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October 31, 2006
Boo!
Couple of treats for you:
Gaiman in the NYT Op-Eds writing about Halloween and ghost stories. (Now, is that {about "Halloween and ghost stories"} or {"about Halloween" and "ghost stories"}?)
Also, the complete text of The Call of Cthulhu, which I keep meaning to read, and today seems like as good a time as any.
Posted by todd at 9:34 AM | Comments (2)
October 30, 2006
Who's Excited? I'm Excited.
I know we're all very excited about tomorrow. It's a big day, October 31st. That's right, the start of the 2007 NBA season is here.
Ok, fine. Maybe you aren't excited. But at least I'm not alone. Kim Jong Il is also completely stoked. His whole administration is full of huge fans.
Gene Schmiel was the deputy director of Korean affairs for the State Department in the early 1990s when he met with some top North Korean officials making a rare visit to the United States. They met during the day, had dinner together and then continued their discussions in a hotel suite, hoping to find common ground with a staunchly communist country – the so-called Hermit Kingdom – that does not allow its 23 million citizens access to cell phones, the Internet, international TV or free press.Things seemed to be progressing methodically when the most senior North Korean diplomat looked at his watch and, Schmiel said, blurted out: "Stop. No more. Michael and Bulls are on TNT, and I've got to see if Scottie (Pippen) has gotten over his latest injury."
However, unlike Dear Leader, I have tickets for the third Clippers game of the year. Sucker!
Posted by todd at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
October 29, 2006
They Say it is a Capital Offense
I was on Wikipedia, researching a post about my new favorite television show, when I found this:
"I want to say 'I shot the police' but the government would have made a fuss so I said 'I shot the sheriff' instead... but it's the same idea: justice." --Bob Marley
I find this incredibly interesting. I have always thought of this as an essentially nonsensical feel-good cover by Eric Clapton. To find out that it is really not all that different in intention from Ice-T's Cop Killer is a real change in perspective.
Meanwhile, my new favorite television show is Ice-T's Rap School, in which our hero has six weeks to turn eight kids from an elite NYC prep school into a rap group. Seriously, Leprechaun in the Hood had a more believable premise.
Posted by todd at 11:03 PM | Comments (1)
October 28, 2006
Difference Number 17 Between Bard and UCI
At Bard, I knew everyone who attended the school and who played basketball even a little. In fact, I knew most of the people who lived near Bard and who played basketball. Here, I have yet to see the same person in the gym twice, despite being able to find a game at any time of any day.
On the one hand, this feels a little weird -- I miss the sense of camaraderie that builds up after shooting over and banging into the same people every week. On the other hand, I don't miss at all the perpetually empty gym.
Posted by todd at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2006
Also, Congratulations
To Monica, who passed the bar in Alaska, though we still have no word as to why anyone wants to live in Alaska.
Posted by todd at 9:19 PM | Comments (1)
For the Comment Spammers Out There
Seems like those guys are really into gangbangs. Not sure what the deal with that is, but I thought they might like to know that your odds of impregnating the woman are best if you go last.
(Here at tbnd, we're all about public service. Bringing useful information to the people. That, and bringing in deviants via Google search results.)
Posted by todd at 9:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2006
Note to Self
Dear Todd,
In the future, if your dinner is not sufficient, please consider making a sandwich or walking to one of the nearby fast food restaurants to supplement your meal. In a pinch, maybe have a banana. Under no circumstances are you to eat a quarter of a bag of candy corn on a half-full stomach ever again.
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter,
Todd.
Posted by todd at 11:06 PM | Comments (5)
October 25, 2006
No One Tells Me Anything
Am I the only one who hadn't seen this? From now on, anyone who ever fails to talk his/her way out of a speeding ticket should feel like a failure.
"Man? You mean I look like an escaped convict? That's crazy. Well, I'm not that guy! For real. Can I go now?"
Posted by todd at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2006
Competing Resolutions
So I had this great idea. In addition to the resolution to post on this blog at least once a day until the end of the year, what if I attempt to increase my academic productivity by restricting all reading, commenting upon, and writing of blog posts on week days to the hour from 11 pm to midnight?
Wouldn't that make the nightly posts so much better?
Anyway, here's this morality test Tony sent me. I totally failed. Turns out, I'm a sociopathic whore.
Posted by todd at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
Dennzilla
RichardDawkins.net is reproducing a Wired article about "New Atheism." The piece itself isn't all that great. It's peppered with stupid, thoughtless wordings such as
The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.
However, it is worth checking out for the photos of leading lights Dawkins, Dan Dennett, and Sam Harris. In particular, Double-D looks like he's emerging from the darkest corner of a blind alley, and just about to put a serious hurting on someone.
Posted by todd at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)
October 22, 2006
Sounds Like the Set-up for a Commercial
I just learned from Ed Felten that Apple shipped some iPods with a special surprise bonus -- the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. Apple's support page is a bit snarky:
As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.
The iPods were apparently infected while being tested. That's an awesome QA process -- one that takes in working iPods and outputs working iPods with worms.
Posted by todd at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2006
What it is Possible to Compute
Here's the abstract for a paper in preparation. I saw a talk on the subject on Friday, and I'm really curious about the proofs. I really can't figure out how stochasticity would increase the computational power of a system.
In other words, other algorithms are known where stochasticity dramatically increases efficiency, but here stochasticity increases what it is possible to compute, regardless of efficiency. Without stochasticity, computations are limited to primitive recursive functions, but with stochasticity, the full generality of Turing machine computation is attained.
Posted by todd at 10:36 PM | Comments (1)
October 20, 2006
Are You Sure that Ketel One is in the Protocol?
I am no longer as excited as I used to be about The Disgruntled Chemist's beer blogging. This is because I just read a brief news item in the "Sidelines" section of the September 21 Nature, which reads (possibly behind pay wall):
Chemists' nights outJapanese police have launched a desperate search for three bottles of potentially deadly hydrofluoric acid, after an official from Shimonoseki Mitsui Chemicals who was carrying them one night got so drunk he couldn't remember what he did with them.
If you can get to the Nature link, you'll also find a bit about this story, where a Chinese philosopher claims to have found a novel proof of the four color conjecture, another writer challenges this claim, and then the philosopher challenges him to an academic duel to the death. Literally, to the death. "If my proof is correct, you commit suicide. If not, I do."
Judging from this very extensive sample, I think we can conclude that Asia is a scary, scary place.
Posted by todd at 7:12 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2006
Crazy Fact of the Day
The names of the island nation Jamaica, Jamaica Plain, MA and Jamaica, Queens, NY have three independent etymologies. They're all Anglicizations of Native American words, but there are three different roots.
Posted by todd at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2006
Pictures!
The rest of our zoo pictures are now up, including this thing:
I'm told that it's an enormous guinea pig, which is awesome. Why don't we have huge versions of more animals? Or small versions? Who doesn't want an elephant the size of a cocker spaniel?
Also available are our house, which my mom's been asking for for weeks, and Ruth's new haircut.
Yay, pictures.
Posted by todd at 4:31 PM | Comments (5)
October 17, 2006
Slow News Day
I can heartily recommend this biscuit recipe, particularly if you replace the milk with buttermilk.
Mmmm. Biscuits.
Posted by todd at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2006
Editing Profiles in the Gnome 'network-admin' Tool
The network-admin tool that comes with Gnome has a handy feature that allows you to store "profiles" or "locations" which specify the name of the network and the WEP key for different places where you use wireless. This is great.
The problem is, the interface for this tool is completely counterintuitive. I have, for some time now, had several "locations" which were configured completely backward. This turns out to be because you aren't supposed to set profiles up in the way that I would expect. That is, I would think you should 1) create a new profile 2) configure the profile 3) save the profile. In fact, you have to 1) configure your network settings 2) create a profile. If you don't know this beforehand (and I have no idea how you would know this) then you're screwed -- you can't edit profiles from the tool; it doesn't remember any changes you make after the profile is created.
Your best bet is probably to delete your broken profiles and create new, correct ones. But if you've found your way here through Google, you're probably like me and that solution is just too stupid for you. In that case, I have for you the XML file which contains these profiles. It is here:
/etc/gnome-system-tools/network/profiles.xml
The entries are completely straightforward, and can be edited/renamed without any problem.
While I'm griping, it would be nice if these files were documented somewhere easier to find. To figure out which file to edit, I had to resort to adding a new profile and then executing
sudo find / -amin -1and sifting through a long list of recently-accessed files.
Posted by todd at 10:38 AM | Comments (1)
October 15, 2006
Lions and Tigers and Growing Old, Oh My
Turned twenty-four today. To celebrate, we threw a big party went to the zoo.
Here are some pictures. First, the awesome cake that Ruth baked last night. It's got coconut milk and mango frosting/sauce.
And, from the zoo, we start with the signature of the San Diego Zoo, the pandas. The sign said that this one is a year old and spends most of its time in the tree napping.
One of my favorite animals was this Sun Bear:
Finally, in case you were worried that as I aged I might mature:
Posted by todd at 11:20 PM | Comments (7)
October 14, 2006
Kind of Like "Guess Who?"
Today, someone said
[I]t's like trying to couple sugar and shit on our dessert plate.
Any idea what they were talking about?
Posted by todd at 10:37 PM | Comments (5)
October 13, 2006
Scalz
There are a lot of nice things about living in Southern California. But then, there were a lot of nice things about living in Boston, as well. In fact, for all of the great things about being here, I can only think of a couple of things that are good about not being there. The biggest one is probably being in the home town of an NBA basketball team that doesn't pay Brian Scalabrini five million dollars a year.
Posted by todd at 8:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2006
If You're Slash
So ... what is the deal with this new sales campaign from Volkswagen? Free guitar with every car? Guitar lessons from "legendary guiarist Dweezil Zappa"? Is "wannabe rock star" really that big of a demographic?
Whatever, I think it's awesome, even if it doesn't make sense. And I can't wait for the Nigel Tufnel ad.
Posted by todd at 11:01 PM | Comments (3)
October 11, 2006
Welcome Back, Sucker
Ex-coworker and pal Jon Newton just got back from two months in Europe. He had a couple of pithy thoughts:
I really appreciate toilet paper, both the existence of, and quality, in most public restrooms in the US so far. Yes yes, what a thing to say but its really the small things that make the most difference. In Romania they had either 1) none or 2) party streamers. seriously.
And then:
Simple living was another wonderful part of my trip. I lived out of a medium sized backpack for 2 months and shopped for food at tiny markets... and now i'm home with dozens of tshirts, 4 pair of pants and 2 pairs of sneakers! so much stuff... and i went to walmart yesterday. it almost drained all the europe out of me.
Look, man. Wal*Mart and good toilet paper. Package deal. Take it or leave it. Megastores or cray paper. Your choice.
Posted by todd at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)
October 10, 2006
Why Haven't You ...
... started reading xkcd every day yet?
(Look, I can't spare the RAM necessary to run Firefox and write real posts.)
Posted by todd at 9:56 PM | Comments (3)
October 9, 2006
Someone Put the Kettle on to Boil
Ernesto Illy, Chairman of the illy coffee and espresso company, holds a PhD in chemistry? The link is kind of old, but pretty interesting, and leads to a pdf of an article by Dr. Illy that is also quite good.
Posted by todd at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
October 8, 2006
Investing in the Future
It looks like, if I'm going to win a million dollars, I'm going to have to first invest $150 in some RAM, because this half-gigabyte shit isn't cutting it.
Posted by todd at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)
October 7, 2006
2003 All Over Again
I can't tell you how much I missed the sight of Nomar Garciaparra compulsively tapping his equipment during the playoffs.
"Is my helmet still there? Helmet's still there. Is my bat still there? Bat's still there. Wait, is my helmet still there ... ?"
Posted by todd at 7:10 PM | Comments (0)
October 6, 2006
What's in a Name?
Said the famous researcher, slightly embarrassed, "We needed a catchy name that was short for Bayesian Logic. We thought BLOG sounded good. Only after it was too late did we realize that you can't Google the term and find anything at all related."
I think "Googlability" is an excellent metric when choosing names for things. That's why my first kid will be named Ambiguous Moonchilds.
Posted by todd at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
October 5, 2006
Why Can't My Beer do That?
Nothing good to talk about today, so all you get is this. The title of the post is in reference to the action shot, which is my favorite part.
Ok, since you're going to whine, here's another and also some interesting thoughts on the Netflix thing and two posts from the same blog to first make you think there's hope for the world and then realize wait, no, there isn't.
Posted by todd at 10:49 PM | Comments (3)
October 4, 2006
Fun with Science
Ruth's research has gotten off to a much more exciting start than mine. Case in point, she has come home each of the last two days and reported, "Well, they pooped on me less today, so that's a good sign."
Posted by todd at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)
October 3, 2006
Ka-Ching
Most interesting development of the day: There's a decent chance I'll enter this contest for a million dollars as part of a class project.
Posted by todd at 11:39 PM | Comments (1)
October 2, 2006
It's This, or Calculus
I haven't gotten around to writing up the last couple of days of our cross-country trip yet, but I have uploaded a ton of photos from days eight, nine, and ten. Here is one of the ... uh ... best? It's from an "Old West Museum" in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma. It was this, or I post the machine learning homework I spent all day working over with my mad LaTeX and mutlivariable calculus skillz. It's impressive, to be sure, but it doesn't tug at the heart strings like the ills that befell poor Uncle Billy's club.
Posted by todd at 10:49 PM | Comments (1)
October 1, 2006
A Bunch of Links
Where babies come from (random YLTLSWC link).
I'm running out of energy with which to be angry about our government.
Nazi made of Bees! (hat tip Holbo.)
Now I can close those tabs. Yay.
Posted by todd at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)