the graph world. They aren't very useful, hang out a lot, and don't help you much. The worst thing about pie charts is that they aren't even good at the thing they're supposed to be the best at: comparing relative sizes. Consider thanksgiving, or christmas, or whatever large gathering you prefer where there is pie. Lots of pie slices are laid out on the table. Which one is the biggest? It's hard to tell. It's even hard to cut even slices from a normal pie. Sure, you can cut in 4ths, 6ths, or 8ths, but I challenge you to cut a pie in 5 pieces equally - it's really hard! It's because humans aren't great at judging the differences between angles. They're only really good for seeing one thing: the largest piece in the pie. Even then, it's sometimes questionable - if you looked at a evenly sliced pie, could you tell the difference between a 23% piece from a 20% piece? The bad thing about this is that they are ingrained into our culture. There wasn't a finance report in the last 10 years without a pie chart.

All of this ranting was basically brought to you by a recent post on BoingBoing. This post features the most horrible monstrosity I have seen in a long time: the hierarchial pie chart. Feast your eyes on this monstrosity. I challenge any reader to tell me: what is the smallest third-level category? What is the largest?

Apparently, I'm flexible.

2007-01-06T08:41:03-06:00

You scored as Either. You brain is neither specifically male, nor female in the way you perceive your surroundings. As bad as this may sound to some, it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, but it might.

Either

64%

Male

57%

Female

43%

Neither

18%

Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* created with QuizFarm.com

This quiz was blissfully short. I've seen ones at quizfarm go hundreds long. I love the "this does not mean xxxx, but it might" complete cop-out.

Auror? Interesting.

2007-01-05T12:36:12-06:00

Setup will complete in approximately: 39 minutes

2007-01-04T21:20:56-06:00

Hardware evils

I've had quite the unfortunate week, hardware-wise, here. Nothing on my end is broken, but [lj user=ceilingsarecool]'s computer is screwed but good. It all started near the beginning of this week when I started to look into her machine. It had been loud for a while, and was being unreliable in regards to applications. Running memtest86+ on it via a handy System Rescue CD I always keep around discovered a couple of stuck bits on the memory that otherwise had been perfectly fine. However, I have had sticks die before, so I called Crucial and am having the memory replaced. (thank you Lifetime warranty). While I was taking the Memory out I noticed the couse of the loudness. Apparently there was ailing fan on the south bridge, which explained her issues with USB-connected devices. No problem - I'll just order a replacement motherboard. The old FIC AD11 was getting pretty bad anyway.

The new motherboard (a PCCHIPS M810LMR) arrived yesterday, so I went through the lengthy process of removing the old motherboard and moving the CPU from one to another. Just one problem: the new motherboard didn't start up. After checking that I had everything connected right, I thought the board was DOA. This would be my first DOA ever, but as usual the place I bought from has a DOA replacement policy so I thought I just wasted 2 hours and a bunch of time replacing. Unfortunately, this isn't even the end of this sad tale of brokenness. When I put the CPU back in the old motherboard, it didn't start either. So now I'm left with two motherboards for a processor that doesn't work, I assume. I don't really have another one that I can test it out on, and I can't test the motherboards with another CPU because I don't have one.

Luckily, I have some old towers sitting here that were about to be dragged out to the dumpster. I rescued them. They're ancient, even more than the machine that was in use was. I had to burn a Maxtor MaxBlast4 CD just to get them past the 65GB barrier, and of course I need to do a "repair" install of Windows because all the hardware changed since I installed it.

Lesson of this tale: Almost-broken computers are a delicate ecosystem. Just buy a new computer - you'll have to do that in the longrun anyway. Currently I'm looking at replacing the mainboard and CPU with this combo from newegg. It's got mixed reviews, but is reasonably priced, and if DOA I am sure that newegg will replace it. I'm debating between doing this and just saving up to get a decent new motherboard and CPU (generally around $150-$250, $300 easily with new memory) later in the year. I feel pretty bad because every computer that I've given [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] to use has had issues like this. She tells me that she doesn't really care that much, and she does have a laptop which works well when the desktop has issues like this, but it's still like a poison apple.

Windows XP Setup

It doesn't seem to matter what you are installing Windows XP on. It can be 500MHz or 1.2GHz or 3.0GHz, the first time estimate that you get for finishing the install is 39 minutes. When XP was first released, I never ever had a computer that would finish that fast - it consistently took an hour or more from that state, and then I jumped to fast computers that come under the mark most of the time (although not by much). At least the estimate is monotonic, not going up to an hour. I can at least assess the progress a little more. Installing a couple times in the last few weeks has got me wondering about the origin of that estimate, and if it was going to be so inaccurate as to just guess and be constant at the beginning of the install, why include a time estimate at all?

These are just a couple of my cravings

2006-11-30T22:10:34-06:00

Food has always been a source of contention for me when I am trying to lose weight. I never want to restrict the types of food - I've spent a long time working out what I like and dislike. One of the benefits of the Hacker's Diet isn't all that concerned with what food you eat, but simply that you get a certain amount of calories, it gives you a lot of choices for dining. The first time I was on it, I used ramen and rice to keep me fed. Those worked well because I was basically broke and the rice filled up the stomach just fine.

There are a lot of diets out there, and it's easy to try one or the other just to get completely fed up with the lack of diet-allowed food that you actually like to eat. I believe that this is a major reason that most diets fail, and why there are so many of them - after all, Atkins might work great for the people who don't have a jonesing for a bunch of fries every once in a while. If you're looking for a diet right now, think about the kinds of foods that you won't be willing to give up. There are diets out there for every type of favorite food nowadays, just walk down the fitness and health section of your local bookstore. I'm convinced that the final word is going to be a calorie deficiency. After all, what is dieting but controlled starvation?

This time dieting has been slightly different, but not very much. I've been trying to buy pre-packaged food more than normal, because it's easy to find calorie counts for them - right on the box. Lately I've been eating some TV-dinner like things, which clock in at about 400 calories a piece. This means that I'm eating 4-5 of them a day, which is like an extra bonus because eating more smaller meals is supposed to help keep the metabolism up. The mass market economy of these meals is amazing - you can easily get 7-8 for $10, making my daily expense very low. They are also not completely horrible for you - most have some vegetables and protein and starch of some sort. There is also a decent variety, so it's hard to get bored of the same old stuff. I've also switched some of the eating out to a more healthy fast food sub place, which has the extra bonus of also being cheaper.

This Week (Nov 24 - Nov 30): Minimum: 334.0 (-1.0) (Nov 29) Maximum: 337.0 (-2.0) (Nov 26) Average: 335.0 (-1.8) (135.0 to goal) Exercise Calories: 3172 on 6 days Average Calories per session: 528.9

She keeps a picture of me

2006-11-23T23:06:00-06:00

This is a picture of me before I started this whole diet watching and exercising regimen. Hopefully I will be able to take regular pictures that can document my progress. This is one thing which I don't plan on doing very regularly, maybe every two or three months. Pictures have been known to be a great motivator to people on diets - they remind people how they used to look, and more importantly point out how far they have gone so far. Usually the most dramatic change is seen in the picture, even if you don't see much movement on the scale. The picture is so powerful that it is usually used alongside actual insane weight loss claims in TV commercials. Anyway, this is how I looked when I started this whole thing.

As this week's entry falls on turkey day, it may be interesting to note something which has been at the back of my mind during these “special” days in which you are urged by almost every sane diet plan to just forget the plan on that day. Many websites say that cheating on your diet may actually be good for you in the long run. While some emphasize the psychological aspects of having a day off, others actually cite scientific reasoning involving a hormone called Leptin. At any rate, the line between cheating and giving your diet a little boost is getting quite a bit blurred. So on this turkey day and days after, don't feel like you have to work out extra hard just because you're eating more.

This week I started using a new diet tracking site. This one is more closely in line with the method I used before. It's Physics Diet, and is basically an online notebook like you would keep if you were on the hacker's diet. This also calculates some more stuff that would be a little complicated to keep track of yourself, like Total Energy Expended (calories). It also has a nice CSV export which still allows me to give all of you your weekly stats. I've continued with the watching of anime while I am exercising, but am supplementing it with some podcasts and some episodes of a BBC show called QI or Quite Interesting. There is a downside to watching QI while exercising: I am laughing so hard sometimes I need to re-concentrate on the exercise so that I don't fall over. I'm sure it's not a bad thing for my calories expended in total.

This Week (Nov 17 - Nov 23): Minimum: 335.0 (-0.5) (Nov 22) Maximum: 339.0 (-0.5) (Nov 17) Average: 336.8 (-0.4) (136.8 to goal) Exercise Calories: 2719 on 6 days Average Calories per session: 453.1

That's what I call a wireless connection.

2006-11-18T17:59:14-06:00

I work hard, every day of my life

2006-11-16T22:51:47-06:00

Most of my fitness transition plan has been focused on exercise. Get more exercise and eat the same as you did before, and you will lose weight. This has to be true, based simply on physics. Back when I was using the Hacker's Diet, it worked like a charm. Then it was all about eating less calories, because I wasn't really keen on doing exercise in my olden days. It worked for a while. Unfortunately I got stressed and stopped countign calories, and weighing every day. I've started the weighing again, and maybe I can actually fire up gnuplot again and produce some pretty graphs like the one on the left.

I've had an iPod for approximately 5 years now. That puts me a bit ahead of the curve. I still remember seeing the original iPod commercial, and looking literally seconds later for how much it was, and seeing how much I could sell my old player on eBay for. Having been in the mp3 scene for a while at that point, I knew that it would turn everything on it's head. I got it and replaced my normal player for walking to and from class and listening while coding. Now I have a new iPod video, and it is the chief entertainment while I'm in the exercise room. At first I was just listening to my fairly large music collection. Then I started listening to podcasts again - they are about the right length, and I enjoyed them. Now I've harnessed the power of the video iPod to kill two birds with one stone: I'm watching my large collection of Anime at an hour a day. This means about 3 episodes if I skip the openings and endings. I also watch Heroes on Tuesday nights, after I transfer it from the TiVo. The only problem I'm having with this setup is that the screen is small, so I need to hold it fairly close to my face in order to read the subtitles.

Today marks one month on the diet and exercise regimen. I started on the scale at 344 and this week's average was 337, 7 pounds lighter. I'm going a little slower than my goal of 2 pounds per week, but I seem to be hitting the right buttons at least.

This week (Nov 10 - Nov 16): Minimum: 335.5 (-2.5) (Nov 14) Maximum: 339.5 (-0.5) (Nov 16) Average: 337.2 (-2.05) (137.2 to goal) Exercise Calories: 2563 on 5 days Average Calories per session: 512.16

Quickie Hack: Online X-mas list

2006-11-16T07:09:16-06:00

It's getting around that time of year when kids start singing little annoying songs and thinking of the toys that they will be getting in slightly more than a month. In my family, when everyone gathered for thanksgiving, the younguns were expected to have a list which could be disseminated throughout the family with everything they wanted. This avoided some of the more clichÃ© gifts such as sweaters and socks. But who's to say that grownups can't have a little fun as well?

It's rather easy to use del.icio.us as a holder for your whole Christmas list. If you find something you want, just add it to your del.icio.us bookmarks with a special tag - I'm using “xmaslist2006”. Using del.icio.us gives you a few advantages over the traditional list:

A nice URL which you can give to friends, family and anyone else who might want to give you something - mine, for example, is http://del.icio.us/jamuraa/xmaslist2006. It's very readable and could even be memorable to someone who uses del.icio.us themselves.
You get to put comments by each item, which may persuade perusers of your list to get a certain item, or point out synergistic items like the Two iPod things you want.
The list can be updated by yourself, meaning there's really no deadline for your list to be finished. This also adds a little bit of non-repeatability - if I know that someone else already bought their gift, I can buy something added recently for a better chance of uniqueness.
You get to keep your list around, letting you get those things you wanted with the plethora of gift cards that you received, buy the things you REALLY wanted yourself, or even carry things over to next year.

Things on the list need not be completely techie - if you're just looking for a nice sweater, you can add a general page or a representative item with a comment on it. Perhaps include your sizes as well, especially for items which come in a large number of sizes like pants. With any luck, you'll get just what you want this year.

Birthdays and non-events.

2006-11-14T14:18:09-06:00

This is just a short note to remind everyone that the most wonderful woman in the world deserves birthday greetings. She's still only 4 years, 5 months, and 2 days older than me, and not 5 years older, which she would like you to believe. Despite that, she easily is beautiful enough to be younger than me, and I'm blessed that she can tolerate my ineptitude.

Happy birthday [lj user="ceilingsarecool"]!

Iowans are absent accent.

2006-11-11T18:07:57-06:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
Philadelphia
North Central
The South
The Northeast
The Inland North
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

It's too late baby, now it's too late

2006-11-10T11:00:00-06:00

Getting to the gym consistently is one of the biggest hurdles that I have stuck to jumping over while I'm trying to lose a bit more than a few. I seem to have no consistent schedule, except that I do end up doing it every day that I can. One downside of this is that I tend to work out late at night, almost always an hour or less before I go to bed. I've heard that this is not the best for the sleep, but I suspect it is actually better than nothing, so I continue to get to the gym at 11pm or 12pm. Unfortunately, I found myself with some extra roadblocks this week: the exercise room was half broken. The breakers on one half of the room tend to trip when the air conditioner and two machines that are on that circuit are all in use. This means that no one can use those machines until someone from the coop management goes and resets the switch. The treadmill machine, my weapon of choice for shedding a few pounds, is inconveniently on this circuit, and can't be plugged in anywhere else. This happened 3 times this week, Wed-Fri. I'm calling the office for the second time tomorrow.

It is significantly harder to exercise when I don't have the treadmill handy — the stepping machine works on semi-powered days, but it tires me out much too quickly and I cannot get enough exercise in. I'm not the kind of person to reliably run in place or do jumping jacks. My solution was to move the exercise bike to the powered side of the room. The biggest problem with semi-powered days is motivation. Usually I have the motivation to get to the exercise room and start the machine, and once I've started I can stop. Opening the door to a bunch of non-working machines is a huge motivation hit though. It's so much easier to take a roadblock like this and skip a day — in fact I did this week once. Luckily I discovered that the bike is on wheels on one side so it is easy to move to the other side of the room. However, I'd like to solicit suggestions for alternate exercises for semi-power days. The things that work in the room are a weight machine with a bunch of attachments, the stepping machine, and the exercise bike. I can't really go outside and exercise, because of the late hour and neighborhood that I live in, so it needs to be an inside task. The last requirement is that it focuses on losing weight, not gaining muscle. I'm fairly sure that I'll be gaining some muscle along this process, but the goal is to drop the weight.

I have taken Saturdays to be my day off, so that I can get a little rest and not be so stressed about things, but I'm not taking it this week as I need to "make up" for the skipped day.

This week (Nov 3 - Nov 9): Minimum: 338.0 (-0.5) (Nov 7) Maximum: 340.0 (-1.0) (Nov 4) Average: 339.25 (-0.35) (139.25 to goal) Exercise Calories: 2314 on 5 days Average Calories per session: 462.8

The waiting is the hardest part

2006-11-03T10:15:00-06:00

Exercise is hard work. It is hard to keep going to the exercise room every day, and getting on that machine and doing the exercise. It is only loosely assuaded by the fact that I can listen to music or read a magazine while I am doing it. The saddle on the stationary bike is uncomfortable, and the treadmill is annoying when it asks for my heartrate. Don't get me wrong, I am comitted to my exercise regimen and will be keeping it up for the forseeable future. I really do believe that I am improving my overall health and wellbeing doing it. Walking down the hall back to the apartment is a good feeling, and it's strangely satisfying to be all sweaty and gross. This week was fairly erratic with respect to exercise. I ended up taking saturday off mostly by accident, completely filling up my schedule with other things. Other days I would start early -- around 7pm instead of my normal 10pm, or would start an hour late. Tuesday was a particularly crappy day as half of the exercise room was tripped on the breaker and I had to resort to the horrible stepping machine and some weightlifting to get my 30 minutes in. Hopefully this week I will be able to get a better schedule going.

I am frustrated. Two weeks of dieting and exercise, and I don't seem to be losing weight. This bothers me because in the past I would have received at least a little bonus on the scale just for dieting, and I don't seem to be getting that this time. I tend to weigh myself after my workout, because there is a fairly nice physician's scale which I can use to weigh myself, and doing after every exercise is a good way to remember. This causes a problem however because I usually exercise at the end of the day. One day I may eat more and then weigh more, and another day I may eat less (or ahem, output more) and weigh less that night. It doesn't deal a good hand to my psyche to sometimes weigh more than I did the day before. I do seem to be getting a hang of guessing when I will weigh more though. I am thinking of switching to weighing only once a week, but I am afraid that I will forget, and the hacker in me wants as much data as possible on this.

This week (Oct 27 - Nov 2): Minimum: 338.5 (Oct 31) Maximum: 341.0 (Nov 2) Average: 339.8 (139.8 to goal) Total Exercise Calories: 2562 Average Exercise Calories: 427

Google Experiment: Prelude

2006-11-03T09:38:00-06:00

I've been using DreamHost to host this blog and most of my persistent online activity for the past 10 months. All in all I have been really happy with them. Others seem to have issues, but I don't have any gripes. I'm only paying a paltry fee, so I don't complain too much if my server isn't five-nines reliable. However, I am starting to have a problem with one of the services available. The email support is somewhat lax. My current situation is that I am using mutt as a reader on the server itself. This requires me to SSH into the server and read the mail on there. Because DreamHost doesn't realy expect that people will have this activity (most people check their mail by IMAP or webmail) it sometimes sees my mutt process as long-running, and decides to kill it with a HUP on the SSH connection. This is pretty annoying. Also, I get a lot of spam. No, really: on a typical day, I receive over 400 spams. Currently I am using SpamBayes for spam filtering, which works reasonably well - it catches most spam at least in the unsure folder. The same problem with mutt shows up with spambayes though: it takes up too much CPU and gets killed by DH's watchdogs.

These problems lead me to this experiment. The hassle with my mail is just too large, and I hear that GMail's spam filters are reasonably aggressive and work well after you train them slightly. I have decided that I will run an experiment. Starting with November 1st, all of my mail will forward to my GMail account. I will document the spam filtering (or lack of) abilities here on Base Zero, and I'll see how it works out. I have years of data from other methods of spam filtering so I can compare.

However, this experiment isn't only going to be about spam filtering. GMail also employs some different mail models than what I am used to. The first that I am interested in is tags. GMail uses tags instead of folders, the normal way of organizing mail. This is touted as better because you can have more than one tag assigned to a email at once, and therefore orgniaze mail which should be in two categories better. For messages which are in an Inbox you just use a Inbox tag. Spam messages get a Spam tag. So I will be orgnaizing my email with tags as much as possible. The second thing which intrigues me is the idea of emails being conversations instead of threads. GMail puts related emails together, but uses a flat structure as opposed to the tree structure that I am used to. I wonder if this will confuse me because I am on a number of lists which tend to use the tree structure a lot, with many branches. I may not like some of the things that GMail does -- in these cases I will look for hacks or build ones myself which attempt to solve these problems. I am also probably going to try and do some user interface critique.

Some people are concerned about GMail and scanning emails. This doesn't concern me that much: most ISPs can scan your emails for viruses and spam nowadays anyway, webmail particularly so. I can understand the effect that this could have on some people however. If anyone reading this message would like to be excluded from the email going to GMail, just reply to this post or email me. I will oblidge by filtering your following emails to a special folder on my server. Just realize that I will only read those emails weekly at best.

GMail will not be the only Google service which gets tested by me this month. Stay tuned for more information. Until then, hail to Google, our dear and glorious leader.

Damn, Had to be the guy who dies.

2006-10-28T07:21:55-05:00

You scored as Wash. "I'm a leaf on the wind...watch how I soar."

Wash

81%

Inara

69%

Kaylee

63%

Simon

63%

ZoÃ«

56%

River

56%

Book

50%

Jayne

38%

Mal

25%

Firefly: Which Big Damn Character Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

There's no better time than right now

2006-10-26T21:30:28-05:00

Welsome to the first of I hope many diet and exercise weekly posts. As I noted previously, in the past week or so I have started trying to lose weight. Currently I am using two websites to track my progress. The first is Traineo, which has nifty graphs which show the progress in many different logs. Traineo has a very high caloric recommendation for me, almost 3500 calories. I almost never go above the calorie recommendation here. Traineo also is highly encouraging to exercise. However, it lacks a large component of calorie tracking for me: daily ingestion. This leads me to use a second site: TheDailyPlate. DailyPlate has an insane amount of foods in it's database, I suspect seeded from USDA database at first, but updated by different users. The site allows you to add your own food and then everyone can use your data. I've added one or two items I think since I started. TheDailyPlate also has a caloric recommendation for me, which is sitting at 2600 calories or so. I've been below my net calories on both of these sites daily.

Along with watching my caloric intake, I've started exercising on a daily basis. It is actually much easier than I thought it would be, mostly because no one uses the exercise room during my "normal" workout time. The equipment in there isn't the greatest, but it works for burning calories and aerobics, which is what I'm aiming for. My weekly routine is currently 4 days fat burning, 3 days aerobic exercise. My fat burning is on a treadmill, going at about 2.5 miles an hour which is just a slightly faster walk than normal for me, and keeping my heart rate in the "fat burning zone" which is generally below 140. Because I'm so out of shape, I don't need to work that hard. Because it's not as much work, I tend to do the walking for 45-60 minutes. The aerobic exercise is a 24 minute program on the stationary bike.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm making that much progress. The Traineo graphs aren't exactly correct. I've actually lost net 0.5 pounds on the scale in the exercise room, which at first I subtracted 4 pounds because I obviously am wearing clothes and shoes while I'm on it. I would weigh in the morning, but the scale that I used before is very unreliable for some reason - I can get on it, weigh, and instantly get on it again, and have the change be 4 pounds or more. I'm hoping to find a more reliable scale at a reasonable price that can handle my weight. The problem with all the cheap scales is that they're not reliable or they don't go over 330 pounds, which I'm above of course.

I'm trying to be open with my weight and weight loss throughout the process. Towards that goal, I'm adding this to my sidebar:

Till I opened my eyes and walked out the door

2006-10-21T15:45:48-05:00

Life has been hectic to say the least, but I am taking control of it finally. School started, and I finally got settled into a schedule. I am taking two classes with highly overlapping material, both focused on user interface design. They are focused on separate aspects however and only overlap slightly. They are required. Also I am working at Honeywell still, programming away. Things are going better there, we just got past a critical juncture so I have about 2 weeks (15 hour weeks, but still weeks) of work laid out for me. I was getting worried because we were hitting a critical path issue: all the other programming things which needed to get done were based on a decision which we didn't feel like we should make without consulting others. Anyway the decision is made, and while there is slightly more work than there was previously for me, I am glad because the work glass being full helps rather than hinders there.

I've started drinking green tea, which supposedly has some nice health benefits, and sleeping earlier and waking earlier, which also isn't that bad. I'm currently trying out different green teas, and liking all of them unfortunately. They aren't really that different to my taste buds, but at least they're all good. Now that my day usually starts around 8am officially, its nice to be up at 6:30 and have some time to get the motor running. I've also started working out regularly, and dieting consistently. I've started a log at Traineo, a website which banks upon the concept of others checking out your progress as you go along. I hope it doesn't become annoying to anyone who I put down -- also I'm trying to be open about it, so if someone wants to be on the "motivators" list, I'd be happy to add you. I think I'm limited to 4 at the moment, so there's one spot available. I could probably eliminate one as they are closely related to another of my motivators, so they'd be a 2-in-1. Things are going well so far, as you can see.

[lj user="ceilingsarecool"] asked me the second or third day why I decided to start the diet and exercise regiment, and I couldn't tell her exactly. I think it's a mix of many things which are happening at the moment. It's like I hit a tipping point. Anyway it's time to go out to eat. Hopefully I'll have some time later.

Firefox 2.0 and User Interfaces

2006-09-07T17:21:18-05:00

Classes have started for this semester, which means that I am just a bit more busy than I was before - and I had a pretty full plate before. Luckily, both of my classes are fairly similar, allowing for some overlap and giving me two different perspectives on the same topic. I suspect that I will end up skewed toward one direction or the other. Both are on Human Machine Interaction, one from psychology and one from computer science. I am particularly interested in improving software interfaces and novel interfaces, even though it isn't really in my defined research topic. Homework on both doesn't seem like it will be an issue. There will be usability studies at the actual professional usability lab at the U.

I recently got fed up with the crappy javascript support that safari has, so I decided to install Firefox 2.0b2 and give it a try. I was immediately presented with some new user interface elements. Close buttons on each tab is an annoyance for me, because usually I close tabs with Ctrl-W (Loop-W on my Mac) so I didn't want them around. I found an extension that supposedly removed them but found in the comments an about:config variable that you can set to get rid of them. Problem 1 solved. This leaves two remaining annoyances for me. The go button by the URL entry not removable as it was in 1.5 - this is only a minor annoyance, I can ignore it easily and it doesn't take up much space. The more obtrusive change however is that when you close the last remaining tab, now it doesn't close the window, it just clears out the tab. This doesn't happen when you have the tab bar go away if you only have one tab open, so that's a good workaround for now, but I sincerely hope that this is just a bug that they haven't fixed yet.

Both of these things have a strange sort of antagonistic synergy for me: I'm trying to learn what is the best interface for everyone, but at the same time I want my interface exactly the way that I specify, generally usability be dashed. Then again, I did prefer to use ion for a while.

Labor Day 2006 Day 2

2006-09-04T09:03:28-05:00

We went to the beach, near park point. It was nice.

Labor Day 2006 Day 1

2006-09-03T07:53:14-05:00

I can work overtime I can work in a mine

2006-09-01T21:30:58-05:00

Labor day weekend approacheth, and myself and [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] have secured a little getaway for ourselves. It is proving to be a nice way to relax a while before a big rush of work. I have been in all true form not updating the blog lately, so I get to give everyone a big update all at once.

The iBook problems which I mentioned in the last blog entry proved to be fatal to the machine, so I went out and bought a shiny new MacBook to replace it. Given the pricing behind most of the small laptops and the experience that I had with my iBook, I was happy with my decision. I plan to add ram (Apple's ram is so expensive) and replace the hard drive (also cheaper elsewhere) sometime before the end of the year. After I bought the new book, looking through my old receipts I discovered that my iBook is still under AppleCare so I took it in to get it fixed. The Genius Bar at the MOA store was very busy today so we had to walk around the mall and then wait for ages still. However, we successfully got the thing to freeze twice in the presence of a MacGenius(tm) so it is now off to the magic depot in the sky for fixing before I sell it used to someone. It is a nice machine and works great other than the freezing which will be fixed, and I was informed by the MacGenius(tm) that the AppleCare travels with the machine, so if it breaks in the next 8 months or so the buyer can get it fixed for free.

Honeywell this week was pretty hectic and non-normal. There was a deadline which required the working of an application I hadn't planned on having working until the end of the week, so I had to work Monday and Tuesday, putting in 20 hours before mid-week. This made it slightly hard to get anything else done, but still not bad because it means I have a little leeway for next week. The good news is that we got it done, and the even better news is that it's possible to focus on other things which I have more experience in there now.

After the weekend (which I'm sure we'll have pictures from) is the start of the new school year. This means that my schedule is being impacted a lot, and I will need to get used to classes again. With any luck, this semester will be the last time I ever take classes in grad school. I also need to start a paper next week which is due on the 14th, so it's a little tight on the scheduling end. Hopefully I will be able to pull it off, because the conference is in Italy next year and [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] has a keen interest in going with me.

But for now, I get a little R&R time before rejoining previously scheduled overwhelming work, already in progress.

One Year Ago: "The new place is great - even with all of the boxes it's better than the old apartment"
~Two Years Ago: "THEN DON'T TAKE IT ASSHOLE. IT'S NOT YOURS."

Late at night when the wires in the walls

2006-08-09T14:29:10-05:00

After my iBook problems last week, I tried to install Debian on the thing. I have narrowed down the problem to something with the hard drive inside, because the machine seems to run fine and go through most of the installation without any trouble, but once I start using the hard drive, it completely freezes. I successfully ran the hardware test disc which came with it a couple times in extended mode, but I'm not sure that it uses the hard drive in it's tests long enough for it to exhibit the problem. The failure seems to be somewhat random in nature, occuring at different times in the install process. Now I have the unhappy decision of trying to save this laptop which is more than 3 years old, or to attempt to buy a new one. Right now I am leaning toward buying a new one.

Honeywell seems 1.5 times as long this week, mostly because I'm making up for a day which I missed a couple weeks ago. Things have settled down there in terms of software failure, so I'm back at the normal coding which I am doing. The code uses Ogre, which is a handy 3d engine, making it much easier than learning something like OpenGL, and as a bonus adding portability. I am considering building some play applicaitons with the toolkit at home just because it would be fun.

Tonight I need to build a couple presentations covering some papers which were in CVPR this year to present at a reading group at Honeywell. It would be fine except that I am completely unaware of any of the recent history of vision research, so it makes it much harder to build the presentations. I hope I can finish them in a reasonable amount of time so I can watch Eureka tonight.

The TiVo Diet is still working out as expected. I discovered that I don't really have anything to watch on Sunday or Monday of the week. I'm getting much more productive work done than I used to. One downside of the diet is that I tend to not want to just sit and veg at the end of the work day - I think it frustrates [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] a bit because I'm always going off to the office to do something on the computer.

I recieved and watched the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip yesterday. Being an Aaron Sorkin fan, I am excited for another of his shows to broadcast. Judging by the pilot, it should be a decent show.

Sidenote: Planet Debian seems to like one of my weekend weeviews a little too much, and is regrabbing it for the front page every so often. I can't figure out why this is happening, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, in a couple more posts it should be off the RSS feed.

iBook failure recovery, and what else I've been doing

2006-08-04T20:10:52-05:00

Well, I discovered last night while I was writing a blog entry that my iBook G4 is somewhat broken. After ignoring it for most of the day today, I am currently working on getting my home directory off of it so that I can try installing Debian later tonight. I think that some piece of hardware has failed, because I haven't seen OS X sieze up like this before. However, I haven't yet had a freeze occur when I am in Linux of some kind. The symptoms of this failure vary between not being able to boot (blue screen before progress bar) to booting and then freezing completely, to the point of no mouse movement, to booting and freezing partially allowing for mouse movement but no interaction of any kind. I'm trying to view this as an opportunity to install Debian now that the Airport Express works in Linux, but the type of failure is very frustrating. rsync to the rescue, to restart backups where they left off before they froze.

It seems that software isn't being nice to me lately either. When I tried to start Visual Studio .NET at work on Tuesday, it refused to start, including without a .sln being loaded up at all. This caused a complete work stoppage for me, spending about half the day trying to discover what was wrong and putting calls in to various help desks. The other half of the day and half of yesterday was spent attempting to setup a second system with the files needed for working. I think that when I return on Monday I will be in a state where I can just start working again. As a bonus, they should have my original machine (which is fairly beefy from a hardware standpoint) reimaged so I can start setting it up once more with the tools for work.

Other than the constant computer problems, I've been playing a fair amount of Battlefield 2. I've managed to get almost all of the basic badges, and I am quickly on my way to another promotion. The TiVo TV Diet is working out well, I am actually watching less TV than I planned for, mostly because I'm not really up for watching Jeopardy every day. That knocks me down to less than 2 hours a day. I seem to be getting a lot more personal work done, and watching more of my Netflix movies. I uploaded new packages for vgrabbj, codeville and bogosort. I am happy with the state of all of them excepting bittorrent, which is still a very old version due to the new license they switched to for the 4.X series. There has been some movement on that front lately however: apparently the Ubuntu people are bugging Bram and friends as well as myself about changes that the license needs. Crossing my fingers!

One Year Ago: The good part is that it does actually help you, well, get things done. Two Years Ago: Tuesdays have now become my TV night.

Work and Procrastination: A six-hour study of the (10+2)*5 hack.

2006-07-27T21:22:07-05:00

Recently I discovered the (10+2)*5 dash courtesy of Merlin over at 43 Folders, and I thought that I would give it a try. The concept is fairly simple: work for 10 minutes, screw around for 2 minutes, repeat 5 times, and voila! you have filled an hour with 5/6 productivity. The first thing that I did was download a Konfabulator widget which keeps track of the time and pops up a warning box when you should be screwing around and working.

I worked for approximately 6 hours under this regime today at my Honeywell job, even though I don't use task lists as diligently as I should there. I found that tasks which I regarded as small were finishing in a snap, partly because I wanted to get them done before the next 2 minute break, and partly because if I didn't finish for a break, my mind didn't just stop thinking about the problem. It was very advantageous to think about something else for 2 minutes and then get back to the action because it was like taking a fresh start. I was using the dash to do some coding (the major portion of my hours right now) - finding bugs that normally would have me staring at the screen for a couple minutes seemed easy when I was just coming back from a break. The only issues which I had with it was when I got interrupted by Workrave rest breaks (I turned off microbreaks) or a coworker. I am definitely doing it again, the next time I have an hour uninterrupted.

TiVo TV Diet: 2 hours - Daily Show, Colbert Report, Hustle
A little over 2 years ago: "Things I can control: - Caloric intake - TV habits"

Serendipity plugin for LiveJournal markup

2006-07-27T21:01:07-05:00

Serendipity is my blogging software of choice lately, but in the past I was a happy user of LiveJournal. Fortunately, now my friends at LJ can keep up to date with my current blog, because of a great event plugin which mirrors posts here on LiveJournal (configurable of course). On LJ people use markup like [lj user="jamuraa"] in order to make a handy link to the page of the livejournal user in question. I was missing that feature, so I coded up a small plugin for s9y which converts that into jamuraa. This is version 0.1, which only does the user tag. It also works in comments if you enable it. In the future, I hope to add code to detect the user type correctly (on LiveJournal there are other icons for different user types). I also probably should not hotlink to the .gifs on the livejournal servers.

To install, just unzip into the plugins/ directory of your s9y installation.

Download the LJ Markup Plugin 0.1 for Serendipity

On the Varied Use of Free Time

2006-07-26T22:24:59-05:00

Three things which I do with my free time which will have some impact or change this week: Gaming, Sleeping, Watching TV.

In gaming, I discovered a list of games which are available on computer and have AI opponents. This will probably kill some productivity as it means I discovered San Juan, a card game which I simply must buy a real life copy of. The game dynamics are perfect and it's in the "learn once, play forever" category. Hope to play this at the next board gaming night.

In sleep, I am attempting to change my sleeping patterns so that I am an early riser. Generally I'm a late sleeper and late riser, but as I get older, I am finding that it is better to wake up early and get things done in the morning. I feel much more productive at the end of the day. To this end I am now sleeping at 10-11pm. ceilingsarecool also appreciates the new schedule because it lines up with hers much better.

In TV, I have concocted a plan to lessen the amount of TV that I watch per week. I have dubbed it the TiVo TV diet, and details are after the fold.

Weekend Weeviews: Omega Man, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

2006-07-26T15:23:00-05:00

A month between postings. Who needs regular updates? I've got a few of these weekend weeviews piled up, so I'm going to do them two at a time every couple of days.

Omega Man

Charleton Heston makes this post-apocalyptic world view quite the masterpiece. Considering his current stance on guns, it is easy to throw a couple of cheap shots at the movie in which he plays a gun-crazed doctor. Thinking you're the only one left in existence has got to be pretty hard on the psyche, and it shows in the character. Robert Neville (Heston's character) obviously doesn't think he's really alone, just the only one left who shouldn't be shot on sight. The rest of the human race was hit by a crappy plague, 28 days later-style. This plague apparently doesn't kill all brain functions, but only crams you into a religious sect which could only be described as luddite. Movies aren't interesting without a love interest, so Heston finds out early about Lisa (Rosalind Cash) who is keeping a set of children who are immune. Robert is also immune, and hopes to create a serum from his blood. This 70's end of the world is remarkably watchable, although it has it's moments of Action Movie. The acting is well done, although the cult of luddites is somewhat overplayed and has strange overtones of vampirism for some reason. Omega Man gets a 7. (imdb, amazon)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

As a child of the 80s, I never saw any of the original Planet of the Apes movies, and always assumed they were campy and not well done. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they actually have a plot and are interesting. This fourth movie in the series of 70s movies presents it's moral message with a generous heaping of.. it's moral message. Years after his parents travelled backward in time in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Caesar, the only talking ape left, is incognito with the circus master who raised him and comes to the city for the first time. At this time the plague which killed all pets has already ravaged the nation, humans have decided that apes are more useful as slaves than pets, and already have a large monolithic "Ape Management" section of government. Caesar gets thrown through the system when his "owner" gets brought into questioning for.. questioning the treatment of an ape. Being highly intelligent, he quickly gets snatched up for his skills by a top government official. Starting an underground resistance movement is the next step, and dominos start to fall from there. Conquest.. then degenerates into a large-cast action film, with hundreds of extras in a street-level ape vs. human fight. It's not the most interesting movie ever, but considering my expectations I can happily give it a 6. (imdb, amazon)

The Continuing Saga of the ML-2010

2006-06-27T10:08:59-05:00

I upgraded my CUPS to 1.2 today, and had a bit of trouble with getting the ML-2010 to work with it. Given my other issues with this printer, I thought I would expound on how I fixed yet another problem with this semi-supported printer.

The Samsung printing uses the linuxprint system, which uses a configuration file in an XML format which isn't specified. In the default install for the Samsung linux tool, it is installed in /usr/local/linuxprinter/linuxprint.cfg with a link from /etc/linuxprint.cfg to it. My file, after being setup, looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<linux root="/usr/local/linuxprinter" system="cups">

<option name="ghostscript" value="/usr/bin/gs-esp"/>

<option name="address" value="localhost"/>

<option name="port" value="631"/>

<option name="lpr" value="/usr/bin/lp"/>

<option name="llpr-default-printer" value="lp"/>

<printer ppd="ppd/C/ML-2010spl2.ppd" queue="lp">

<option name="Resolution" value="600"/>

<option name="PageSize" value="Letter"/>

<option name="InputSlot" value="AUTO"/>

<option name="MediaType" value="PRINTER"/>

<option name="JCLJamrecovery" value="RWJOff"/>

<option name="JCLEconomode" value="PRINTERDEFAULT"/>

</printer>

</linux>

I discovered the hard way that if this file isn't there, the filter which is installed (ppmtospl2) doesn't work that well. In this case, the printer queue is lp. If this file is setup correctly, you can setup CUPS yourself, using the ppd file which is referenced in the linuxprint.cfg file. If you have lost your linuxprint.cfg, I suspect you can just modify the above with the correct ppd - the Samsung package has many of them for different printers. If you don't want to go that way, you can rerun the /usr/local/linuxprinter/bin/linux-config as before, but you will have to open your CUPS 1.2 server wide open while you are configuring it so that it can add the printer. Also, I had to have a printer existing in the CUPS 1.2 server in order to have the linux-config program work at all. I solved this by just adding a virtual pdf printer (using the package cups-pdf). Even when you get linux-config to add the printer, it will not add it correctly for CUPS 1.2 - the device is incorrect - so you will have to reconfigure it via the web interface and give it the ppd which is in the directory anyway.

At least I have my printer back again.

Refilling Laser Printer Cartridges

2006-06-21T11:47:24-05:00

I have the pleasure to have a laser printer at home, which works great and is wonderful for printing everything from research papers to read to envelopes for sending. [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] uses it for taking things for proofing and research. While it was a slight trouble to set up with my Linux server, but works great now. Unfortunately while it was cheap as hell after rebate, the starter cartridge that it came with only prints off about 1,000 pages. Recently it started printing very light and shaking the cartridge wasn't working anymore, so I started looking for new toner. I found out quickly that one new toner cartridge costs as much as the whole printer itself, but my searches also turned up another option: refilling the cartridge that I have already. I figured I would take the chance, because it cost around $20 compared to the $80-90 for a new cartridge.

Yesterday I got the toner in the mail - it comes in a very small bottle with a small diagram and a little topper funnel. The process was fairly easy and straightforward. All I needed for tools that didn't come in the package was a Phillips and flathead screwdriver. The steps which I had to take:

Setup the area - I put newspaper down all around the area I was planning to do the work. I didn't need that much space and I was very clean and didn't spill, but I still got toner on the paper I put down.
Remove the side of the cartridge - this was indicated to me on the diagram that came with the new toner. There was one little clip which I had to push in in order to get the side off, and I had to pry the side off slowly with a flathead.
Remove the toner plug - the toner plug was under the side panel I pried off in the last step, and also took a little coaxing with my small flathead. Starting at this step, I also put on a set of latex gloves so I wouldn't get toner all over my fingers.
Open the toner - Open the top of the cap (mine came in a little bottle) and remove the safety seal (like on pill bottles). This got a little messy on my fingers to get all of the safety seal off. I also screwed the plastic funnel thing on.
Pour the toner into the cartridge - If your cartridge is really empty it's not a problem to turn it over so you can put the bottle in at a 45 degree angle and then turn both the cartridge and toner bottle so that the toner is pouring out. I had to tap the bottle a little and shake them (while still together) to get the toner into the cartridge
Put the plug and side back on - replace the plug and screw the side of the cartridge back on.
Shake the cartridge to settle the toner - shake it about 3-4 times, while it's still over the paper. Some of the small dust-like particles came off for me when I shook the cartridge
Clean up - throw away the toner bottle and the newspaper

I was thrilled to put the cartridge back into my printer and find that it printed just as good as before. Unfortunately this doesn't work forever - eventually the fusing barrel will wear out and start producing some of those other laser printer problems like lines and repeating patterns. Everything that I have read suggests that one cartridge of mechanical parts will work for about 10,000 pages. That means that I have about 2 more refills before this one runs out. Saving $50-70 every couple of months will make a big difference in the long run. I suspect that some of the toner cartridges that you can buy on line are "re-manufactured" much like this one, or possibly slightly more complicated (replacing a drum that's broken) so they might not work for as many refills as a new one.

Weekend Weeviews: Jawbreaker, Real Genius, Primer

2006-06-18T23:54:17-05:00

There are three reviews this week, because I neglected to review one which I watched earlier. I'm also trying to decide whether the links at the end are of any use, and whether it's useful to syndicate this to Planet Debian. Feedback is encouraged! ;)

Jawbreaker

The whole premise of Jawbreaker gets laid out right at the beginning - after a opening sequence in which we see the title candy being made, a couple of girls kill a friend by surprising her and using a jawbreaker as a gag. The movie then degenerates into a formulaic nerdy girl gets to be pretty storyline. Unfortunately Jawbreaker doesn't pull it off as well as Mean Girls does, and ends up falling pretty flat. One saving grace of this movie is that it is very short at just 87 minutes. One small treat is that Rose McGowan is playing a decent role, although I do have a much older vision whenever I see her from her work on Charmed. One thing which keeps bugging me is how the movie reminds me of But I'm a Cheerleader, even though the plots and premises are very different. The soundtrack is very well done with good placement of good songs. Jawbreaker is bittersweet at a 5. (imdb, amazon)

Real Genius

I have always heard good things about Real Genius, but never saw it all the way through. Supposedly this is a tragedy. Apparently [lj user="ceilingsarecool"] saw it before, but didn't remember a bunch of the plot. A whiz kid enters college early and starts working for a professor. The premise is setup in the first 10 minutes or so, which is that Herr Professor is really corrupt and working to provide a laser weapon to the military. This leaves ample time for the comedy in the movie to play out, as Whiz Kid gets to experience all the wild antics of college with a high-IQ twist. Lasers are used fairly extensively in the movie (mostly as part of the plot) and get a nice chunk of credits in the end. The movie unfortunately doesn't really age well with time, unless you're a fan of 80's movies. There are no less than 2 montages with music, and the ultimate 80's end-of-movie song "Everybody wants to rule the world" by Tears for Fears is playing at the end. Real Genius still is smarter than many movies you'll see nowadays, so it burns in a 7. (imdb, amazon)

Primer

Small budget films are usually interesting to watch, because either they are simple masterpieces, or they try to be way more than they can be and end up being a trainwreck which you just can't stop watching. Primer is the rare gem which found a happy medium between complex and simple. At the start, a garage business is introduced with four tech friends making a bit of money selling to hobbyists. Apparently they have some sort of deal about who gets to pick the next thing they try, and one of them wants to try something related to physics. Two decide to attempt it on their own and they create a device which apparently lowers density, or gravity, or something. Then they discover it does much more than that - it can manipulate time. Fortunately there is still much of the movie left after this. The acting is not top notch by any means, and comes off as cardboardish, but it seems well-placed in this script because most techies that I know are not the best with social skills. It's important to note that the main focus doesn't lie on the device, but on the implications and ramifications. As the movie approaches it's end, the pace and convolution increases quickly. A rewatch is in order for Primer - and even then you still may be missing parts in the giant puzzle which is laid out before you. Shane Carruth directs, writes, and produces an amazing film, especially considering the sub-10k budget. Primer scores e^2.30258509. (imdb, amazon)

Random Technological Stuff

2006-06-15T23:27:18-05:00

Programming, windows style

I'm now in the thick of a bunch of win32 programming at my Honeywell part-time job. I don't mind it that much, but I continue to be amazed that Microsoft's IDE is still the one used most often. The autocompletion is nice, but that's about the only good thing about it. I am continually annoyed that the IDE doesn't know which definition of a function I want to use, and only seems to pop up it's hints when it decides. Add this to the fact that most win32 libraries aren't apparently setup in a way so you can put their source in the repository, and I have a lot of admin work which I'm not particularly thrilled to do. 10% programming, 90% random crap. I'm beginning to understand why the average lines of code per day is so low. I can't really complain that much though, I knew the tools we'd be using when I accepted the job.

Programming, rails style

I have been working with Ruby on Rails lately, mostly to make some new web applications which aren't released yet. Things which are possibly in the works:

MoneyDelta - credit card and savings balance tracker - figures out how much money you are making (or losing) each day based on how the interest is actually calculated. In the end it will probably have a little graph and possibly small things you can do in order to avoid interest and how much you would save in the long run.
DeadSimpleCMS - CMS built mostly for Diana's use. It lets you specify layouts (not done yet) and content which goes into the layouts. In a very very early stage of development, but it is actually live on a site right now. As the name would imply, the point is to be very simple.
Gathr - scholarly conference management software. Accepts papers, assigns reviewers based on degrees of connection to avoid conflicts of interest, generally tries to make the whole conference thing easier.

I also have a couple of smaller applications which won't really go anywhere, and an internal application upgrade from php. I really enjoy building web applications in the Rails framework, and I have honed my skills at Ruby enough that I actually use it for small scripts when I get frustrated with bash. I tend to do my Ruby Coding in TextMate and with Locomotive on the iBook, although I may do some on the Debian machine soon.

Weekend Weeviews: The Iron Giant, Brazil

2006-06-12T22:10:19-05:00

Wow, a semi-regular posting.

The Iron Giant

Small town america in the late 50s doesn't know what hit it. Science fiction is in it's hayday and the nation is on a hairpin trigger when a big robot falls from the sky and is discovered by a small boy. I had heard much about this movie and everyone I knew who saw it liked it. I have to tell you: the hype is well deserved. The story is compelling and heartening, good for children and adults alike, and the humor throughout is well done. Characters are voiced well. The story obviously revolves around the giant. Most of the story is centered around keeping the monstrosity hidden, which doesn't succeed for long. The government eventually figures it out and starts shooting, and then things really get interesting. The ending was just as fun to watch as the beginning, although I think they copped out on the very end, leaving it with a light note. It would have been really nice to see it end in a bitter-sweet tone. The Giant gets a 9. (imdb)

Brazil

One of the things I remember hearing about Brazil is that it was "Terry Gilliam's Directorial Masterpiece". It certainly is at that. In the 20th century somewhere, a clerical error causes a great movie plot. A futuristic society is thrown into disarray by a simple error in typing, starting with the death of an innocent man, and then the coverup of the century. The protaganist is in a dead-end job, but seems to be perfectly fine with it, until the girl of his dreams literally walks into his life. Gilliam and his cinematographer create a beautifully blocky and dull grey industrial wasteland set in stark contrast with the beautiful dreamland. The subplots don't obscure the main line which is compelling and kept me wanting more even though it clocks in at over 2 hours. The ending was unexpected and well done at the same time, and I couldn't see it done any other way. The directors cut is the only way to go with this one, and I haven't even seen the studio cut. Brazil is berriffic, and scores a 12. (imdb)

Go Go Gadget Vacuum

2006-06-10T19:01:47-05:00

The gift which I bought Di last week came this Thursday - a iRobot Roomba Sage. So far we have ran it about 4 times - the first three times it's bin filled up completely, today when it was finished it wasn't even half full. The robot is really maddening to watch, because the pseudo-random walk that it uses doesn't seem like it is covering the floor that well. The roboticist in me knows better though, and the proof is in the particle-free floor which our apartment is now sporting.

It's not to say that there is no setup before turning the Roomba on - you need to clean up the floors just as you would for any low-powered vacuum, picking up pieces of deitrius which will not be picked up. The Roomba doesn't deal well with the type of rugs which we have in apartment either, so those need to be picked up and placed somewhere while it's running. After these steps, it's just turning it on and waiting basically. It easily gets to the 3 rooms which we have it vacuuming in (living room w/attached kitchen, bedroom, bathroom) multiple times in one cleaning cycle, but our apartment is not that large. After it's done you need to empty the bin and clean the brushes of hair and other debris, which takes about 2 minutes. All told I would say that using it takes about 10 minutes total interactive time.

Other than that, this week has been pretty dull actually, work and more work. Completed some code for Marsupial Player/Stage but it doesn't quite work the way I want yet. Monday went out with Di to look at couches and found a great table for the dining area. You can see pictures of it on my flickr page.

I need to install a backup system which works on Windows, OS X and Linux on the server machine, and figure out a network file system which works with all of them as well. I'm fairly sure that I am going to use Samba as the file serving capabilities. The machine has been rock-solid stable since the removal of the DWL-G520 which was providing network for it before the upgrade to a wireless bridge. I suspect that the madwifi drivers were not playing well with the amd64 architecture.

Weekend Weeviews: Brewster's Millions, All That Jazz

2006-06-05T14:48:58-05:00

Brewster's Millions

Richard Pryor and John Candy in a classic story retold many times. I had seen parts of this movie on TV or in the background and thought I should give it a try all the way through. Spending lots of money isn't quite as easy as it should be in this comedy directed by Walter Hill (48 Hours). I thoroughly enjoyed the story as much as is really possible in this type of plot. I thought that the acting was somewhat over the top and the main plot meandered a bit, but at 101 minutes it never went too far off the mark. The payoff at the end, even though it was obvious and expected, left me smiling while the credits rolled. I give it a 8.

All That Jazz

Life is not normal for Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) in this foray into the backstage of directing and coreography directed by Bob Fosse. In a setting where the only normal part of life seems to be the morning wake-up routine, a duality of mind and reality appears in the beginning. There is also a great interplay between Gideon and his daughter. I was dissappointed to continue on through the ending, which was completely flat leaving me wishing I had hit the back button on the remote and watched the first half over again. A fascinating tale of the struggle between personal and professional life turns into a disaster of an ending. It scores a 4.

Pet Peeve #2: Microsoft Excel and Unicode

2006-06-03T22:21:31-05:00

Recently I was working on an application for ICRA2006 and I needed to output some data to be read by Excel. This would seem like an easy problem, just output in CSV and Excel can open the text just fine. Unfortunately Excel has one of the most backwards implementations of international character support that I have ever worked with. Being nieve to this, I simply tried UTF-8. I was greeted with multiple strange characters in the place of my normal umlauted and tilde-d letters. A quick search turned up that when Excel reads a CSV, it assumes that it is in ASCII or . However, you can import the CSV as a text file and select it as unicode. This is where my real pet peeve is: You can't select the character set of a CSV in Excel. You have to rename the file as a .TXT file and go through a wizard, basically spelling out that yes, it is comma separated and yes, this is the data I want to import. There's one drop down box which specifies the character set. Of course Unicode is supported there.

In the search for a solution to this problem which didn't involve a 10-step process for the customer, I discovered the Unicode marker which is supported by Wordpad, but amazingly, does nothing but add a bit of garbage in Excel. The sad part is that I can be almost certain that the next version of Office will continue to have this problem. My only hope is that somehow the XML format will be open enough to just create a native Excel file.

Been a long time coming.

2006-06-01T17:34:34-05:00

Life has taken a turn for the busy lately, which means of course that this space loses a lot of content. Things have slowed down a bit now. Things which were taking up my time before were being basically one of the only technical staff for ICRA2006 (with one other who helped enormously), a new job at Honeywell Labs, and actually getting some research done on my thesis.

ICRA2006 was basically amazing and horrible at the same time. The amazing parts: meeitng people who are famous (a.k.a. "respected in their field"), eating a ton of fancy food on the dime of the conference, being at the first conference of my academic career. The horrible: working 18 hour days, being the go-to guy for practically everything, painful feet from walking most of those 18 hours. All in all, the amazing outways the horrible by a long shot. I also couldn't make it to DebConf6 because of it, and it was in a country that I might have actually made it to this time. Next year I guess.

The new job at Honeywell is going decently. We have a target in July which is probably going to have me pulling long hours. The best thing about the new job is of course pay-related though - I am going to be consumer-debt free by the end of this year. I hope that I can finish the nameless financial web application before my finances improve enough that I don't need it anymore.

I have narrowed in on my thesis more, which is an improvement at least. Now I need to actually write papers and do research while avoiding too many duties in other areas. I've got a couple of blog postings in the queue which should show up soon, and hopefully I will re-enable myself on Planet Debian.

I also bought a present for our apartment, and she hasn't guessed exactly what it is yet. This is me taunting Di a little. :)

Never before

2006-04-20T17:52:01-05:00

Never before have I cohabited with another person for a year. Never before have I visited another family for christmas. Never before have I yearned for someone while away. Never before have I been happy for more days together. Never before have I loved a person like I love Diana.

As of today it has been 2 wonderful years.

Movies Meme

2006-03-09T07:32:50-06:00

IMDB's Top 100 Best Movies of All Time generate this HTML for your own page at ObeytheFist.com

Rank	Movie	Didn't See It/ Started It/ Finished It/ Hated It!
1	Godfather, The (1972)	Started It
2	Shawshank Redemption, The (1994)	Finished It
3	Godfather: Part II, The (1974)
4	Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)	Finished It
5	Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)	Finished It
6	Casablanca (1942)	Finished It
7	Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)	Finished It
8	Schindler's List (1993)	Finished It
9	Shichinin No Samurai [Seven Samurai] (1954)	Finished It
10	Star Wars (1977)	Finished It
11	Citizen Kane (1941)	Finished It
12	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)	Finished It
13	Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)	Finished It
14	Rear Window (1954)
15	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	Finished It
16	Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)	Finished It
17	Memento (2000)	Finished It
18	Usual Suspects, The (1995)	Finished It
19	Pulp Fiction (1994)	Finished It
20	North by Northwest (1959)	Finished It
21	12 Angry Men (1957)	Finished It
22	Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le [Amelie] (2001)	Finished It
23	Psycho (1960)
24	Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
25	Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il [The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly] (1966)
26	Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)	Finished It
27	It's a Wonderful Life (1946)	Finished It
28	Goodfellas (1990)
29	American Beauty (1999)	Finished It
30	Vertigo (1958)
31	Sunset Blvd. (1950)
32	Matrix, The (1999)	Finished It
33	Apocalypse Now (1979)
34	Pianist, The (2002)	Finished It
35	To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)	Finished It
36	C'era una volta il West [Once Upon a Time in the West] (1968)
37	Some Like It Hot (1959)	Finished It
38	Third Man, The (1949)
39	Taxi Driver (1976)	Finished It
40	Paths of Glory (1957)
41	Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi [Spirited Away] (2001)	Finished It
42	Fight Club (1999)	Finished It
43	Boot, Das (1981)
44	Double Indemnity (1944)
45	L.A. Confidential (1997)
46	Chinatown (1974)	Finished It
47	Singin' in the Rain (1952)	Finished It
48	Maltese Falcon, The (1941)	Finished It
49	M (1931)
50	Requiem for a Dream (2000)
51	Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)	Finished It
52	All About Eve (1950)
53	Se7en (1995)	Finished It
54	Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)	Finished It
55	Saving Private Ryan (1998)
56	Cidade de Deus [City of God] (2002)
57	Raging Bull (1980)
58	Rashômon (1950)
59	Wizard of Oz, The (1939)	Finished It
60	Sting, The (1973)
61	Alien (1979)
62	American History X (1998)	Finished It
63	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)	Finished It
64	Léon (1994)	Finished It
65	Vita è bella, La [Life is Beautiful] (1997)
66	Touch of Evil (1958)
67	Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
68	2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)	Finished It
69	Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948)
70	Great Escape, The (1963)
71	Wo hu cang long [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] (2000)	Finished It
72	Reservoir Dogs (1992)	Finished It
73	Clockwork Orange, A (1971)	Finished It
74	Amadeus (1984)
75	Modern Times (1936)
76	Ran (1985)
77	Annie Hall (1977)
78	Jaws (1975)
79	On the Waterfront (1954)	Finished It
80	Braveheart (1995)
81	High Noon (1952)
82	Apartment, The (1960)
83	Fargo (1996)	Finished It
84	Sixth Sense, The (1999)	Finished It
85	Aliens (1986)
86	Shining, The (1980)
87	Strangers on a Train (1951)
88	Blade Runner (1982)	Finished It
89	Metropolis (1927)	Finished It
90	Duck Soup (1933)
91	Finding Nemo (2003)	Finished It
92	Donnie Darko (2001)	Finished It
93	General, The (1927)
94	City Lights (1931)
95	Princess Bride, The (1987)	Finished It
96	Toy Story 2 (1999)	Finished It
97	Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)	Finished It
98	Great Dictator, The (1940)
99	Sjunde inseglet, Det [The Seventh Seal] (1957)
100	Lola rennt [Run Lola Run] (1998)	Finished It

Which movies have you seen?

Getting a Samsung ML-2010 to work in Debian Linux amd64/x86_64

2006-02-23T11:43:17-06:00

I recently bought a Samsung ML-2010, which is a nice laser printer for home use, and tried to set it up on Debian, only to discover that Samsung wasn't hip to my architecture, namely amd64/x86_64. It's no matter, their printer drivers still work, but you have to hack around a bunch of their checks. I'm documenting them here because I'd rather not forget when I reinstall, and it's probably useful for others to know about it.

Step 1 - Install the necessary packages - In my case all I needed to install was ia32-libs, because I already had all of the other packages needed installed. The samsung tool uses cupsys, so you may need to install the cupsys package and it's dependencies.

Step 2 - Unpack the driver - Get the driver from Samsung and untar it, producing a directory called "image"

Step 3 - Hack around the glibc detection - The setup program is "smart" and tries to detect if there is a GLIBC with a high enough version. The bad news is that it uses the wrong version, because it is not familiar with the ia32-libs positioning of it. Luckily, it uses a script to do it's dirty work, so I just changed scripts/test-libc.sh to this:

[cc lang="bash"]

!/bin/sh

Test the Libc version and make sure it is > 2.0

# exit 0 [/cc]

Mostly because I know that we meet the requirement of glibc > 2.0.

Step 4 - Run the setup program directly - The setup script (script.sh) doesn't like to run on x86_64 architectures, because of it's architecture checking. This is annoying, so looking into script.sh, find the program that it runs and run it directly, that is, run ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/glibc-2.1/setup.gtk as root (it will be putting things in /usr/local).

Step 5 - Add your printer to the setup utility - run /usr/local/linuxprinter/bin/linux-config and add the printer. It's pretty straightforward, and actually follows the docs which Samsung gives out from here on.

I'd Like to Teach the World to Program

2006-02-18T20:18:52-06:00

A couple weeks ago I was going to lunch and met up with one of my friends who I hadn't seen in a while. I had to wait for her to finish her TAing job, in the same lab that I once taught in. I was surprised at my reaction - I wanted to jump right into the room and start helping out. I restrained myself, but it gave me a good reminder of what my actual goal is in grad school. I want to be a professor - I wasn't sure when I started here at the U of M, but after two or three teaching sessions I was certain I was going to teach. It probably helped that it was a class which I have a good amount of experience teaching, being one of the classes I helped with for 3 semesters.

Lately I've been trying to remember why I am going through with it all in order to get the Ph.D, and seeing that class was a good reminder. It makes me think that I might want to request a Teaching Assistant job every year or so just to keep me on the right track towards something. Unfortunately, I think if I want to finish in a reasonable amount of time, I will need to focus 100 percent on the thesis before long.

Debt "consolidation": scam, scum or sweet?

2006-02-17T14:43:08-06:00

Throughout the last couple of years, I've had some bad decisions. I decided to start using my credit to work for me, and to buy things which I couldn't afford. Partly this was because I had a horrible ex, who I thought I should do things for, and partly because of just living outside of my means for a certain period of time.

The long and short of it is, I've gotten myself into a bit of credit card debt. I'm not in any big trouble, just needing to pay it down so that I can get on with using that money for other things. There is a couple of web applications that I have in the works which will help me remind myself, but that's neither here nor there at this point. So, I have all of this credit at high interest rates, surely there is someone out there that will look at my credit and finance it at a lower rate, make some money off of me, right? I'm thinking that what I need is a consolidation loan - something to lump together my credit card debt and give me one monthly payment. What I call this, is debt consolidation.

Thinking we are in the age of the internet, I type "debt consolidation" into google and give it a try. This is my first mistake. Apparently "debt consolidation" doesn't mean that you are consolidating your debt, it instead means that you are going into what I would call debt negotiation. This means you decide of your own volition that you are going to stop paying your bills, and try to negotiate with the credit card companies to pay off your debt at a fraction of your actual debt. But I don't know this, so I nievely fill out a couple of forms at "debt consolidation" sites. This gets pretty long, so I put in a break. Read on, MacDuff.

The Scam

The first people who got in contact with me were some people from Credit Solutions. Let me be clear on this: I'm not making broad generalizations about the company here - I can only speak of my own experiences. The person who I got on the phone went through a whole spiel, "explaining" how it works. He was very high-pressure and very fast talking, just from the start I didn't want to buy anything from him because he seemed like a used car salesman who decided that it was better to make money from nothing than from goods.

Here's the explanation he gave me: You've probably been paying your cards down already, so you've paid 70-100% of the cost of your original loan. You stopped paying your cards, wait 3 months, and then they start negotiating with their "powerhouse lawyers". Then they negotiate you to pay your debt at 40-60% of the current balance, and the credit card companies get to take the remaining 40% as a tax loss.

Now is when the math gets strange. The man on the phone attempted to say that this meant that the credit card company got 140% of the current balance. This doesn't make sense to me, especially because I'm a smart credit card consumer, and most of my debt is on 0% APR promotional rate cards. This means that they have made at most 3% of the balance from me, based on balance transfer fees. The man on the phone tried to dance around the issue, saying that they actually will get the 40% tax loss and that means they'll still get 140%. 140%? This doesn't make sense - 60% plus 40% is 100%, not 140%. Lets add to this that a tax loss is not the same as profit: a tax loss only gets you like, 30% of your loss.

At this point, I've decided that I'm being taken for a ride already, but I ask how it works anyway. Here's how this particular company is setup: I pay into a savings account (of my own), automatically deposit around $200 a month, and they take money out. For the first three months, they take the WHOLE amount. After that, they take half the amount, and leave the other half. They then start negotiating with your creditors, and when they make a deal, they tell you "pay them now". In the end, they take 15% of the settled cost of your debt. On $6k settled debt, this is another $900.

I really didn't want to do it now, mostly because of the high cost. The man kept coming back to my objections with "you can't borrow your way out of debt". Of course you can't borrow your way out of debt. That's stupid. I wasn't planning on borrowing money and then ending up with less debt. I was planning on borrowing money so that I'm not paying so much in order to have the debt. Apparently he thought I was an idiot, because he kept repeating it to me.

He sent me a little packet of stuff, which laid out the whole plan. After that, he gave me a call back. This is when I got really defensive. I asked him point blank: "What is the worst thing that can happen to me if I go with this plan?" His answer: "You stop paying your bills." On the surface, this is true. The worst thing that can happen is that I stop paying my credit card bills. He neglected to mention the fact that ceasing payment on my credit cards would ruin my credit, cause insane fees for lateness, and possibly send me to forced arbitration with the creditors. Every creditor that I have ever had since 2002 has had an arbitration agreement, which basically would end up in garnishment of wages.

The Scum

About a week after my first bad experience with a debt "consolidation" company, I got a second call from a completely separate company. They introduced themselves on the phone as "Christian Financial Services" or some such. Basically the same deal, but this was a low-pressure sell instead of a high-pressure sell. He was much more reasonable, and talked me through the whole thing at my own pace, taking his time to lay everything out that I could understand it. It was basically the same deal, 15% and they negotiate for you, but they set up an escrow account instead of you doing it yourself.

When I asked the same "worst situation" question, he gave me a realistic outlook, and this company is in a much better standing. If the creditors don't like their negotiation and take you to arbitration, you actually get representation from their company to help you out. I was almost willing to do it.

Then I went and looked at their actual company online, and discovered that they are a chamelon of some sorts. They were originally called something similar to "USA Debt Consolidation" or something otherwise patriotic. Apparently they decided that God could be on their side, at least it's good advertising. What good company has to change their name to get religion on their side? A good company would not need to change it's name.

The Sweet

Some people have gone with these companies, and they have actually negotiated with the creditors in order to pay off your debt at a fraction of the price. If it happens, that's the sweet part of this. Just given an example of $10,000 credit card debt, it is possible to pay around $6,000 and have all of your debt paid off. It's basically saying that you can spend money that you won't have to pay back, ever. There is some hit to your credit rating in the short term, but in the long term, it starts going the other direction. The hard part is finding a company who will do this and who you like.

I had an even harder hurdle to surmount - I don't really believe that it is ethical to do this. I spent the money, I should pay it back - that's the deal I made with the company when I signed up for the card. To me, I need to go through with paying them back. Luckily, I came into this with a decent credit rating, and will probably go out with a similarly decent one. Right now, I am a prime target for anyone who wants to give me a large loan at a decent rate - if I can pay less for the money I spent, I'm savvy enough to do it.

The Alternative

There is one other option which I looked into, and will represent the only company that I will link through this diatribe: Consumer Credit Counseling Services or Money Management International are truly non-profit and have good word-of-mouth from anyone I have talked to. They will not negotiate to settle your debt, but they will work with the creditors to get lower percentage, and help you through your budget. The couple of talks on the phone that I had with these people were very productive, and I got some stuff in the mail to help me out. You pay down the entirety of your debt. The downside is that you get a good size hit on your credit rating.

My Choice

In my position, I decided that I was on a good track myself already - I'm paying off my cards smartly, taking the highest APR out as quickly as possible. On my current plan, I will be completely debt-free in 3 years, less if I get some windfall of any sort. One of the bonuses of having a good credit rating is that people are willing to loan me money at promotional rates for some amounts of time. When my promos run out, I play financial musical chairs and get the lowest rate on all of my money. That's just for me though, to each his own.

The most important part in all of this is that I got control of my budget, and started living within my means. My punishment for living outside of my means for so much time is that now I have to live well within my means. I have to live within the means set upon by having to pay a large chunk of each paycheck to the creditors. Once I'm outside this, it will be much easier for me to have lots of happiness and savings.

Trivia Monkey Weekend

2006-02-12T04:57:17-06:00

So this weekend is Trivia weekend, which means that my clock gets inverted for a couple days at least, as I tend to be on the "night team". Right now it's the beginning of hour 40, of which I've been around for about half. We just found out we're ahead of the team on the other side of the city. Hooray!

Holy Hell. Audio Speed Round.

Pet peeve number 1

2006-02-09T17:18:04-06:00

Okay, something bugs me, and it's somewhat irrational, and somewhat rational. I totally hate really long URLs needed to "verify" that the sign-up is valid. There are more than one type of these, sometimes they are required to continue into the site, sometime just for extra features, but they are more often that not, very long. Now, I don't like long URLs in general in emails, because there are many services which allow you to shorten them for public use. Recently I signed up for 30 boxes and they sent me this monstrosity:

http://30boxes.com/signup.php?action=finishSignup&d=aSDFJKLa43da
safjdAL5RLKj4afjrafa45J5kljtyTGJrALKJgFKLsaj5klJ4jkljakljdkalflk
fASJKjdfa4r23890fdfjskl342390fakjlei309dk390ujkal39032kd03j9djd9

Okay, so lets look at this rationally for a bit. How many unique strings can they have from that huge behemoth of an identifier. There are 145 characters. They are using the entire uppercase (26), lowercase (26) and numbers (10), so there are a total of 62 unique symbols for each spot. That gives us a total of 62¹⁴⁵ different strings. That's 7884877985816054063923340812443632867980747435265064547440365297877812230999983634922053904324829205441837830921209410767866820350392591496465345718879667228701033177516338179747430870298820209307821377548903252404736464300144342990107276174332102635697681203 different combinations. In scientific notation, thats 7.8 × 10²⁵⁹. Just for comparison, the entire number of atoms in the universe is high-balled at 6 × 10⁷⁹ (on this page). That's more than a googol of identifiers for EACH ATOM, EVERYWHERE. Isn't naming each atom once enough? Then you would only need 45 characters, which would nicely fit in one line of my email client if you just shortened your "finishSignup" to "fS" and action to "a". As a bonus, it also saves you approximately 117 bytes of bandwidth per email.

UPDATE: Apparently it has ALL the information, in addition to being completely too long. I replaced it with random crap.

How to become more interesting to people

2006-01-28T22:04:19-06:00

Everyone would like to be more interesting. While this seems like a broad statement which can't possibly be true for all people, I am confident that it is true for most. Even if you aren't a person who is driven by social interaction, if asked "would you like to lead a more interesting life?" most people would answer with a yes (ninjas and pirates need not apply, I think).

There are very easy ways to make your life more interesting - you can volunteer somewhere, change your habits, or go out and party all the time. Unfortunately, some of these things aren't interesting to you, and they may be downright boring. So an ideal way to make your life more interesting would catch not only other people's interests, but yours as well, raising the whole world's interest level.

The device today which garners the most attention is, arguably, the TV. It sits ensconced in the middle of almost every living room in America. We watch TV so much that there's a considerable market for devices which make it easier to watch, either by time shifting or space shifting . If we're guaging the interest of people just by what gets the most eyeballs, the TV wins hands down.

So if you want to be more interesting, and whatever's on the TV is the most interesting thing around, it stands to reason that you should emulate what you're watching. I'm not saying you bust into a hospital and start performing surgery just because you like ER, or start having saucy affairs with the other families on your own personal wysteria lane, but people can make small decisions which make things more interesting.

This is all a long-winded and round-about way of coming to my point, however. In most TV shows, the TV plays a very small role, if any at all. How many times do you ever see a TV screen on a sitcom? Almost never. They are always off screen, obviously not interesting enough to put on camera. There's no "watching the tube" show, in which everyone watches the TV. It's because that's boring. This suggests that if people want to be more interesting, they should just reduce the amount of TV watching they do. In most shows on the tube, the only reason they watch TV is because of some specific purpose relating to the other, non-TV-watching. things which they are doing. Also there are very few if any big screen TVs on TV - I would bet someone that I've never seen even a 35 inch screen ever on TV. Smaller TVs and a minimal amount of TV watching make for more interesting lives.

Switching.

2006-01-26T06:23:45-06:00

Last weekend I moved all of my websites from my expensive dedicated server solution to a shared server solution. So far everything has been working out great - the transfer of files went fine, and some of the automatic services that are setup for you, such as automatic secure webmail which is always nice to fall back on when you're at say, a public kiosk or something. The switch saves me approx. US$720 a year, which is going to be great for my finances. However, I'm always wary when I move to a new place that something is going to be horribly wrong, so it's watch-like-a-hawk time.

One of the consequences of moving to the new server is using IMAP for reading mail. I am amazed, shocked and appalled that I didn't discover this earlier, but mutt has a caching mechanism, which increases the joy of reading both large Maildir mailboxes and IMAP mailboxes. To enable, just put set header_cache="/path/to/some/directory" in your .muttrc file - things go 10x faster after the first cache.

In the same spirit of switching for a new year, I decided to switch my finances up a little bit. I'm currently migrating to using the StackBacks system for managing finances. This is the budget for the generation of consumers who would rather carry around a debit card than a bunch of cash, and is especially good for weaning yourself from credit cards. At the same time, I'm switching banks from a national chain to a local credit union.

Warning: Habit-forming.

2006-01-19T05:37:10-06:00

Recently I have started a new diet: the No S Diet. The concept is very simple: no sweets, snacks, or seconds (except on days which start with S). I started around the holidays, which actually wasn't hard at all because holidays count as S days (they're "Special"). However, I didn't really get into it that much until recently. I can't really tell if it is working yet, because it doesn't have strict weighing guidelines like the previous diet, but I feel like something has changed in my life. There is a bunch of text on the page about why it works, but the basic concept is that you should be forming habits which are healthy. It is much easier to get into a healthy habit if it's not hard to remember what the habit you're trying to reinforce actually is. It makes it much easier to feel guilty when you fail in enforcing the habit as well, because you can't make complicated excuses ("this is okay because I excercised off those calories").

The No S Diet also has the bonus of being easily combinable with basically any other diet you can think of, unless that diet specifically requires you to eat sweets. I'm thinking of combining it with the hacker's diet, which definitely appeals to my accountant side. The problem I had with the previous attempt at the hacker's diet still exists, unfortunately - I still don't have an easy way to keep track of my calories. I am considering dropping a few bucks on a calorie counter database for my new Palm, which may help in that regard.

I have noticed that most of the things which are now being termed as "lifehacks" are actually just habit-forming. The No S diet is a habit for eating, Getting Things Done is a collection of habits for todo lists and projects, and Early Rising is a habit for sleeping and waking up. These are not new ideas, they are just smashed into the new fad: improving your life through good habits. The accountant in me wants to do more than just that, so I am thinking of making a drupal module or two to keep track of my progress (and subsequently broadcast it to the world).

Shiny roofs are good for the environment!

2006-01-15T21:11:32-06:00

This is definitely some of the geekiest humor that I have ever read. Funniest site I stumbled upon all day. That is all.

Required reading.

2006-01-13T12:39:56-06:00

College is not the launching pad for a job. It's the launching pad for the rest of your life. High school is a mini-jail with strict standards that everyone must live up to. College is when you get to make your own choices. This is the sentiment behind this article. I agree with it on principle, but not completely on content. Computer Science in the past 7 years has gone through an evil transition - almost all of the Colleges out there shifted to a Technical style curriculum because that was what was in demand. While TAing the introductory classes here at the U of M, the most common complaint was that they weren't learning things which will be useful in the future. The classes are taught in Scheme, for reasons that I completely agree with - the students would rather have them taught in Java, because that would be useful in the market when they leave college. What were they missing? The knowledge that programming concepts are what make good programmers, not language skills. Students want cookie cutter code which solves the problems that they are given. That is why people are lambasting the teaching of Java: people aren't learning hard thinking concepts.

In my opinion, college is not supposed to teach you the skills you need for your job - instead, you are there to learn your specific learning style. This will allow you to learn anything you need for your job. Most jobs which exist in the Real World™ aren't looking for people from a specific major, they're looking for experience.

I also share the views that you don't need to get perfect grades - the effort required to get an A over a B+ or a B is not worth it for the slight bump in your GPA, and you will have much more fun in college. Meeting friends in college is just as important as your actual classes. The Real World ™ calls this "networking".

Choosing your major in order to get a job is also such a crap shoot otherwise - you're betting that in 4 years, the market will need the skills that you learn in a major.

nobody thinks or expects too much

2006-01-06T06:39:32-06:00

Today is a bunch of quickies about random stuff.

Sleeping..

..and subsequently waking up. I have been trying out the advice of How to Become an Early Riser recently, after discovering it about a week ago from some people. I had been sleeping from about 4am to noon or 1pm, depending on the day. I decided to go all out and set my alarm clock for 5:30am, never to be reset again. It didn't work out the first couple days, but after three days of getting up on time, my body is definitely adjusting well to it, and I get a bunch of work done in the morning before I head off to work at 9.

Debian packages-arch-specific

vgrabbj finally got out of packages-arch-specific hell and is building on almost all architectures. I think the addition of a new person to the team maintaining packages-arch specific helped a bunch, because shortly after I emailed the new maintainer movement occurred after two months of nothing from the other two. I don't know if they had to actually check out the package itself efore removing the line, but it seems like something as simple as removing one line from a file in cvs shouldn't take that long.

Planet issues

For some reason, the posts from my blog which are syndicated to PlanetDebian are showing up on the planet 2 times for every post I make. If anyone has some insight as to why, and whether it's a problem on my end, I'm all ears.

Diana

Diana makes me happy like a bright sunny day after a long cloudy winter week.

Applying economics to open resources

2006-01-05T06:50:05-06:00

Yesterday I needed to get a simple task done: scan a piece of paper so that I could email it to someone. Simple enough, as there is a scanner available for use in the grad lab. When I arrived, the lights were turned off and the lab vacant. Walking up to the machine with the scanner attached, I was surprised to see that the screen was locked. This annoys me to no end, and got me thinking about the thought processes of people when they choose open resources. Economics tells us that scarce resources are more valuable. The problem with this is the hoarding of resources - obviously the person who locked the computer was not using the unique resource attached to it, but if economics guided his decision would this be the correct answer? I would like to think not - it is far more valuable to use identical resources which were available (other M$ computers) while leaving that resource available for use by others. This seems to reverse the normal economic idea - you should use the resource which is the most abundant which suits your needs, allowing the scarce resources available to be used by others.

Sidenote

As it turns out, the user of this locked computer had left the computer locked for a considerable length of time. I left at 9, returned at 11, and returned again at 1 and there was no sign that it had even been used. I got tired of waiting and rebooted the computer, which I justified by the fact that you're not supposed to lock computers for long times in the grad lab. This particular student I do know, and he has taken some of the exaggerations about grad school a little too far - I'm pretty sure he sleeps in the building most nights, which just shouldn't be done IMHO.

Asking = good

2006-01-04T06:54:34-06:00

I have noticed a new trend in my shopping habits lately: I will ask for help from a "sales associate" much faster than I did previously. This could be a product of the instant-gratification culture, but I really don't have much patience with floundering around a store trying to find what I need, especially if I have done all of my research earlier and show up at a store with just one thing in mind. I will go to great lengths to find a live person because even if I spend 3-5 minutes trying to find help, they will most likely be able to help me right away. That said, I won't just grab the first employee that I see in the store, I will actually make a reaosnable effort at finding the item first. After getting help, I can look at my handy palm pilot and see if there's anything else in the store that I need.

I have noticed that Target is especially good at having random people walking around the store doing things that are quickly dropped in order to help a customer. In addition they have these nice little buttons sprinkled around the store that you can press and the entire floor staff gets paged notifying them that you have a question. I prefer this to the "pick up the phone" approach, although that is also available in some stores.

The worst store by far for this strategy that I have come across is Home Depot. You sometimes have to walk a very long distance before you find anyone, and then when you do, they just point you back in the direction that you came from and said that someone over there can help you. If there was someone over there, I wouldn't be asking over here. I wonder if they just think I'm too stupid to read the HUGE SIGNS which state what is where in a Depot.

Life, Jim, but not as we know it..

2005-12-05T22:48:34-06:00

Well, things have been going okay in my life except for a couple things. Diana has been sick for the last three days, which means she's staying at home over the weekend and couldn't work at all. I've been trying to help her back to health. The TV broke last week, so we went out and bought a new one which is much better. This is the model we got, and I think we got a good deal at $199. The quality is better than the old TV and it's of course not broken, which is it's major advantage over the old one.

Yesterday my parents were in town, so I went to have brunch with them at Joe's Garage, which was family style and very good. It was nice to see them because I didn't get to go down for Thanksgiving and won't see them for Christmas because we're going to Indiana this year. We had a bunch of catching up time, extending beyong brunch to a short walk in Loring Park and through a couple shops on Nicollet.

Yesterday I had a little accident - after being out of the house the whole day, I went to drop off something for Di and stupidly double parked because I thought I was only going to be on the street for less than a minute. Of course, someone came around the corner. I scampered to my car and slipped on my way, causing a nasty sprain which has kept me sitting and lying down all day today basically. Hopefully it will be good enough tomorrow to go to work, which I anticipate - it's been improving all day. I feel like crap because there was a pretty important meeting today at school which I missed. Di has been a dear with me basically incapicated for part of the day.

Amazing

2005-11-27T12:23:58-06:00

I was actually very surprised, that this changed - I used to be worth nothing. I wonder what changed?

My blog is worth $5,645.40. How much is your blog worth?

Everything Old is New Again

2005-10-25T22:01:29-05:00

Well, I've switched blog software. WordPress is great, but recently I've been wanting to develop more things to put on the page, and the model that drupal uses is much easier to handle and seems much more flexible. The developers seem to have much more open source mindset - I don't know why, it's just a perception thing. It gives me much more control over which articles which go to different syndication places, like the LiveJournal feed and Planet Debian. Drupal also makes it much easier for users to setup their own feeds for categories, if some people are only interested in say, the book or movie reviews.

I also made a new theme which is pretty minimal. I'm hoping to add more features in the near future. A short list, which is probably not comprehensive:

Book Reading/Review Sidebar
Movie Review Sidebar
A little color, possibly some icons
Revamp the TrainSched page

Remote Control Wrapup

2005-10-24T23:23:59-05:00

Recently in the States a new season of TV shows started - okay, so it was 3 or 4 weeks ago, but I haven't gotten around to writing about it until now. In preparation for the new seasons, I reactivated the ReplayTV, which makes it much easier and less stressful to catch all the shows. Some of the shows were basically dead in the water before I even caught one glimpse. Most of the shows that I'm watching this time around is just more seasons of the same while picking a couple new shows mostly for actors. (Show list below the fold)

Current shows on the Replay:

CSI:, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY
How I Met Your Mother
Kitchen Confidential
Jeopardy!
Gilmore Girls
Supernatural
Bones
Numb3rs

I've watched a few other shows this season, but they didn't really grab me as good. Not that the ones above are good, but they are nice to relax to when I end my workday. Another new development in leisure is a new remote control - I lost the old one and decided that we could use one that can control everything we have. I'm very happy with not having more than one control for all of our stuff.

Pictures

2005-09-27T08:22:13-05:00

Obviously they don't count lossless JPEGs..

Which File Extension are You?

Starting, sortof

2005-09-08T20:38:21-05:00

Moving

The moving is finally almost done. We have a problem with the amount of shelving space that we have now - we switched a couple of the shelves and some of them aren't setup yet, so we have a couple of boxes of books which are not unpacked because we don't have shelf space. Other than that we have everything unpacked, although it's somewhat unorgnaized.

School

School just started on Tuesday. I'm not taking any classes this semester, so things haven't changed much for me, except for the large influx of new students and the craziness involved with that. I decided that I like the campus slightly more when it isn't packed to the gills with students. I'm hoping to get a lot more stuff done this semester, and hopefully progress more towards my thesis.

Opera

I've started using Opera for browsing on the various machines I use and have admin control over. I feel sortof strange using non-free software to do a major part of my browsing. It's extremely fast and very out of the way.

Diana

Diana's so wonderful. Love her very much.

Meme time

2005-09-05T08:56:15-05:00

You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don't believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).

Agnosticism is a philosophy that God's existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe. (Bar graphs folllow)

agnosticism

75%

Islam

63%

Judaism

58%

Buddhism

54%

Satanism

54%

atheism

38%

Paganism

33%

Christianity

29%

Hinduism

21%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

If only I could now..

2005-09-03T00:34:02-05:00

Well, as expected, I didn't get the 5 things (oh yea, and about 40 sub-things) done today that I had planned on. However, I did take a big chunk out of it. I did clean the old place, making my hands raw. There is really less than one carload left at the old apartment now. Picking that up tomorrow at about 9:30am and then dropping off the keys with the manager of the building. We officially have the place until the 31st but I want to give them a chance to rent it out to someone else so we may get some of that last month's rent back.

The office setup is next on the agenda tomorrow. I hope to have it up and running so that I can deliver the stuff I was supposed to deliver yesterday and my debian packages. We got a nice bedframe at IKEA today and I set it up, it took far too long but it will be good for us I think to have. Now we have one more thing we should get rid of - the foundation of the bed we used to use. It's probably about $10 worth of injection-molded plastic, but Sleep Number sells it for $300, so we can probably get rid of it in short order.

After the office, it's unpacking for the rest of everything. We have a general layout of what we want the apartment to look like, but we're having to change it because the rooms aren't quite the dimensions that we had planned on originally. Also, I think we're going to have to move the light somewhere else, because it's not going to jive well with the recliner part of the couch.

Sleepy time now.

I was sitting, waiting, wishing..

2005-09-01T22:03:55-05:00

Well, after I got everything done on the list today the movers came and moved all fo the stuff. Di showed up at just the right time and the timing was perfect with the movers and the keys and everything. Got out of it far under the budget I was planning on. Unfortunately the entire new place is filled with boxes and nothing is unpacked right now.

The new place is great - even with all of the boxes it's better than the old apartment. Diana likes it a ton as well so I think we're going to be good here until we move somewhere permanent. First utility to be tested in the new apartment? Cable internet of course. It's working fine!

List of stuff to do tomorrow follows

Hygene
Rent Rug Doctor
Old Apartment:
1. Move anything we're not throwing out, to the car
2. Clean bathroom (bleach, bleach, bleach)
3. Clean bedroom (vacuum, vacuum, vacuum)
4. Clean Hallway/Linen Closet
5. Clean Office (vacuum some more)
6. Clean Kitchen
  1. Clean Stove
  2. Clean Fridge
  3. Clean Countertops
  4. Sweep, Vacuum floor
  5. Mop Floor
7. Clean Living Room / Entry Area
8. Remove Cleaning Supplies
9. Storage Units to car or trash
New Apartment:
1. Office:
  1. Setup Desks/Shelves
  2. Setup Power Distribution (this doesn't look too bad but must check to see if we have 1 or 2 circuits in there)
  3. Setup Odo (new wireless ethernet, look ma, no wires!)
  4. Setup Printer
  5. Setup Scanner
  6. Setup Filing Cabinets
2. Living Room:
  1. Plug in and move lamp to corner
  2. Setup Entertainment Center
  3. Cable mania with TV + VCR + DVD + ReplayTV + Easy iBook hookup
  4. Setup Table
  5. Move Bookshelves to rightful position
3. Kitchen:
  1. Unpack Dishes
  2. Unpack Pots & Pans
  3. Stock Fridge, Food
  4. Wash Dishes
  5. Setup Microwave
4. Bedroom:
  1. Buy Bedframe
  2. Setup Bed
  3. Move furniture to rightful position
  4. Hang Clothes
5. Give away used boxes
Take a much-needed break for an hour and watch some anime

Any bets on us getting all of this done tomorrow? Come on, there's only 5 things! :)

You gotta be clean...

2005-08-31T23:23:59-05:00

Moving is coming along as expected. The apartment looks really bare now, and that's to be expected since we are moving tomorrow. I'm nervous mostly because I don't know when the movers are coming - hopefully they will show up sometime around 2pm, instead of some time around 11am. I love it when important things like movers are scheduled for a three-hour window.

In order to ease my mind, and get things done quicker in the morning, I present a list of things (ordered this time, as this is the order I must finish them in) which I must do tomorrow:

Pack microwave, Wok
Dissassemble kitchen table
Take out trashbags
Pack Bathroom Stuff
Drive Di's Car up to side door
Load up Di's Car with things we're definitely transporting ourselves (mostly computers and important documents)
Load up the rest of Di's car with other stuff we don't mind hauling ourselves and fits
Attempt to move things which are being professionally moved into living room
Random cleaning

I've been testing a drupal installation today. I don't have it themed yet, but the setup is here. Until it gets themed and takes over, I'll be mirroring posts both here and there.

Tell me what's that for..

2005-08-31T01:02:49-05:00

SCM tools

There has been a lot of talk on Planet Debian about SCM tools recently. Lately I've been leaning toward using bzr for source control, although cdv is looking nice too (and not just because I help maintain it). I really believe that cdv is trying to solve the underlying problem which is part of all of these systems: ambiguous merging. Most traffic I've seen on the developer list have been bram conversing on common lists about solving three-way merges automatically. That said, it requires a standalone server for distributed work, which I think will be it's downfall. Noone wants to run a server when almost every other new system out there works automatically with any web server you can get your hands on. For now, bzr seems like it's being actively developed. Given the amazing array of systems out there now, I suspect tools like tailor will be the most important ones. Everyone choose your own, and then work things out from there.

Working

I've just recently quit my job at velocity, in order to make room for possible jobs at other places. When I originally quit, a job seemed waiting and ready for me. That has fallen through, but maybe it is meant to be anyway - I need to be working more on my thesis topic than anything else nowadays. I'm picking up some consulting work on the side for a couple of different people, and I'm thinking of advertising my expertise some more in order to have some extra income every once in a while.

Moving

Our apartment looks pretty bare nowadays. If you didn't know it, you would think we're moving out. Oh wait, we are. Most everything is packed now - the only thing really left is the kitchen pots and pans and the bedroom. The office is completely bare and will need some major vacuuming. I'm getting more nervous now that the day is coming up quickly. I hope that everything goes smoothly. Calling the new place, everything seems great.

List of things I definitely need to do tomorrow:

Pick up forwarding address thingys at post office
Call everyone I can think of and give them the new address
Call cable company and make sure cable will be turned on when we get there
Call power company and turn off power at old place, turn on power at new place
Pack all the things that I have on the list for Wednesday
Somehow figure out the finances of the move

I shouldn't be out of comission for more than a couple of days for some of the things which are involved with the office computer, and if something important comes up I still have my trusty iBook kira to work with.

When we can be completely free..

2005-08-28T16:01:22-05:00

Maintenance

Did the maintenance on the car a while back. It went pretty much exactly as described in the many webpages I looked up beforehand. I changed the oil and oil filter, air filter, and wiper blades. For some reason, one of the old wiper blades was shorter than the other. I would have rotated the tires as well, but I couldn't find jack stands (2 separate stores) so I got ramps instead. Maybe I can borrow someone's jack and jack stands and rotate the tires - beats paying $30 to get it done for me. Hell, for $30, I can buy the jack and jack stands when I find them. Still need to schedule the other maintenance, I'll probably do that today.

Biking

Things are going well with the biking. Friday's ride map is available. A little over 4 miles in half an hour, I can't say it was bad, but I was much too tired at the end of it. I definitely need to get back in shape. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up doing it every morning for at least half an hour. Hoping to make it around Hiawatha Lake in the same amount of time soon, and then the goal is Nokomis Lake. I really need to get some gloves for biking though, and probably rewrap my handlebars.

Random Stuff

I'm thinking of switching from WordPress to Drupal. This mostly revolves behind me wanting to put more "normal" pages up on the website about scripts that I write and random software projects, and probably a CV as well. I just started using Drupal for a site that I am creating and the flexibility of it is really one of it's bonuses. The themes are easy to change and the site in general is easy to make - menus are a snap and creating static pages is practically the default. On the other hand, WordPress has been pretty good and it seems that some nice things are coming down the line, and Drupal doesn't seem to be as blog-friendly. Also, I will want to import all of my WP stuff into Drupal and I'm not quite sure how to do that yet.

I got something like 60%-70% on the Debian Quiz thingy. I don't agree with some of the "correct" answers (there seems to be more than one right answer on some questions), but I don't mind.

My japanese name is æ£®ç”° Morita (forest field) æ‹“æµ· Takumi (open sea). Take your real japanese name generator! today! Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Travels, Meetings, Repairs

2005-08-07T19:13:56-05:00

Yesterday I took a day and went to meet the old gang at the old stomping grounds. Mostly we just hung out and chatted about old things and new things, and crackpot theories. I had a good time, but I was getting really tired of it at the end. I also put a bunch of miles on the car.

I need to do a bunch of things to the car, the least of which are rotating the tires and changing the oil. I am fairly confident that I can do both of those myself, but feel strange doing it when I don't have a garage or driveway of my own. I also need to do some more complicated things (flush transmission, drive fluid) which I'll have done at a shop for sure. I'll probably change the air filter, since those are a piece of cake. I don't think it's allowed to change the oil or do any maintenance in our parking lot, so I may have to do this stuff on the street curb (always tons of fun). It would be nice to find a place I could do this inside.

I have updated the TrainSched Twin Cities Files to include Routes 16 and 50 (combined in one file).

Wheels keep on spinning round and round

2005-08-05T14:47:33-05:00

I decided yesterday that I was going to start biking again regularly, so today I cut my bike down from it's location (I had used zip ties to hold it in the closet over winter) and started out. I found out pretty quick that I wasn't going to go far with this bike - the tubes had all lost their air over winter and I quickly punctured the back tube. I also noticed that the tires were very old and the threads where showing (I got this bike for $20, remember) so I thought it was high time that I learned how to fix my bike. After some help from a decent webpage and Wal-Mart and SportMart (I would have gotten everything I needed from Wal-Mart but they only had one tire), I had a functioning bike again. I also have a spare tube now just in case I bust another one. Replacing the tubes and tires was surprisingly easy - I think I have the drop-out back wheel to thank for that.

After I conquered my bicycle maintenance need, I figured I should go for a ride anyway just to make sure I hadn't screwed everything up. I intended to go along my "normal" route (I've only taken it twice), I got sidetracked when I forgot the turn that I was supposed to take, and had a little sojurn through Mendota. The kickass Google Maps Pedometer can show you the route. Just shy of 10 miles, but it was pretty hot out and I had forgotten my water bottle (doh!) so I had to take a couple breaks in the middle - not that I minded stopping - the route is very scenic. I actually stopped down by the river in Mendota since I was there anyway. It was the middle of the day, which is obviously the worst time to go biking without water (eek! sun!).

Tomorrow I start with water and a bike that works early in the morning. Hope this gives me the kickstart that my day needs usually. Velocity last night was not too bad, although sortof short. Tonight should be crazier, they just called me asking if I could come early.

Book: Getting Things Done

2005-08-04T16:03:41-05:00

Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

(Book)

Authors:David Allen Manufacturer:Penguin (Non-Classics) Released:31 December, 2002 Rating: B+

I came across this book through a few interesting websites, 43folders being one of them. The "GTD" system for time management has been bandied around the geek-sphere recently it seems. You don't actually have to read the book in order to get the main ideas of GTD, but I thought that dancing around the edges without diving in is a disservice to a system like this. The good part is that it does actually help you, well, get things done. Everyone has their own systems for figuring out what needs to be done in a day - this book seems to distill a bunch of good ideas into one system which works decently well. I have implemented it myself and present my findings here. If you find that your life is in disarray and you can't decide what to do (what did you do yesterday? why didn't you do X?) then you may want to give this book a try.

Gimme one reason to stay here

2005-07-31T22:32:44-05:00

Well, for understatement of the year, I haven't been updating much recently. I'll try not to be too long-winded.

Trip to England

As some of you saw, in May we took a trip to England. I didn't get to meet anyone there that I knew, but hope to go back. The trip was pretty stressful on Di, which made it not so much fun. Definitely next time we go, we will stay closer to London and get to spend more time together. There is just much more to see in London and everywhere else. One thing that I did like about England was the traffic control - or rather the lack of traffic control at many places. It surprised me how many of the intersections were roundabouts instead. If only we could get a few more of those here - and people would learn how to use them. There's a roundabout near Minnehaha Park here and everyone exhibits complete lack of knowledge on how to use them, it's always frustrating.

New Job

I got a new job in order to make some extra money, mostly on weekends and nights. I'm working ~10-12 hours a week couriering for Velocity Express in the Twin Cities area. The work is very easy, and it gets me basically free gas and maintenance on the car through the business I setup for it (all drivers are Velocity are independent contractors). Sometimes when work is slow, I watch some anime again. I'm not sure how long it's going to be before I quit again, but it'll probably be sometime in the next two months.

New Place

Di and I decided that we were going to move a while back, and the crazy apartment searching ensued. We have decided on a new place, the Franklin Coop. The apartment is nice - granted, it would have to be really bad in order to be worse than the place we're at currently. It's in a slightly less nice neighborhood, but it's a much more convenient - the grocery, bank, university, and light rail are in walking distance. We're moving at the beginning of September, with the help of some movers. We've worked out where all of the furniture is going all ready, and have started packing. It's probably a little early to start, but we figure that the sooner we start, the less work it's going to be at the end of the process. The people at the moving crew were very nice and give every intention of making the move the smoothest that we have ever done. New addresses to everyone who thinks they need one soon.

Books

I've finished both Getting Things Done, The Empty Cradle, What Just Happened, and should be posting reviews soon.

New Toys

I got a few new toys - a power inverter to run the iBook in the car, a new cell phone, and a Palm Zire 21. I picked up the Palm on a eBay for a nice small price, and it's been a big help with keeping me on task and at my appointments. I also am really happy with the environment that Palm has setup for programming, and I hope to delve into the world soon. There seems to be a dearth of free (as in speech) programs out there for it. I downloaded a nice Transit Schedule program called TrainSched. Unfortunately, it requires the schedules to be in a specific format which isn't easy to get out of Metro Transit site. I started converting the schedules today and plan on continuing. Behold, the Twin Cities TrainSched page. Expect one more database file to be uploaded each week. Next week: 16/50.

New SCCS

I started using arch exclusively. It's branching and merging tools make it not only easy to follow other source control systems, but easy to make changes locally or a small branch of changes which then gets merged back. I'll be putting the debian stuff in arch soon, so it's not just sitting on one computer begging for a hard drive failure.

TrainSched Twin Cities Data Files

2005-07-31T21:40:28-05:00

I discovered TrainSched for the Palm, and wanted to use it for my purposes in the Twin Cities, so I started creating data files. The CSV files are what are fed into the tool included with trainsched to produce the PalmDB files. I've tested the DBs here shortly, but not extensively

Attachment	Size
tc55.pdb	27.86 KB
tc55.csv	65.48 KB
tc1650.pdb	21.33 KB
tc1650.csv	45.08 KB

Freaky

2005-07-19T08:36:25-05:00

And I just finished reading the book...

First Response

2005-05-20T07:34:25-05:00

Steve Kemp: I agree with you. Websites should always be accessible sans-www. So do many others.

Also, your blog seems to have some problem with commenting on your most recent post.

Phone Updates

2005-05-19T14:46:59-05:00

I've decided that I am going to ditch my cell phone in favor of a cheaper VoIP solution. This requires me to change phone numbers unfortunately. If you have my old cell phone number and need my new number, I give you one of two options:

email or IM me
Call my old number before Wednesday, May 25

England - Day 4

2005-05-02T14:44:42-05:00

England - Day 3

2005-05-01T14:43:12-05:00

England - Day 2

2005-05-01T14:40:41-05:00

England - Day 1

2005-04-29T14:34:39-05:00

Seen on the train today

2005-04-26T22:23:43-05:00

[cc lang="sh"]

!/bin/thought

if [ $IDEA -gt $BIAS ]; then grep validity $IDEA else $IDEA >> /dev/null fi [/cc]

Birthday Craziness

2005-04-26T22:22:05-05:00

Quarter of a Century

I've officially been alive for a quarter of a century now. Actually, I've been in this state since the 12th, but I was eith lazy or insanely busy since then. I didn't do anything all that special - just went out to eat. I got a couple of cool shirts from my sweetie. I don't feel any different than I did before 25 of course, but I suppose it's a milestone of some sort. I expect the 30 mark will hit heavier on me, but then again I hope to be doing something entirely different when I hit 30.

Publishing

Most of what was making me busy earlier was writing and doing experiments for a paper which I submitted. We finally got two of the robots in our lab working with GPS at the same time and on wireless for long enough to do some experiments with the interface which is in itself not all that novel but really hasn't been presented before. I would have liked to get more experiments in but the sky started threatening and none of our robots do well when wet. So we went back inside and did a little bit of work on the paper. It is a bit better now than it was before, only because we had some more time to really show off what the little system that we created can do. It got accepted to the conference and we turned in our final copies on time, so I expect it will amount to my first published paper, and also my first time as first author on a paper. I also have another paper in the pipeline (third or fourth author on that one) which will make my CV look like I'm actually a graduate student and not just some guy with a BS that has taken grad classes.

Stupid Advertising

There seems to be an advertising campaign lately which just boggles my mind. There are trains and busses and billboards which tout: Fresh Air! Coming soon to select bars and restaurants!. It is obvious what this ad campaign is for - there was recently a new bill which passed in both Ramses and Hennepin county which bans smoking from all bars and restaurants in the counties. I'm not opposed to this kind of a law, but what bothers me is that someone (and probably a group of someones) decided that there needed to be an advertising campaign for it. It's a law. Laws should be enforced, not advertised. You don't see billboards all around saying Now in stores: Paying for goods and services! because it's a law. Di supposed that the advertising campaign was in order to alleviate businesses' concerns about the new ban. I don't think that explains the need myself - it's not like people are going to stop going out to eat downtown because of it.

make things so complicated

2005-03-29T15:33:23-06:00

Apartment Annoyance

This sunday we got a note under our door about clearing out around the windows in the bedrooms in order for them to install new windows. Now, normally I would be happy about this, because the windows in the building are getting fairly old, and it may help the heating in the place. Unfortunately though, the replacement of the windows requires 2 feet of clearance on the inside of the window, which requires me to completely tear down my office, so I couldn't work at all last night or this morning. They better be finished when I get back today though, otherwise I consider requesting compensation for the $120 worth of work that I can't do.

At least today they came and replaced the lock so I don't have to be around every time they want to do maintenance, which may be soon again because our fridge is leaking and we are still seeing bugs around the apartment. le sigh.

Easter

Easter came and went, and due to some extra work, I wasn't able to travel to be with my family this year. Instead I took Di to the California Cafe at the Mall of America. The environment and the food there were wonderful. Of course we had some fun being out of place - most of the people around us were in their Easter Best clothing, and we were just out of waking up. I was surprised at how many things were closed in the city this easter - Sams Club, Cub Foods, Rainbow.. Makes me wonder what all of the non-christian people are supposed to do.

Unstructured time

It's taken me a bit of time, but I finally realized that I am horrible with unstructured time and it is ruining my work. I need to schedule the time for getting work done, and get to work early in the morning. I get much more done when I'm actually at school/work than when I'm home. Unfortunately some of the work that I need to do can't be done at work -- for that I have scheduled time when I'm supposed to be working on one project or another. Here's hoping I can stay on track.

Files, Files, Files

I seem to have one of the hardest configurations of all when it comes to files that I want to keep syncronized. Let me just put a little lowdown on my situation. I have 4-6 machines on 4 different networks that I want to do work on. To further complicate matters, I have my laptop. I would like to be able to log onto any of these machines and get work done. For legal reasons, I have filesets for work, consulting, personal, and school. To make things slightly simpler, I rent a server every month, and can run basically anything I want on it. It houses enough space to hold all of the files I want to work with and because it's personal, I can store all the filesets on it.

At home and on my laptop, I want to be able to get to all of my filesets, and have them updated. At school, I can only have access to my school fileset. I read my mail on the server, and would like to make it easy to inject attachments I recieve into any one of the filesets. My home system runs Debian 3.0, My laptop is on OS X (no Debian yet), and school runs on linux, but I can't install extensive programs on there because I don't have access to change the files. Just for happy-fun-time, I'm also space-limited on the school machines, so I archive off old classwork every semester and only keep the most current semester available at all times, with other semesters available when I need a file from them. Ideally any tool I use would be able to be compiled for OS X, linux, and sparc (some of the machines at school).

In my dream world, I would login to any of these systems and it would automatically sync to the server, and when I logout it would automatically sync to the server again. If it was really nice, it would check back with the server periodically and sync again or the server would tell it when files change on the "master" copy. This "push" type thing is important for both my home machine and the laptop, which I rarely logout from. Of course, the laptop goes with me a lot, and some of the networks I deal with are not secure, so the tool should use ssl, and not key off of the IP being used.

Right now I'm using unison, with a single syncronization directory with separate ignore paths for the separate filesets. It works okay, but not as well as I'd like. It's also getting crufty. I would like to switch to something possibly involving cvs, svn or arch.

Other stuff

Other than that, life is just getting interesting with work and school and everything wanting more of my time. One of the papers that I have been working on off-and-on for the past year has been accepted to a conference, so it will need to be dragged out of the past and updated with some new experiments and more work. The conference is in Greece, so there is a possibility that I will be heading there sometime this summer. I have been on a budgeting binge in the last week and I think I have everything worked out in gnucash the way that I want - I may post a bit on how I finagled that soon. Also big things happening in Diana's life.

Yes, but FASTER!

2005-03-15T22:47:08-06:00

Life

Things have been fairly slow around this week. It is mostly due to it being spring break, and despite trying to get myself motivated, I seem to sit around and do small things or nothing all day. I expect this to be a problem in the near future, because I have a project that I need to work on soon for at least three different entities, if not four. This state unsurprisingly doesn't help my mood.

Debian

It seems that lately it is mandatory in any Debian developer's blog to comment about the Etch release proposal. I have to say that I don't like the idea of dropping so many architectures without a stable. One thing that made debian appealing to me was that I could not only run it on the old sparcs at my school (and put to use an otherwise unused machine), but I could also run it on old Mac LC IIs. I nuderstand that neither of these archs will be going away, but the fact that they all need to now deal with the fact that stuff may "just break" like it does in unstable every once in a while disheartens me. At the same time, I agree that we are in desperate need of a shorter release cycle and I think that dropping archs is the best and quickest way to get the job done, as it seems to be mostly a manpower issue. I'm pleased with the SCC idea and think it will be beneficial both to architectures on the decline and new archs (like amd64 was).

My packages are in desperate need of attention. This will be remedied soon, hopefully.

News Reading

Lately I have been using NetNewsWire for reading my RSS and Atom feeds. I find it excellent, but I am unable to cope with it's client-ness. I used bloglines in the past but fear that it isn't really for me - I am not a fan of their stated future business plan. I seem to be in need of a really good server-side aggregator. Planet is not right for me - I need something that keeps track of what I have read. It would be nice to have a server-side aggregator with an interface similar to NetNewsWire, which I have become fond of. The hotkeys and reading is really cool. Current plan is to look into Feed on Feeds and hope that I can extend it with some JavaScript and/or CSS in order to have it mimic the hotkeys of NNW. If others have some suggestions, I'm all ears (or at least my blog is).

and I'm not even FROM england!

2005-03-12T18:09:37-06:00

English Genius You scored 93% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 83% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go! Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 38% on Beginner

You scored higher than 74% on Intermediate

You scored higher than 89% on Advanced

You scored higher than 88% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

The time has come, to pay the rent

2005-03-04T22:10:15-06:00

Well, I can't say I have been the most forthcoming on here about what is actually going on. Most of life is stuck in the same old same old every day. Over the last few weeks, I have been working, playing, and sleeping. Unfortunately I think that playing has taken up a lot more than it's fair share.

The change: World of Warcraft. I bought it a couple weeks ago because there are a great many people playing it.

The good:

The world is huge - 2 weeks and I haven't even seen half of the world.
The social aspects - playing with friends is really the best part of the game. This game doesn't encourage as many new friends as City of Heroes, but it's still wonderful
Ongoing story - quests really drive the game. There are thousands, and some are in chains so you can see the whole story unfolding.
Graphics - it has won awards for it's wonderful graphics, and I can see why. Sometimes it is fun to get to other parts of the world just to see the scenery. Localities in each area have different properties, and the transitions are fluid.
Multi-Platform - while it would just rule to also have a linux client, I am happy that I can play the game both on my iBook and the Windows installation I keep.

The bad:

Playing too much - this is the main beef with the game. I think I'm going to try to restrict myself to playing for less than 2 hours a day from now on. It's simply taking up too much of my time.
Technology - as expected, the game takes too much processor and graphics for either of the machines I play it on. I am glad that Blizzard let me play on this old laptop (it doesn't officially meet the specs), but it has awakened in me a desire to upgrade which isn't really healthy right now
The "other" social aspects - Di was bitten hard by someone who got sucked into games. I am confident that I will get bored with the game soon, but she has reservations. I have made a pact to myself that I won't play when she is around because of this - most of all, I have a problem if it affects my love.
Limited updates - I have yet to see a MMORPG which actually delivers on making the game more interesting for me after the initial month, which is probably why I've never played one for longer than a month.

As expected, the good are better than most other MMORPGs that I have played, and the bad are all the same. I really think that the MMORPG model is flawed, at least for me. It captures interest because the world is new and fresh, but then the quests all seem to be the same, the world becomes less and less novel, and nothing updates. If someone wants to keep my interest for longer than a month, they will have to show me that they are actually making major content updates frequently. At the same time, the game cannot be unfinished when I buy it. I think I would pay good money for a game in which there are a set number of quests and things in the world, and they actually were depleted after a while. The respawn world just bugs me for some reason. Things don't just appear from nowhere in the real world, why should they in the game world? Also, I shouldn't be able to save the same child from the deadly disease, save the same tower from ruthless robbers, kill the same big boss guy, as everyone else. Once the big boss guy is dead, he should be dead for everyone, forever. The MMORPG model does not allow for this to occur. A game that does that might actually get my attention for longer than the "free" month (that I pay $50 for).

At any rate, the time for me to get more actual work done has come. More updates on everything else later, I guess.

Sleep Deprived Google Monkey

2005-02-13T22:16:26-06:00

Well, this weekend was the KVSC Trivia Contest, an event I was aware of, but hadn't been a part of until this year. I had meant to go starting on friday night, when it started, but some work came up which kept me busy friday night and saturday. Anyway I got my work to a usable state saturday after grappling with javascript for a while, and I went off to want_a_be's place for game night. There I played a rousing game of illuminati, a particularly fun game, and a more simple game Bohnanza. It was good to get a load off after the working weekend. That wrapped up around midnight and I headed to superna's place for some trivia goodness.

Trivia was an experience which is not to be missed for a man of my trivia caliber. It's setup like some sort of super-trivia where you listen to the radio, get the questions (which are "open", or available to answer, for a certain amount of time) and then frantically come up with the answer. Easier questions are worth less points - most 15 point questions were known off-hand or a simple Googling would reveal the answer. Harder questions either required elite internet searching skills or some knowledge of a subject. I don't have deep knowledge of many subjects, so I had to put my searching skills to the test. One of the most interesting parts of the night was at about 7am when two of the four people awake were working on a 250 point question which took a long time, and myself and want_a_be were handling all the other questions that came up in the meantime. It was like a oiled machine where each person did their part. My big win of the night was finding a midget wrestling championship bout answer.

It's one of the funnest times I think is possible by staying up all hours. I ended up staying until about 11am, when I went to meet my parents for brunch. I got home sleep deprived and planning to take a power nap in order to make it possible to accomplish some things later, but I ended up sleeping until 7pm. Strange, because I'm still tired at my normal time again tonight. I will probably set aside the whole weekend next time, or perhaps take a break in the middle to play some games. I'm definitely part of the team for next year.

Sleep Deprived Google Monkey, over and out.

Blogger Code

2005-02-08T12:31:55-06:00

B5 d+ t+ k s u-- f o+ x+ e l+ c-

A way to make these codes more interesting to me would be to plot where most of the responses are on a scale. Also possibly some distance metric between you and another person would be nifty.

Arnold

2005-01-27T23:35:05-06:00

My grandfather died today. He passed peacefully.

Arnold - bells for his years.

Looking back, looking forward

2005-01-07T14:36:51-06:00

Ladies and gentlemen, my year, in numbers:

Took 6 classes totalling 17 credits
Made 127 weblog posts, an average of 2 a week
Email:
- Received 184210 emails
- 111749 were marked as spam - this is an average of 1 spam every 5 minutes
- Compressed, my 2004 email takes up 620 megabytes
- 383 megabytes of this is spam
Garnered $16000 in income (after taxes)
Spent nearly $8000 on rent
Spent an average of $12.15 per day on dining out
Was the TA for no less than 200 students
Most importantly, found the love of my life, and spent a wonderful 8 months with her, with hopes of many more

These are of course just the numbers that I thought were important and could say off the top of my head. Lots has happened since last I wrote - classes ended with a horrendous final, I finished my project. Diana and I went to christmas with both my family, and extended family, and she gave me the greatest gift I can remember. Having her come to christmas and meet my family made me realize just how much I love her. We also drove from Iowa to Indiana in order for her family to meet me. The trip would have not been made except that my parents place is very close to about half-way between the Twin Cities and Indiana, so it was much more convenient to go see them.

The biggest change in my life is that Diana is moving into the apartment. We discussed this at length and both agreed we wanted to live together, both acknowledging that Diana could have easily moved into other apartments that she was looking at. Being together for only 8 months, we're both a little scared about it, but it has gone swimmingly so far. The eternal pessimist in me has setup a monthly budget set-aside just in case of hard times. The process of moving her in has been stretched out over most of the month of January. We'll probably hold a housewarming party around the middle of February. This, work, and eternally waiting for the maintenance guy at my apartment has been taking up most of my time.

Late Nights, Early Mornings

2004-12-04T11:06:04-06:00

As the semester draws to a close, my days get longer. The last week has been full of working on the project for computational vision, which amounts to an image manipulation library for Mathematica. The project is about halfway done I would guess, but I can see why people get paid largs sums of money to develop packages for this language - it's incredibly hard to learn, but once you know it, you can do things very quickly. The harder problem involves coding which is acually efficient. The package I'm building's whole point is that it is a more computationally efficient than normal algorithms - unfortunately, in Mathematica you need to do some things slightly differently. Most of the efficiency changes I need to make are due to Matrix computation being much faster than normal. The second Mathematica issue is that they are very courteous to different programming styles - the progam accomodates functional, procedural, object-oriented, and rule-based programming. You would think this is a bonus because you can program in any way you want, but some algorithms are faster in one language than others.

Of course, not everything surfaces in fun coding projects - the next thing on my list of things to do is homework for my tortuous class, Theory of Matrix Computation. The class is teaching me lots of material, but the tests seem overly complex to me - the same kinds of questions that are on the homework and take hours to do are only part of the test. The tests also seem very much weighted toward the problems which I deem impossible to solve when I glance at them normally. These problems are normal for a hard class - the big beef I am having with the class is that there never fails to be a set of questions that have never been introduced in class, practice tests or homework and are worth 20% or more of the test. I can't complain though, because even if I completely fail the course I will have what can be consider a decent GPA.

I really want to buy myself a new bed for christmas. I really want to watch some of the DVDs I have waiting for me. I really want to start coding on the research project I'm working on. All the things I want to do, I can't because it's the end of the semester. Time to get back to grading.

Gobble Gobble

2004-11-27T21:07:06-06:00

I spent time with family at thanksgiving this year. A decent time was had by everyone, mostly eating and chatting about what was going on. I ate way too much, but it's turkey day, what can you do? It was the first time I saw my grandfather for a very long time, actually since last christmas almost since I skipped easter this year. He seems to be doing fairly well. He's using a walker around his apartment complex now, and he seems to be getting around very well. I've wanted to know him better than I actually do, and I hope I get around to it soon.

Updated my folks on about everything in my life at the same time, and spent the night at home before I drove back to the twin cities friday morning. Part of me wanted to stay there for longer. I was missing Di and had lots of work to do though - and I know I wouldn't get it done there, it would basically just be loafing around.

After I got back Di was sick and had to call into work. I visited the library and tried to pick up her last check from her downtown workplace. Di is so wonderful, she lost her job last friday. by this friday, she had a temp job that pays more than her old job, and she got a job offer for much more than she was makign before that is actually in her field. It's just amazing.

As for myself, I'm still trying to hanker down for the rest of the semester. Currently my top three school-related priorities:

Project for Computer Vision
Studying for Matrix Theory
Working on behaviors for research

Somewhere in there should be grading, but unfortunately it's been relegated to at least priority 4.

You win some, you lose some

2004-11-22T18:00:28-06:00

Well today was quite the interesting day today. I had 2 meetings that I forgot about (thank god I decided to go in early to study and silvrayn was around to remind me of them) and then a test to prepare for. Of course in the two meetings I paid marginal attention. The first one was fairly inconsequential and I discovered a really cool online utility bloglines which is almost exactly what I was looking for in a RSS reader. It's now replaced Thunderbird as my syndication reader of choice. It basically does that my Planet was doing before, but it remembers what I have read and what I haven't read, making my life filtering out things I already know about much simpler. It has nifty firefox integration, which makes it uber-cool in my opinion. I don't know about the staying power of it though, because it doesn't charge for anything and has no ads that I noticed. In that meeting the group I was there to represent basically got everything it wanted without my help.

In conjunction with that, I discovered the nifty application Konfabulator which puts lots of things on my desktop (or whever I want) and informs me about the world around me even when I'm holed up my cave somewhere coding away or wasting time, as it may be. It's nagware, but the nagging is minimal, and the application is cool enough that I just might buy it. The one thing that might stop me is that it looks like OS X Tiger (10.4) will duplicate it's functionality with Dashboard. Makes me wonder about where the idea came from in the first place, not that it's anything very profound. I'm just happy because now my desktop is bursting with information.

The big loss today was at the CSci 5304 test. Suffice to say I wasn't prepared, but I am not exactly sure what I would have done to be prepared. The test had very little similarity with the practice/previous tests that were available for perusal and that the professor went over in class, and the homeworks for the class didn't have much to do with it either. My pessimistic outlook puts me at about a 48 out of 100. This is not to say that I couldn't have done better - there were things I could have studied and performed better. This is the first test in my life that I just got completely fed up with and left. My only consolation is that even if I completely fail the class, if I get an A in my other class (which shouldn't be too hard) I will still have a GPA over 3.5, which means I'm still validly in grad school. It's freaky to know that I could blow off the entire rest of the class and still be in good standing. Suffice to day that CSci 5304 is going to get a significant amoutn fo my free time for the next few weeks. If I study all that I can, and then still do horrible on the last test and homework, I will chalk the class up to a teaching style that is completely orthogonal to my learning style.

What's been happening

2004-11-21T22:41:01-06:00

I've not been quite the busy blogging bee lately. This is proabbly becuase of one of five things:

CSci 5302
TAing CSci 1901
Grading for CSci 4131
Reading for new RA
Various Business Stuff

These are of course in order of time taken. I have been to a lot of movies, and been reading a few books. The books wil get reviewed first, because generally I like to be more detailed on them, and they're more interesting to me.

I have had some time to update my Debian packages, pushing out a new bogosort (who would have thought that package needed updating) and a new bittorrent which fixes a fair amount of bugs and represents my first multiple package source, after caving to pressure and separating the gui elements of bittorrent. I have another rant about bittorrent, but that will have to wait for another day.

Di is still being the beautiful and wonderful person she is, which makes me a happy camper most of the time. She just got laid off this friday, but she has been taking it rather well considering. It probably helps that she has interviews/tests with a handful of temp agencies next week, and other jobs.

I've been homeworkfull of course, and TAing taking up the rest of my time. Of course a 50+ student class who has assignments due every week takes up a large portion of my time. At least the class is on things that I do just for fun - Internet Programming. The most recent assignment was a movie database with actors, movies, directors, etc. all editable from a web interface. It would probably freak the students out to tell them that I did something much more complicated than this in my free time in order to keep track of my anime obsession. I didn't quite get to the level of actors, but I have compiled my share of web-accessible and editable databases. Sometimes I wish I had kept them all around, even the ones that I half-completed, in order to somehow monitor my progress or something.

I had a crash of one of my computers in the last month that I haven't been updating. After a few days of technical voodoo, I declared my firewall sisko dead to the world and recovered it's 250GB of anime in an LVM to my main machine odo. As part of the voodoo I had acquired another 250GB drive, which was happily added to the anime volume in order to have a cool .5TB of space for anime. I reconfigured my newly acquired WRT54G in order to run linux and be a firewall and traffic shaper and it has been running swimmingly so far.

On the blogging front, other than not updating at all, the front page of my blog got a small change to it's header which I think is slightly more pleasing to the eye, plus it allows me to put nifty pictures of stuff I see in the twin cities for all to see. I was considering a much more bland reworking, but that got scrapped because it took too much CPU and content. I will probably be adding buttons and screwing with plugins soon, as I have not been too happy with ChaitGear's Amazon plugin. Being that Amazon's web services aren't that bad, I hope to write a book reader's plugin fairly soon for wordpress. I also hope to be able to post some of my other recent hacks on the site, right after I figure out a decent place for them. For now, I'm going to get back to my reading.

Book: Priceless

2004-11-21T19:39:51-06:00

Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing

(Book)

Authors:Frank Ackerman, Lisa Heinzerling Manufacturer:New Press Released:24 August, 2005 Rating: B+

This book takes a critical look at the policy of cost-benefit analysis, specifically with respect to environmental policies. The authors act as the sleuths for the reader, seeking out the source of some benefit guidelines, and making a big deal about the $6.1 million human life value. They also present some shady econonmic practices for the semi-layman, making it as simple as I think you could for this type of audience. At the same time, I never was tired of the analysis or decided to skip anything. Of all of the things which seem to be bad about the Bush administration, anyone who thinks they're pro-public health should take a read.

Demystifying numbers isn’t the easiest in these times - especially when you’re talking about the government. The authors either have a lot of time on their hands, or they’re experts on the public health initiatives. Their first target: the $6.1 mil price on all of our heads. The first few chapters focus on where this amount for one human life was decided on. Other numbers are demystified as well, but this one is tbe biggie.

They take a meandering path through public policy, citing study after study and making a point of noticing where the source of information comes from. Probably the best point to take from this book is that you should be looking at where information is coming from, and that numbers sometimes lie. They make a point of noticing the numbers that the opponents of their views make, and discounting them based on earlier work by the own authors or adguing against the work itself. At times getting close to an ad hominem attack on some of the think tanks in the washignton area, they stop short of being the bad guys in this debate.

While numbers are one thing, the discounting of human life is another thing, especially through evil statistics. Priceless takes the fuzzy math that is used by cost-benefit analysis and makes it accessible to the normal american, or at least to the american with high school math. Techniques that are discounting human life for being disabled or young are found out and pointed out to the people who don’t have the time to follow every mathematical trick that is pulled in the confines of the capitol.

One thing that is clear from this book: the EPA isn’t the enemy here. It seems that the OMB office of the Bush administration has been sending back policy initiatives for almost the entire time that they’ve been around. While the book is overly critical, they come across as very truthful. One part that sticks out in my mind is the time that the EPA sent over a new policy that would actually SAVE money based on the OMB’s own cost-benefit guidelines, and they sent it back saying it wasn’t good enough.

While this book has a lot of good points, it does meander around the points a lot, taking three chapters to reveal some of the figures. Unlike this administration, This book gets a B+.

Book: Being Digital

2004-11-21T18:19:17-06:00

Being Digital

(Book)

Authors:Nicholas Negroponte Manufacturer:Knopf Released:31 January, 1995 Rating: C-

This book presents an interesting cover design that looks snazzy. Unfortunately it's content doesn't age as well as it's outside. Nicholas seems to meander throughout this book, hitting in some places and missing in others. He starts with a rant about TV, which doesn't seem to be where someone would start with a title like Being Digital. Overall, he seems to hit on some of his predictions, and misses wildly on others. Of course I have the benefit of actually being in the future, but it seems too much like shotgun prophesy to me. If you hit everything once, you're bound to hit something right.

Don’t get me wrong, Negroponte starts from some valid points: protocols should be flexible, they should communicate in order to figure out what language to talk in, and then communicate as quickly as possible. The negotiation of protocols is an interesting subject, because while it allows for the use of new technology where it is available, it also forces everyone into the handshaking protocol. It’s like speaking to someone and going through all of the languages you both know - “Parle vu francais?, Sprechen sie deutsch?” until you get to a language you both can talk. This is fine, but in the world of programming, you need to define the protocol for determining the protocol. Anyone see a problem here? It’s a good point, but it only took an entire chapter.

Negroponte seems to like to pontificate on anything and everything in the book, starting of course with the past. Reading a history for every technology under the sun that shouldn’t be known already, I think the only major advance that was left out was the Internet itself. After all of this, it’s time to take a shot at the future. Of course, the best way to get something right is to take a shot at everything. With writing that seems to have wonderlust as a prerequisite, Being Digital ends up covering almost every part of the technological spectrum. Of course there are some hits, but there are a lot of misses. Too much entertainment, not enough integration was my basic feelings after finishing this book. I admit that I have the gift of hindsight, but even taking that into account, there just didn’t seem to be enough justification for the predictions that were made.

Making his predictions aren’t the end of this though, they just lead toward something he really wants to get to. In the end, Negroponte starts pontificating about what it really means to be digital, and his answer was very off base if you ask me. I just wasn’t very thrilled with this book, it’s not making the grade on reasoning. C-

Random Technological Ranting

2004-09-21T08:39:47-05:00

After spending the morning doing things that are throughly unproductive, I have a couple of things that bother me about the world right now, mostly technical.

Why doesn't Planet Debian advertise the availablility of an RSS feed in it's output, but not to automatic readers. I expect that an age where aggregators are more common to everyone (OS X 10.4, anyone?) will accelerate greatly the age of the content web - more and more people will not be using the web for nice-looking sites, but for the content on them. This could cause issues with advertisers, who on major sites could make it harder for information to flow freely from sources to sinks.

While Apple's Mail.app looks nice and works well, it is lacking at least two major features. The first is decent threading. We've had this for years in the world of mutt and any graphical mail reader I get will be required to have one. This is currently the only thing that is keeping me from using Mail.app for my main mailreader. The other thing that I want a graphical mail reader to do is work with GnuPG. It would be nice to have it auto-check people's signatures. I think I've come to the conclusion that I want "mutt with graphics". Of course, some would tell me to get off my ass and make one if I want it so bad, but I suspect that one may exist already and I don't know that it exists yet.

I've wanted to put an install of Debian on my iBook for a while, but I have been foiled by the fact that I use it daily and cannot cripple it. I need to figure out a way to copy all important data off so I can repartition correctly and reinstall both OS X and Debian. I think I am going to have issues with the Debian side of things, but I've been away from my Debian packages too long and I am feeling very bad about it.

I haven't been active on gale in a while, but I'm toying with the idea of joining the conversation again. I've always liked the people there - for some reason they seem very nice.

My favorite site for a long time Halfbakery, has been down yesterday and today. It was the clearinghouse for me to spout crazy ideas that come into my head every once in a while. I may have to spout some crazy ideas here instead because they're bouncing around up there.

Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2004-09-07T10:40:55-05:00

So I haven't been posting much lately, this is something which I intend to fix starting now. The reason that I have dropped off the radar lately is because of a great change in my life: I moved from a studio apartment to a two-bedroom apartment.

I knew I was moving for a while, but of course, having last moved two years ago and then to a new city with lots of friends to help, I didn't appreciate the full agony of moving. I thankfully was smart enough to schedule getting the new apartment on August 15, leaving me half a month to move out completely. I didn't really need all that time, but it was nice to not have to move it all in one day.

After conducting a wonderful three-week long search for apartments, I found a wonderful one-bedroom apartment that is situated right next to the new light rail system making it a very low-stress and simple ride into school. I filled out the application and the check for the deposit, and got a call a couple days later saying I was set for the place. The thing that clinched it for the apartment was the dishwasher. People who know me pretty well know that I despise doing dishes. A dishwasher is a dream come true for me.

Of course, I was supposed to move into a one bedroom apartment. I got a call around the 6th from the general manager of the apartments, saying that the one bedroom wouldn't be ready by the time I wanted to move in, and wondering if I would take a two-bedroom instead. Thinking it a cruel trick of some kind, I asked if it would be the same price, and assured her that I could move in on the 20th if needed. So I was excited to get the two-bedroom for the one-bedroom price, but wary of course.

The day came (after the reunion) and as I showed up I noticed that there was someone in my apartment. I had showed up at 10am, but apparently they weren't expecting me until noon, and the former resident wasn't out of the apartment yet. I walked upstairs and signed the lease with the resident manager, paying pro-rated rent for the first month and making sure there weren't any tricks. I got one set of keys to the place, and talked to the former resident saying that I wasn't going to move anything big today, but if he could be out by noon (like he had expected) then I would be pleased to move in tomorrow or later that night. Visiting the place later in the evening I discovered that there were still large pieces of furniture there. I was getting mad at this point, because I did expect to move some of the large boxes of stuff I had in my car at that point into the apartment.

I called the next day to the general manager and got it all worked out - the stuff would be gone by 5. I also got more of the full story behind the mess. Apparently one of the two general managers decided to take an unscheduled vacation. This caused a failure in communication on who was to move where. The other general manager was shuffling upstairs to a new apartment and there were two or three other shuffles going on as well. Normally they don't allow any moving withing the saame building. Anyway at 5pm that day, I was happy to see the general manager in my apartment helping to finish up the cleaning and the handiman came in to change the lock on the sliding door (it was previously fairly loose) and to change the deadbolt on the apartment door. This of course settled the issues that I had with the apartment at that point. I was very happy - I am getting a two-bedroom apartment for $65 less than I had previously been paying for a studio apartment.

Boring moving ensued, spanning many days. Soon everything but the large stuff that wouldn't fit into either my car or Di's (which is a station wagon and considerably larger). I also moved a bit of Di's stuff because she is moving as well - although to one room of a two-bedroom. Then came the 22nd, the day which we had worked out would be best for the moving of large furniture. Having scheduled a rental of a U-Haul truck in the size of 17 feet the week before, but not receiving a call beforehand, I call on the day asking when and where I should pick up the truck. Originally I scheduled pickup at 10am. Calling the general office for the twin cities told me that somehow that was moved back to noon. This was okay, as I had the truck until 6pm still, and this was ample time to get everything moved, including the big-ass couch that was such a pain to move earlier in the year. Going out to breakfast and then to the actual U-Haul store, I discover that the assholes don't expect me until 3pm. Now, I've had some issues with this U-Haul place before, but they were handled fairly quickly and nicely (see the couch ordeal for examples). However, I had already been delayed that day and I had plans for things closely after 6pm. To top it off, they couldn't give me a 17 foot truck as I had ordered, but only a 14 foot truck. 3 hours is NOT enough time to move that big couch and all the other things we needed to move, and to top it off, I had A waiting for me to show up in the truck to help. Fairly obviously fuming at this point, they called around the twin cities trying to find a truck that I could get right away. They found a 14 foot truck in Burnsville. Of course now I'm complaining because U-Haul charges by the mile, but I need to get that truck. The guy at the U-Haul on Nicollet gave me $30 in gift certificates in order to make up for the difference, which didn't really make it because the Burnsville one closes at 5pm and I wasn't planning on returning it until 6pm, making them useless. We got everything moved - the big couch went to my place because it was much MUCH easier to move into the 1st floor than it would have been to move it into the already-full apartment.

At any rate, I'm never using U-Haul on Nicollet and 34th ever again, I'm all moved into my new place, and I am back to blogging again regularly. More about what has happened later.

Book: The Last Three Minutes

2004-09-02T17:05:20-05:00

The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe (Science Masters Series)

(Book)

Authors:P. C. W. Davies Manufacturer:Basic Books Released:January, 1997 Rating: B

The Big Bang. Genesis. These are the two prevailing theories on the beginning of the universe. But honestly, who cares? I'm more worried about the future than the past any day of the week. That's why this book caught my interest. If the universe is going to end, I want to be darn sure that it's not going to happen before I die of natural causes, and it'd be nice to know how it's going down too. Paul Davies takes me on a delightful tour thorugh the current theory of where we all are headed, in the big picture.

The book starts with what I might consider a fake-out: Davies starts by recounting a situation where some asteroid has been found to be on a collision course with Earth and the final minutes in our existence considering that we know we’re going to be hit by a “global killer". While this is interesting, it’s a bit of fiction. We were scared for a bit that later this century we would be hit by something heading our direction, but it was found to be missing us by just a little bit later. After considering the possibilities and probabilities of these happening for some pages, he notes that even if we do die this way, it’s not exactly the last three minutes of the universe, just life on earth. Going on, he discusses the possibility of heat death, seemingly unavoidable by the second law of thermodynamics and something which depressed scientists to no end after they found it out. He also covers the possibility that the universe may stop expanding and start contracting at some point in the future.

Davies seems to work very hard to make the material not as dry as a AA member at a monastery by connecting most of the theory to what would actually happen, assuming that human life exists at that point. Unfortunately, the evaporating power of the material seems to take over, and I couldn’t really get through this book all the way without forcing myself through long sections on black holes that I really didn’t care much about. After the long discussion of black holes and how we could possibly get energy out of them stops, Davies got to the meat of what I was actually looking for: heat death or contracting universe. The last third of the book was actually much easier to read than the middle and much more intersting than most of the rest. Contracting and “Bouncing back” universes are discussed along with an actually interesting tangent about artifically creating universes by tricks with false vacuum. One other thing I really like about this book - Davies seems to go out of his way to make sure you know where to look up more information about the situations he talks about - even without resorting to looking at the notes in the back.

The book is actually better than many I could have read on the subject, and did increase my knowledge of the possibilities for the ultimate fate of the universe fairly extensively. It definitely gets my recommendation for geeky reading over the summer, at least if you can get through to the really interesting parts. At 176 pages, it is actually more reading than it looks like at a paltry paperbook size. If it weren’t for the dry section in the middle, it wouldn’t be B grade material.

What is wrong with people these days?

2004-09-02T16:38:59-05:00

I've been struck in the last few weeks with something that is baffling me. The thing that really sparked this in my head was when I left Di's and my bike in front of her car in our new neighborhood. They were not attached to anything, and I was pretty ansy about it, but after checking on them every couple of minutes for half an hour, I figured "wow, we live in a good neighborhood now". No such luck. Just after a walk, we came back to discover that her bike was stolen. Just recently I moved into a new place (see post coming later), and of course I put my folding chair out on my porch. Now, my new apartment is ground-level. The placing of the chair on my porch was basically a test of the neighborhood to see how crappy it was. The thing stayed there for near a week before, last night, it showed up missing.

The thing that really bugs me is this: why do people steal this stuff? It's not like it's a really complicated concept: is it yours? No? THEN DON'T TAKE IT ASSHOLE. IT'S NOT YOURS. I was hoping that moving to this new neighborhood I could be away from the people who think this way, but apparently I need to be living in some rural area in order for people to have the common sense of decency to not take shit. The thing that really baffles me though, is that some of the other people on the first floor have non-tied down stuff on their porches, and it doesn't get stolen. Are there really parents out there that aren't teaching kids these basic morals of life? If there are, I want to smack them upside the head a couple times for screwing it up for all the rest of us.

Isn't it sad that my great American dream consists of being able to leave a bike on my driveway/porch, unchained, and expect it to be there in the morning?

A Book Store Tour of Minneapolis

2004-08-16T16:39:13-05:00

Di and I went on a bookstore tour of the Twin Cities today - after discovering that she has a particular aversion to everything remotely relating to an animal, we decided to search for a particular book which she had seen before in vegan cooking. We started at a new book place, the alternative bookstore that is below where Midwest Mountaineering used to have part of it's store. We didn't find any cookbooks there, but I did find a couple books that I wanted to buy. Knowing that I am short on the cash end of things this summer, I decided to get them from library instead.

Next was Cummings Books which is by far my favorite of the bunch, which is situated in Dinkytown and has a nice selection of books from all fields in it's two stories (ground floor and basement). The two cats and one parrot just add to it's charm - I think if I was about to start working at some bookstore, this would be my first choice.

After failing to find anything in Dinkytown, we stopped by the Midway and went to the three story bookstore there. While having read great reviews of it, I expected much more. The place wasn't all that great - it seemed very unorganized to me. Anyway the book wasn't there either. Giving up, we went to Borders down the road, thinking they surely must have this book we're looking for. Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

As I gawked at books for a while Di found 6 or 7 vegan cooking books and started looking through them in hopes to find one she liked. I then continued to look around at books and music, hoping to find some Frank Sinatra because I have been on a crooner kick lately for some reason. After a bit I traipsed back to Di and she chose one (How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet) to buy.

Okay, so it was only four bookstores, but it seemed like a lot. At least it's more bookstores than I generally visit in a day.

Back to that same old place...

2004-08-14T21:23:58-05:00

Home sweet home - except that it wasn't home that I visited this weekend. I went to a family reunion / wedding in Spencer and Clear Lake, Iowa. Di didn't come along, for good reason, and I missed her a lot. I would have liked her to come along, but it was smarter of me to not introduce her to my family by bringing her to a wedding with every living relative on my father's side of the family present.

Of course this wedding was an interesting punctuation to my whole crazy summer of grading, working, grading, homework, class, grading, and TA work - I finished my final final grading at about 9:30am over the phone with the professor of the 1901 class I was the TA for. This was a little later than I thought I was going to do it. I needed about 4 hours to get to the wedding by 1:30pm so that I could be present for a family picture. I run very late normally so I decided I was going to leave by 9:30. This didn’t work out with final grading, because I hadn’t finished grading until late friday night. I call and send the email to the guy setting final grades and then skedaddle over to my place to pick up the bag I packed earlier and get on down to the wedding.

For people who know me, they will probably be able to guess how I got to the place on time: I sped like a bat out of hell most of the way down there. I don’t think my spedometer was below 80 for a very long time on that trip. I was very very lucky and I acqnowledge that I should have been caught. That being said, I don’t think I had much of a chance for crashing into something on paved country roads where soybeans were growing all around me. It was like a scene from a movie where you have crossroads and a car speeding down the road or something. The countryside was beautiful, and I was making good time, until I hit the traffic from hell in Clear Lake. Now, you have to understand, this is northwest Iowa we’re talking about so I wasn’t really expecting much delay going through the city. Boy, I was very wrong. It was about 10 miles per hour for no less than 5 miles. Having made the normally 4 hour trip in no less than record speed for me, I was now stuck in traffic in rural Iowa.

Well, it turned out that it was okay for me to be a little late anyway because the picture was not taken that afternoon, it was cancelled. I was surprised to see at the wedding some people I hadn’t seen in a LONG time: every living relative from the one family’s side. Everyone who is related by blood to me on my father’s side starting from my grandma were there, and most of the spouses as well. I got to see my Aunt and Cousins who I hadn’t seen in 7 years easy. Some children I barely recognized - S is grown now, and last time I saw E she was a little baby. It was a great time chatting with everyone again.

The wedding was my Cousin K who has always been an interesting relative for me - he is interested in the same types of stuff that I am, and is about the age of my sister. We never really seemed to hit it off however - probably because we only saw each other a couple of times each year, and we don’t do things like chat online. He’s getting married, which makes me feel kindof strange all of a sudden - I think he’s marrying early, but I’m not about to tell him that - he certainly has a loving relationship with his wife. Anyway the wedding was an interesting fusion of a wedding and a reception - I sat down at a table to watch the wedding, the same table I would be eating on later. The wedding went on, a fairly short ceremony by some standards (long by others I’m sure) and then the same stage that was used to say vows on was transformed into a head table. The food was chinese (wonderfully seasoned beef or chicken) and the cake was cheesecake. The whole thing took about 2 hours total - easily the least amount of time I’ve spent when I went to a wedding and reception. We sent K and J off with bubbles, which aren’t all that uncommon nowadays I guess.

After the wedding/reception mix we went back to K’s parent’s place in order to chat and have fun. We took some family pictures there (missing K and J of course) and also played some games, chatted, and had a general good time. I met some people who are related to me by marriage I never met before, and had more time to talk with relatives I haven’t seen in forever again. Things are always fun when we get a lot of my family together in one place - we all seem to be game players of some sort. At the end of the day I gave Di a call and was happy to be able to talk to her.

Cell phone usage in this part of Iowa was interesting - whenever I wanted to call someone, I could call out fine, but there was no internet service. This was something I would expect with roaming, but I also expected to be able to receive calls. Cellular ONE in Iowa decided that I can make calls from their towers as much as I want, but they hate AT&T for some strange reason and anyone who tried to call me was greeted with a “The Cellular One number you have dialed is no longer in service” which would baffle anyone who called me because 1) my number isn’t owned by Cellular One and 2) the number works just fine for calling people. Also, I couldn’t call my voice mail, which annoyed me to no end, and I couldn’t call the 1-800 number for AT&T technical support either. I ended up using the hotel’s phone the next day and figuring out this whole flip-off that Cellular ONE is doing to AT&T. I can tell you one thing, I’ll never be a customer of them. It’s one thing to not accept incoming calls for users from a particular company - it’s another to tell anyone who tries to call you that your number is out of service. There should be laws against it, I tell you.

The next day everyone in the family went to see the opening of presents by K and J, which wasn’t all that exciting, and take another family picture with K and J around this time. Our family has this thing about taking pictures. I totally agree with them this time though, because of the aforementioned people being around when otherwise they wouldn’t be. Some of my family then went home, and the rest of the family travelled up to Spirit Lake to a family reunion. I forgot my swimsuit, so I hopped a ride with Aunt C to Wal-Mart and picked out one, and picked up a trafvel charger for my phone too. After a bit of swimming and a bit of reading of my summer reading books, we all were going to go to ride on the Queen II across the lake. It was a wonderful day for it, not too hot and not too cool, but they weren’t running the boat that night because a private party had it. The Queen II is very close to Arnolds Park, so we enjoyed ourselves anyway. Back to the hotel for some supper and some sleep.

The next day was fairly uneventful - it was mostly lounging around doing nothing, playing some pool in the rec room, playing games with family (including a fun real-time game called Blink). I also visited the maritime museum with my dad and talked with him about some life stuff. Sadly I had to go that evening because I was planning on doing things on Tuesday. I said farewell to everyone and had a much more leisurely drive back to the twin cities - this time not speeding once.

On the way back, between 90 and 169 on MN-4, I caught “Minnie the Moocher” on a radio station surfing, and was treated with “Sweet Home Chicago” as well. A distinctly old lady came on announcing the Blues Brothers set that had just played and announced the next songs, which I don’t really remember. She was so wonderful - it was completely obvious that she was just doing it for fun and having a good time. I wonder which station that was. At any rate, I’m back, and well-rested.

Movie: Catwoman

2004-08-14T19:13:49-05:00

Brooklyn Park 20 7/25/04 7:00pm Score: 6

Halle Berry in a catsuit. What more can I say about this movie? It's visual entertainment. Despite it's outward appearance as a movie built for men's eyecandy, the movie is very woman-liberating.

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is an adwoman who seems to be going nowhere in her job for a cosmetics company. She stumbles upon something that she shouldn’t have - addictive cosmetics - and gets killed. Then she gets the soul of a cat. We aren’t really privvy to why she was chosen, or how exactly it happened, but that’s just as well, because we don’t really care. The best part of this script is that they know exactly what we don’t really care about. Some critics have decided the movie isn’t that great because the self-discovery phase of the catwoman isn’t really serious - she is enamoured of catnip, for example. I don’t really think this is a failing - the humor used makes the audience feel more comfortable with the character.

The rest of this movie is pretty predictable - Patience/Catwoman steals things, feels sorry, becomes more aware of her transformation (and abilities), has a love interest that is a cop and has to hide her secret identity, gets setup by the villians, discovered by her love interest and put in jail, breaks out of jail, kills villian. I was happy to see that at the end she continues the indepent woman attitude however and doesn’t hook up with the cop. Still, there are completely useless logic errors in the beginning of the movie that required me to turn off my brain quickly.

There are some decent supporting actor roles in here, with Alex Borstein, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone and Frances Conroy. They all play their roles like the great actors they are, without overplaying them and without overshadowing Halle, since this is really her movie. I have to admit, I am somewhat of an actor guy at this point. When I see a familiar actor that I like in a movie when I didn’t expect them, I come out of the movie with a better opinion of the movie. I like to think that good actors get to choose the movies that they want to do. This movie is not a bad movie, and I hope that the actors weren’t just signing on for a paycheck. The bit parts in the movie are very well played.

One of the great failings of this movie is the extensive use of horrible CGI. It’s very very obvious when the catwoman on the screen is created by computer and when it is actually the actor. It seems to me that they were very bold with the CGI in the movie - they used it for shots which are much closer than I expect. On the other side of the coin, the CGI is sometimes a wonder simply because it is CGI. Movie budgets need not have space for city flyovers in a helicopter anymore - they need only look to Catwoman to see them done beautifully. The movie slightly overuses the freedom given by this, but I was amazed just to see how far the technology has come - it took me a couple seconds into the first shot to realize that it was CGI. As a bonus perk, I would bet that there is a full computer model of Halle Berry in a catsuit out there somewhere (used in the game, I suppose).

Go into this movie without expecting amazing epiphanies and without a critical eye to overused CGI and you will have a good time. I give it a 6.

Movie: Harold and Kumar go to White Castle

2004-08-14T18:42:32-05:00

AMC Har-Mar 3:30pm 7/30/04 Score: 8

The first time I saw a trailer for this movie, I was fairly sure that I wasn't going to see it. Honestly, it was being advertised as by the same guy who did "Dude, where's my car". That was closer to the kiss of death than any movie has come before that I have actually went and saw. I did go, and it is surprisingly good. I'm trying to decide if this movie is good on it's own morals or just because it has reverse Riddick's Disease.

Let me explain Riddick’s Disease quickly for people who don’t know what I’m referring to. Pitch Black was a good movie. It had a good plot with characters who weren’t predictable and a storyline that, while it wasn’t original, brought out the strengths of the actors. It got decent reviews. The Chronicles of Riddick was also a good movie, but it was written by the same person as Pitch Black, with a couple of the same characters, set in the same universe. Despite all this, it isn’t a sequel to Pitch Black - it’s very different. Pitch Black was an action movie, Chronicles of Riddick was a space opera. The critics didn’t see it this way - they were expecting another Pitch Black, and of course it was panned. This is Riddick’s Disease - a movie that’s expected to be great, but is only good, so it gets panned. It’s like Matrix Reloaded - everyone was expecting a miracle, but we got a decent movie so it got picked apart. Matrix Reloaded’s Disease doesn’t sound as cool as Riddick’s Disease though.

Reverse Riddick’s Disease is just that - you expect the movie to be utter crap, but it turns out to be okay, so it’s hailed as better than it should be. Bad advertising aside, this movie is not a stinker. The start of the movie would be interesting if you didn’t know that the movie was about two guys named Harold and Kumar already who aren’t white guys - there is a short fake-out in the first scene with a couple of guys who are trying to get out of work. Of course, most of the first scene’s jokes are aimed at Harold, so they’re mostly racial. I braced myself for a movie full of bad jokes and wisecracks. Luckily, I got treated to a movie with just not enough point to be interesting.

The setup is fairly simple: Harold is a investment banker who hates his job, Kumar is a genius medical student who doesn’t have any real desire to be a medical student. Harold plays straight man to Kumar’s pioneering, pointless desire to get lit. They get baked on a friday night after Harold got dumped on in the introduction, and become seduced by the idea of the worst food to be had at 2am, White Castle. For the characters, the ends are justification for any means. For the audience, the means is the meat.

The journey is of course the greater part of this movie. There are truly horrible jokes including horrible toilet humor (literally), but there are some well-performed jokes as well, with Neil Patrick Harris being vehicle for some of the better ones. I give the movie a 8.

Movie: Napoleon Dynamite

2004-08-14T17:53:09-05:00

07/07/04 Lagoon Cinema 4:00pm Score: 10

Plot? Who needs plot? Napoleon Dynamite certainly doesn't. This movie set in rural america is a feast for the mind. Starting fairly indiscriminately, this movie shows that good writers can weave tales together in a way that makes everything come together in an interesting manner. If you haven't seen this movie yet, you should.

Napoleon Dynamite may sound like a super hero, but don’t mistake this for another Super-man. It’s just the name of a normal geek in high school. The simple mannerisms of this “normal” kid are the focus of the movie which shares his name. Why is he the main character? Well, because all the stories revolvfe around him. The school election, the rise and fall of business, the long-distance relationship that changes someone, the school dance, they’re all connected to Napoleon in some way.

In some sense, this movie is all about the connections between seemingly unrelated stories. This causes one thing which is the effect for another which causes yet another thing. This goes on throughout the movie, exquititely expanding on one story and then switching to another, keeping the audience wondering the entire way. The movie doesn’t have an overriding plot of any kind, using the separate stories driven mainly by supporting characters to keep us interested. I didn’t think that the movie was all that funny - it doesn’t have as many obvious laughs as Anchorman or Dodgeball, even though there are some wonderful physical humor.

The main players: Napoleon Dynamite, the center of it all, Kip, his brother who has an internet relationship, Uncle Rico, stuck in the 80s, Pedro, the new mexican kid on the block. This mish-mash of characters gives the movie an interesting feel. I’m not sure when it exactly is set, but it doesn’t matter much. Napoleon is the quintessential nerd, with the full effect of non-swearwords and completely ackward sentences added for no particular reason. The audience learns who he is throughout the movie in his dialog and actions. The role is acted just right by Jon Heder, like a gazillion times better than any other actior than I can think of. There are a few cameo apperances by Deidrich Bader (Oswald from Drew Carey) which garner some laughs, but seem misplaced in the grander scheme of things.

The movie keeps us all interested, and is unique in a sea of cookie-cutter movies this summer. I give it a 10 cajillion.

Movie: Anchorman

2004-08-14T17:04:01-05:00

Anchorman - The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Extended Edition)

(Video)

Starring:Christina Applegate, Steve Carell, Will Ferrell Manufacturer:Dreamworks Video Released:28 December, 2004 Watched: 07/11/04 AMC Southdale 16 9:50pm Score: 8

When I saw the previews for Anchorman, it was clear that this was the movie that would make Will Farrell shine. The movie seems tailor-made for his style of humor - I'm not sure if that means that he is after his time, or he was just not sure of where he should be until now. The movie delivers on it's promise of humor, with a small bit of plot just for the fun of it. The laughs are minuite-by-minute, with a few surprises in store for comedy movie fans.

The premise: Ron Burgundy (Will Farrell) is the top news anchor in the LA area. This is supposed to be a time before the advent of CNN and cable, so he is of course a huge star. He was obviously hired because he can read off the prompter and look good. Will pulls off this role perfectly. He has a team of other reporters there mostly for slapstick and less quick-witted than he is. It’s clear that he isn’t doing much in the way of relationships, and he seems to be partying all night every night. Then along comes Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) and he falls in love. Of course this isn’t enough to fill a movie, so Veronica is also trying to become the first network anchor ever (enter woman’s rights thing in the middle of the 70’s) and also there are little rivalries with other stations.

Despite the weak plot and jokes which are very off-color, the movie is entertaining to watch, as long as you just turn off your brain. There are running gags for some, and a wealth of cameos in one sequence which are perfectly timed through the movie, although they get fairly heavy in a extraneous scene near the end. The movie moves along well and times the laughs well, giving the audience just enough time to forget about the earlier joke before starting the next one and not putting consecutive jokes too close to plot so as to drown it out.

Di pointed out that there were some scenes in the commercials for this movie that were not in the movie - the major one being one where a table is broken. I think that the movie plot got changed a little based on screening because I don’t know where the scene would fit into the movie. At any rate, this movie is great to go and turn your brain off to. I give it an 8

Tuesdays have a new name

2004-08-04T14:32:37-05:00

Tuesdays have now become my TV night. I currently watch the lineup of Gilmore Girls, Last Comic Standing, Amazing Race, Friends, Dharma & Greg, and sometimes Drew Carey. This makes it hard to get other things done like anything. My favorite show of the lineup is by far Amazing Race. THIS is a reality show I can stand to watch - a race around the world.

Of course now I must launch into the requisite writing on my blog about it. I hate to say it, I really hope that Sharla and Mirna lose next chance they get. I don't mind Sharla at all - she's being great and it's wonderful that they're doing well, but Mirna is just annoying as hell. She's done approximately 0% of the work in the entire race. She also has an attitude that just won't quit - unfortunately it's a crappy one. Granted, I would have snuck away from the rest of the group just like they did to get on the earlier flight, but she's not even nice to her TEAMMATE.

Movie: The Corporation

2004-08-02T19:38:38-05:00

Lagoon Cinema 4 07/25/04 2:00pm Score: 7

The Corporation takes on the largest and most prolific business entity of the 20h century. In this documentary, Mark Ackbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakkan dissect the entity that runs our capitalist society, and attempts to find flaws. Unfortunately, they find quite a few flaws in the model. However, they don't offer any new solution to the problem.

The movie starts with a little bit of history about corporations. Formerly restricted to things such as building toll roads and bridges and granted by the state, they soon branched out into other things. They’re still granted by the state, though, which presents one possible solution: stop granting them. This solution, although very flawed and probably unhealthy for the economy in it’s current state, wasn’t really covered. Anyway they are easily represented as evil by now because they’re not being used for what they were originally for right?

The movie also covers the use of the 13th amendment of the constitution being used to grant the rights of an individual to a corporation. They note that many of the cases tried by the supreme court were for this use of the new amendment rather than the intended use of freeing slaves. I don’t see a problem with it myself - when a new use of a law is being worked out, it makes sense that cases testing the limit of the law will be brought to case.

My favorite part of this movie came up about halfway through if I can judge time right - when `The Investigators’ of a television station set their sights on Monsanto’s growth hormone which was being given to cows at the time. They found that the drug was not tested throughly and could have serious implications for the health of the nation. Of course, this story wouldn’t be fun if Monsanto didn’t bully the station into not airing the special right away. The station billied the reporters and the reporters brought a whistle-blower case against the station. The station appealed naturally, and it was ‘vindicated’ years after the original story because the court stripped the reporters of their whistle-blower status - by ruling it not illegal to present news which is fiction.

Overall, The Corporation takes a microscope to what has become a foundation of the modern United States economy. Things I was sad to not see: a distinction between the different types of corporation, and a look at proposed solutions to the problem with advantages and disadvantages. It came out to be a little long for the material it was covering as well - it got boring about half an hour before the end. These downsides are why it gets a 7 instead of a higher score.

How to lose LJ friends in 3 easy steps

2004-08-02T07:42:06-05:00

Apparently the best way to lose friends on LJ is to 1. start a separate blog that can post to LJ 2. stop posting things about your life 3. start posting lots of movie and book reviews.

People on LJ - I'm defriending people who I see rarely in real life and have also defriended me.

In other news, my new blog is being syndicated in full glory at Planet Debian. Wondering how the debian folks will like the movie reviews and general ramblings.

It's a very very.. Mad World

2004-08-01T01:16:48-05:00

An executive summary of the events of today:

Ferion, Airplane!, Falutas, Harold and Kumar, Brownie Blizzard, Wedge, Amazing Race, Ferion, Princess Diaries, Whose Line, Aldous, Instant Marriage License, Kayas, Ritual, Perkins, Kaya Happy Dance, Menthol, Balls, Aneurism-inducing Beeping, Mad World.

Things

2004-07-23T16:20:15-05:00

Things I can control:

Caloric intake
TV habits
Keeping in touch with people
Posting of Homeworks
Movies I see
Upkeep of Debian packages
Spending

Things I can't control:

Other's feelings
Annoying people
The price of objects
Financial penalties
Liars
Employers

So, why am I focusing on the second list?

Movie: Dodgeball

2004-07-21T09:32:44-05:00

Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story

(Video)

Starring:Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Vince Vaughn Manufacturer:Fox Home Entertainme Released:24 May, 2005 Watched: 07/04/04 St. Anthony Main 7:00pm Score: 5

Ben Stiller in a movie about the little guy beating the big guy that is supposed to be funny. You have to go into this movie not expecting much, it's obviously a movie aimed at the immature crowd. Surprisingly, it refrained from the easiest of wisecracks and went on to be genuinely entertaining to watch.

When Di brought up the idea of going to a movie on Independence Day I was surprised - I hadn’t expected she would be one to sit in a theater on a day where there were lots of street vendors to look through and peruse their selection. Perhaps it was the heat, or the fact that we can’t really buy anything from the vendors made her suggest it. Passing up a chance at a movie is something I don’t do often - but did the St. Anthony Main movie theater have the right movie playing for such a day? In order to match the mood, the movie should not require thought, and take cheap shots whenever it can, and have no impact whatsoever on later thinking. You need to be lazy on Independence Day - it’s the American thing to do! Indeed the perfect movie was playing: Dodgeball.

Approaching Dodgeball expecting a good movie is something no sane person should do. It is Ben Stiller, but not everything from him can be Zoolander quality, and as TBS has shown us it even it wasn’t that great. You must go in with lowered expectations - expecting to see the kind of movie that you can walk out of the theater and act as if you never walked in, and be proud.

The story is fairly formulaic - Big Corporation Mega-Gym is buying out Small Time Cozy Gym for no reason except out of spite. Of course the Small Time Gym has financial issues, mostly because of the owner’s (Vince Vaughn) lack of accounting skills. The heroization of this guy in such a short time just because he’s stupid is a forewarning of the general level of intelligence that the rest of the movie’s jokes require, which mostly revolve around some sexual issue.

Anyway the “only” way that they can get the money to save the gym is to enter a dodgeball tournament. They join and learn how to play (honestly, who doesn’t know how to play dodgeball?), but of course they suck so they hire a coach (excellently played by Rip Torn) and we get more antics of the “ouch that had to hurt” variety. The movie ends with Big Shot Gym guy getting his comeuppins, of course.

If it weren’t for the good actors in this movie which include excellent performances by Stephen Root and Allen Tudyk, it would be something that monkeys should be flinging at walls. However, they all have a good sense of comedic timing, which makes the jokes not completely unbearable. This movie gets a number in the sit on the couch at a party and watch (if there’s nothing else to do)range, a 5.

Movie: King Arthur

2004-07-17T23:04:31-05:00

Watched: 07/17/04 9:55pm St. Anthony Main Score: -∞

Don't see this movie. Please. Crap like this should not be rewarded. More later maybe. Score: -∞.

Book: Euclid's Window

2004-07-17T17:36:27-05:00

Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace

(Book)

Authors:Leonard Mlodinow Manufacturer:Free Press Released:09 April, 2002 Rating: A

When most people think of math, they think of raw numbers, boring classes in high school or college, and geeky people calculating things quickly. People don't think of geometry, which is very much a foundation of much of the mathematics which is performed today. In Euclid's Window, Leonard Mlodinow makes math history interesting by telling the story of the people behind geometry, starting with Euclid and ending with modern string and M-theory.

Leonard starts at the very beginnings of Geometry, tracing back the roots of Euclid’s Elements and the times of Pythagoras’s gang of mathemeticians. He presents them in their full glory, giving a tip of the hat to how well greek society was and how it helped foster mathematics revolutions. He continues to the downfall/descruction of high math concepts (thanks a lot, romans) through the dark ages, and how math came to be reborn. The story continues through Gauss and the discovery of non-Euclidian spaces, and eentually continues through to Einstein and Witten, eventually ending with superstring theory and M-theory. The connection between physics and geometry is at first downplayed (as Euclidian space is not related to real-world physics much) and then emphasized. He very much gives a biography of the key players to drive the story, handing it off from one historic figure to another through lesser known mathemeticians linked in a remarkable way. At no point do you think you have lost the story, or is it jarring.

One of the best parts of this book are the explanations of math concepts. Leonard is generally witty, using real-world examples when appropriate, and making excellent use of figures to get his point across. At the same time he never goes too far into the math, covering only the basic concepts the reader needs to know in order to grasp the scientific significance of the advances in mathematics and physics. Every point in the book which seems confusing when presented at first is covered with an example which, even when covering basic concepts, are a joy to read. Many examples employ Alexei and Nikolai, the author’s sons, which add some sort of charm.

I sped through this book, reading it whenever chance allowed. It was split into parts which are further split into chapters, but read very much like a novel. The writing style employed is well suited to the material, and I hope that I can read more from this author. It is very rare that a book on mathematics is written so well and such a joy to read. I emphatically recommend this book to anyone who has even a passing interest in geometry or mathematics history. This book is grade A.

Interesting things about 1980?

2004-07-07T22:36:04-05:00

In 1980 (the year you were born)

Jimmy Carter is president of the US President Carter announces punitive measures and embargos against the USSR in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Mount St. Helens in Washington state erupts in a violent blast estimated to be 500 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th US president in a sweeping victory US Representative Michael O. Myers is expelled from the House for his role in the Abscam scandal Hewlett-Packard announces release of its first personal computer Microsoft announces their version of UNIX, Xenix Christina Ricci, Chelsea Clinton, Venus Williams, Jessica Simpson, Macaulay Culkin, and Jake Gyllenhaal are born Philadelphia Phllies win the World Series Pittsburgh Steelers win Superbowl XIV New York Islanders win the Stanley Cup The Empire Strikes Back is the top grossing film "Lady" by Kenny Rogers spends the most time at the top of the US charts U.S. viewers get caught up in the "Who Shot J.R.?" cliff hanger on the soap opera series, Dallas, which is solved on a November 21 episode, drawing a record numbers of viewers

What Happened the Year You Were Born? More cool things for your blog at Blogthings

Book: Innumeracy

2004-07-07T11:51:12-05:00

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

(Book)

Authors:John Allen Paulos Manufacturer:Hill and Wang Released:18 August, 2001 Rating: C

In this book, John Allen Paulos attempts to present the reasonings behind the Innumeracy problem, and some possible solutions. Unfortunately, this book falls flat on the solutions, and doesn't examine the reasons as well as I would have liked. It seems riddled with useless information that is only connected to the subject by one thread or another, and doesn't have a clear goal.

Dr. Paulos's Innumeracy caught my eye in a book store a while back. Perhaps I expected too much from this book, I expected a sociological look at innumeracy and possibilities for fixing it, maybe a study or two to back up claims made. Unfortunately, I opened this book and received a warning in the preface about skipping over math which I deemed too easy or hard. If I would have followed this advice, I could have finished the book in an hour or so, mostly by flipping pages.

The book starts with introducing the problem: people in this country don't know how to do math, and in the large part, they don't care. Sure, most of them know how to add and subtract at least - they need to do that in order to figure out monthly bills and balance their checkbook. These things involve money, so of course the venerable citizen of the capitalist economy will know. Dr. Paulos seems to think that if many more people in the world knew more math, the world would be a better place. I happen to agree, but not for the same reasons.

The main parts of mathematics which people seem to be lacking are in probability, statistics, and estimation. I happen to think that there are some other fields such as geometry and logic that the public isn't so hot in either, but Dr. Paulos tackles the first three. In his defense, he presents the material in a decently organized manner in each chapter, taking on Gambling and Paranormal activity, in a mannered way. However, I find he used too many examples, as if his book needed more pages and he just couldn't find something else to work on.

With it's extensive examples, the book doesn't seem to be written for my audience - it seems to be written for the innumerate of this world. This worries me because I do not believe that people who are innumerate would be inclined to pick up this book and give it a try. Even given that someone has opened the book, I believe that they would be bored by the examples. No challenge is given to the reader in order to motivate them to improve their numeracy: all answers to examples are given right after they are explained, or left off completely. It is possible that this book would benefit with excercises which are answered in the back of the book.

There are short sections detailing the problem of innumeracy in our society and some suggestions to fix them. Teaching estimation and probability at a grade school seems a bit harsh, but it is something which could be started at a young age. Imagine a teacher with a spinner with three colors asking the class how many times we expect the spinner to land in each area. This is the kind of early probability that is missing from schooling. Of course, this brings up the problem that the teachers need to understand probability as well. So introduces the vicious cycle: teachers don't know math because they are innumerate, and therefore produce more students who are innumerate. Dr. Paulos suggests roving math experts and professor/teacher swaps in order to stop it, but most of his ideas seem far-fetched, or hard to implement on a large scale.

To the book's credit, the areas of math which are covered need to be, and all the examples explain the concepts behind math in a manner which any layperson off the street could understand. This book is not for me, though, as it was much too dry. For this reason I give it a C - still good, but not above the average level for interest.

Things are progressing quickly..

2004-07-07T11:09:00-05:00

The last few weeks have gone by in what serems like a breeze. Let me see if I can sum up the events in my life between now and then:

Tested for my license twice and passed on the second try, getting a large yellow sheet of paper which worked as a license until I received mine in the mail. Why they don't just print out the license on the spot is beyond me, almost every other state and university on the planet prints them off while you wait. At any rate, I'm now an officially licensed Minnesota citizen.

Went apartment hunting, because they are raising my rent at Cedars 94 and I just can't justify living there anymore. After looking at approximately 20 apartments, and calling about 40 or so, I found a nice one-bedroom apartment for less rent than I am paying now, but is south of where I am - farther from the university. However, it is on the Light Rail line (literally it runs right outside the complex), so the ride to school is still not too long and it is convenient. There are less "community" amenities, but I never really used any of the ones at Cedars anyway. The ride to school and back home will be longer - hoping to use the time to get some reading in regularly. It's only 12 minutes to downtown by LRT - something which makes me very happy, and also a short ride to the Mall of America when the rest of the line opens in December.

Speaking of the LRT system, I rode on the sunday of opening day for a little bit just for fun with Di. It was packed (of course) but seemed to go smoothly. The highest speeds are on the part of the line which I'm moving to, which is beneficial to me of course. The system seemed to handle a lot of passengers well, we were crammed in there. Some people remarked that if it can't move this many people, how well will it work as a mass-transit service - They should be reminded that in normal operation, more people would be leaving the train at some stops.

Di decided that she is going to move from her apartment in with a friend, which will save her a bunch of money but lose her some private space. Also she got fired from her job for no reason by a domineering bitch, gotta love that. Bad timing too - she put in her applications right before the 4th holiday and of course had to wait until this week in order to get responses. The good news: she has lots of interviews and places which want her to work for them. She's taking it very well, and I've been trying to help when I can. She's my sweetie and I hate it when she's depressed or stressed more than normal.

Teaching classes is okay, I'll probably post about it in another post since I have these nice categories now.

Preparing Future Faculty is progressing nicely - we are getting into creating a syllabus, filling out your CV, things like that which you just don't get anywhere else, but are expected of you as faculty anywhere you will start as a professor. It is really a very useful class, everyone who is planning on being a professor should take it. I hope I can take the practicum next semester.

Been eating out too much, and it shows on my scale and my wallet. Need to stop by buying groceries and cooking my own meals. Watched a lot of movies with Di because it's summer and that's what you do in summer. Reading some good books.

Movie: Fahrenheit 9/11

2004-07-04T15:12:13-05:00

Watched: 06/25/04 AMC Southdale 16 Score: 7

I went on opening day to see Fahrenheit 9/11 with Di. It was a good thing that we bought our tickets online in advance, because it sold out almost every showing at the theater we went to - there was a line outside the door when we were leaving. While I'm glad that lots of people are seeing this movie, I came out of it lukewarm. It wasn't all that entertaining, and didn't present any information which I didn't get from other sources already.

Michael Moore's second big "documentary" movie (the first being Bowling for Columbine) tries to make some sense of what the government is thinking after the 9/11 attacks. There are many different views, picks on, and defenses of this movie on the 'net already, so I think I'll just stick to what I felt in my gut right after seeing it.

Fahrenheit 9/11 seems, as best, hectic and disconnected. There are good facts in here, somewhere, but I'm not sure where they are. Moore starts with the election, which he insinuates was turned by family ties at Fox, and goes on from there to Senate tapes from which House members plead for the contest of the election. I would have liked some followup on this, some interviews or statements from Senate members at the time on why they wouldn't contest the election, but Moore presses on.

He's just a couple steps from the 9/11 attacks, in which we watch the debris falling and the president as he sits stunned at the news of the attacks at a photo opportunity for 7 minutes. Honestly I'm not sure what Moore is trying to bring across here, because if I was the leader of the country, I might just sit there for 7 minutes trying to think over the situation. If it was a half hour, an hour, longer, I would expect some action, but 7 minutes? Please. If his point was the inaction, Moore could have contrasted this with our vice-president Dick Cheney's quick action of ordering planes that did not respond shot down.

From here, he goes on to criticize the war on terror, the absense of troops in Afghanistan, and the entire war on Iraq. There are issues I have with some of these as well, but I'm getting tired so I'll talk about the other part of this movie: the emotional part. Moore of course finds a connection in his home town of Flint, MI with a son who was lost in Iraq. This is disheartening, and there are hundreds of stories all around the country. There may be a point in this, but all it did was tug on the heartstrings for me. A sad story, but lives have been lost over worse things.

I came away from this movie wish-washy about it. The movie seems like it tried to address too many issues and was fragmented. It is obvioously biased and I don't know why we as liberals aren't calling Moore on it. We complain about how the "Fair and Balanced" reporting of Fox is hurting the american public, but can't hold a movie with equally obvious slant to the same standards. I give it a 7, because it's a great collection of things that are otherwise scattered, and it's emotional message drives home well.

Movie: Spider-man 2

2004-07-04T14:36:01-05:00

Watched: 07/02/04 3:15pm AMC Southdale 16 Score: 10

Going into the theater expecting something good, it turns out I was underestimating this movie. The special effects are great, the plot is great, and the ending is great. Can you guess what adjective I would use to describe Spider-man 2?

Taking place 2 years after the end of the first movie in the timeline, Peter Parker is now battling with a new enemy: doubt. He has issues keeping up with being a crimefighter and a student at the university. Mary Jane has began her acting career (performing in The Importance of Being Ernest, hint, hint) and Harry Osborn has taken his father's place as head of Oscorp. Of course this movie wouldn't be complete (or true to it's comic book roots) without a new villian, and Alfred Malina delivers a great performance as Dr. Otto Octavius.

Spider-man 2 is at the same time funny and profound, and the audience develops an empathy for the characters throughout the movie (even the villian). This doesn't mean that they skimped on the effects - they are used more in this movie than in it's predecessor, but at the same time they are almost seamless.

Director Sam Raimi takes this sequel to the box office record breaker farther than Spider-man, both in plot depth and character development. He has shown the world that sequels can still be better than the orignial, and wraps it all up in a truly enjoyable 2 hours. See this movie this summer. On the jamuraa scale it gets a well-deserved 10.

WordPress, hooray!

2004-07-04T12:32:55-05:00

I switched to WordPress for my blog recently. So far I have been very happy with it - I can update via the web or through a blog updating client. It has everything I really want in a blog, plus more - it even has an available plugin so I can post stuff to livejournal at the same time (hi LJ people!). Spent most of the last few days categorizing the old entries in my LJ and my older blog in WP. I'm going to change the look of this page, but for now it will have to do. I am only missing one major thing that I want my blog to have: a "I'm reading this book and I'm X of the way through it" plugin, which I have seen on other people's sites (they use blosxom or pyblosxom I'm pretty sure). I'm thiking of writing the plugin myself (they don't seem that hard). Really the only downside to WordPress is having to install MySQL for the database.

Planning on posting 3-4 entries later today, after I figure out the layout thing.

A 90s geek!

2004-06-29T14:22:00-05:00

I'm A 1990s Geek

Cool, confident, and very powerful, you're the sexiest geek ever! Buckle in, your decade is one hell of a ride.

find your geek decade at spacefem.com

picked up from planetDebian of all places..

Movie: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2004-06-09T13:36:00-05:00

Viewing Date: June 4, 2004 (Technically - 12:01)

I was long anticipating this new installment to the Harry Potter movie saga started by the first two movies. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban carries on the story by taking the third book to the big screen. A warning to readers: I am a big fan of Harry Potter so don't expect this review to be unbiased, or not filled with spoilers.

The adaptation to the screen is particularly well done, I believe. They left out parts of the book which aren't particularly important to the story - you don't need to know details that Harry discovers about the trial of Sirius or the other dropped hints of the book. They left in possibly enough in order to figure out who the real culprit of the crime was before the end. The hints for other mysteries are a little less clear. I got the feeling that there is considerably less kitch left in the movie as in the book - people who read the book and wanted to know some things because they were in previous books didn't get those parts into the movie.

The acting wasn't incredible, but they are still kid actors, so I don't expect too much from them. The directing was superb - the movie had a good pace, keeping the audience interested. Special effects were used more sparinly throughout this movie it seemed, but that may have been simply because there wasn't that many scenes like the Quiddich matches in the previous movies.

Overall I thought the movie was excellent, and if I got the chance to see it in the theater again I probably even would splurge for popcorn and a drink to enjoy with it. On my review scale it gets a 7.

Movie: The Day After Tomorrow

2004-06-09T13:06:00-05:00

Viewing Date: May 30, 2004 The Day After Tomorrow is the required summer disaster movie of the summer. Made in the fine tradition of Deep Impact and Armageddon, I went into this movie expecting nothing but special effects and another interesting look at how the world could end for all of us, and of course it will be avoided at the last minute.

This time it is the effects of global warming, which incidentally, causes the rapid onset of a new ice age. Of course, in the movie it all happens entirely too fast with very little scientific explanation for why it happens - the closest they get is that the desalinization of the oceans screws up the north atlantic current, making all of that warm equator water not go north and causing serious weather problems, including huge hurricanes on land which insta-freeze anything that is in the center.

The director or writer in this movie tries entirely too hard in order to get the audience to care about his characters. The mad scientist who predicts it has a son who goes to New York which is (surprise, surprise) in the path of a big storm. So is his wife, who conveniently works in a cancer ward for children. Look everyone, it's a little kid with cancer! You have to care about him! The only way he could have made it more obvious would be to put a shipment of widdle cute puppies on it's way to the storm driven by a cadre of third-world children hoping to sell them for money to save their baseball field in the south pacific. It's okay though, because I wasn't expecting a great plot from this movie.

What I was expecting from the movie was good special effects. Unfortunately the movie didn't deliver very well. Sure, they had the ocean rising, and Los Angeles being destroyed by tornadoes (which I was almost cheering at), but the main destruction wasn't accompanied by a requirement of all good special effects: large explosions. The only explosions in the movie are the crashing of three helicopters, which shouldn't have exploded anyway because they crashed due to their fuel freezing. Now that I think about it they may not have exploded at all.

Errors in the movie are numerous I am sure, but I just sat back and vegged out after I saw the cancer kid. The movie is remarkably horrible, even for such a low standard as a summer disaster movie. Don't go see it, even if it's playing in the cheap seats the day after tomorrow, or on DVD the tuesday after next. I give it a -10.

My feet are killing me

2004-05-26T15:00:00-05:00

Well, today I was hoping to get a new license, my first Minnesotan one. Di and I walked to downtown, where she had some stuff to do. We walked downtown and when we got to Block E we took the skyways. We stopped and browsed around Barnes & Noble for a while and then walked the skyways to the Hennepin county government building downtown.

It was there, in a huge government building in the heart of a large metropolitan area, that I found out that I need a birth certificate in order to prove that I exist or something, and I need to go to one of the suburbs in order to take the written test. I find it slightly strange that I can't get it done in a large building downtown. I also find it annoying that they can't trust that Iowa verified my existence/identity correctly when they gave me my license.

After that ordeal, we had been walking a while so we went through the skyways back to Block E and had some ice cream from Coldstone Creamery and I had a pretzel. We discovered that if we were more astute earlier, we could have seen Harry Potter at a special showing at the theater there. Then we took the streets to the post office, where I finally mailed my copy of This is Spinal Tap to someone who wanted it for $10.

All in all, it was a LOT of walking, so my feet hurt now, and I'm resting. I didn't go into work today and feel kindof bad about that, except that I found out that nothing would have been done by me except a couple of useless phone calls anyway. I'm going to sit down and watch some TV now and rest.

eBay as futures market

2004-05-26T14:39:00-05:00

I was thinking the other day for no particular reason about the expected price of the inevitable "Extended Edition" Lord of the Rings Mega-Set that New Line is sure to put out at the end of the whole trilogy being out on DVD, and thought a bit about using eBay as a futures market.

The idea is simple enough and here is how it would be executed:

Andy is willing to bet that the price of some tangible item to be sold in the future will cost X or lower.
Andy starts an auction on eBay with a starting price (or reserve price) of X.
Bob thinks that the price of said tangible item will be higher than X, so he places a bid on the auction.
Repeat Step 3 with other bidders who believe the price will be even higher.
Once the auction ends, Andy has a contract with the highest bidder to buy said tangible item when it is placed on the market and send it.

It's fairly simple, but it could easily be pulled off. The question is whether anyone would go for this plan, if it's possible to have a futures market on items which don't exist yet, and if it's within the bounds of eBay rules.

This scheme couled easily be repeated with more classic futures markets on eBay, for example people betting on the price of a bushel of corn in July or something.

My Movie I "Belong" In

2004-05-26T14:19:00-05:00

Say Anything...

What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!) brought to you by Quizilla

My Nick Show

2004-05-26T14:18:00-05:00

You are WILD AND CRAZY KIDS. You couldn't get through life without a little fun... or a neon colored t-shirt. You are a team player and really into Omar Gooding. GO YOU!

Which old school Nickelodeon show are you? brought to you by Quizilla

My Famous Artist

2004-05-26T14:17:00-05:00

You're Monet!! Fuzzy and romantic, your art is destined to hang on every college freshman girls' dorm room wall until the end of time.

What famous artist are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Get up, come on get down with the sickness

2004-05-25T14:30:00-05:00

After I posted yesterday I started feeling not so well. I don't know why, but it's probably something hanging over from the cold I had a while back. I'm sure it's great that I am going into work and walking around in a t-shirt and shorts too. Anyway my ncse was all stuffed up and I ended up not feeling too well at all.

Went to work for a while and then out to this great coffee shop in south minneapolis with Di. They had some of the most yummy strawberry cream cake. I understand the reasoning behind bringing home a cake in japanese anime now - if they make all the cakes as well as some of the coffee shops around here, I would be happy to get one too! After that work started interrupting. I'm sure I was one of the most boring people ever to Di at the Perkins as I talked for half an hour to Nikos about the state of the lab and ordering.

Eating was nice, talking to Di, than it was back to Di's place for more West Wing season 2 (2 episodes left!) and sweet, sweet slumber. This morning I got a nice gesture from Di - a hot cup of healing tea. All of her healing teas that I've tasted so far are just awful. That's probably part of the healing process though, and she's sweet for making them for me anyway. She gave me this cool essential oil that smells like spearmint or something. It's working great - I'm not stuffed up at all.

I forgot to mention in my last entry that I spent some time with my sister and parents in St. Peter Saturday. My sister has finals this week and my parents were moving out a bunch of her stuff. We had Chinese in town and saw the senior projects of some art students there at Gustavus. I got grilled about Di. They seem to not mind her, at least from the answers I gave - then again I may have put a little spin on it. :)

My 80's Toy

2004-05-25T14:03:00-05:00

You're a Speak & Spell!! You nerd, you. Just because you were disguised as a toy doesn't mean you weren't educational, you sneaky bastard.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Weekend? What's that?

2004-05-24T08:13:00-05:00

This weekend was fairly full, considering how much money wasn't spent. Couch ordeal on thursday, we went to see Shrek 2. Friday was mostly taken up with going to a cafe across the street called Seward Cafe and going to a meeting with Nikos about the possibility of a move again. Did some work during that meeting because I wasn't hearing anything that I hadn't heard before, and at this point I really don't care. I want him to decide so that I can get on with my life, but other than that I'm trying to not think about it too much. The stress would get to me. Of course, he was supposed to make his desicion known to us on the 15th, and then it was last Tuesday, and now he really doesn't know.

Also on Friday I got a couple of nifty things in the mail: my new phone and the 2nd season of West Wing. These make me happy. The new phone is working out okay - people still don't call me that often, but now at least I can use it for things when they do. My old phone was starting to break, so it's a good thing. It was also a free phone because AT&T decided to give it away for free to anyone who signs up for automatic billing, except that I am already on automatic billing so hooray, free phone.

The second season of West Wing is really great. I've watched 12 of the episodes so far, 10 to go. I'm sure I'll put up a review of it when I'm done, since my new blog format is geared toward that sort of thing.

Saturday was a lazing around the apartment day, watching West Wing and generally enjoying the company of Di. Later in the evening we got cabin fever so we went out to a couple bars in search of fried food, which we both had a craving for. After a couple of unsuccessful stops, ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings which, true to their name, have excellent wings. We'll have to play trivia next time.

Sunday was another day of doing nothing and watching TV without commercials. In the evening, we went to Chad and Kristy and Brandy's place to watch some Anime (Fruits Basket) and hang around in general. It was an okay time, even though I had seen the series before and didn't really like it. There was enough heckling at the TV for me to stand it a second time. Plus the company wasn't bad.

Movie: Shrek 2

2004-05-24T07:54:00-05:00

Saw Shrek 2 last week. The movie starts with the premise of meeting the inlaws, which always seems like a decent start to a comedy movie. There are the requisite "I don't like you" from the father. After a prescribed part of that, there is the main plot - Shrek feeling bad about not being good enough for Fiona. Of course, at this point you can see where the movie will end up, but the writers make it worth your while to stay along for the journey. It's a movie I'll have to see on DVD in order to catch all the jokes. Unfortunately some of them are topical, so don't look for them to make sense without context later in life.

The movie's animation wasn't spectacular. There are a few scenes that had a lot of closeup hair or grass that was interesting, but other than that, the entire movie had a very cartoonish feel to it. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or just because of shoddy rendering on the part of Dreamworks.

Overall, it was worth it to pay to see in the theater, and I would probably go again if I was with friends. It's a maybe on the DVD rental - only if there aren't other movies I haven't seen and that may be good. For now I'll give it a 4.

Notice I don't tell you out of how many, or what the scale is like. I think I'll figure that out later or something.

The Legend of the Couch

2004-05-20T14:57:00-05:00

Went to pick up a couch today that I spotted on LJ. This couch is huge, and is a sectional but has very heavy sections because one of them has a hideabed in it. The ordeal of getting it from Burnsville to Di's place started at 7am this morning, when I called the UHaul place and they didn't have our reservation. Originally we were going to use a SUV from a friend, but that fell through. Anyway we just stopped by at 9:30 or so and then picked up the truck. They gave us the truck with no issue -- even though my driver's license is out of state and expired.

Drove to the girl's place and spent about half an hour or more taking the sectional piece by piece and loading it into the truck. It's a good thing we didn't use the SUV, because there's no way that it would have fit in there. It just barely fit into a 10 foot truck. Said goodbye to the awesome girl who gave us the couch and went on our way. We enlisted the help of Mike when we got back to Di's place, and getting it to the first floor seemed a bit easier.

After that, we went to Papito's with Ben and Kelly for a nice lunch and stopped by the Amazon Book Store and a little ice cream shop on the way home. Sitting on the couch now. It's comfy. Time for a nap, I think.

A new blogging day

2004-05-19T20:46:00-05:00

I think that I finally have PyBloxsom the way that I want it. reStructuredText entries are working, which is nice, because then I don't have to type annoying HTML all the time. The layout is new, and working out good, and I have the custom plugin in order to make the side menu you see over there work just right. It puts the most recent three titles of entries over there, just for fun. Anyway, I'm hoping that I can organize things a little better this way, and also get things syndicated that some people want and others don't. Hoping to make a /debian which is syndicated to Planet Debian. I just need to get the fake categories plugin I found here working.

My First Post

2004-05-18T15:06:00-05:00

Okay, so this is my first post on the new blog. It will be a new day, a day of non-LJ entries and a day of syndication on Planet Debian.

The Monthly Diet Update

2004-05-15T14:17:00-05:00

Well, it seems that my diet is still working, contrary to me actually not thinking about it in the slightest in the meantime. I guess it doesn't bother me that I'm still losing weight without really trying, except I wonder why. I hope it isn't the stress.

I have heard the song, and now it stays.

2004-05-06T17:30:00-05:00

I have heard the song which will resound through my head for days. It has me. I am much like the man here.

It's very interesting the stark contrast between things I want to do and things I have to do lately. I think it could be because semi-suddenly (it's not like I wasn't expecting it) the things I have to do are taking up lots of my time. On the other hand, soon, those things will not take up as much time.

Before the end of next week, have to do: Finish take home final, order parts for the lab, finish SSNSIM (final project), finish Reliable Communication Layer for Java (homework, way past due), make CheetSheet(tm) for statistics, study statistics, grade lab 14, grade final projects, grade final test, proctor final test, run tournament in class.

Want to do: be outside in general, spend time with Di, learn to cook a good dinner, finish watching Airmaster, or continue watching every other anime I have and haven't watched, download more anime, work on Grit Online Update Tool (GOUT), work on debian/techie blog at base0.net, write in LJ about stuff, debug debian packages, install debian linux on various laptops of friends, take interesting statistics of spam received in the last year, archive mail, watch futurama (disc 1 is on it's way), read innumeracy, read escher's window, play with scheme tournament code, learn to code for OS X, create EatWatch tool for Linux, create autozoomgrid widget for use in QT, read up on EigenTrust and NICE

I need to call my parents and chat with them, it's been weeks and much has happened since. Tonight is the last crappy Thursday ever. It's nice. Did my finances earlier this week and discovered that without some help from external sources, I would be farther in debt on paper when I finish May than when I started it. Found out yesterday that some of the needed financial help will be coming to me for help in the lab doing ordering, which will be nice. Found out Tuesday that I got charged $25 because my rent wasn't paid on time. The check was sitting on my desk but forgot to take it down - one mistake I won't make again. I've been looking for alternate sources of income just for a few extra bucks still though, in order to give me some padding. I've been thinking that I am perfect at living either exactly at or just beyond my means. This worries me some because I don't account for accidents which could cost a lot of money, but I haven't had one yet.

I am, as others aptly put it "in a holding pattern" for the "Elephant". Brought an Elephant for silvrayn last weekend. Hoping we can pop him joyfully next weekend and shred his remains, and use them as celebration for something I would have taken for granted two months ago. It would be very frustrating and I would be going crazy except that I am very busy with other things, and wonderful things entered into my life in the recent past.

It seems that I write long entries recently. I wonder how many of you actually read through all of them.

The Temple of Laziness

2004-05-06T17:25:00-05:00

I request an audience in the chamber, and I get informed it is my turn. Others may join me, or may be in the chamber already. I enter, make a request, and wait, head raised, staring at the icon above me. The icon moves and suddenly I feel light or heavy. The room is adorned with shiny objects, some reflecting my own image back to me while I stand and think. When I am ready, I exit the room. I have been moved by experience there.

Many perform rituals every day. Do they mean anything?

Onslaught of Bugs

2004-05-05T16:37:00-05:00

For some reason, I've received a large number of bugs all at once for the BitTorrent package. Of course this comes at exactly the time of year when I have the least possibility of working on them. Figures.

Why is it so hard to find a good blogging tool?

2004-05-04T13:46:00-05:00

I've been looking for a good blogging tool all afternoon today, and the best open-source one I have found is pyblosxom, which I'm incindentally using now in order to write this entry. It is a huge hassle to setup though - much easier to just use LiveJournal, and LJ has much nicer community properties. The problem with LJ: I can't limit my entries, so unless I want everyone on Planet Debian reading about my weekend drinking, I would have to set everything to friends-only except for ones which have a tech component. Granted, I could just start talking about tech stuff way more often than I do now, but I'd rather not put everyone into that group. I wish there was a way to categorize entries on LJ so that I can just mark the entries I want to be syndicated.

Sometimes, I find it's easy to be myself

2004-04-29T17:44:00-05:00

Okay, I'm scatterbrained today, so this entry is unorganized and non-cohesive, as compared to my other ones, I guess.

UPnP

Gave my presentation on UPnP today, which was both a joy and a nightmare at the same time. I didn't prepare like I had wanted to, so I was just going up and talking about the knowledge that I had gained from researching for 4 hours the previous day. The good part is that the presentation went well by the standards of the class. The bad part is that it went horribly by my own standards. Overall, UPnP isn't really a deep topic if you have knowledge of the tools that it uses to do it's job: Multicast, HTTP-UDP, XML, and SOAP. If you don't have knowledge, it would be a great project to build a UPnP client (or control point as the UPnP forum likes to call it) and a UPnP server (device). You would be forced to learn Multicast - something which I fully understand but haven't actually coded yet - and the full range of HTTP using SOAP and XML, which despite it's non-brevity I have to admit could actually be useful.

Overall UPnP is a good idea, and my favorite zero configuration network service location protocol so far. Today we looked at UPnP, Jini, SLP, and Salutation. It is simple, but can be very complex if needed. Unfortunately the creators decided to be smart and use Multicast, which means that most networks will not be able to handle it correctly. The fallout of this - if I wanted to use it in my home, I would have to install a "UPnP enabled" network hardware. It also means that it will never be used on the whole internet. There's another reason why it won't be used on the whole internet, however: it is too bandwidth-intensive. Granted, I don't think there is a way to make a directory-less flexible zero configuration protocol with less bandwidth.

Some of the Mac Advocates (Zealots) out there are probably thinking I should look into Rendezvous. It's something I'm working on, as well as looking into zeroconf. This is an area I'm fairly interested in, because I think it's the future of computing - at some point I'm thinking we'll have mature enough wireless that we will not even consider running cable, and at that point, we need devices to discover local services on their own. Printers is a start, but it could be just the beginning. Within this view are the problems of security, authentication (printing isn't free anywhere I know of, and even if it was, how long will it take advertising companies to hire people to walk around with devices just broadcasting ads to all printers in range), and human computer interfaces.

Being Productive

Yesterday, I considered myself fairly productive. That was because the night before I actually got a project working (a sensor network simulator in QT), and then I started doing work like grading which always makes me feel productive because it doesn't take long and it's something I have to do. I also did the research for 4 hours, which I haven't done in a while, but I don't actually mind when I'm interested in the subject at hand. Not enough time lately to do such things.

Today, I don't consider myself to be productive, even though I have already done laundry and ordering for the lab, and I plan to get some more stuff done later tonight if possible. This weekend I need to be productive - I have another presentation on tuesday on the sensor network simulator, which, while it is working, is far from a final product I could actually present.

Journaling

I've considered lately making this journal friends-only and keeping non-Debian related stuff out of the public eye because I like to feed my ego and be in the semi-public eye. This is something I'm reluctant to do because I know people read this journal who don't have an account on LJ and therefore couldn't keep up with my daily life anymore (Hi Mom). Luckily, the University of Minnesota is a pretty cool school, and launched UThink, a blog service for any U of M student recently, so I'm thinking of getting one of those and using that for a feed into Planet Debian. Now to make myself a hackergotchi head. On the other hand, I may just use my advogato diary.

I've considered abusing LiveJournal recently - a large number of the journals syndicated on Planet Debian are LiveJournals, so if I want to comment on them, I'd rather just have the user's journal entry to comment on. I'd also be able to see their real userpics in this situation. I've considered adding all of the people who are LJ users to my friends list and putting them into a "Debian LJ users" group so I can read them like my normal friends page. I could take the other blogs that are syndicated at Planet Debian and turn them into syndicated feeds here at LJ, which is easily possible since there are no syndication points anymore. After thinking about this a bit, I come to the conclusion that a bunch of these people would probably wonder why I friended them - I would be producing a footprint of friend-adding which is common to the serial adder. So I keep planetdebian on my friends list and read them that way instead, which is just a slight inconvenience.

Okay, that was much longer than expected, and I even have more to say, or at least I did while I was walking here from home.

It feels like Friday.

Stolen from jwendl, silvrayn, and others

2004-04-29T08:26:00-05:00

1.Go into your LJ's archives. 2.Find your 23rd post (or closest to). 3.Find the fifth sentence (or closest to). 4.Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

2004-02-25 7:07pm "A couple of the non-normal crowd came along, which made the night more interesting (not that it wasn't bound to be interesting to begin with)."

First Experiences

2004-04-24T18:09:00-05:00

This week I had my first experience riding on the Metro bus, since the strike is over. I graciously received a bus pass as a gift from a friend's friend last weekend, so I figured I could use it in order to get to some of the stuff I do on my long Thursday. It was interesting waiting for the bus again. I hadn't done that since grade school - it seemed that I always had a ride from a parent or drove myself. The ride was surprisingly quick, even though we ended up making all the stops because people wanted to leave or enter the bus at every stop. I made it to class with plenty of time to spare, which I expect most riders on a schedule end up doing in order to accommodate the bus's schedule. All in all, it was good I guess, in that "nothing went wrong" way. The seats on the Metro are much better than I expected, though.

Today I was pleased to go to Miss Saigon. This being my second theatre experience in Minneapolis (it was supposed to be my third, but that kind of fell through) and my first big name play experience, I was not sure what to expect. The play was wonderful, especially the actor who played The Engineer (Jon Jon Briones), who was from the original cast. I was disappointed to discover in the second act that I didn't like his "big number". I was moved to tears at some points, which may or may not be saying something, because I get moved like that when TV shows hit me just the right way as well. I found the story touching, if slightly cheesy. The part of Chris was overacted by a bit, and he drowned out Kim when they were singing together sometimes. Overall, it was a great time - I throughly enjoyed it. Favorite songs: "The Movie in My Mind", "Sun and Moon", "If You Want to Die in Bed".

I really meant to post something earlier this week

2004-04-23T07:59:00-05:00

I've been meaning to update more often. Guess that goal isn't being reached.

Anyway, to finish out my weekend last week, I went with jwendl to see Kill Bill vol. 2, which I thought was much better than the first one, mostly because it had more plot. It seemed like it has a larger variety of influences than the first movie. I do enjoy the style of the first movie, however - the swordfight scene in the snow was exquisite. The new movie had more style, I thought. It may be too plot/dialog for some though.

After the movie I met up with Di and her friend at Gameworks. I hadn't been there in a while, and forgot the sweet sweet joy of alcohol and games mixed. Justin and I played a few games of DDR - which I happily won, even though I'm horribly out of practice (silvrayn, I'm raiding your apartment soon!). Also got to play some skee-ball and various other games of little importance. Night hilight: genuine high school moment.

The week was fairly run-of-the-mill at school, except that I was strangely late all this week - except today. It's very bizarre, because I don't think I've been to my Friday office hours on time yet this semester. The crunch is fastly approaching, when all classes (including the one I TA) will have a deluge of assignments and exams at the same time. I have a feeling that I will be a much lazier and happier man 3 weeks from now.

I've begun yet another project at work which I'm slacking off on, even though it will not take too long to get finished. One of these days I'm going to actually promise something by a time and actually have it done when I promised it. It's like I have the old-timers software engineering illness or something where you give time estimates which are best case scenarios and then never come through. Yesterday I went home on my break time to finish it, and then somehow got no work done on it there. Anyway, this is a fairly simple database so I should have it done by the end of the weekend, if not by the end of the day today. It will make my new duties at work much, much simpler however.

I don't think I've told the good news in this forum yet: I am the proud recipient of a TA appointment for the summer, and a promise of a TA appointment for fall and spring of next academic year. This makes me very happy because I didn't really expect to be able to teach through next year as well. I did have high hopes for the summer, however. It also helps that it is the source of all of my income.

Wow, I have a lot more to say. I'm out of time though, so I will save the rest for a post later today. Note to self: need more userpics.

Who/Whom, Their/they're/there, I got it all covered.

2004-04-20T15:56:00-05:00

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you? brought to you by Quizilla

West Wing FanJournals

2004-04-19T11:34:00-05:00

This whole thing is so very interesting to me. (The West Wing FanJournals)

My brain hurts.

2004-04-18T14:59:00-05:00

I just finished grading 240 problems in a little less than 4 hours for my class, since they took a test on friday. We're speedy, I tell you. My brain feels a little like mush right now. I'd love to go out and do something completely mindless, but I'll probably stay in and watch more DVDs. If anyone wants to do something mindless like watching a movie (ooh, cold theater would feel good about now), IM me.

Last night I ended up chatting with amagdalyn for entirely too long and missed going out dancing, which made me semi-frustrated. So at the end of the night I instead watched two episodes of Six Feet Under that I rented from GreenCine. After two episodes my review is that either Peter Krause is a very good actor or I've only seen him in two TV shows that were extremely well written and directed well - the other show I've seen him in is the wonderfully written Sports Night written by Aaron Sorkin, the same writer as The West Wing. Also, Michael C Hall is playing his character very well too. The first two episodes have been eventful and give us incredible insight into the characters' backstories and psyches. I hope the rest lives up to them. I'm also not used to TV shows without commercials being actually an hour long, in the first episode I was like "shouldn't this be over yet? but it's so good!".

If I'm going to keep watching DVDs on my iBook, I'm going to need to buy some good headphones. The speakers suck and so do most of my headphones since they're "walking headphones" that I don't really care if they get messed up. On that note, if someone has a desire to watch Six Feet Under with me, I wouldn't mind watching the first two episodes again.

It's been really freaking hot in my apartment lately. I'm sure it's not helped by having two space heaters (a.k.a. computers) running all the time. I'm very glad I have a bug fan that pushes air around

One friday I won't forget

2004-04-17T15:21:00-05:00

Yesterday was Buca's with the LJ gang including zosiablue, adrianne, bronzegoddess and company. I had a great time meeting everyone. The food was mediocre by Buca's standards though. I swear our waiter had the perfect voice for a stand-up comic. Having the food be not so great (except for the cheesecake, which was supreme) wasn't really a factor though because the company was great.

We started at Buca's late and were there until it closed basically. After that a smaller group of us went to amagdalyn's apartment to continue enjoying the company. Amy got her hedgehog out and one of her Chinchillas for our amusement pretty quickly. One highlight of the evening: harveytchansaw's perfect analogy for the boxers/briefs debate from a guy's perspective. We stayed up very late, but that was okay because now it's saturday.

I was supposed to wake up and go into school to grade tests that the class took yesterday, but my alarm clock had other ideas. It's okay because we rescheduled for tomorrow, but I feel horrible because three TAs waited there for me for an hour.

About an hour, about an hour ago..

2004-04-16T07:49:00-05:00

Well, This day has started perfectly. Apparently I hit the wrong button on my alarm clock this morning and turned off my alarm instead of the snooze. Because of this, I had to drive into work today, which was accompanied by far too many stoplights and a wait at the bus stop on campus that far too long. Because I was on a rush to head out, I forgot my homework which I had nicely printed out last night and need to reprint again before going to my class in 10 minutes, and I forgot my phone in my apartment. Now I'm going to have to drive back and get my phone and then (probably) walk back in. I seriously hope there's some "Mike's reservoir of bad luck" that will run out very soon.

Still working on the homework that was supposed to be due approximately 3 weeks ago. The professor is being super nice letting us work on it this long - well, we really couldn't meet with him before today anyway, but it was still nice of him. I need to get a bunch of that done later today and hope we're not meeting too early.

Today I have a class, donut/coffee hour, proctoring for a test, a lab meeting (which got moved to 3), a barbeque, and Buca's. I'm very psyched to meet a bunch of you people, which is why I'm hoping my bad luck runs out soon. If I'm tripping over things and accidently flinging silverware tonight, you were warned.

The rest of this week was fairly routine. I started working on my new duties in the lab, which mostly involve phone work and filling out forms online. Yesterday was review day in the lab for the test today, which is normally something I look forward to because I actually get to stand up and teach, which is something I throughly enjoy.

Oh, and because I'm mucho-lazy and have to go in one minute, thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. It's really appreciated. :)

Some sort of get-together, late notice.

2004-04-12T14:25:00-05:00

Well, since it is my birthday today, I am going out to dinner with a few friends at Annie's Parlour on the U of M campus. Anyone who can read this is welcome to show up. It's kind of late notice I guess. EDIT: Being the doof that I am, I forgot to put the time in the original post. We're meeting around 6:30, although we may be a little late or a little early.

Mmmm.. yummy big burgers with fries and a malt. My mouth is watering already.

Would you like some cinnamon before you go?

2004-04-12T14:17:00-05:00

This reminds me of some of the humor of Home Movies. I think that it could easily be one of Brendan's movies for some reason.

Reflection on a trip around the sun

2004-04-12T11:59:00-05:00

Well, I'm one year older today, so I have been thinking since this morning about the last year, and what I have done in it. It seems to be the correct time.

In the last year I have:

Passed the Written Preliminary Exam, allowing me to continue pursuing a Ph.D degree in computer science at the University of Minnesota.
Completed 16 hours of classes towards my degree, with a GPA of 3.78 in those classes.
Was a Teaching Assistant for three classes, available to over 200 students.
Paid $7,980.00 in rent at my apartment, approximately 51% of my total expected income in a year.
Bought a new iBook 12" laptop and for the first time, put myself into debt which is not school-related.
Had the first romantic relationship in my life since 1999.
Started writing in LiveJournal, thanks to silvrayn.
Contributed +1242 -724 lines of changes to the open source software project BitTorrent
Started one of the top sites for Anime via BitTorrent, whose torrents have transferred approximately 399.1 TB of Anime to the masses from 21 different fansubbing groups.
Discovered that I like DDR and am actually not bad at it, most likely to the chagrin of the people in the apartment below me.
Drank more alcohol than I had in my entire life before this day last year.
Submitted a paper to two conferences, and got rejected from both.
Watched more Anime than anyone else I know.
Started a diet and successfully lost 41 pounds to date.

Some of these I regard as accomplishments. Some are things I should fix in the future. Some I'm kind of indifferent about.

You know you're bored when...

2004-04-09T10:44:00-05:00

You decide that you want to check what all of the numbers from one to ten are on the internet.

One - boring software solutions Two - something with flowers? Three - confusing but elaborate - I have no clue what they do, but I think it has something to do with cell phones. Four - online support Five - mysterious, black, enigma. Six - domain parked Seven - something to do with cellphones and PIM stuff Eight - online trading Nine - number 9 technology, defunct video card company - I used to have a VGA card by these guys in like, high school. Ten - erm, porn. Definitely NSFW link.

You get quite the range of the internet when you do this. I was so expecting to have a porn site on there somewhere.

Five questions, Five answers

2004-04-09T10:01:00-05:00

1. What do you do for a living? I work at the University of Minnesota as a Teaching Assistant, currently teaching CSci 1901, a introduction to programming course.

2. What do you like most about your job? Teaching is one of the most rewarding experiences that I have ever had. I love to teach large classes, groups of 30 or more people.

3. What do you like least about your job? Grading - it's one of the most boring part of the job, but it just needs to get done. I wish I could just teach and not worry about grades.

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because _____... I didn't get grading done that I needed to finish, or I feel that I have done a bad job conveying information to the students in the class.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in? I have thought about being a sysadmin at a college or small company for a while, or going and working some level of help desk support. Sometimes I think about menial jobs, ones that would not require large amounts of thought, but would always be done at 5.

To sleep, perchance, to dream.

2004-04-08T08:32:00-05:00

I feel like I've just been just going through the motions of life lately. Get homework done, watch anime, work on some Debian packages, chat a little, sleep. Today is another Thursday I know will feel way longer than it really will be.

Sunday I went to see Hellboy. It wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't good either. It had a terrific setup (the part before the opening sequence was excellent), but fell flat later. More variety in the enemies would have been nice. I understand that the director/writer was trying to be true to the actual comics though.

We had a decent Steganography talk on Monday. I hope that he gets hired - he really knows how to present information well, I think he would be a good professor simply for teaching.

I skipped a meeting with a couple of CEO candidates Tuesday because I just didn't feel like getting up. Apparently some excitement happened while it was going on - people showed up who we weren't really interested in seeing the robots (we've had a bad past with them). Went out Tuesday night to the Edina grill with silvrayn and the LJ-silent want_a_be, with yummy french-toasty pound cake for dessert.

Wednesday was entirely a working on code day, although I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. I got hungry halfway through the day so I went and grabbed some Nutty Bars from the little convenience store in Coffman. Later went to Vescios for dinner, which was very good.

Lately I feel like I want to sleep a lot. Maybe this weekend I will be able to satisfy that. Class is coming up now, so I better wrap this up.

I'm just filling LJ space now

2004-04-04T23:13:00-05:00

From silvrayn, kitchenwitch, and others: I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Mage Bard

Alignment: Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.

Race: Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.

Primary Class: Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.

Secondary Class: Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity: Mystra is the Neutral Good goddess of magic. She is also known as the Lady of Mysteries. Followers of Mystra wear armor and carry shields with her symbol on them. Mystra's symbol is a ring of stars.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan(e-mail)

It's a long thursday and there's reason to believe...

2004-04-01T18:57:00-06:00

This week so far is a pretty normal week, with the exception of being at someone else's house with a big dog for a large portion. amagdalyn was housesitting for the dog, so I spent a bunch of time reveling in nice cable and making sure that he didn't chew up all their magazines.

The homework which was supposed to be due last week tuesday was very not done at the beginning of this week, which puts me in a state of stress. One of the group members hasn't committed anything to CVS yet, so I don't feel like I'm not doing my part, but I sincerely hope that this weekend we can nail this thing down. Another assignment for the same class materialized this week, and I need to get a lot of reading done in this same weekend in order to catch up to want_a_be in the subject, or at least get some cursory knowledge about it. It looks to be a pretty full weekend between those two projects.

I got some work done on my Debian packages last friday, which made me happy because the bittorrent package was old by a version. Hoping I can do some more of that soon. I've been thinking of trying to install Debian on my iBook, but I have been wary of it because I think that Linux really can't survive without a 3-button mouse. I've been very surprised at how well the Mac works with the one button - almost all interface elements work fine and I haven't felt restricted.

Okay that was a very geeky post. I'm happy tomorrow is Friday. It's now officially the end of a long thursday. On a completely unrelated note, I'm not sure I know the real words to the song in my head right now. It's probably one of the most misunderstood songs ever.

Random status report

2004-03-31T14:04:00-06:00

My cell phone battery is almost dead, and I don't have a charger in the near vicinity. I won't be able to charge it until at least 5:45 today, and possibly later. Here's hoping noone wants to call me before then.

Slacking catches up to you

2004-03-29T07:07:00-06:00

Wow, a whole week without a post. Not surprising from me, I suppose. Last week was fairly normal, except for the fact that I had a bunch of homework and midterms to get done, so I was a busy bee and couldn't do too much of my normal fare, which is highly based on laziness. Of course, it was the week after spring break, so it seems like it was a lot busier than it actually was, and in retrospect, I should have done a bunch of this stuff during the break. Oh well.

Wendsday was probably the highlight of the week - Dan's 30th birthday celebration took us to Bilimbi Bay for some light before-movie chatting and carousing. Since we had already seen the movie, we went back to Amy's place and got some work done while Dan and buddies went to see Eternal Sunshine. Afterwards we all met up (+1 more) at The Independent, which has a cocktail and martini list longer than your arm. I couldn't drink much at all because I was driving, but the appetizers were excellent. Amy was a bit drunk when we left, and regretted it a bit the next day. Dan had a good time (which is the most important part, being his birthday and all). The late night made thursday a long day. I wanted to curl up and sleep shortly after the end of work.

Tuesday I spent a little bit of time at th0rny's grandmother's place in order to help her install a new printer, which we discovered was too new for her OS, so this Saturday we returned and gave her an OS upgrade which took much longer than expected. She has a shiny new OS and a slightly larger hard drive though. Most of the time of course was spent in waiting - we ended up watching a bit of ice skating on TV.

Sunday was more computer installs at a friend's place. I installed two new Debian machines, and put 2.6 kernels on both of them. Unfortunately one of them locked up, so I guess I'll be taking that one back to 2.4. Last night I happily got the homework which is turning out to be the longest procrastination that I have ever done finished, at least for now. I still need to read a bunch of papers for that class. I feel accomplished for doing a bunch of stuff this weekend when I really didn't get too much done that was on my list before this weekend.

One of the worst things about the way that I do things is that I never really get things done until the last minute. It's just the way I prefer to do things I guess. Unfortunately, when I am expected to get a bunch of stuff done over a long period of time, I leave it until the last minute and then have a huge pile of work that needs doing. This means that during this time of heavy work, I need to neglect other things which I find much more enjoyable. I wish I had the willpower to just do what needs to be done early instead of leaving it. Now that I think about it though, if I went around and decided "I'm just going to do this now!" all the time, I would be able to stay in the "working on stuff" mode for a very long time. I tend to have things piled up that I could do at any time. Can I live my life without anything on my todo list?

In other news, Amy is housesitting this week, so I get to play with a big dog for stress relief. Hopefully it will be warm. Hooray!

Time enough to post..

2004-03-22T17:19:00-06:00

Well, I'm waiting here for amagdalyn to pick me up and no one seems to be around to chat, so I may as well update.

Most of spring break was spent being lazy. I slept a lot, and played with my new toy a lot. The weather was great though. We went out for a walk a couple times, and came up with excuses to walk down to the convenience store.

Thursday I was feeling not so great in the evening. I watched some anime to get my mind off of things, but it didn't work too well. I went to sleep surprisingly early considering I had no real reason to get up. I swear I was the happiest man in the world when I got a call on Friday afternoon (I had gone into work to get some things done and distract me) - so happy that I just got some flowers for my goddess on a whim.

Friday night we went to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The movie is excellent from a technical perspective - the special effects were very well done. The story is easily Kaufman's best as well. The whole plot is a kind of question to the audience, because there are very few of us that haven't been through a relationship that didn't work out before. Would you sacrifice the good memories to get rid of the bad? Personally I think the idea of erasing them all is bad, because everyone grows from experiences. Amy pointed out that the movie doesn't really wrap up everything at the end. I tend to like movies like that, because people can have different opinions on how it is "supposed" to end.

Saturday was mostly spent lazing around the place, but I got a little bit of the assignment I needed to get done. In the evening, th0rny's aunt invited us to join her for her birthday at a place up in Rogers. It was quite the drive, but the Blue Cheese Soup was worth it. Afterwards there was ice cream and 50% frosting cake, and some chatting.

Sunday was a nice day outside, but we didn't get to enjoy it that much. Ended up hanging shelves in Amy's room and going grocery and amenity shopping, which took longer than planned. Then again, we started out a bit late.

The weekend was the most full part of the week, unsurprisingly I guess because Amy doesn't have work those days. Today was the start of school again. Almost fell asleep in stats class, but I don't think it's because I'm missing something important, I think the professor was just taking it slow today or something. It was exciting before break, like he was hurried into matching a pace from previous years or something.

Oh well, I need to get working on the assignment that's due tommorrow and supper seems to be ready soon. Just for kicks, here are a couple links to new designs I'm thinking about for my LJ: Style 1 and Style 2. They're very much the same, but Style 2 has a more efficient CSS implementation I think. Tell me your preference, or if you like the one I have now better. The colors are not set in stone, of course (they'll be variables). I'm hoping to nail this down the end of this week. Food! Yay!

And now for something completely different

2004-03-21T21:49:00-06:00

I found out this thursday that my alma mater got into the NCAA tournament this year. It's a smaller school, mostly a suitcase college for most of the surrounding area. That doesn't stop them from having a great education program and business school. They played Friday, and while they lost, they put up a good fight if you ask me.

Posts about spring break and such coming soon.

Why must it be spring already?

2004-03-19T12:35:00-06:00

Dear bike-stealers of last summer,

You took my bike. I liked my bike. Now that spring has come again, I want it back. I want to bike along forested areas and beside lakes in the great city that I have moved to. I want to be able to travel miles from my home and the worries of modern life to read a book in a cool breeze. I want to eat great picnics with amagdalyn on grassy hills in the bright warming sunlight. Look out your window and see the beautiful spring weather. I hope you're looking from a cell.

Hatefully yours, jamuraa

Feelings with no songs

2004-03-18T21:25:00-06:00

There are no love songs for what I feel right now. Fortunately, there are no hate songs either.

SHINY. NEW. TOY.

2004-03-15T22:16:00-06:00

This weekend was fun. Friday I went out for bad food at McDonalds with amagdalyn and th0rny and we went to satisfy my shiny new toy urge. That's right, I went and bought a 12" iBook. I got it new from the Apple Store in the MOA with an AirPort card, 640MB of Memory, and the 3 years of service for around $1500. I'll be paying it off for the next half a year at least I figure, but surprisingly, the interest rate on one of my credit cards was less than the rate on their dumb little instant loan.

Some may be saying "oh man, he has turned to the dark side!" It may be true - I actually love this new little thing. It's amazing to have a *nix machine that works and has tons of applications ready for it. Almost everything that I try works automatically, and I haven't had it lockup once. It's nice and small, and the wireless works great. Pics of the shiny new toy will be forthcoming, but for now I can give you a screenshot:

Then we went and got some really good ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery (Amy and I still have some left - we got a bucket). We hung out for a while and I played with the new toy. Later we went to see Fight Club at Block E, which was really good on the big screen, but the theater next to us had WAY too loud speakers - I could hear them whenever big stuff happened. Maybe we just got a not so good theater for such things. Afterwards scary stuff ensued in the parking lot.

Saturday was a fairly boring day, lazing around doing not too much. Sunday I went to Triple Rock, and I typed a bunch of stuff while I was there. I'll probably just post that text in a second. I also worked a little bit on a new format for my LJ, which I'll polish and ask opinions on later this week.

Spring break rules. I want to rant a little bit about how it would be cool for LJ domain forwarding to work, but this post is way too long already. I'll do it tomorrow.

Triple Rock has damn good sausage gravy.

2004-03-14T10:04:00-06:00

Okay so now I'm sitting at Triple Rock, typing this on my new iBook (yay for new toys). We just ordered food and I'm at an interesting policital discussion group with. Amy is talking with Sarah's mom about her car.

The group had homework this month, to find out what you actually care about on the issues. You were supposed to come up with 5 things that you care about outside of your personal life. I have serious issues coming up with these issues, because I really don't care too much about things that don't effect my life on a daily basis. So this means that my list of things consists of (in no particular order):

Public transit
Intellectual Property / Consumer Rights in the Modern Age
Education concerns

This is only 3 items, you notice, because I don't really have anything else I care about that isn't personal - at least things that I actually care about.

This group is now semi-officially called "junta" (pronounced "who-nta") which means something in spanish that I can't really recall right now.

Okay, I'm typing this because I need a sufficiently long piece of text in order to text out the layout that I am creating for a livejournal/web page. One of the issues I have with LiveJournal is that you can't use the domain redirection with people being logged in at the same time. It would be cool if you could just go to a random page (www.base0.net in this case) and not have to worry about "am I logged in?" - it would be cool to see the friends-only entries show up on sites that I visit. Not that I really read other people's pages by their journal entries on their actual journals anyway. That is probably why this is an exercise in futility - most people won't even see this page. The important page is the comments page - people will click on their page to leave a comment or view the comments and then they will see your style.

Paul is talking about how there are a lot of sexy women on the news and there are not many sexy women in the commercials. Sarah talks about how there are more car commercials on local news than national news - lots of investment commercials on the national news. She found that very interesting. Sarah's mom makes a boomers comment.

Billy suggests breaking up the bill evenly. Some guy in a blue hoodie (Amy says that it's Noah or Zach) says that he's staying for some alcohol and suggests we split that too. No seconds.

In Want of Shiny New Toys

2004-03-11T10:43:00-06:00

Lately my days have been spent doing homework or just wasting time on the web. Anyone who knows my normal schedule can guess what I've been doing - it basically consists of school-filled days and various fun activities at night. I took a day in-house Tuesday in order to get some work done and also a bit more sleep than I normally get. I only missed one class, and since I had it again today, I know I didn't miss much (or the professor was just being nice, as 2 of 6 were gone).

Spring Break is just around the corner - I have one more class to teach this evening (7pm-9pm) and then a class tomorrow, and then a week off from the daily grind. Unfortunately, I'm not doing anything special this year for break, just plan to hang around and do some homework and research, and get caught up on various projects (like updating my Debian packages). With luck, I may actually get some leisure programming done as well.

In other news, I want this iBook (edit okay that link didn't work. It's the 12" model of a normal iBook) badly for some reason. It could be that I'm spending more time away from my apartment, or the fact that lots of my colleagues tend to have laptops nowadays. I've wanted an iBook for a while now, but the desire to buy has increased lately. The fact that I can get an instant loan and pay $43 a month for it makes it just that much more attractive.

There is only one thing really keeping me from buying it right now - I'm not sure if I'd really be comfortable with it. It would be my first non-PC computer, and while I'm sure I can get it to mesh correctly with my other computers (which are mostly linux), I'm not sure how well I would work on it. I am a big fan of the iLife products -- I've been looking for a calendar-type application to keep track of where I need to be for a while now, and iCal looks like a winner to me. I wonder if there is a rental place out there that I could get the same model for a week or so and play with it, see if I could get used to using the laptop for the tasks I want to use it for. Ideally, it would be installed as it comes from Apple, but I suppose I could handle reinstalling the system (I will probably try to get Debian on it anyway if I buy it).

I've had some other ideas bouncing around in my head, but this was the first thing that came to mind. Any comments from people who have iBooks or other laptops and could share their experiences? Maybe you know of a rental place?

Some days are made to be celebrated.

2004-03-10T11:45:00-06:00

I went to get chinese for lunch today and got the fortune: "Pleasant days lie ahead" or some such. Strangely, I just aced an exam I did almost no preparation for, got a call from amagdalyn with very happy news (which I'm sure she'll extole upon you later), and am the recipient of a free iTunes song in my first bottle of Pepsi in a long time. To top it off, I have only a small pile of work and have actually been productive already today. I feel like going out and having a beer to celebrate the good fortune.

Why does the weekend need to be so short?

2004-03-08T10:52:00-06:00

The weekend was fun. Friday night was full of amagdalyn - we went to see American Splendor, which was an excellent film that I would suggest to anyone. It definitely included many oscar-quality elements - I would almost suggest that it get best actor for Paul Giamatti - he really got the mannerisms down and played the part well. After that was bowling with the CS graduate students and prospective students. I bowled a 151, which is better than I've done in a long time. I wonder if I could join a league somewhere or something. The group went out to Sallys (which was surprisingly non-smoky) for drinks afterwards. Amy got reasonably drunk.

Saturday was a lazy day for me. Stayed in and played lots of web games. I'm not too great at any of them, unfortunately. Sunday was productive. Of a list of items, more than half got completed. Had IHOP for breakfast/lunch, went out and did some errands (including getting some pocky from united noodle, which is surprisingly close to my apartment). Got lots of Girl Scout cookies. Went to watch adult swim at silvrayn's place and played some Carcasonne there.

Weekends are entirely too short. I need a 3-day weekend built into my schedule. I may be able to pull it off next year. Isn't college great? This week doesn't look too busy - just a "normal" schedule.

Still going to try a non-"this is what I did today!" post sometime later this week.

Questions of the day: What one movie have you seen on video/DVD that you would want to see in the theater? Why did you miss it in the theater the first time? Why do you think it would be better on the big screen (as opposed to the small screen)? (I could have made this a poll, but this way is easier anyway and more free-form)

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical.

2004-03-05T08:06:00-06:00

Well, it's not quite "tomorrow" from my last update. I really mean to update this more often, but it's turning into a "what did jamuraa do today" type of thing, and I don't think that's all that interesting, myself.

Monday was fairly normal. I surprisingly didn't fall asleep in class, even though the professor was going over material that he had already covered the day before. I had a Mello Yello during the class, which may have helped a little. Also, I was attempting to think of how the statistics would actually apply to my work - which was an interesting exercise because robotics and statistics aren't really peas in a pod, but they are used together a lot. Mostly for things like covariance testing. Monday night was fairly uneventful.

Tuesday I surprisingly didn't go to sleep in my Distributed class. It could have been because the material was interesting, nbut it was more likely because I got enough sleep on Monday. Watched some of the caucuses tuesday night, I was happy that Kucinich made a strong showing in MN.

Wednesday was a short day due to evening festivities with amagdalyn, so I didn't get much of anything done at work except for normal, run-of-the mill stuff. Wednesday night was a planned fun evening with Amy - ordered chinese, had dinner and generally enjoyed the company of each other. Went for DQ afterward because even though it was freezing, earlier in the week it was feeling like spring, and time for ice cream again.

Yesterday was normal, if you can call any Thursday that I have normal. I will say one thing, I will most likely never volunteer for a 8am to 9pm day ever again. amagdalyn was a sweetie and picked me up from work at 9 when the sky was impending doom upon us all. Luckily it didn't start until after.

This weekend isn't quite full yet, although tonight is pretty taken. American Splendor is playing on campus in the West Bank Auditorium for free, which will be watched after free burritos (Chipotle rules, they have the niftiest promotions). Anyway, this went way too long. Time for donuts.

It's such a wonder that I think I'll stay in bed.

2004-03-02T11:04:00-06:00

Sorry for no updates over the weekend, not even a rant or two. I really need to have one bubble up sometime soon, otherwise I'll be stuck with just updating with the status of my life, and we all know how boring that is.

Last Thursday (yes, it's been that long since I updated), was a nice day. I drove in as usual and got a decent spot in the ramp, and was early enough that I could stop and check my e-mail. The lab sections were going over review for the test on the next day, so for the first hour of the day I got to do actual work for the class, which means grading. Most of the students are doing fairly well in the class, but some of them just don't get it. I really wish those students would come into class. I got to go over the test they just took in the second hour of the lab, which I enjoyed greatly as I enjoy all teaching. I really love teaching new material more though. In class, there was a guest lecturer, which wasn't too interesting.

Friday was office hours, which a few people showed up to, but not many. I expected more, since they all should have had questions about the test that they were taking later that day. After that, Statistics and 15 minutes of Coffee hour before I went to a visiting speaker to make up for the class that I missed last Monday. The speaker was excellent, and presented the material very well. I really think he would be a great addition to the faculty here. His research was very impressive. Later in the day was proctoring the test, which, as always, is very boring.

Friday night I took amagdalyn out to eat at Applebees (yummy hot wings) - I was very hungry at that point, having had a total of like, 3 donuts intake the whole day. After that we went back to my place and attempted to watch Twelve Kingdoms, one of my favorite anime ever. Amy fell asleep as she is apt to when watching movies late at night. The bed was really too small for the both of us, and we gave up on watching the show pretty early that night, so I had a hard time sleeping. I really didn't care much though.

Saturday I had to go to the U in order to grade the tests from Friday. It took 4 people 3 hours, but we got them all graded and added up. Most of the class did fairly well, but there were the ones that did badly. I was glad to get it out of the way. The rest of the day was lazy but gorgeous! Such wonderful weather coaxed us to walk down Nicollet for lunch. We ended up stopping at the Jasmine Deli and had some wonderful soup and Papaya Salad. It got a bit busy while we were eating, and I was glad to have the waitress tell us how the food is meant to be eaten -- I always worry about doing things the completely wrong way at restaurants. After supper I was on a quest for pocky, so we walked through a couple of the international markets to no avail.

Sunday was a lazy day as well. Ended up getting up around 2pm. After that it was just a adventure in killing time - I watched a bit of Mallrats because I wasn't sure if I had seen it or not (I had). Another great day weather-wise, so we walked to Chipotle, which took an amazingly short amount of time compared to what we thought. We met with sugarbeet there, who graciously gave us a ride back. Watched Peter Jackson take home tons of Oscars.

This is getting way too long, so I guess I'll write about yesterday, tomorrow. Time to get some work done!

We should really bring back the siesta.

2004-02-26T19:29:00-06:00

Well, yesterday was Wedndsday again. Class in the morning - in which I learned I missed something semi-important on Monday, so I had to read the stuff from the book instead. This isn't such a bad thing, but it just makes my day longer on thursday.

Last night I went over to amagdalyn's place again and we watched Millenium Actress, another Satoshi Kon movie. The premise was interesting and the style was somewhat reminiscent of his first movie, Perfect Blue. It seemed like this one was more polished, however. Amy slept through part of it again, but it wasn't the important part this time, so I think she still got the full effect. There was a 40 minute "making of" special on the DVD, they pointed out some of the stuff that you don't usually notice in the movie, like the backgrounds and how they're different.

Today was the long thursday again. It was a review session for the test that the class has tomorrow, so it wasn't as busy at all as before - they had an hour of a practice test to take which made the first half easy to do other things in. I still have about 10 emails to grade from the last lab, which should be finished tomorrow sometime. After that, it's the test grading on Saturday (hooray).

I kept dozing off in my mid-day class again. This is beginning to become a problem that I need to find a solution for. I get to go to a talk on Learning Temporal Logic because of the class that I missed on monday. I think this one may actually be more exciting - I hope I don't fall asleep again, it's that same time of day.

Always remember

2004-02-26T15:41:00-06:00

Today is the day after yesterday, and before tomorrow.

Where does the time go when it's not around here?

2004-02-25T17:07:00-06:00

Okay, it's been since friday since my last update, and the weekend was busy, so this may get a little long.

Friday was fairly uneventful at school, with a slightly busier office hour because the lab for class was very long and some people didn't even get one step done. Friday night was free beer and wine thanks to GAPSA at the union on campus. Chatting with everyone I don't get to see too often (including peaches_phd) from the lab was nice. After that, excellent jambalaya was to be had at silvrayn's place along with a bit of DDR and fun drinking games. A couple of the non-normal crowd came along, which made the night more interesting (not that it wasn't bound to be interesting to begin with). Alas, I planned on driving home, so I couldn't get too drunk.

Saturday and Sunday were happily full of amagdalyn, th0rny and Jared. We went to the science museum, which has a pretty cool robot exhibit right now, and of course many other cool exhibits. I can't help but feel like a kid when I go - it's just too much fun. Good breakfast at Triple Rock was had.

Sunday night I went with amagdalyn to Tokyo Godfathers, Satoshi Kon's most recent work. It was very good, one of the best anime movies I have ever seen. There were funny and touching parts, and parts that ended up funny and sad at the same time, which is hard to pull off. Lots of coincidences happen, which makes the whole sequence kind of unlikely unless you believe in a higher power or suspend your disbelief something serious.

Slept in on Monday, missing a colloquium class and statistics. I attempted to get some lab work done, but was waylayed by cookies and lemonade, a bunch of email submissions to grade, and various other things.

Tuesday was more productive, but unknown forces kept me from doing any of the real work that I attempted to do. Almost fell asleep in class again. I'm wondering if it's just the room or something that's keeping me asleep. I don't seem to have issues staying awake in Statistics anymore (we are covering new material now however). I should doodle some more, or come up with a project when I'm bored. Unfortunately, that class has a total of 6 students in the room, so I think it will be fairly obvious if I'm just killing time on something else.

Last night was the LJ Meetup. A very different crowd showed up than last time - I think there were a total of 2 people who have shown up to both I went to, me included. Met raeosunshine, wulfsbane, ashedreyvin (who I'm sure is an anime watcher as well, the way she knows how to pronounce japanese), new_iconoclast, h2bhc, and a few others I can't remember or didn't catch the LJ names of.

Okay, that was way long. I'll post about today/tonight tomorrow, I guess. I have a rant or two bubbling up in my head as well, I'm sure it'll show up soon.

Me too!

2004-02-20T07:24:00-06:00












jwendl

91%













sugarbeet

91%













zedd

91%













amagdalyn

90%













joceiphus

90%













silvrayn

80%













kitchenwitch

76%













gunn

69%













pinkscotch

69%













skarletbeg0nias

54%













adrianne

50%









How compatible with me are YOU?












kitchenwitch

41%













skarletbeg0nias

37%













amagdalyn

37%













adrianne

36%













gunn

29%













joceiphus

4%













sugarbeet

0%













jwendl

0%









How sexually compatible with me are you?
Take the NEW sexual compatibility quiz at LJMatch!

jamuraa's LiveJournal Friend Stats I
Biggest digital packrat:	gunn
Most easily-distracted:	miss_jones
Most friendly:	sugarbeet
Most popular:	gunn
Most communities:	adrianne
Oldest on LJ:	adrianne
Newest to LJ:	want_a_be
What Are YOUR LiveJournal Friend Stats? (Beta - May be slow for those with large friends lists)

Friday Five

2004-02-20T06:12:00-06:00

When was the last time you...

1. ...went to the doctor? Last time I was sick enough - probably more than 4 years ago.

2. ...went to the dentist? 2 months ago

3. ...filled your gas tank? 2 weeks ago

4. ...got enough sleep? last weekend

5. ...backed up your computer? the whole thing? never (crossing my fingers) I backup various important stuff (finances, tax records, etc) every month or so. (I should do that now)

Events of the last few days.

2004-02-19T08:24:00-06:00

Monday is a fairly quiet day for me at school, so I decided to waste a ton of time making my journal look like my homepage, in the hopes of merging them into one this weekend. If only I could get the comments pages to look right. I'm willing to let basically anyone use this new style that I made (I actually modified "A sturdy gesture" heavily). All in all, I'm pretty happy with the new page. I have a couple things that I still want to fix, like putting a navigation link at the bottom of the page, and some more links to facilitate things like editing entries.

Monday night I went to amagadalyn's place and we watched Kiki's Delivery Service. It was her first time watching it, and my first time watching it in english. I was happy with the way that Kirsten Dunst played Kiki. I brought over Laputa as well, so we'll probably watch it sometime. I think it's a bit better than Kiki, and she seemed to like that, so I have high hopes. We're definitely watching it in japanese in order to avoid James Van Der Beek's voice acting.

Tuesday was "change Amy night" - she got a haircut and decided to get a labret piercing. I was thrilled to go along and kinda wanted to watch, but it happened kinda fast and I was guarding her stuff. It looks really great on her - I'm sure she'll post pics as soon as her camera works again.

Yesterday I actually attempted to get some work done on the iPaq interface to the robots, but discovered that the one that I needed to work on was completely discharged of all of it's battery power. We discovered some adapters that seem to work for charging them - I hope that when I get in today I can attempt to get some work dona again.

Last night we watched Dancer in the Dark, which was an excellent movie with a shooting style I found very interesting (although at the theater it could have been nauseating). It had camera movement which seemed very similar to a home-movie type thing. As for the content of the movie, it was very sad - it had a melancholy feeling from the start, and didn't really get any happier from there. Probably the most serious musical-type movie I've seen in a while - and Bjork's musical style was perfect for this movie.

Today is another long thursday, and I need to do my homework for tomorrow and grade about 10 more labs that got emailed to me last night. I've also forgotten my lunch at home. Statistics lab is a great time to update my LJ. I've been very forward-looking lately, and have a desire to actually get things done at work. I've decided that I don't really go to sleep in class because I'm sleepy, but more because I have a general tired-ness going on and I get bored at the content of the classes I'm going to. I've stopped reading for both of my classes in hopes that I get interested when the material is actually new to me. Oops, class is over already.

Valentine's

2004-02-16T12:12:00-06:00

This weekend was the first time in a few years that I have done anything on Valentine's day. It was my busiest and best ever, I think.

We had a lab meeting on saturday about the new scout user interface as a check to see where we are on the project. I think it's turning out really good, as someone who is mostly sitting on the sidelines helping out when I can. I wish I could put more work in on the project, but I think we'll run into a "too many cooks" problem before long.

Amy came to the lab and we had lunch at Sally's and played some pool with silvrayn, want_a_be, Chuck and Andi. Afterward there was yummy ice cream at Ben and Jerry's. Amy and I still had about an hour to kill, so we went and played some more pool in Goldy's Game Room.

Then we went to The Vagina Monologues. The show was actually much better than my preconceptions placed it. There were a lot of funny stories with a smattering of very serious facts and touching stories. It was well done, I'd recommend it to anyone (even the guys).

Sunday was the party at kitchenwitch's place. Lots of new people met. We ended up playing a bunch of games of Fluxx (which reminded me that I want to buy a set of IceHouse) while a rousing game of Clue was played in the other part of the room. It was certainly a fun time.

The web servers are down here at school today, so my office hours are quieter than I thought they would be. Maybe I can get some work done later today.

Bad attempt at a do-no-work day

2004-02-13T20:11:00-06:00

It being friday, I attempted to make today a do-no-work day, as I try to make all fridays. It gets hard when I have office hours scheduled. A lot of students yesterday didn't finish the lab (in fact, no one did, that I know of) and that means busy office hours on Monday at least, and it meant a bunch of questions today. This is the gut-check lab for most of them I think. It's hard enough that if you don't get off your ass and do something, you aren't going to do well in the class.

Do-no-work day be damned, I remembered an assignment that was due today (and I didn't do earlier) that I had to finish, so I had to do actual work around 6pm today after supper at Sallys with silvrayn, the non-posting want_a_be and the rest of the gang from the lab. I swear that Sally's buffalo chicken wrap is awesome for stomachs that have had only junk food. I finished my homework and attempted to do more actual work (now that I had blown the whole no-work thing) and ended up playing a lot of Crack Attack with some people who are trying to finish a long homework. That game is seriously addictive.

I also discovered that it is impossible to embed libjpeg into a reasonable C++ object. I now need to find a C++ library for jpeg, or continue to compress frames from a robot in the old way, which I think is hacked and sucks. I really need to get the new interface working. It's probably more important at this point than the server with heartbeat that I am writing, and the server which I thought would be a major change is turning out to be (mostly) a retyping of the old server, with small improvements. I'll probably give up and start on the client end again next week sometime. This would require me to dive back into Linux on the IPAQ again, which was fun for a time.

At least this weekend seems full, because I get to do something nice for someone on valentine's, and as an added bonus, I'm going to a party on sunday! Yay! Okay, time to play more crack attack, and maybe get some reading for work done.

It's gonna be a long day..

2004-02-12T08:29:00-06:00

Well, here I am in the middle of another long tuesday. I'll probably be updating again later today - during my extremely long break. Right now, I'm taking a short break from statistics, because the lab isn't really all that interesting to me. I skipped last week because of my extreme tiredness. Today, I'm not tired, but if I wasn't keeping myself entertained, I would probably be falling asleep anyway.

Let's see, what happened since I last updated. Went out to Plan B for coffee with amagdalyn on Monday - quite the relaxing, laid-back place. The army and NSF visited the lab to check out the robots monday and tuesday, so everyone else is getting stressed out. Sometimes I get the feeling that the room is going to explode around there. The robot decided to not agree with it's user on Monday. I need to get working on a solution to that problem (maybe something I can get done in my break today).

Saw Lost in Translation with amagdalyn last night. Bill Murray can actually act if he needs to. There were the funny parts of the movie, and the sad parts. The feel of the whole movie was very interesting though. You really got the feeling that you were far from home and just worn out with life, like Murray's character. Meeting someone from closer to home with the same feeling put the whole movie together nicely. I expect I enjoyed the movie slightly more, owing in part to my knowledge of japan (due mostly to anime) and partly because amagadalyn was dead tired and slept through some of it.

Researching Parties..

2004-02-08T12:15:00-06:00

Well, last night I went out to chuck's place to party with the whole lab gang. We watched Swingers and partook of a lot of alcohol. Actually, I think there was more partaking of alcohol and lively conversation than there was of watching the movie. It was loads of fun - I'm sure pics will be posted by silvrayn, who was also there (or maybe even want_a_be, who hasn't even used his LJ account yet). I invited amagdalyn and she came along and drove, which was very cool. I had far too much Guiness - 4 extra stout and 1 bottle. It didn't get me as drunk as it did fill me up - I was definitely not sober by the end of the night though.

I've been feeling like I should do more work lately, which is most likely a good thing. I have to figure out exactly what in robotics I'm planning on doing my thesis on, and that means basically reading papers and books to kingdom come. I shouldn't have a huge problem with that because this semester is not too hard classes-wise.

I get to give the Pioneer robot intro speech again tomorrow like I did last semester. Apparently I'm the go-to guy for it now, which doesn't bother me really, but I haven't used the robots in almost a year now. I'm excited to stand in front of a class and teach again though.

Who needs sleep?

2004-02-06T11:36:00-06:00

I hadn't updated for a couple days, so I figured I should put something up.

Tuesday night was Starfarers of Catan with silvrayn, Ben and Ben's ex-roommate. We played a couple times (I always forget how long those games are) after finding her place. Ordered pizza and watched a bit of TV.

Wendsday I went over to amagdalyn's place and watched Metropolis. I was unaware going into the experience that it was a silent movie (for some reason I don't equate "really old movie" with "no actors talking"). The movie had alot of parallels with the anime version - kindof the same plot, and the imagery was basically the same. There were shots in the old movie that I was like "oh that's exactly like this shot from the anime".

Amazing parts of the movie were missing, like they had plot intertitles telling what there would be in the story at that point. I kept trying to imagine watching the movie without knowing those parts of the story, and realizing how much you would have missed when you saw it in the theater. For some reason I thought it had a very enthralling plot, even though it had some plot holes. Then again, parts of it were corny, and deserved to be picked on. Since it was a silent movie, I didn't have any problem talking over the constant orchestration.

After the movie we chatted a while with Mariya, and then went to spyhouse for coffee. We talked about stuff there until they kicked us out, and talked late into the evening/early morning. We probably could have kept talking for a while more actually. I proceeded to get no sleep so it feels like it should be Thursday now. My 8:00am section was probably worse for it. I ended up taking a nap during my long break on thursdays, so the last lab I had wasn't so bad.

I ended up paying for a LJ account too, so now I have this spiffy new layout. I'll probably figure out how to use S2 to make the journal my real webpage sometime soon. I'll probably stop posting my anime debt, because honestly, I can't even keep track of it myself.

"Just the one guy, no other guys attached to me"

2004-02-03T11:07:00-06:00

Ben and Kelly are officially dating now and it's "out". It'll be interesting, since us three were pretty close friends beforehand. I'm not quite sure how to act around them yet, but I really hope it won't damage either friendship even the relationship between both of them is going to the "next level" or whatever. Seeing them together makes me want to start dating more -- it emphasizes my singleness. It shouldn't be too hard, since I haven't been dating much at all lately. Despite my recent LJ post on the subject, I think I found a online service that I won't mind - Lavalife actually works on a credit system, which means you only spend your money when you're actually meeting and communicating with people. It has a much lower chance of "money into black hole" than all the other services. It's still not ideal by any means however. This new OkCupid site looks interesting though.

I got to teach class (beginning programming) Friday and Monday. I love teaching, I hope to do it after I graduate - I was really happy and enthusiastic. I covered the material sort of fast, so I hope they got it all. I was thrilled to see the class the same or even more full on Monday than it was on Friday. I think it was a good test that I wasn't doing completely horrible. I even got a couple comments about how enthusiastic I was and taught well. It was a great time.

Superbowl Sunday?

2004-02-02T00:17:00-06:00

Went to peaches_phd's place with silvrayn and want_a_be for a superbowl thingy. The game was surprisingly fun to watch this time. It could have been a lot worse than it was, and it's always great when it comes down to the last seconds. The commercials weren't bad either - you can see them if you missed them. I particularly like the Pepsi Music Download one and the Linux one - although you might have guessed that. There seemed to be a bunch of trailers this year, but it could just be my imagination.

After the game we hung around and I drunk some more (with some egging on by silvrayn needed) and watched the premiere of that new survivor thing, even though it will be impossible for me to watch it since I teach on Thursday nights when it shows, oh, and the fact that I don't own a TV. It was a pretty fun time. Good gumbo was had by all, and friends of peaches_phd kept showing up which was interesting. Serious snowstorms occurred, otherwise I'm sure there would have been more people around.

Time to curl up into a warm bed and sleep now though.

The monthly diet report

2004-01-31T13:47:00-06:00

Well, I put in my month's weight, and I don't seem to be making any progress.. See for yourself. The overall progress looks a lot better than the monthly one. My goal for February: 10 pounds loss.

For those that don't know (well, that would be pretty much everyone, I think) , I'm attempting to follow the Hacker's Diet which seems very down-to-earth to me: it's basically a calorie counter. Having the book free online probably influenced my decision a little.

Online dating sucks.

2004-01-31T13:04:00-06:00

Or, I should say, online dating services suck. I want to start dating now, and I figure since I'm a pretty online guy, I would go with an online dating service or 2. I signed up at Yahoo! Personals and Match.com and put some words about me. Words about me aren't that easy to come by for me, because I'm not a really introspective person. I guess the main problem I have with personals sites is that they all cost money. I'd certainly be willing to pay if I knew that someone was interested in me from these sites, but so far I've gotten one response from one person in the non-pay way (which are usually some sort of flirt or wink or something that you can't really put anything into). Granted, I chat with that person regularly now, and she's great, but I kinda hoped for better. Sometimes I think I'm just not suited to these types of things - that people have to get to know me first before they like me all that much. Then again, I'm a fairly weird person by most people's standards. Oh well.

Thursdays Suck

2004-01-29T15:14:00-06:00

Well, I'm in the middle of one of my thursdays. They really suck for me because I have to get up at 6:30am in order to get in by 7:30am and prepare for the lab I'm teaching/monitoring at 8:00am. When that finishes, I go to a really boring class lab (that I usually just surf the web during or do my own homework), and then another class which is only 25 minutes longer, but feels a lot longer on some days because there's no computer to waste the time when I'm bored. I'm glad about the class though because when it's interesting, it's very interesting. After that it's about 1pm, time for lunch, and then nothing at all until about 7pm, when I have another lab that I direct until 9pm. It's the longest day that I have every week. So now I'm just sitting at my desk typing into LJ because I don't really have anything else that to do (or at least, nothing else I want to do - hooray for procrastination).

The only good part about Thursdays is that the next day is Friday.

Meetup, Teaching

2004-01-28T06:40:00-06:00

Went to the LJ meetup last night. zedd, silvrayn, miss_jones, sparkledrop, amagadlyn, joceiphus, sugarbeet, and Ben (who I think is now want_a_be) were there. It was a fun time, went around the room with everyone's jobs and passing around anecdotal stories about Minneapolis, Driving, and other stuff. zedd gets the "HARDCORE" award for driving from Rochester. Afterwards I was getting pretty hungry, so we dropped off Ben and headed to the IHOP with joceiphus. Yummy breakfast food was had by all.

I get to teach the 1901 (Structure of Computer Programming I a.k.a. Beginning Programming) this Friday. I'm pretty excited, but I haven't taught students who are this green before anything, unless you count the lab/discussion that I lead last summer. I think I'm going to get to teach them the joy of special forms like "if" and "and" and "or" and the meaning behind them being a special form and not a combination. We'll see how far the professor gets today.

A bit behind the meme curve on this one..

2004-01-27T13:00:00-06:00

create your own visited states map or write about it on the open travel guide

Now if I could just hit the South and Northwest..

Here comes the sun

2004-01-27T06:41:00-06:00

I can't tell you how pleased I was this morning to find out that the sun is now waking up before I do. I always enjoy my morning walk alot better when there's some rays piercing through the normal winter wonderland. Winter would be great if we got more sun during these months.

Going to the LJ meetup tonight with silvrayn. I'll probably be meeting a bunch of people I didn't even know existed. I wonder what kind of food the Eat Street Cafe serves.

I had an unplanned nap yesterday. I'm not sure if it was due to actual tiredness or if it was conditioned because I was attempting to read a paper whilst lying in bed - with the bed triggering some unconscious reaction making me sleepier. Then again, it could just be a really boring paper.

Gastof's

2004-01-18T11:23:00-06:00

Last night I went to gastof's with Kelly and Andi. Chuck was going to come too, but he came down with something, and doesn't really want to be sick for next week's big demo. I don't blame him, it was really smoky and if I was even a little sick, I would have had issues by the end of the night. So he just dropped us off.

The band was playing polka music, which is surprisingly good, and a bunch of people were dancing. The ages of these people ran the gamut. There were 21-year olds all the way up to a guy who I'm sure was at least 70.

The place turned out to be packed when we got there, but don't tell that to the owners, they wanted to pack more people in. I'd say the amount of people in the place while we were there pretty much tripled. After a while the band started to play more polka-covers of hits we all know ("That's Amore", "New York, New York" to name a few, although I'm sure there were non-crooner era songs in there) and more people started dancing. After the band was done a DJ started (around midnight). A fun time was had by all.

I got pretty drunk. I only had 3 beers - but the size of these beers is massive. Know that scene in Fellowship of the Ring where Merry comes up with a glass as big as his head? "That, my friend, is a Pint"? That's how big these beers are. Darned good german beer though.

As for my LiveJournal, welcome to the age of double-posting. All my posts will now go both to LJ and to my website-blog. We'll see how this works out for a while. I need to make my normal blog site smarter about paragraphs and stuff.

I'm a good loser

2004-01-09T09:21:00-06:00

Hehe. Scrabble rules. I played alot of Settlers of Catan last night, but didn't win any. The night before was Starfarers of Catan, didn't win any of those either. So tonight, tonight should be the night that I can win ALL of the games. I'm just waiting for my comeuppins! I'm kinda glad that noone has released any new anime episodes I'm interested in the last few days. Mabye it's because they're kinda between seasons in japan.

Curious Dreams and Other Stuff

2004-01-06T16:26:00-06:00

Okay this turned out very long. Learning LJ-Cut time...

The Strangest Dream Ever

I had the stangest dream of my life last night. I don't remember too much of it, as I usually forget them, but this one was especially wierd. I was living in my same apartment, but for some reason I had a roommate. I woke and took a shower, while listening to the radio like I usually do (I actually listen to NPR's newscast in the morning on the web) when the fire alarm went off in the building. Of course I did what I would normally do in this situation, ignore the alarm and continue to shower. As I'm finishing, I vaguely hear things about terrorists on the radio over the alarm. I get out of the shower and start drying off, and then realize that there are 2 armed, uniformed men in my bathroom (how we all fit in there is beyond me). They tell me that the alarm is a terrorist alarm, and I just kindof nonchalantly say 'okay' and go to get dressed, but as I reach for some undergarments, there are 2 vicious squirrels IN my underwear! Of course this is when I wake up.

I think back at the dream and wonder if my mind is trying to tell me something. Mabye this is my body's way of telling me that squirrels are going to try and take over the planet.

Watching way too much anime

I made a huge dent in my anime debt last night. I watched some Daa Daa Daa, Airmaster, Cinderella Boy, Full Metal Alchemist, Shingetsuan Tsukihime, Yawara!, Konjiki no Gash Bell, Ocha-ken, Chrno Crusade, and Condor Hero. Shingetsuan Tsukihime ended well, not in the kind of happy-ending-disney sort of way that lots of anime end up. Condor Hero is proving to still be the best old-style martial arts anime out there. Konjiki was surprisingly plot-ful as opposed to it's normal hooliganistic humor, a good contrast to the last episode ("Muteki Folgore!"). Cinderella Boy finished, and boy am I glad -- that series was very horrible. If I wasn't such an anime addict, I would have stopped watching it a long time ago. Anyway with all these series finishing, I will probably get to use my DVD burner again sometime this week. One of the bonuses of having a DVD burner is that you only need to use it every two weeks or so, instead of all the time, as my old CD-RW drive got used. It feels so nice to be able to clear out 4.3GB of stuff at once.

My Diet

In other news, my diet isn't going exactly as planned. While this looks great overall, the flattening at the end is what bugs me. Oh, and that huge space right before December? That's all of November missing from my chart. I have no doubt that I threw it away because I had been all the way through December already. I really did weigh myself and write it down, but I have no clue where it went. At any rate you can see I didn't really lose any poinds during that month anyway. The sizable other chunk missing is the christmas holiday, which I am perfectly fine missing, and I surprisingly didn't gain weight over.

I'll probably stop writing in LJ sometime in the near future, since I don't really want to pay, and I have a perfectly good site of my own to work with. Mabye I'll see if I can make my site work with LogJam or something, or add comments. Comments are cool. I'll probably keep this account around anyway, just so I can keep track of some LJ people I know.

Anime

2004-01-05T18:48:00-06:00

I have lots of anime to watch.

Good Sleep Come Now

2004-01-05T18:41:00-06:00

There came a point in my day today when I wanted to watch some anime, so I decided to sit down and do just that. I get into my chair and realize that my feet are cold because I took my socks off, so I decided to watch laying in bed instead in hopes of warming them. I warmed myself a little too much, and ended up sleeping from 5pm to 7pm. This would normally be fine, but this weekend I stayed up until 4am for three days in a row, and I was really hoping to fix my sleep cycle today. In other news, I discovered how to join communities in lj. I should really set a picture on here as well, but the end of Shingetsuan Tsukihime is calling to me, and my stomach is ready for a chicken breast that I've been thawing specifically for 12 hours for it.

Time to get to the blogging, thing.

2004-01-05T14:32:00-06:00

I'm trying out this live-journal thing to find out if I can get the journal looking like my base0 homepage. If I can't, I'll probably be coding a bunch on that in eht next few days making it more featureful by adding categories or something. I'm in search of good blogging software, both to post and customize. Pybloxsom really appeals to me from a hacker's point of view, but everyone who uses it seems to be very non-creative or it's not very customizable. I'd like to see one that is "tricked out", that has images and things floating around, with moods or whatever. I also looked at Movable Type, but it looks like it would be a pain to setup, and it looks like it's not really free as Debian would define it, which I prefer stuff I use to be. Oh well, this is just a first post really, explaining why I actually have a livejournal now.

Harry Potter Meme of All Memes by Osaku
Name/Username
Age
Gender
House	Gryffindor
Wand	Birch, 9", Phoenix Feather
Best Course	Spell Theory
Worst Course	Charms
Pet	Hawk Owl
Patronus	Badger
Quidditch Job	Seeker
Wizard Candy	Jelly Slugs
Profession After School	Auror