words of advice for young people

I'm the guy who

2011-06-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

When I used to run religiously, which if you read my blog you know I used to do, anytime I met a new person in my neighborhood, they'd recognize me and say 'you're the guy who's always running'. I could have been insulted by being reduced from the complex human being with thoughts and feelings and stuff to a guy running the 1.8 mile loop around our neighborhood non-stop like a character in an

No dark sarcasm in the classroom.

2011-04-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time before we managed to make the jump from glorifying stupidity to villifying education and the people responsible to provide and give the children the educations. 'Is our children learning?', the President Bush asked, and it turn out when he ask that it was meant in the same way the question 'Are you drinking my milk from the fridge?' or 'Are you beating your wife?'

Puppy Tweets UNLEASHED!

2011-03-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm a hacker type, and recently I've become interested in circuit bending, so I like to make a trip to the Goodwill or other thrift stores from time to time to see if I can find some musical or noisemaking toys that can be 'bent'. Saturday I went with my daughter, and she strongly disapproved of a Barbie guitar I was looking at, so I was out of luck as far as musical toys went.As is sometimes the

Mystery Solutions To Famous Problems By Important Mathematicians

2011-02-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading 'Uncle Petros & Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession', written by Apostolos Doxiadis, part of the team that brought us the wonderful graphic novel 'Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth'.While Logicomix focuses on the great mathematician Bertrand Russell, his work, and his association with other great mathematicians of the early 20th Century, 'Uncle

Facebook's Fakeness Makes Us Feel Worse, Comedians' Honesty Makes Us Feel Better

2011-02-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

'I see the people happy, so can it happen for me? 'Cos when I have no energy, there's nothing that can move me' -Kate Bush, 'Sat in Your Lap'Recently a group of Stanford scientists led by Alex Jordan published an article in the 'Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin' about a tendency people have to overestimate other people's happiness, which usually ends up leading to increased dejection

I Will Never Eat These Things Again

2011-01-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

Today I took my daughter to Target to go grocery shopping while my wife is in London and then Dublin for a week. We went because while we can manage on our own, we decided to get some pre-packaged, easy-to-fix foods (frozen pizza, frozen other things) to get us through the week. You are probably thinking, wow, what a bad Dad, and actually it gets worse. My 7yo daughter decided she wanted to try a

This year, I'll try to be more superficial

2011-01-08T20:41:00.001-08:00

There's no point in running it into the ground anymore - my goals for 2010 have been covered and revisited. Overall, I did OK, but it was not the year things really happened for me. In the interest of looking forward, even though that way lies oblivion (it lies the other direction, too, only then I didn't know any better), here's what we'll be going for in 2011, which we've already been in for a

'Something to offer besides waiting to die' or 'why do I live in Bloomington?'

2010-11-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday on Twitter, @drewmckinney, aka the guy who wrote that cool DrivingBuddy iPhone app, wrote:Why be a tech professional in Bton instead of SF? "Bloomington is 58% cheaper than San Fran, housing is 81% cheaper"He linked to bestplaces.net, a handy site where you can find out for example if you are making $50,000 a year in Bloomington IN, how much would you need to make in San Francisco to

I'm Thankful

2010-11-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

...I've been removed from all the 'Obama iz a seekrit Muslim' mass e-mail lists of relatives and colleagues...I don't have to fly this Thanksgiving weekend and endure 'gate rape' of myself, my wife and my daughter...my daughter is so cute and funny...my dog is both affectionate and ridiculous...my wife is beautiful, supportive, and funny...the people I spend the majority of my time with at work

Neologism Squatting: these words/phrases are mine

2010-11-22T14:30:00.000-08:00

Oraclown: clowns who use Oracle. Also, consultants from Oracle.I Googled this one, and I got a lot of results for a fish called an 'Ora Clown' (MySQL has the porpoise, now Oracle can have the Oraclown). I couldn't find anybody referring to Oracle-ites as Oraclowns, though. Surely somebody has thought of or used this?Scooby Dieu: the dog god of France. This one is nonsense, but it makes a nice

'___ is like Jazz' No, it's not.

2010-11-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

I recall reading one of those 'change or be killed' stories about a guy who got fired from his job (I believe it was a journalism type job). He asked his employer 'Why are you firing me? Aren't I doing a good job? I'm producing a lot!'. His employer answered 'You are great at what you do. The thing is, what you do is like Classical Music, and we need Jazz. We need somebody who can do Jazz.'Myself

LoL news scrolling thingy

2010-09-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the Mitch Altman/Jimmie Rodgers soldering workshop at Bloominglabs here in town. Both Jimmie and Mitch brought kits to sell, and I bought one of Altman's famous brain machines, and Jimmie's LoL Shield (lots of LEDs, lots of lights, lots of laffs) in the then brand-new extra bright blue.Once I'd put it together I had to do something with it other than the test pattern and the

Steam-powered cars with the gardens in the back

2010-08-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

Some people were arguing on Twitter as to the sucks vs. rules category Steely Dan belong to, and one of the debaters linked to this essay from Donald Fagen about Science Fiction's impact on his youth: The Cortico-Thalamic Pause: Growing Up Sci-Fi.That Fagen was a sci-fi guy in his youth is not exactly a shocking revelation, especially those who've heard his 1993 solo album Kamakiriad. Leaving

'I had always heard that building a word processor is one of the hardest things you can ever do as a software engineer.'

2010-08-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

So says this guy.That is probably a good test of a person's aptitude toward software engineering. If you can somehow look past the crushing and pointless dullness of developing yet another word processor and instead groove on the intrinsic challenge of the task, clearly you've found your spot in the world.Increasingly I am more and more interested in having some kind of concrete (useful or fun)

Second Quarter Report

2010-07-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the year I did a brief post about what seemed like good goals for 2010. This is something lots of people do. I am doing New Year's Resolutions wrong, though, because I followed up 3 months later, and am back to do it again 6 months later. This is turning into the 7up of self-absorbed blogging. Here we go now...1) Get out of the I.T. ghettoAs mentioned in our last entry, this

This Book About the Atari 2600 Reminds Us That Programming These Days is Really Candy Ass

2010-06-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

I recently read 'Racing The Beam: The Atari Video Computer System'. The book introduces a new field: 'platform studies', which sounds academic and dry, but if you are a technical person, what it is is a nice break from the told and re-told video game mythology those of us who came up in the era of classic video games (roughly the late 70's to the '83 crash) have heard and re-heard: the Pong coin

Not quite destroying Jah work: the least offensive attempts at reggae by non-Jamaicans

2010-06-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Reggae is not for everyone. Unfortunately, over the years it has become associated with dorm room stoners and the likes of Ras Trent of 'Are You There Jah, It's me Ras Trent' fame.It doesn't really help that people unfamiliar with Jamaican patois only catch a few words and phrases ('Babylon', 'sensimilla', 'Jah', 'Selassie', 'I and I', 'mon', 'ting') and decide that reggae lyrics are written by

Wall Street Douchebags are ready to tear up Main Street

2010-05-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 has really led to an explosion in chain e-mails, one that might suggest the wise investor buy stocks in a company like Cisco whose products are part of the infrastructure of the Internet that keeps our inboxes stuffed with gems about 'Obama is a Secret Muslim, the Angel Of Death Is Nigh', or 'Obamacare mandates taking over kids' summer camps to turn them into

Creation Science and Robotics: A match made in heaven, BY GOD!

2010-04-30T18:36:00.000-07:00

I have been wondering recently whether there is a lot of robotics research happening in the world of Creation Science. It seems like a really good fit. If there are answers in Genesis, surely one of them is the answer to the question: how do you make an autonomous entity that will do your dirty work for you (naming all the animals, that sort of thing)? Surely Creation Scientists are not, as their

More About The Wit of the Staircase

2010-04-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

It turns out the French phrase for thinking of something clever too late to use it is 'L’esprit de l’escalier or esprit d'escalier (staircase wit)'.A classic example of this in popular culture is the Seinfeld episode where George wracks his brains thinking up a riposte to a co-worker's 'the ocean called, they're running out of shrimp', and all he can come up with is 'oh yeah? Well the jerk store

If You Have a Racist Friend...

2010-04-22T19:28:00.001-07:00

Back when I was cycling through all the music subcultures of the past 50 years and I was on the ska chapter (2-Tone ska, not the Don Drummond/Skatalites 60s ska - yet), I of course loved The Specials. I still like The Specials a lot, they're just not in the kind of heavy rotation they were 20 years ago.They had this song called 'Racist Friend':If you have a racist friendNow is the time, now is

The Internet: How do I work this?

2010-04-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

"Bragging that you're not a blogger is like bragging that you're slow and stupid and probably don't know how to use the Internet that well."-Jake Dobkin of Gothamist.comThis was something I heard on a not so recent episode of WFMU's Too Much Information, the DEAD MEDIA episode. I'm kind of slow (ouch) in mentioning it, but I agree with the sentiment.On the other side of the news (although it's

1st Quarter Report: 2010

2010-03-31T18:44:00.001-07:00

Previously, I wrote about things I hope to do in 2010.Now that Q1 of 2010 is over, let's see how I'm doing.1) Get out of the I.T. ghettoPretty much no motion at all on this one. My job continues to be a pointless exercise in futility at a joyless hole (new nickname for my workplace, but if you own a bar in a shitty part of town feel free to use that name), but at least on the 'abandoning your

And Jobs came down from the mountain: some analysts hype the iPad

2010-02-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

Lest anyone think age and recent health struggles have in any way attenuated Steve Jobs' famous reality distortion field, check out this quote from this article over on ReadWriteWeb:Mike Abramsky, RBC Capital Markets:"With iPad, Apple creates a revolutionary e-reading, browsing, media, gaming experience. Newspapers, Web pages, books 'come alive' with video, animation, color and fullscreen touch."

The Freshner!

2010-01-15T18:17:00.000-08:00

I have gone on sometimes about the tedium and monotony of my life and job here. That's because this is a blog. Also, under all the griping and kvetching there was hope and optimism, mainly hope and optimism that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life answering calls and emails from mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging idiots incapable of figuring out the simplest things on their own.I did finally get

Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, is no longer with us

2010-01-09T15:53:00.000-08:00

As a kid, my entry point into the Gumby world was via Eddie Murphy's portrayal of Gumby as an aging, bitter show business hack. I was too young to catch the original Gumby show on TV as a kid. Later I rented some videos of the best of Gumby, and I very much enjoyed the claymation and rich imagination of Art Clokey, Gumby's creator. The real Gumby was nothing like the bitter jerk on Saturday Night

I broke the joke, baybee!

2010-01-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't mentioned it explicitly, but I'm sure some readers have detected the influence of Bob Zany in my posts. You can find his website, a clever parody of late 90s web design, here. Bob is something of a trailblazer, with his 'fix the joke, baybee' being a good example of pre-Twitter and social media crowdsourcing.This inspired today's feature, 'I broke the joke, baybee!' You readers at home

Free and Worth Every Penny: 'What Matters Now' by Seth Godin

2010-01-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

People need help. I know I often do. Lots of us are stuck in schlubby jobs, wage slaves to the man. While we can find some consolation in knowing we are not alone (a report from the Conference Board research group tells us only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work, and only 51% find their jobs interesting), or can lose ourselves in youTube/Facebook/Twitter reveries of low-to-no

Things I need to do in 2010

2010-01-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the beginning of the year post most of you have probably not even started to read, being as you are a bit burned out by 'end of year' and 'end of decade' retrospectives. If you missed those, the consensus seems to be that the 00's really sucked, although I completely disagree as my daughter was born in the last decade, and this was a decidedly good thing.New Year's resolutions are somewhat

Reasons, Lame and Otherwise, for My Recent Silence

2009-12-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

In November, inspired by Nanowrimo, the event where instead of writing a novel nobody will read over the course of many years, participants write one in a month, I decided to blog every day that month. I didn't, but November featured more entries than any month up until then. They were not all good entries, but as with Nanowrimo, that wasn't the point.I fell back into my old infrequent writing

Lots of decidedly implied violence: 'The Impossibly' by Laird Hunt

2009-11-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

A wise man once said 'we are all of us unreliable narrators'. Actually I thought I was that man, but it looks like a guy named Frank Wu, who has more Google juice than I do, has also said this. People (myself included) are always deceiving themselves as to their own flaws and shortcomings, or re-shaping the narrative of their lives, perhaps to improve employment or sex partner prospects. This can

30 years Later, I'm vindicated by the Cake Boss

2009-11-18T19:03:00.000-08:00

Many people enjoy complaining about reality shows, because, like griping about there being no good Chinese food in town, it can really help you feel superior to those around you. Personally, I finished High School, and I love some reality shows, so the complaining-about-reality-shows magic doesn't work on me.A recent favorite is the show Cake Boss, which is about a guy in Hoboken named Buddy

The Happiness Hat Will Solve all of Your Problems

2009-11-16T17:54:00.000-08:00

This was in Gizmodo weeks ago, so this isn't exactly a scoop, but it really captured my imagination: The Happiness Hat Will Spike Your Skull.happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.While the idea of having a spike poke my head to remind me to keep smiling is unpleasant, an honest self-assessment tells me I really could have benefitted from such a thing in my youth. Even when I am not in the

Geisy Arruda of Brazil Keeps Berkeley Naked Guy's Fight Alive

2009-11-11T18:46:00.000-08:00

Geisy Arruda, a Brazilian student at Bandeirante University in Sao Bernardo do Campo (near Sao Paulo), managed to get herself expelled for wearing a skirt that was deemed 'too short' by the people who get to decide these things, although in the pictures the skirt was no shorter than any skirt you'd see in a bar in a college town on any given night. At least that is what I am told.This is strange

You can't say I didn't blog today!

2009-11-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

dentist lunch soul crushing boredom home wiggly dog hackerspace lasers lcd displays more lasers solar cell monitoring devices junk food the best show on wfmu featuring andrew w k twitter twitter twitter you are on reserve battery power shut down or you will lose data what does it all mean

Knee-Jerk News

2009-11-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Today the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guy from Jesus Jones who sang 'Right Here Right Now' could not be reached for comment. MTV organized a concert in Berlin featuring U2, and came under fire for erecting a 2 meter wall to keep out people with no tickets. Several people were tasered while trying to climb the wall to escape during one of Bono's

Tonight on Curb Your Enthusiasm

2009-11-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

Larry goes to buy a tackle box for his friend Funkhouser, but gets into a heated argument with a clerk who won't sell him one because he doesn't have a fishing license.Later, while discussing the script for the Seinfeld reunion, Larry screams at a waiter who gave him Lime Diet Coke, when he had asked for Diet Coke with real lime in it. Seinfeld tries to rein Larry in, but this makes Larry so

Anyone can hate this: the 'nathlete' billboard.

2009-11-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Like Maxfield Parrish, I dislike billboards. In a more pragmatic way, I understand that billboards featuring infants pimping out tire stores or car dealerships are good for the economy: the most likely local family business can use the advertising, and the billboard rental company employs people, too.Still, most billboards have no reason to exist. I'm thinking of the 'Integrity: Pass it On'

The results are in!

2009-11-06T15:16:00.001-08:00

I lost to some of the most moronic blogs imaginable! I flopped at the Fish Fry! Back to Brownsburg for me.I should post a link, but I already deleted the email.

'I am riddled with ADHD' - Glenn Beck's Goon Squad 'Faces Their Storm', attempts to read.

2009-11-05T18:23:00.001-08:00

Tim Heidecker on Twitter alerted followers that Mr. Crocodile tears has rounded up another ghost writer to help him crap out yet another book guaranteed to sell to the teabag crowd. The site calls it 'an instant Holiday Classic', and it really is a tribute to the hack or hacks that were able to crank out reams of schmaltz on such short notice.This one looks to be a tearjerker: The Christmas

Goldman Sachs Stole Your Flying Cars, Too

2009-10-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

"Then finance started sucking people from all over. You'd walk around our trading floor and there were guys who were math Ph.D.s and physics Ph.D.s, and chemists, and lawyers, and doctors - there were doctors on our trading floor, who trade, you know, the health care sector. The bubble in financial assets had a derivative bubble in people. Some of these physicists should be doing physics; some of

For those of you just joining us...

2009-10-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

This blog was recently nominated for Linking Indiana's 'Indiana's Favorite Blog' Contest. I'd be lying if I said it was nominated by somebody other than I. It seemed harmless enough, but then doubt set in. It was like signing up to participate in the talent show at your town's Founding Fathers Fish Fry - it seems like a harmless, low-stakes thing to do, but then you're hit with the realization

The Balloon Boy Rhyme that I should have posted days ago

2009-10-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Balloon boy's dad enjoys dangerous toyswhen he heard the voice of caution, always said 'fuck that noise'He rose his children to love all the dangersMom and Dad sat them down, said 'take candy from strangers'Then one morning in the sky he saw his toy pieThought his son was up there, and was sure to dieHe called 911 but first called the paparazziHe regretted not being his kid's safety NaziThe

The Baron Hall Health Care Town Hall in Bloomington - Sept 2, 2009

2009-09-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

I have been putting off writing this recap for nearly 2 weeks now. In a way, I dreaded going to the Baron Hill Town Hall at Bloomington High School North. By now, everybody has heard of the Town Halls for Health Care reform across the nation, featuring buffoons shouting out talking points from their health insurance company sponsors (when they even bother to be coherent - other times they're

Take Your Passion and Make It Happen, or, Another Word Bites the Dust

2009-08-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

It's upsetting to some people that the meaning of words in the English language change over time, but that's just the way it works. You can't stop it anymore than you can stop a glacier (although perhaps glaciers can be melted - stay tuned).For example, Kurt Vonnegut explains in one of his books that the word jerk used to refer to somebody that masturbates excessively, and geek meant very

Summer's here and the time is right for declaring independence.

2009-07-11T18:20:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday was, as my (2) American readers know, Independence Day here in the USA. It's a good day to be deafened by the alarms of firetrucks or by fireworks, professional and amateur, and to (weather permitting) celebrate our freedoms with hopefully sufficiently cooked hamburgers from the grill.It turns out summer, particulary July, is a popular time to throw off the chains of colonialism or

Social Media Games Episode 1: LinkedIn

2009-07-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

William Gibson famously said 'the street finds its own use for technology'. This is true, as the television show 'The Wire' has shown us. It's even more true that the bored and underemployed find their own uses for technology. Presented here are just a few games for those who want to use social media without being social media douchebags.LinkedIn Schadenfreude GamesOstensibly, LinkedIn is a tool

Chapter the Last of 'How Open Source Ruined My Life', or 'What am I gonna do with all these $%)(#^*% CDs?'

2009-06-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Back in the 90s I saw Larry Ellison on the TV talking about how much he hated the PC. He used those words: 'I hate the PC'. His problem with it: you have to go to the store and get software, then you go home and install it. It would be so much better if you could either download the code, or use a 'network computer', Larry's pet idea of the time.Of course, around that time virtually everybody

Sucka Java Developers

2009-06-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

(Apologies to RUN-DMC the ODB, and GZA/Genius)Sucka JD'sWhen I grab the mic with intent to damage yabetter drink the red bull to build your staminaI'm here to drop some truth and some scienceabout sucka JDs and the way they do violenceThey went to school to get the Java knowledgeBut sometimes they act like they flunked outta collegeThey know web frameworks for days and daysBut when it comes to

Sorry about that blue template I had.

2009-05-27T17:35:00.001-07:00

I don't know what I was thinking with that.

'Science involves confronting our absolute stupidity'

2009-05-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/the_importance_of_being_stupid.htmlFrom the Journal of Cell Science, by way of The Make Blog.Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid - that is, if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying. I'm not talking about `relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the

The long awaited Part 2 in the Series: How Open Source Ruined My Life

2009-04-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

After the government job that introduced me to Linux, I took a job with a consulting company in New Jersey. The salary was higher, but the cost of living was WAY higher, so the joke was on me. The company sent employees to bodyshop, seat-warmer jobs all around the country to support the elite group of 3 working on what was to become Sapphire/Web, a Java-based Application Server that had the

Now a moment of hero worship: Chuck D at Neal Marshall, Sat April 4 2009

2009-04-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

On Sat. April 4, 2009 I had the opportunity to see one of the heroes of my college days (and today), Chuck D, founder of Hip-Hop legends Public Enemy, give a lecture at the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center Library on the IU campus. This event was somewhat under-publicized, and I was only lucky enough to hear about it thanks to some tweets from the Bloomington 'twitterati' on twitter the day

How Open Source Ruined My Life, Part I

2009-04-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

My life came off the rails in my mid-20s, right on schedule. I was either evicted from or rejected the academic world, depending on how I'm feeling when I tell the story. I flamed out of the Ph.D. program (Mathematics) in I.U. - not too shabby a program to flame out of, really.At this point I had an apartment in Bloomington, also known as the town where people with Master's Degrees wash dishes

Elitist Liberals Visit The Creation Museum

2008-12-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am not particularly unusual in wanting to be there when history is unfolding. Last month I was excited about playing a tiny, tiny role in Obama's victory over John McCain. A few weeks ago, I went to the Creation Museum with my wife, two friends, and 3 of the friends' kids: one a junior in high school, another a seventh grader, the other ten years old. A bunch of smirky liberal-types making a

Python 3.0 and making it happen on MacOSX

2008-12-06T17:31:00.000-08:00

Python 3.0 was released last week to much commentary both pro and con. I would place myself in the pro column, for reasons best articulated here: Let’s talk about Python 3.0. The story about the monkeys beating up each other is one you'll want to file away for use someday, in the event you haven't already heard it.The big deals seem to be the all Unicode all the time, dammit, text and extensive

Kids say the you-are-damndest things!

2008-11-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I discovered an exciting sub-genre of youTube videos, the 'Baby Preacher' video. The kid preacher in 'Jesus Camp' apparently went over so well, they are expanding the outreach to infants.Probably the most famous of the baby preacher videos is this one, Kanon Tipton. There's nothing that quite puts the shivers in your soul like somebody who craps his own pants telling you you're going

Pakistan's Truck art is like the sticker of Calvin, pissing on US truck art

2008-11-23T14:10:00.000-08:00

Via the wonderful web urbanist blog, I was introduced today to the beautiful Truck Art of Pakistan.The under-appreciated, indigenous Pakistani tradition of truck painting has an extraordinary history, starting in the days of the Raj. As early as the 1920’s, competing transportation companies would hire craftsmen to adorn their buses in the hopes that these moving canvases would attract more

The Really Minor But Not Completely Insignificant Part I Played in the Great Victory for the US, and the World.

2008-11-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

As Election Day approached I found myself increasingly anxious and agitated. Things looked OK over on fivethirtyeight.com, but it was still too close. The thought of four years of Bible Spice and Old Spice was unbearable. I thought of how I'd brought my poor daughter into a world where we had an incompetent moronic clown of a president who'd dragged us into an ill-advised, seemingly endless

Cold Gettin' Stupid or: Google Didn't Start The Fire

2008-10-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

Back in July of this year, Encyclopedia Britannica board member Nicholas Carr's article 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' appeared in The Atlantic. It was a phenomenal hit. As the new Borg, Google is the company to hate right now. Right now, hating Microsoft is as passe as hating N'Sync or The Spice Girls. It kind of has an air of un-necessary kick 'em when they're down meanness, even, like the

Rebel Girls You Are the Queens Of My World!

2008-09-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

A couple tidbits on RNC '08, and then I'm getting the hell out of the crowded world of political blogging again. If you don't like it, go to Russia!The shouting-heavy ending of McCain's acceptance speech reminded me a lot of Howard Dean's campaign-derailing 'We're going to New Hampshire! And Georgia! And Kentucky! and etc!' minus the 'WAHOO!' at the end. Everybody jumped all over Dean and even

Django 1 is coming, so get ready

2008-08-30T18:27:00.001-07:00

You can consider Django for inclusion in the category of things that make your life easier instead of more difficult if you find yourself needing/wanting to do web development for some specific purpose, but you find web development with Java based frameworks tedious, and consider PHP hokey (or, if, like me you are a former Perl freak who is still pissed at PHP for stealing Perl's thunder).For all

The Sad Sad Story of Zines are Dead

2008-08-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

Before the internet and outside academia, zines were a way somewhat disaffected and alienated people of like minds found and communicated with each other. The letters section of Maximum Rock-n-Roll, featuring writers from all points on the intelligence continuum debating everything from is racism bad to should you eat meat was a precursor to the punky's punk forums on the Web today. In Maximum

Talk to your Doctor about Leon Redbone

2008-08-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

I missed a lot of work this week due to Lianard Bones, something I got in my ankles from excessive running. I had not run for a long time because of ennui and knee pains, also people would not leave me alone all day at work, so I could get nothing done, and I was overwhelmed and paralyzed by guilt at not getting anything done. I did not deserve burritos. I did not even deserve browned iceberg

Why oh why does anybody ask Rob Enderle about anything?

2008-08-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

I was enjoying this article about a grad student's plans for a $12 computer until the Rob Enderle quote showed up on page 2. His appearance in an article or the sound of his voice on a 'Marketplace' segment is the signal to stop reading or listening. This 2002 (2002!) posting from Dave Winer explains it as well as anything:Michael Williams: "That guy has always struck me as all hat and no

The Cussinest Bunch Of Cuss Ever

2008-08-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder what happened to the cuss words that got edited out of Eazy-E's first album and NWA's 'Straight Outta Compton' to make the clean radio versions?They ended up in this lovely mix featured recently on the Coffee2Go podcast from WFMU (featuring Noah). Noah typically focuses on unsigned artists and his show succeeds when I listen while running or otherwise cardio-izing.The sad

Top 10 record companies in my collection thus far, acc to scanmanCarothers.py

2008-08-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Meme-o-rama - the best album from each year I've been alive so far

2008-08-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

1970 - The Stooges: Funhouse1971 - Os Mutantes : Jardim Electrico1972 - David Bowie: The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars1973 - The Stooges: Raw Power1974 - Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic1975 - Steely Dan: Katy Lied1976 - Boston: Boston1977 - Talking Heads: Talking Heads '77 (sorry Punk Rock)1978 - Devo: Q: Are we not men? A: We are Devo!1979 - Talking Heads: Fear Of Music1980

The Kids Are Alright: CS Enrollment Way Down at US Universities

2008-07-29T17:50:00.000-07:00

As I said a couple of weeks ago (or months ago, maybe), while talking about how wonderful Python is, I wouldn't really recommend Java to American programmers, particularly young ones, since Java programming jobs are so easily outsourced.In the article 'The 'Anti-Java' Professor and The Jobless Programmers" (lamest Disney movie EVAR), Robert Dewar talks about the concurrent trends of increasingly

Crowd-Sourced Comedy: The American Family Association Boycotts McDonald's for being too nice to gays, or something.

2008-07-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

McDonald's recently drew the wrath of the American Family Association after making an announcement that they'd joing the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. From the 'Boycott McDonald's' website:According to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner, McDonald's will aggressively promote the homosexual agenda. In remarks on McDonald's Web site concerning the company becoming a member of the National

The Northern Hemisphere is totally kicking the Southern Hemisphere's Ass in the Programming Language Department

2008-07-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Check it.Australian techies remain neither abashed nor humbled.Leaving out Ruby (Japan) was a pretty big oversight, though, I have to say.

LinkedIn Shows Us How Right Chris Rock's Mom Was

2008-07-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, my mother would never give money to a white bum. She'd take one look at him and say, "No reason for that." -Chris RockWhen I was 29, I was a bundle of nerves, having just made the worst move of my career up to that point (and since). Motivated as much by personality conflicts and enmity toward a certain individual as for any other reason, I left an otherwise OK position with

Blogging About Twitter Is Like Swimming About Bathing

2008-06-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

It took me a long time, but I've finally got into Freebase. No, not that freebase, actually I mean Freebase, 'an open, shared database of the world's knowledge.' It's shares similarities with wikipedia and Google Base. What's cool about it (to me) is the query language. Would you like to give your daughter some examples of powerful women? Show her a list of Female CEOs of Public Companies in

Oh yeah. I forgot to include the proof.

2008-06-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

Re: a couple entries ago, the one where I engaged in EWD worship, I mentioned a nifty proof in his essay but left it out. It's a cool proof because: 1) it requires no knowledge of math 2) it requires no knowledge of chess 3) it makes his point about looking at a set as a whole rather than bit by bit. To recap, say you remove the 2 squares on opposite corners of a chess board. Prove you can't

Battle of the Bands: Backyardigans vs. Vampire Weekend

2008-06-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

As a parent of a now 4 1/2 year old, I occasionally write about matters of interest to parents. This week we discuss the very important matter of music for kids. Many then-new parents were driven insane by the musical stylings of Barney the purple dinosaur in the 1990s. Making music that appeals to the very young without driving parents to suicide or merely to the ill-advised actions

Statistics tells us what this blog is about

2008-05-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hidden in the Google App Engine App Gallery among the me-too twitter-based apps and variants on 'save something so I can read it later' (I use Firefox plug-in Readeroo) is the glamorously named app 'Statistically Improbable Phrases'. Give it a URL, play with some sliders, and you're rewarded for your minutes of effort with a nifty tagcloud:It seems a pretty accurate representation of what this

Radical Novelty - Edsger Dijkstra and what might have been

2008-05-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

Edsger Dijkstra is known for his many contributions to computer science, including but not limited to the algorithm named after him, structured programming, and the shunting yard algorithm. He's also famous for his ninny-eviscerating essays like 'Go To Statement Considered Harmful' (1968) and 1975's even more wonderfully titled 'How Do We Tell The Truths That Hurt?' (there are likely many

OK Kid, Get Off The Couch and Learn iMovie Already

2008-04-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

Clay Shirky spoke recently about something I have pondered - the tragic waste of mental energy that's sunk into TV watching. Rather than suggest Nuremburg-type Trials for TV producers, as I did, Mr. Shirky has a much brighter and optimistic outlook, predicting a future where the people who once sat on the couch watching TV get out into the world (or onto the internet, more or less the same thing

I was in Vermont this past week

2008-04-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

(written whilst internetless)We ran into that 'Rambo' guy, he had one tooth and a bushy beard and a very sad story from 'nam - he had been told to stay in the tent that night and not go anywhere, but he disobeyed and went in search of a 'piece of tail'. When he came back - you know what's coming - everyone was gone, they had been attacked and killed (I feel bad for the gut reaction of wanting to

Recommending Free Stuff since we have that Recession going

2008-04-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

I am recommending free stuff not only because of the Recession, but also because too much of human interaction (esp. on the internet) is about 'oh hey, I bought this'. 'You bought that? Cool'. 'I'm gonna buy this other thing.' As I type this on my MacBook Pro, I realize I'm as guilty of this as anyone.The flip side (the Jedi side, the punk rock before 1991 side, the Jesus before Fallwell got

Curse you, Harper's Subscription Department, for making me think T.C. Boyle had died

2008-03-17T17:51:00.001-07:00

While I like Harper's Magazine for their short readings at the beginning (there really should be whole magazines made up of these. They are like the internet, only if it only consisted of really interesting or bizarre stuff, inverting the real internet's 1/100000 interesting to tedious ratio), the Harper's Index, and the great essays and articles by many of my favorite writers, I do not like

Effusive Python Fan Love Pt 1 - Some Early Impressions

2008-03-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

Just as Morgan Spurlock conducted an experiment where he put his health at risk by eating nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days, in 2005 I started an experiment where I put my career and sanity at risk by taking a job focusing on the use of Microsoft products. As part of that misadventure, I did some scripting with VBScript, a horribly malformed abortion that was at one point the scripting

Predatory Lenders Preying On The Fundies

2008-02-28T18:32:00.000-08:00

One of my recent obsessions is information visualization. Working in IT, yes, I'm intimately familiar with the 'an ocean of water, but not a drop to drink' phenomenon - millions of dollars of big iron type servers (or the Fisher-Price Dell variants) capturing gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes of data which can not then be pulled out in any meaningful way (except for the bytes making up employees'

With My Purchase of a MacBook I Achieve Compliance with all the White Liberal Stereotypes

2008-02-15T19:03:00.000-08:00

I have bitched and moaned here of late about the misfortunes and indignities I have suffered as a PC user and general user of Microsoft products. Raised in the somewhat cryptic and academic UNIX world, I have been looking down at Microsoft the company, their products, and their users for years (but, as a practical type, I've used the products anyway rather than be that insufferable asshole at

They were better back when they sucked: my friend the teacher learns to teach

2008-02-09T18:46:00.000-08:00

The subject of this story was born to be a teacher. He possesses all the essential character traits of a good teacher - he's extroverted, he's intelligent, he's confident but not arrogant, he's great with kids. By all accounts, today he is a wonderful middle-school science teacher, but it's oddly comforting to remember that his start was not so smooth.I witnessed (and video-taped) his first

The Main WTF moment from the Super Bowl for Me

2008-02-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

The New York Giants' Super Bowl upset over the (until then, ha ha ha) undefeated New England Patriots had a lot of people saying WTF?!, but for me the WTF moment came after the game, when some dude (Terry Bradshaw?) presented winning QB and MVP Eli Manning with the keys to a HYBRID Escalade. Awesome, a HYBRID Escalade. It caused some cognitive dissonance for me and apparently for Manning, who

Don't make my job harder - children's books with dubious messages

2008-02-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

It's a generally accepted truism that 'reading to your child is a good thing'. It's up there with brushing your teeth, not taking candy from strangers (although even this can be dangerous), and not leaving your kid in the car on a hot day while you do the grocery shopping (or the animation work for Toy Story II (true story!)). The non-parent is likely tempted to draw the conclusion that this

Lu Pi's Rule

2008-01-23T14:15:00.000-08:00

Lu Pi's rule is named after Lu Pi, who worked at the infamously corrupt Enron but cashed out before everything went to hell. At the time the film The Smartest Guys in The Room was made, he was not dead like Cliff Baxter (or, now, Ken Lay) or in jail like Jeff Skilling. He was the second-largest landowner in Colorado. Lu Pi has not cured cancer or come up with a Grand Unified Theory for Physics

Quick Chicago Report, then let's get serious next time

2008-01-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

I've been 'tweeting' over at twitter. Twitter's contribution to society is that posts are limited to 140 chars. Unfortunately, some see this as an invitation to post every 10 minutes. 'Leave a trail of genius', as the writing pad at the Marriott O'Hare said. It was perhaps one of the least intellectually stimulating places I have EVER been, but business folks do like the ego stroking.Anyhow,

The Official God F.A.Q.

2008-01-11T20:09:00.001-08:00

No need to waste time reading the hundreds of Left Behind books, or even the Bible. The answers are all right here.I kid the Left Behinders, yet find myself enjoying economic doomsayers like the Golden Jackass entirely too much (and what's not to love about the 1st generation Nintendo console animated donkey gif?). I understand the appeal of wanting the world to end soon, as apparently most

Charlie Brown Specials made in the 90s Which Were Never Aired

2007-12-18T17:36:00.001-08:00

Every year, the end of October marks the beginning of Charlie Brown special season. Starting with1966's 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown', the networks trot out both the well-known specials like the award-winning 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' and lesser-known specials like 'Lucy must be traded, Charlie Brown' and 'He's A Bully, Charlie Brown', which are used to pad out the one-hour time

2007: Favorite Shit and Least Favorite Shit

2007-12-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

This is highly unorganized, as fits my current brain state. Has this ever happened to you? 'Brain Age' only for Nintendo DS. Train your brain in minutes a day!Note, the shit mentioned within may not have been released or created in 2007, but rather was enjoyed or reviled in 2007.Favorite Shit:CD: Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass: I slept on Aes for far too long. I admit, I've listened to this a

WTF?!

2007-12-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

I especially like how he rhymed 'djlfjlkjdslkjirt' with 'Run-DMC shirt'Still processing this one.

Your One-Stop Shop for Responses to "Atheism is a religion"

2007-12-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

I have stolen these from a thread over at Doc Bushwell's:Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.Atheism is a religion the way off is a television channel.Claiming that atheism is a religion is like claiming that not smoking crack is a form of drug addiction.Atheism is a religion the way good health is a disease.Claiming that atheism is a religion is like claiming that an

I wish all Teddy Bears were named Muhammad

2007-12-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

Back in 2006, the world didn't know how to act when a firestorm erupted over some cartoons in a right-wing Danish newspaper. Currently, people are freaking out in Sudan because a teacher allowed her students to name a Teddy Bear Muhammad.In a show of solidarity w/ Ms. Gibbons (the teacher in question), and because I haven't posted a greasemonkey script for a while, below you will find a

Chris Ware delivers more body-blows of depression

2007-11-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

I read Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth a couple years ago, having seen excerpts in various cities' alternative weeklies. It was a thing of beauty, very well done, dense and deep, but also profoundly sad, being full of parental abandonment and alienation and so on. Somehow I soldiered through. Later I read Quimby The Mouse. What the fuck was going on with the cat's head the mouse

ChatterBlocker: A Great Idea if this was 1978

2007-11-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

I read blogs like Lifehacker and others of their ilk, chock full of their Hints from Heloise, Bottom Line Personal hints for the not-yet-elderly. I profoundly, deeply, viscerally hate the sound of workplace chatter. In Indianapolis, when I was outside at lunch or the beginning/ends of days, sometimes I'd hear a train braking, and it made an extended whining sound that it seemed would never end,

For Sunday: A reading from the book of Miles Davis

2007-11-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

Open your Autobiography of Miles Davis (with Quincy Troupe) to p 380, please, for 'The Dinner at The White House with Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles'. At the table where I was sitting, a politician's wife said some silly shit about jazz, like 'Are we supporting the art form just because it's from here in this country, and is it art in it's truest form, or are we just being blase and ignoring

In which I tell people more successful than myself what to do

2007-11-04T08:35:00.000-08:00

This is a brief one:Patton Oswalt - Please license your 'I'm going to fill your hoo-ha with goof juice' routine to Gilbert Gottfried. Maybe get somebody to do an animated short with him providing the voice. Comedy Gold!Quentin Tarantino - In a future film, make sure there's a graphic torture scene where the background music is 'The Rockafella Skank' by Fatboy Slim (aka 'Right About Now, the

If you've read the title, you've pretty much read the book.

2007-10-20T15:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some great books I found while wandering about on Amazon. They seem to be geared toward people without a lot of time for reading. Today's entry is also geared toward those people. Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't (Hardcover) by Robert Spencer In his pre-teen years he won fame as the author of: My Dad can Beat Up Your Dad: My Dad Played Football in