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Saturday, June 7th, 2008
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1:33 pm - Fridge
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I'm selling my crazy custom Sun Frost fridge. I've decided I don't want to be the guy who's so neurotic he has to haul around custom appliances and spend a month and a half setting them up every time he moves.
Got any crazy environmentalist or off-the-grid friends? Cheap high-efficiency fridge if they can handle the shipping.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/fct/hsh/711253169.html
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| Sunday, May 25th, 2008
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8:04 pm - Unpacking books
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Yesterday I finished unpacking my books into the upstairs room I'm calling the library.
This will be the first time in something like six years that the majority of books I own have all been unboxed and in the same room. (There's still a good-sized stash at my dad's place in South Dakota, and the "specialty" books are stashed discreetly downstairs.)
I'm spending Memorial Day weekend resting, taking care of the house and errands, and maybe seeing Indiana Jones tonight. Who else is excited?
current music: Charlie Parker
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| Sunday, May 11th, 2008
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2:12 pm
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Here is a neat video for you to watch, David Ford's "Go to Hell". It's a six minute single cut video for a song that seems to be constructed entirely by one talented guy and his sampler.
current music: David Ford - Go to Hell
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| Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
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9:17 pm
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| Thursday, February 28th, 2008
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8:48 pm - Physicist attacks the Plane-Packing Problem
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This is cool. An astrophysicist models the best way to board planes.
Inefficient transportation behaviors are a big pet peeve of mine. I've had my own theories about plane boarding for a while: grouping horizontally and boarding the window seats first, then the middle seats, then the aisles to get parallelization. His is certainly better and seems to employ the same concepts.
Other crowd behaviors bother me. A lot of them are arms-race scenarios, where individuals prevent each other from taking advantage and expend effort for no net gain in efficiency. Crowding around the conveyor at the baggage claim: inefficient because the closer the crowd stands, the linear space they have to stand in, and views are obstructed. Everyone ought to back up, and approach the conveyer when their bag comes out. Standing right at the edge of the subway platform and packing around the doors, increasing the length and convolution of the paths most people have to take in and out.
The airport security checkpoint is really inefficient, too. You come up to the end of the line, grab a tray, take your shoes off, shuffle a foot ahead as the line moves, take your belt off, shuffle a foot, etc. You ought to approach the table, find a free spot, take all your stuff off and out, and then move to the x-ray machine. In algorithmic terms, the queue for the x-ray ought to be a ring buffer, not an array, because shifting elements is expensive.
It's sad that probably nobody is going to test his new boarding method.
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| Saturday, February 16th, 2008
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5:59 pm
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The fantasy worlds that Disney creates have a surprising amount in common with the ideal universe envisaged by the intelligence community, in which environments are carefully controlled and people are closely observed, and no one seems to mind.
From a Jan 21st New Yorker article, which talks about how many Disney employees moved in to government service after 9/11.
I'm in South Lake Tahoe on a President's Day ski trip with some friends. The country out here is beautiful: all Bonanza and Lone Ranger landscapes and lakes. Spent half a day in Reno, had breakfast at Peg's Glorified Ham and Eggs, including probably the best omelette I've had since Zipf's. Kinda like Vegas without the corporate franchising and crowds.
Tahoe is beautiful: thick snow and real mountains, pine trees all over the place. Great view from the place. And the driveway is a 6-foot canyon shoveled out from the solid chunk of white that is the front yard.
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| Thursday, February 7th, 2008
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10:08 am - Phone time
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I think it's time to get a new cell phone. Mine has started falling asleep, and the synchronization with iSync no longer works.
What should I get?
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| Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
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7:53 pm
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My lease is up April 1st, and I think I want to move. My current house is great, but I really want to get away from the ghetto, and would like a garage for the New England winters. Which is too bad; I've gotten accustomed and attached to this house; it feels like home. But I don't really fit here.
Also, this week I discovered meyer lemons at Trader Joe's. Turns out they are not actually lemons, but a naturally occurring lemon-flavored candy. Very good.
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| Thursday, January 24th, 2008
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10:50 pm - Princesses
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This recent Disney Princesses thing bothers me, and I'll tell you why. It's an unrealistic and probably unhealthy shallow image of femininity to be promoting to our kids. And the unexamined enchantment with aristocracy is troubling.
( But that's not why it really bothers me... )
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| Monday, January 21st, 2008
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6:59 pm - Better than lolcats this week
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| Thursday, January 10th, 2008
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10:01 pm - PowerBook upgrade
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I have 130 GB of mp3s, 20,000 songs worth. I have a 100 GB hard drive in my PowerBook.
This has led to years of complicated setups of network and external drives, split libraries, reduced functionality, and I just can't take it any more. And I'm not willing or able to cull enough to get it to fit.
I've been thinking about getting a new computer for about a year now, but today it occurred to me that I could just upgrade my current PowerBook G4. Drop a 200+ GB laptop drive in and my problem goes away. It hadn't occurred to me to do this with a Mac because of their Just Works sealed-box nature. But they're normal components on the inside, and it turns out some of their authorized resellers will do hardware upgrades.
I'm going to try to load up my computer with:
I'll see if the reseller carries these equivalents; if not, see if I can bring the packaged parts in myself, pay them for labor, and give them a premium to compensate for not making the hardware sales. That should be workable with a local store (as opposed to some CompUSA dickwads). I will, of course, not touch the laptop myself.
If this works, I should have a spiffy, snappier laptop that can pull all my stuff back onto my local machine, and for about $700 instead of the $3,700 for a new MacBook Pro.
Anybody else upgraded a Mac?
current music: Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
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| Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
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11:30 pm - We have a winner!
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Contest over! I've posted the results to my previous post and am unscreening the comments so I can mock and ridicule your guesses.
current music: Ishq
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| Sunday, January 6th, 2008
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11:18 pm
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Today I went skiing for the first time. I went to Mount Southington, a small ski area about an hour northeast of Norwalk (found here), had a private newbie lesson, and spent the afternoon going down the bunny slope.
I'm not any good at it, but I enjoyed it. Going to go back a few times before a ski trip in February.
( Details and thoughts )
current music: Cowboy Bebop
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12:47 am - That class & privilege meme
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Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
I find this one hard to evaluate. By wealth and dress, no, but if class is primarily by education and profession, then yes, by definition, because my parents were also teachers, and college-educated.
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Guesstimating this one.
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
I took karate for a few months
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
Only if you count school extracurricular programs, of which I did many. I think they're looking for private lessons. Though extracurriculars take money, too.
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
This is too broad for a simple yes or no answer
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
I was put on my Mom's American Express when I went to college at 17. This turned out to suck when she went bankrupt and it showed up on my credit report.
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Motels, rather. Are they trying to make a distinction? I'm assuming the alternative is camping, staying with relatives, or crashing in the car.
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
My mom called Goodwill the "GW Style Shop". But the majority of my clothing was new.
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Most of the time. We've also lived in apartments and, one year, in a trailer park.
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Is this a common enough activity to be a good class indicator? How about ski trips or other expensive leisure activities, which will give you common conversational material with wealthier people?
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
Museums and aquariums, yes. Galleries, no.
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
From a Quaker blog via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aryspop, originally and copyrighted by W. Barratt et al.
current music: Natural Language - em:t 0098
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| Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
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9:57 pm - Advanced primitive Java
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Hey Javaheads,
I'm trying to make generic, dynamically resizing arrays of primitives in Java to use as buffers for database connections (a block-oriented layer on top of the cursor-oriented JDBC). What I really want is an ArrayList<int>, but Java generics don't work with primitives. I don't want to use Integer and friends because of the overhead, and when I'm done with the buffering, I'm going to extract the data to Matlab via conversion of primitives.
I could do:
abstract class PrimitiveVector {
public abstract Object getArray(); // returns int[], double[], etc...
}
class IntVector extends PrimitiveVector { ... }
class DoubleVector extends PrimitiveVector { ... }
and then use Reflection to work with the returned arrays. I'd have to actually write each class with a lot of duplicate code, or rather use a Perl preprocessor to generate the .java files for each, doing my own templating at compile time with
for $t (qw/int double float bool .../) { s/T/$t/g; ... }
Java really needs a macro facility; its types are a little too strict, and there's too much tedious getFoo())/setFoo() typing to do. I just feel wrong whipping one up for something this small when it seems like there should be a more straightforward way of doing it.
Any ideas?
This is pretty tricky in C++, too, where I originally wrote this layer. MyArray<int> isn't a subclass of MyArray; so you need MyArray<T> : MyUntypedArray, and it's hard to dynamically get your typed arrays back out without doing manly things like casting to void*.
current music: FSOL - Lifeforms
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| Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
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11:06 pm
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Ah, Casshern. Were you like me when the trailer came out, sitting there and watching it over, and over, and over? I was so stoked about it that for a minute, I considered making a trip to Tokyo, just to sit in a theater and watch this. Go on, watch it and tell me it doesn't give you a bit of the shivers.
( blah blah blah... )
current mood: analytic
current music: Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata from Casshern
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| Thursday, December 20th, 2007
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10:00 pm - Miami
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Miami is cool. Warm and vibrant, I heartily recommend getting a convertible here in the middle of December. I rented a PT Cruiser convertible and had a good time scooting around town. The weather was mild and beautiful, even when it was raining.
My best meal of the whole trip was in Miami, at a mall restaurant named "Mojitos", of all places. Cuban franchise place. Awesome heavily-sauced chicken dish with sweet friend plantains on the side.
( Notes on Miami )
current music: Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls
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| Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
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1:30 am - Notes on Cruise
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The first leg of my vacation was a four-day cruise to the Bahamas on the Carnival ship Sensation. I picked one of the shortest cruises available because I didn't know if I'd like being stuck on a ship and wanted the option to sleep through it if I had to. Turns out being on a cruise ship per se is pretty cool: I like the gentle rocking motion, the feeling of being in one dense building, and the stateliness of cutting through the middle of the ocean. Kind of like being on a spaceship.
( More cruise notes )
Overall, I'm glad I went, but probably won't go again. It's always good to try new things.
current music: Ricardo Romaneiro - Oasis
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| Thursday, December 13th, 2007
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5:24 pm
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| Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
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12:10 am
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I'm back from vacation. Full report later. In the meantime, I'm safely back in Connecticut, having made it around most of the weather on either side of my trip.
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