repak shawahb

repak shawahb
ribulose biswahbphatase: enzymin' and two-timin'					^

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Here's one that'll bore you! In Debian Wheezy, xorg is now version 7.6 and xserver-xorg-core is version 1.11. With this update comes an increment to the xorg input ABI and the xorg video ABI. That's great unless you're using a binary driver that hasn't been updated to work with the ABI (NVidia legacy, I'm looking at you). In my case, I've got a Quadro FX 3000 in one of my boxes, and it still needs the 173.xx driver. What to do? My solution is a hack, plain and simple: downgrade xserver-xorg-core to 1.10 without downgrading anything else. However, you have to be a little tricky about this because otherwise apt will complain that your X install is broken. Here's what you do: Grab xserver-xorg-core_1.10.4-1ubuntu5 from the Ubuntu pool (amd64, i386) (local copies: amd64, i386). mkdir /tmp/xserver-xorg-core_1.11.4-really1.10 dpkg-deb -R xserver-xorg-core_1.10.4-1ubuntu5_.deb /tmp/xserver-xorg-core_1.11.4-really1.10 cd /tmp/xserver-xorg-core_1.11.4-really1.10/DEBIAN/ sed 's/Version: 2:1.10.4-1ubuntu5/Version: 2:1.11.4-really1.10/; s/Provides: xorg-input-abi-12, xorg-video-abi-10/Provides: xorg-input-abi-12, xorg-video-abi-10, xorg-input-abi-13, xorg-video-abi-11/;' control > control.new mv control.new control cd /tmp dpkg-deb --build xserver-xorg-core_1.11.4-really1.10 dpkg -i xserver-xorg-core_1.11.4-really1.10.deb echo xserver-xorg-core hold \| dpkg --set-selections Install the legacy driver of your choice. Enjoy. Note that we've held the package at its present version. You will need to manually undo this (or just explicitly `apt-get install xserver-xorg-core`) if you want to upgrade later. [ permalink* \| 2 comments ] Mon, 03 May 2010 newsflash: narcissism I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I'd give a little update on what's happening in my life: Some of you might have noticed that proton (this machine) melted itself into slag a couple weeks ago. Strangely, that same weekend I lost a drive from the RAID on positron, and then lost a second one after rebuilding the array! Dylan suggested, quite astutely, that the stress of rebuilding the array probably pushed the second drive over the edge on which it'd been teetering. Once I got positron back up, I was able to restore most of phonon, and some things even work better now than they did before—I hope. After some conversations with some of the gentlemen with whom I ran the T.I.G.E.R. Valley 4-man match, I decided I wanted to build myself an AR-15. My new pretty princess (picture perhaps forthcoming) comprises a Noveske SPR 18-inch upper assembly, a DSA ZM4 blemish lower (blemishes are literally invisible), a CMMG lower parts kit, Magpul MOE stock and grip, an AFG, and ladder rail covers (all in Foliage), a Viking Tactics sling (padded slings are for girly-men), and not one but two optics (omg how hsld): a Trijicon Accupoint 3-9x40mm mounted on top and a Primary Arms Micro Dot on a Daniel Defense offset rail. Despite two more inches of barrel and two optics, this gun is still a pound lighter than my favorite little fattie, my SIG 556 with the Leupold CQ/T. I've taken up kickboxing, studying a kind of fusion of Muay Thai and American-style kickboxing at Randy Palmer's South Austin Gym. The classes are awesome, the instructors are friendly and cool, and it's a good workout. It also comes with use of their full gym facilities, so I'm now able to bike to the gym and work and then bike back for some kickboxing in the evening—a tiring but rewarding day. (Today I'm driving on account of errands...) I'm dating a wonderful lady whom, were I given to aliases in the style of our mutual friend Seano, I would call Knightress. It seems likely that some of you will meet her and her amazingly cute 16-month-old daughter at May's wedding. That's right, I'll be fielding a biological timebomb at May's hymeneals. (I love how dirty that word sounds.) After many years of indecision (mostly with respect to what rather than whether), I got a tattoo last Saturday (pictured at right). It's a conformal mapping of the line segment `0.5+jt`, `t∈[-14.135,37.586]` through the Riemann zeta function. The fill is the result of plotting the data as an SVG path with `fill-rule="even-odd"`. The tattoo resides on my left deltoid. My artist was Ben T. Fiedler at Resurrection Tattoo; it's a great shop, and Ben is fucking awesome. Apparently all the fine circular lines make this a pretty difficult tattoo to do well, and Ben did a beautiful job. (Leave it to me to come up with a hard design, right?) I've been tearing through the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. They are fucking awesome. Banks has written up a nice essay discussing his ideas about the Culture, a galactic civilization that forms the backdrop for these novels. I also recently read City of Bones by Martha Wells thanks to Ellen's generosity in lending it; it was a good read. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Fri, 02 Apr 2010 whistlin' XP The Dell mini-10 I got about a year ago came with a ridiculously broken install of Windows XP SP3 on it. By ridiculously broken, I mean it didn't have the Windows Installer component/service/whatever installed—and you can't install Windows Installer without having it already. Great. Until now, I've completely ignored it, because I have Ubuntu on the thing and couldn't care less about running Windows on it. However, it bothers me that half the hard drive is dedicated to a broken XP install, and I really don't need a 160Gb hard drive fully dedicated to Linux on my netbook, so it's worth having something there on the off-chance I want to dual boot. No problem, install XP over again. Yeah, except that the thing has no CD-ROM drive, and I seem to remember that it didn't particularly want to boot from a USB CD-ROM last time I tried (though in retrospect I probably could have made this work; the problem was most likely related to the second bullet below). So, it was time to make an XP install USB key. This thread on GeekPolice details a decent way of doing it, but it leaves a few things out and lacks a couple steps that were specific to my computer. In particular, You have to use a USB key that is <=4Gb (possibly <=2Gb), because PeToUSB will fail on larger drives. Later versions of PeToUSB, which do work on larger drives, are also not usable because they format NTFS instead, which requires a different bootloader setup than the one this method uses. If you are doing this on something like a Mini-10 and using an older Windows XP CD, the setup process will very likely freeze right after loading all the drivers. The solution is to slipstream SP3 into your XP install before creating the USB drive from it. By default, the boot.ini created on the USB key assumes that you will install into the first partition on the hard drive. If you're not, you will need to edit the "Boot Into GUI" line in boot.ini so that it points to the proper one (i.e., if you have a BIOS partition first like most factory installs, you'll want to point it to partition 2 instead of partition 1). Obviously, afterwards you'll need another flash drive ready so you can go back and reinstall grub in the boot sector. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 23 Mar 2010 texts from last weekend Last weekend I participated in the Tiger Valley 4 Man Tactical Team Match in Waco along with a bunch of SA Goons comprising three teams. It was, in a word, awesome. Here's my writeup about the stages from the thread. A bunch of us were talking after the competition and decided that we would do post-mortem analysis of our preparation, strategy, and gear. That post is forthcoming, but first I'm going to paste the text of the stage description sheet, and comment on how they modified it because of the inclement weather. Weather Before I do that, I want to point out that the posts in the thread from ASSers thus far do not come close to properly illustrating the depths of misery we suffered on Saturday. Several points during that day were, no shit, among the most acutely unpleasant things I've withstood in my life. I'm pretty sure I have minor nerve damage in my fingertips, since they're still numb now two days later. When we got in the car to head back to the hotel, it had warmed up from the coldest point in the morning, and my car's thermometer was reading 37F. In the morning it was hanging right around freezing with steady 40kt winds and driving rain. I'm pretty sure when the TX team ran the shotgun stage the rain was freezing on the way down. Beyond all of this, while most of us had some kind of rain gear, no one had anticipated sub-freezing temperatures, so we were completely under-dressed. Combine this with the fact that we were pretty much instantly soaked through and the knee-high water we had to plunge through several times while running and while helping reset the shotgun stage and you begin to get the idea. Diver Dick was suffering from pretty serious hypothermia by the time we got back to the hotel (I hear Arcmage was, too), Ne Cede Malis probably couldn't feel his feet until some time after dinner, and Totally TWISTED was running the competition with a respectable chest cold. What I'm saying is, Team USA was a bunch of fucking troopers. Thanks for the effort, gents. Saturday night, most of us hit Wal-Mart and picked up some more gear: wind breakers, shirts, pants, footwear, et cetera. Combined with the fact that it was dry and a good ten degrees warmer (but still pretty damn windy), Sunday went much better. Stage Descriptions from the handout. The ordering was different for different teams because they had us running some in parallel; I'm just copying the one on the sheet. Stage #1 - Crazy Indians Teams will start on the 200 yard line with unloaded long guns and pistols. On the timer, teams will load and engage target of their choice (1) BOBBER 5 points each hit (1) STOP AND GO 10 points each hit (1) WALKER 15 points each hit (1) RUNNER 20 points each hit, with 15 rounds each target [ed: I believe the word "target" here is a misprint; they meant "with 15 rounds each (shooter)"]. Targets will expose for 90 seconds, starting on the timer. Only 15 rounds will be counted on each of the 4 targets. Pretty much as described, except for my note above. The most abusive thing about this stage is that the walk to it was a bit over half a mile straight into the wind and rain. I put pretty much all my shots into (well, at, anyway) the walker, since I was confident I could hit it consistently. The runner would actually come to a stop for short periods of time when reversing direction, at which point you could take an easy 20 points; I did this once or twice. Stage #2 - Shotgun Jungle Run On the timer teams will start in the start/stop box located by the tower with unloaded shotguns and 16 rounds of shotgun ammunition. On the timer, shooters will move to the pepper popper station and load (4) rounds each (max) and engage 4 pepper poppers from fault line. Once engaged, shooters will show clear to RO's and move down trail stopping at each fault line station and engaging skeet at each of (3) fault lines, showing clear before moving out of position. Once all 4 arrays of targets are hit, time stops on the last shot. Five minutes max time. "Skeet" in this case just means clays on steel stands. As I mentioned before, the run from line to line involved several dips in knee deep water and some treacherously sharp underbrush. I found that pulling two shells out of my bandoleer while running was a reasonable strategy for speeding up reloads. The shotgun that failed Dan in the video Foghorn posted above was actually my IAC Hawk with Scattergun Tech follower and extension, and I ran precisely the same gun with no issue on this stage. As Craptacular said, the issue was with the fourth round not getting seated in the mag tube properly. After the RSO handed me the gun, I was able to clear it with a little poking and prodding, and had no further issues. Sorry my shotgun failed you, Dan... Stage #3 - Helicopter Assault All teams begin stage in the start box. Each shooter will have their rifle and one magazine staged at one of the three barricades and one in the tower. Pistols will be holstered. On the timer one shooter will enter the helicopter and engage the pistol target until hit. After hitting the steel pistol target, the shooter will holster down range and exit the same side. Once that shooter has exited the next shooter moves into the helicopter until all four have engaged the pistol target. Upon exiting the helo, the shooters, either individually or as a team, will move through the obstacles (tunnel/window/wall) to their rifle station, where they will engage a steel target with six rounds each. Once the steel is hit, they will clear, safety and ground their weapons, moving to the tower, entering through the scuttle hole. Once all team members are in the tower, one of the shooters will act as a spotter and retrieve the target notebook and call out the steel box target for the tower shooter to engage. When the shooter hits the designated steel target, the spotter will use binoculars to identify the designated colored paper target in each box then call the paper target in the opened box for the shooter to engage with one round and one round only. Once all three boxes are opened and three shots fired time will stop. Five minutes max time. Aye, there's the rub: five minutes max time. The helo/pistol part was pretty easy, and the tunnel and window obstacles not really hard, but we were having optics/sighting issues, so the steels at 100ish yards tripped us up. I'm proud of Team USA for coming up with a strategy for getting everyone over the (8-foot) wall and then executing it pretty much perfectly (we didn't get Totally TWISTED over because time ran out, but Ne Cede Malis and I were up and pulling him over when they called time). This was the first stage where it became apparent to me that part of our strategy should include a time limit per section, i.e., "if you can't get your 6 rifle hits in 30 seconds, take the penalty and move on." I believe if we'd done this properly we would have been able to finish the stage. As it turns out, only two or three of the twelve teams did so. Stage #4 - Tower Scramble Four shooters will be on the first floor of the tower. On the timer one or all shooters will engage the land mine with fire for a total of 10 seconds or until the mine explodes. Other targets cannot be engaged for 10 seconds or until mine detonates. Once mine or ten seconds have elapsed, shooters will engage other targets at their discretion. Each target must have two hits to neutralize. The "land mine" was some tannerite. This was a pretty nifty stage, and we had a sound strategy, but I made a mental error after reloading and left a couple targets for which I was responsible untouched (and a third with only one hole in it). Lesson here: be careful and methodical, and think think think. Oh, wait, did I mention the 40kt winds? We were facing straight into them from 15 feet off the ground in the tower during this stage. Keeping the rifle steady was hard work. Stage #5 - Village Assault Team will start in start box. On timer two shootrs will move to engage steel targets with rifle fire. Simultaneously, two shooters will move to recover stolen stores, first both going upstairs and engaging pistol targets, then moving back downstairs where they will recover stores and return both shooters and stores to start box. This one didn't run quite as described (pistol shooters shot from downstairs, not upstairs). The rifle shooters had to run about 100yds before engaging their targets, about 20 steel knockdown targets 100 yards out. Totally TWISTED and I did the run, and my first instinct was to run as fast as I could. Problem was, this meant when I got there I was breathing hard for a few seconds before I could start to shoot accurately. Next time, fast jog on the way out and sprint on the way back. This stage also highlighted a minor structural problem with the competition: the RSOs weren't 100% in sync on the rules for each stage. The RSO at the start box told the pistol shooters that each person had to shoot each pistol target, whereas the RSO inside the house told them one hit apiece. In the end, it didn't matter---the rifle part took much longer anyhow---but it would have been nicer to be clear on this. Stage #6 - Zombieland On timer shooters will move from the start box to shooting positions and engage all targets with head shots for a total of one round in each head. Once all head shots are made on paper, shooters will unload and show clear and move into north 1 bay and engage all steel with pistols with one hit in each head from shooting box. All Zombies must be hit before any team member can move into next bay. All steel targets must be shot with pistol and all paper must be hit with rifle. Rifles must be cleared before moving. Pistols must be holstered. Once all Zombies are hit, shooters must move back to start box. This was a pretty fun stage, and mercifully the last that we ran on Saturday (PA and TX teams ran odd/even pairs in backwards order on Saturday, so they finished on #5). Two bays with pistol targets and two with rifle, with two rounds on each rifle target and one round in the head on each pistol. Absolut_Zero and Diver Dick can doubtless talk more about this, but the berm setup for these bays was a bit... inadequate. The range was set up so that people walking to the other stage could end up walking behind the berms where this stage was running, and what I'm guessing were ricochets from the pistol steels were going over the berm and whizzing over the heads of passers-by. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Stage #7 - Rattle Battle All shooters will have 3 magazines loaded with 15 rounds each. The shooters will have 40 seconds to move from the 500 yard line to the 400 yard line where one shooter will shoot standing, one kneeling, one prone and one sitting. Shooters will have 1 minute to fire 15 rounds in their position. At the end of one minute, shooters will again have 40 seconds to move to the next firing position and repeat drill shooting on the 400, 300 and 200 yard lines. They changed this one up a bit because of the high winds on the course (and presumably to get through it faster). They ran three teams simultaneously shooting at their own targets; all shooters were prone; advances to each yardline were untimed; and 90 seconds were given instead of 60. This was the first stage we ran Sunday, and all three ASS teams ran simultaneously. I think one of the OTF guys got some footage of us doing it. Unfortunately, we were the last group to run it and for us the wind strengthened considerably compared to the first teams to shoot. Stage #8 - Hostage Rescue Shooters will start in start box at the entrance to the North bays. On timer, shooters will move and engage all targets from shooting boxes. From the shooting positions in each bay, paper will be engaged with rifle and steel with pistol. Rifles must be cleared before moving. Pistols must be holstered. Once shooters arrive at North bay three, team will split in half, two moving to shoot house bay and two engaging targets in bay three. As shooters move to the shoot house, one will breach the door and one will move into house and engage targets. Once he calls that the building is clear, other team members will help remove downed person to stop box located outside building. They changed this stage completely, and it was really not much like the above. Instead, the teams carried a 300lb dummy throughout the stage, starting with him in the start box and moving forward to each bay, setting him down and engaging targets in that bay. First two bays were pistol steels, second two bays were rifle paper. The trick on the rifle paper targets was that you had to get a head shot, and you could only have one shot on paper. Two shots on paper or a shot not in the head didn't count. After that, carry dummy back to the beginning of the stage. The hardest part here was coordinating carrying the dummy. Totally TWISTED and I took turns calling out a cadence, which worked well except that by the end I was just too fucking winded to keep yelling. The dummy's weight also shifted left to right, and there were no good handholds. The lesson I learned here was, if you can bring along something generally useful and really light like some nylon webbing and a carabiner, do so. It's worth carrying around for cases like this where you can substantially improve your ability to carry the fucking dummy. Also of note: as far as I could tell, Team USA really enjoyed the physically taxing stages. Both this one and the helo stage, despite being ass kickers, were a fun challenge. Of course, it might have been that this was the last stage we ran, and were were just thankful it was over... Stage #9 - Building Assault Shooters will be located approximately 100 yards from the first building in the start/stop box. On timer all team members will engage one steel target each for a total of four targets in gray building with rifles. Once all targets are hit shooters will unload and show clear with long guns and move to assault two story building, with two moving to the second floor and two moving into the first floor. Shooters will load only when in position. Shooters going up stairs will engage rifle targets, shooters down stairs will engage steel targets with pistol. When all targets are hit all members will unload and show clear then move back to the start/stop box. Actually, we were done when clear, they didn't make us run back to the start box. We were nervous about this stage because Diver Dick's rifle was unscoped and the irons weren't particularly well sighted, and both Totally TWISTED's and Ne Cede Malis's rifles' zeros were questionable. Additionally, they told us that shooters were not allowed to assist each other with the first four rifle targets: each shooter must engage his own. We decided that whoever shot the best on the first part would do the rifle on the second, and the other two would do pistol. It ended up being me and Ne Cede Malis on rifle after the 200 yard dash from the start box to the assault house, and there were about 20 steel knockdown targets placed 100 yards beyond the second house. A couple of them took multiple hits to down because the wind was blowing straight into their back. This was a favorite stage for us, and we completely owed the first part of it: I killed my steel on the first hit (booyah) and none of us took more than three. The RSO was actually really impressed by us here. I'm going to split out my general thoughts and other individual experiences that are non-stage-related into another post. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 16 Mar 2010 mixin fixin "To me, making a tape is like writing a letter—there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind", but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules." - High Fidelity (wr. Nick Hornby) Here's the problem: no one really uses tapes any more. Hell, no one really wants to use CD-Rs either: you just have to rip them again, or copy MP3s from them to your iPod or whatever. No, today's mixtape medium of choice is a USB stick. The problem with this is that there's just too much freaking room on a USB stick. Giving someone a dozen songs on a USB stick is... flaccid. Be generous, for Chrisake. For myself, when I run into a problem like this, I just ask: what should any reasonable engineer do? Go up a level in the hierarchy. It's time for a new kind of mixtape: the album mixtape, a mixtape of albums rather than of songs. Now, I'll be the first to admit, the album as an art form seems to be dying: pop artists just aren't good or prolific enough to make an entire album of songs, let alone a cohesive, gestalt kind of thing. At the end of the day, yes, we end up eliminating some good one-hit wonder types from consideration, but hey, if you want that you wouldn't be making an album mixtape anyway. So I set out to make my first album mixtape. My criteria: around ten albums in length; each album has to be one that I consider a really good album on its own (you don't put crappy songs on mixtapes, so...); has to have some kind of glue to it, be it smooth transitions from album to album or some kind of overarching theme (in the end, I went with the former). Fair game here would be Ari's suggestion from earlier today, viz., an album mixtape of concept albums. Anyhow, this was my raw list: Polo Club - Greenskeepers Silent Alarm - Bloc Party We Are Not Alone - Breaking Benjamin At War With the Mystics - The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips Come to Daddy - Aphex Twin Oracular Spectacular - MGMT Carnavas - Silversun Pickups The Bends - Radiohead Superunknown - Soundgarden Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age Surfer Rosa - The Pixies Mer de Noms - A Perfect Circle eMotive - A Perfect Circle Listening Tree - Tim Exile There is Nothing Left to Lose - Foo Fighters Forever Changes - Love Turn on the Bright Lights - Interpol Lateralus - Tool The Mollusk - Ween Close to the Edge - Yes Loveless - My Bloody Valentine Now, I needed to start striking stuff. First, Carnavas, while decent, isn't by itself an awesome album. Gone. Between AWWTM and Soft Bulletin, there's really no comparison; the former didn't make it. TiNLtL is a fucking great album, but it's kind of been overdone; between that and the QotSA album, I'll take the latter for novelty and musical range. Given the surviving albums, MGMT and Radiohead are starting to stick out as a bit incompatible, so they're out. Breaking Benjamin's a good band, and WANA is their best album easily, but it's also not quite right for this collection. This leaves us with a bit more than a dozen, and then it's just a matter of sorting them. It's at this stage that I ended up eliminating the last to go, viz., Lateralus, Close to the Edge, and Superunknown. All are fucking awesome, they just weren't fitting anywhere in the mix in my mind's ear. So, the final list—in order! which is important for a mix tape, even of albums: Polo Club - Greenskeepers This album starts really strong, and it's quirky and awesome throughout. C'mon, a loungey pop rendition of Slayer's "Raining Blood"? Come to Daddy - Aphex Twin Polo Club's bonus track is a kind of creepy song with lyrics including "it puts the lotion on its skin / or it gets the hose again." It segues nicely into "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WANT YOUR SOULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL". Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age While CtD starts all crazy, it ends on some pretty chill strains with "IZ-US", which always felt to me like a bus ride through a bombed out city. After that, a car starting and a faux AM radio asshole deej introducing the next song seems like a good flow. Forever Changes - Love This album starts with a folksy guitar riff, which transitions nicely from SftD's "Mosquito Song". This album is fucking great. The Soft Bulletin - The Flaming Lips After the acid-washed depression of Forever Changes, which is kind of an end-of-the-60s retrospective on what was ultimately Timothy Leary's failure to expand our minds with copious amounts of acid, the Lips' album about depression and madness, starting with the deceptively upbeat "Race for the Prize", slides right into place. The Lips' constant stream of psychedelic rock homage is a fitting coda for Forever Changes. Silent Alarm - Bloc Party Scratchy, guitar-driven rock is precisely what you need to get yourself back out of the dumps of "Waiting for a Superman [Remix]". Yeah, it's already too heavy to lift—and now it's like drinking poison and eating glass. Don't worry, though, this album sweeps you right up and takes you through "Positive Tension" and "This Modern Love" to "Compliments", which closes it out nicely and does a pretty good job of putting us in a darkish, synthy mood—just in time for Listening Tree - Tim Exile This dude is relatively unknown; I saw him open for Imogen Heap. He has some good IDM/D&B/&c riffs on here, and the mood starts and stays relatively dark throughout. I'd be hard pressed to claim that this is actually one of my favorite standalone albums, but the combination of novelty (c'mon, everyone knows you get points for stumping your listener) and mood propriety saves it. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine You might argue that I should've just skipped straight to this and dropped Tim Exile from the mix entirely. If that's your feeling, call Listening Tree the prologue to this gritty, atmospheric masterpiece. These guys were ridiculously exacting in the sound they were after—and it's just what we want here. Surfer Rosa - The Pixies Black Francis is like a kid who just kind of bangs shit together, but the result is an awesome sound. This album is probably most popular for "Where Is My Mind," but the whole thing is just freaking great. I'd go with the extended edition with an extra 9 songs on it; they're worth the listen. eMotive - A Perfect Circle What? An album of covers? Well, not quite: "Passive" was actually jointly written by Maynard and Reznor, and it shows in how awesome it is. Beyond that, there is a hauntingly awesome cover of "When The Levee Breaks" on here that by itself makes this album worth having. But at the end of the day, I like it for the "mixtape in a mixtape" aspect of it, all touched and poked by Maynard et al. And it's a damn solid album. The Mollusk - Ween This is the best album to have been made in the last 30 years. I doubt any of you agree with that statement, but that just means you're wrong. More to the point, this is my mixtape, so fuck you. We start off with a nice little intro that could transition from anywhere—"Dancing in the Show Tonight"—and immediately jump into the nautical concept of the album. "The Blarney Stone" deserves a place at your St. Patty's Day celebration, and "Ocean Man" is both fun and kid-safe. Really, the reason this album belongs last is because "She Wanted To Leave" is—and has—an amazing ending. "So go fetch a bottle of rum, dear friend, and fill up my glass to the brim, for I'm not the man I used to be, now I'm one of them." Welp, that's my album mixtape. Obviously I went for the continuity aspect over the single-concept one, but I'd submit that both are reasonable, as are many other approaches. Now it's your turn: make me an album mixtape. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 31 Dec 2009 after week 16 Note that Indy's dive throws things off a little bit in terms of their offensive ranking and the Jets' defensive. combined offense defense -------- ------- ------- IND 100.000 NO 100.000 NYJ 100.000 NO 91.646 SD 91.830 BAL 95.749 SD 86.626 PHI 91.822 DAL 93.576 PHI 79.168 MIN 91.079 NE 92.607 MIN 77.052 GNB 90.935 CIN 89.327 NE 75.478 IND 89.343 SF 83.683 DAL 72.214 NE 88.670 DEN 79.886 CIN 70.993 NYG 88.260 IND 78.597 GNB 70.450 BAL 83.602 CAR 72.561 ARI 69.379 ARI 82.140 GNB 71.179 NYJ 59.995 HOU 81.507 ARI 69.409 BAL 59.619 ATL 81.006 ATL 67.241 ATL 56.848 MIA 80.614 PIT 66.943 HOU 56.649 PIT 79.647 WAS 66.417 DEN 56.223 TEN 79.430 SD 66.388 NYG 55.115 DAL 78.356 MIN 65.096 PIT 54.285 NYJ 75.029 PHI 65.050 SF 49.062 CIN 74.061 HOU 65.034 MIA 47.653 DEN 73.744 BUF 63.172 CAR 46.999 SF 72.777 NO 58.624 TEN 46.016 CAR 72.133 CHI 51.396 JAC 43.203 CHI 70.997 MIA 48.238 CHI 37.677 JAC 68.853 CLE 46.066 SEA 29.773 SEA 66.965 OAK 45.890 BUF 28.588 KC 65.263 JAC 45.735 OAK 25.806 WAS 63.496 TB 42.616 WAS 22.032 DET 62.662 SEA 41.756 CLE 20.077 TB 62.391 NYG 41.546 TB 15.091 BUF 60.792 TEN 38.025 KC 15.030 CLE 58.612 STL 31.421 DET 6.833 OAK 52.066 KC 31.306 STL 0.000 STL 47.825 DET 14.704 [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 01 Dec 2009 return to power In case you're wondering, Combined Offense Defense --------------- --------------- --------------- IND 100.000 NO 100.000 CIN 100.000 NO 96.530 MIN 90.914 IND 99.404 MIN 85.854 SD 87.094 BAL 99.154 SD 73.787 NE 86.272 DAL 97.433 CIN 71.224 IND 85.064 DEN 96.653 DAL 70.499 PHI 83.040 NYJ 94.711 NE 66.515 GNB 82.737 NE 90.838 ARI 63.300 ATL 79.940 SF 85.635 DEN 60.719 NYG 79.766 WAS 85.147 PHI 60.670 HOU 77.754 PIT 84.737 GNB 60.126 ARI 77.707 MIN 84.661 BAL 54.662 BAL 77.599 GNB 79.654 ATL 52.455 MIA 77.559 ARI 77.114 PIT 52.065 DAL 75.316 NO 75.706 NYG 51.601 PIT 75.068 SD 74.312 JAC 47.213 CIN 71.825 PHI 73.979 NYJ 45.441 TEN 71.411 BUF 68.004 HOU 43.562 NYJ 70.387 ATL 66.263 SF 43.479 SF 70.307 HOU 65.208 MIA 42.014 SEA 68.625 SEA 63.467 TEN 38.591 CHI 67.272 CAR 61.805 SEA 32.860 JAC 64.340 NYG 61.136 CHI 29.897 DEN 64.291 OAK 59.830 CAR 27.723 CAR 64.230 CHI 59.151 BUF 27.607 DET 62.873 JAC 56.308 KC 18.676 KC 61.394 MIA 53.770 WAS 17.154 TB 60.568 KC 49.372 OAK 15.546 BUF 60.357 CLE 48.835 DET 9.777 WAS 56.923 TEN 45.520 STL 1.305 STL 46.451 STL 44.678 TB 1.101 CLE 44.257 TB 37.409 CLE 0.000 OAK 42.602 DET 25.697 [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 27 Oct 2009 motivation Based on management's favorite catchphrase: [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sat, 19 Sep 2009 now with squid bits! Your brain cannot repel entertainment of this magnitude! TriHs r465 adds a major feature: two player mode! True to my word, I've added in the "asshole button" for each player: swap your opponent's next piece for a random one. I don't know yet whether it's a useful addition or not, but at the very least simple strategies like denying them the I or giving them a neverending stream of S and Z are probably annoying enough to get you punched in the face. I've also added shadow mode, even though I think it's totally cheese. By default it's off, but you can activate it with `<Ctrl>-s`. The other somewhat major change I made was breaking the drawing module out of Main. This is a logical partitioning of functionality, and probably makes it a bit easier to swap out Cairo for, e.g., OpenGL. Not that I have any plans to do this, but perhaps someone else will be adventurous. (Hippo, I'm looking in your direction.) Update: r466 corrects the previous loss condition to bring it in line with the official rules. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 15 Sep 2009 damnit Jim Because Jim is such a nitpicking bastard, and after reading the Wikipedia page, I have an update for you. (Seriously, thanks for the feedback, Jim.) r460 has the following changes: CW and CCW keybindings (that you might hate, depending on your keyboard; just fix it if you don't like mine) Instant (hard) drop Hard drop on the final "down" press (or just wait for the soft drop as before) Updated scoring system so that it rewards multiples a bit more Changed the color scheme to match The New Tetris. a README file! As I add minor updates, I'll just post them here. (Major ones will go in their own entry.) Here's a summary of every version I've posted so far: r457 - first release r458 - added Makefile r460 - fix detailed above r461 - fixed an erroneous return value from the keyboard handler that was really harmless r462 - took focus off the Quit button so that space bar doesn't cause the program to exit r465 - see 2009091901 r466 - fixed loss condition to bring it in line with the official rules [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 14 Sep 2009 the (not) long awaited... ...is here! You'll need `Graphics.UI.Gtk` (a.k.a. Gtk2Hs), `Graphics.Rendering.Cairo` (also part of Gtk2Hs, but sometimes distributed separately), and `Control.Concurrent` (I use an `MVar` for game state in case I want to do something crazy later). For now, this is just a normal tetris game. Ctrl-R restarts, Ctrl-Q (or Alt-Q, or the Quit button) quits. Enjoy. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] I don't wanna sound like an Egyptian or nothin' ...but I really like libcairo. Over the weekend I wrote a Tetris-like game using cairo via Haskell's Gtk2Hs bindings. I have one more obvious bug to fix before I release the source, so I'll probably post tonight once it's fixed. After that, I'm going to implement a bastard function, then scale it out to two players and allow each player to choose the other's next piece if they want. Obviously we'll need a computer opponent mode as well... (If you're wondering, I'm hovering around 300 lines of code, but that's a bit on the high side because I went for readability over smallest LoC, and I basically wrote a library of game state transforms and collision predicates and didn't use all of them.) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 12 Aug 2009 a little diversion On the road trip I started working on an implementation of Set. To make it slightly easier to play I've given it a shitty CGI UI. It works well enough, I guess. Here's the source (in Haskell, of course). Oh yeah, also, here's the latest tarball of the crap I hacked up at DefCon for keyboard acoustic eavesdropping. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 16 Jul 2009 end of an era; stroker and ~~hoop~~disk The world is a different place. Last night, after a trip to Fry's, I replaced the last proud vestiges of positron Mk. III, the IBM Ultrastar DNES-318350 U2W SCSI boot drive (a whopping 18.2 Gb!). Not that it died, or anything; it's still running great, and I'm keeping it as a cold backup of my boot drive. The reason I replaced it is that the SCSI controller was unhappy when I put the computer into ACPI S3 (suspend-to-RAM), or more specifically when the computer resumed operation: it would timeout for almost a minute before doing a bus reset, and I was concerned that this could cause problems with filesystem consistency. Since I'm running XFS, I'm not taking any chances—as far as I can tell, it's somewhat less robust against corruption than EXT3. The replacement drive is a 500 Gb Hitachi Deskstar, née IBM Deathstar. These days the Hitachis have a better reputation and a 5 year warranty, plus I have my trusty old Ultrastar in case something goes wrong. Because I don't need much space on the boot partition, I decided to short stroke the drive for a bit better seek performance and thus faster boots. Basically, I made a 30Gb partition at the beginning of the disk, and left the rest to other partitions. Since the partition is small, the average seek time within the partition is much shorter than the average over the whole disk. The rest of the drive I devoted to a swap partition (kind of a waste, but whatever) and—horrors!—a Windows partition. I haven't run windows on positron since late 1998, which means I broke an even longer standing tradition than my 10 year old SCSI drive by installing it last night. I doubt I'll boot it at all until I start playing some fancy computer game that isn't happy enough on my T61, but it feels really wierd to see Windows booting. Also, even with a "fully updated" XP SP3 install CD, the install took longer and required more intervention (during and post install when it hadn't gotten my drivers right) than the last Ubuntu install I did (I'm not going to say it was harder than a debian install would be for the average person, but it was certainly more painful for me (in a "guilty conscience" kind of way, really)). I guess most people never install Windows since they just throw away their computer when it becomes too full of viruses, but it's nice to see just how good Ubuntu et al have gotten, especially when reflecting on the computer on whose earliest versions I ran a 1.0.2x kernel. (OK, there is nothing left of that machine but the name, but what's good enough for Theseus is good enough for me.) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 11 Jul 2009 dude I got a dell Since I'm going to be doing a bunch of travelling this summer, I decided I wanted a really portable computer. Now, netbooks are all the rage, but I abhor low res screens, and most of them are a paltry 1024x600—utter shit—so I couldn't really get one of those, right? Well... In the last couple months a new generation of netbooks has become available with higher resolution screens (1366x768) at reasonable prices. (There's also the awesome but stupidly expensive Sony Vaio P with the 1600x768 screen in 9", but I'm not shelling out for that.) At first I dismissed these as lacking, but then I considered that my 14" Thinkpad T30 is ugly but tolerable at 1024x768, so a 1366x768 screen in 10" probably would look pretty nice. Moreover, given that the T30 was previously my best option for travel, I'm going strictly upwards in res, portability, battery life, and modern niceities like USB2. Computing power might be a very small step back from a 1.8 GHz P4-M to a 1.6 GHz Atom Z530, but it's probably not more than 20% or so—plenty for a little travel laptop! Of the available models, I was most intrigued by the Dell Mini-10 and the Acer AO751h, which are more or less identical. The deciding factor was that I was able to get a refurbished Mini-10 for $330, whereas new both are about $450. Refurbs also have the virtue of shipping really quickly. The only wart in hardware support is that the Intel GMA-500 video driver is kind of a mess and only readily available under Ubuntu (but it does work for 2d and 3d basically right out of the box). Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is better than anything RedHat based, but certain pieces of its not-Debianness are annoying as shit. At the end of the day, as long as I can run some combination of fvwm and xmonad (depending on my mood) and `apt-get install` still works, I'm more or less happy. Anyhow, for $330 it really can't be beat, and I'm very happy with it so far. Of course, I'll post updates as events warrant. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Fri, 10 Jul 2009 delay this My Thinkpad T30 had a longtime issue where it would delay for 30 seconds after loading the network card on every boot. I never bothered to debug it until last night, which really makes no sense because I've now got a T61 and (very soon now) a Dell Mini-10 which together obviate the T30 entirely; nevertheless, I'm loyal to this little machine because it's still pretty great. The issue started after a `dist-upgrade` several months (or more) ago, so I was thinking it was either the new kernel or maybe udev. After following a couple dead end leads (mostly regarding problems with the Cisco Aironet 802.11 card), I found a couple discussions about udev trying to rename the network cards but getting confused about the dual nature of the Aironet device (i.e., wlan0 and wmaster) and trying to just wait it out. The solution is simple: `rm /etc/udev/rules.d/persistent-net.rules` to clear out stale entries from earlier versions of udev. Note that since I use ifrename I don't care about having persistent network interface names assigned by udev. If you do, your solution may involve deleting this file and then editing the newly created one after a reboot so that your network cards are assigned the right names. More discussion on this: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=465775 http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg591832.html http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=465775 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udev/+bug/183968 http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs/2007-09/msg03556.html Hopefully someone will find this useful. [ permalink* \| 1 comment ] Mon, 15 Jun 2009 wrap this rlwrap is awesome. It takes any commandline tool and makes it behave like it uses GNU readline. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 14 Jun 2009 yay!(cd) or, Yet Another Y-Combinator Derivation In the `comp.lang.ml` FAQ one of the questions asks about the Y-combinator; the answer is provided without derivation or explanation of the subtle `datatype` backflip you need to use. So we'll derive it together here. We've all seen the standard Y-combinator derivation in Scheme, right? Y is a fixed-point combinator which represents, in effect, the distilled essence of recursion. To sketch Gabriel's argument (in Scheme first), we start with an example recursive function—factorial, of course: (define fact (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (fact (- n 1)))))) > (fact 5) 120 > Now, what we want to do is define `fact` without using `fact`—so what if we change it so that we can pass the function in that we'll call recursively? (define f (lambda (fz n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (fz fz (- n 1)))))) But what function do we pass in as `fz`? `f` itself, of course—it'll happily keep passing itself all the way down to the base case, and what we get out is factorial. > (f f 5) 120 > Now, for reasons which will become clear in a second here, we will curry this function, i.e., turn one function of two arguments into two nested functions taking one argument each: (define ff (lambda (fz) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n ((fz fz) (- n 1))))))) > ((ff ff) 5) 120 > See? Basically the same thing, but now ff takes one argument—another function—and returns a function that takes a number and returns its factorial. But we're not done yet: we started with `(fact n)` and now we have `((ff ff) 5)`. Well, let's start by fixing the recursive call, recognizing that we can hide the `(fz fz)` inside `lambda`: (define ff (lambda (fz) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n ((lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)) (- n 1))))))) Well, that lambda in there is ugly, but we can always just pull it out and then pass it in via a variable: (define ff (lambda (fz) ((lambda (z) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (z (- n 1)))))) (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n))))) > ((ff ff) 5) 120 > It doesn't look like we're getting any better in terms of recovering the original `(fact 5)` syntax, but I assure you we're getting closer. Recognize that we could recover the original behavior by just defining a new function `fff` like this: (define fff (lambda (n) ((ff ff) n))) Yup, we've seen this trick before. But let's expand out the `(ff ff)` so we can do just one definition: (define fff ((lambda (fz) ((lambda (z) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (z (- n 1)))))) (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)))) (lambda (fz) ((lambda (z) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (z (- n 1)))))) (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)))))) > (fff 5) 120 > And we've done it. Nothing but arithmetic operations and passed-in function names for defining a recursive operation. But we can generalize this by realizing that we can separate out the "guts" of factorial relatively easily: (define Fguts (lambda (z) (lambda (n) (if (= n 0) 1 (* n (z (- n 1))))))) This is a function that requires us to pass in the recursive continuation, so it is not itself recursive, and even better, now that we've defined it we can pull `Fguts` out of `fff` and make it somewhat prettier: (define f3 ((lambda (fz) (Fguts (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)))) (lambda (fz) (Fguts (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)))))) This is identical to fff, but we've folded the mess into Fguts. Note that we are still using `(lambda (n) ((fz fz) n))` just as before—because this was really the first glimmer of the prize. Consider adding one more layer of `lambda` where we completely generalize by passing in `Fguts` or any other "guts"-style function: (define Y (lambda (X) ((lambda (fz) (X (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n)))) (lambda (fz) (X (lambda (n) ((fz fz) n))))))) And we've arrived at the applicative-order Y-combinator. Taa daaaaaaa! > ((Y Fguts) 5) 120 > So could we do the same thing in Standard ML? Well... kind of. The type system gets kind of bitchy if we try to follow exactly the same derivation: - fun f fz 0 = 1 = \| f fz n = (n * (fz fz (n-1))); stdIn:3.20-3.31 Error: operator is not a function [circularity] operator: 'Z in expression: fz fz Many ML programmers are unaware that there is a trick to deriving the Y-combinator in the same wy as above; we simply have to define a recursive datatype so that the type checking unification function doesn't complain about circular substitutions: datatype 'a t = T of 'a t -> 'a Now we can start at the top (almost; we'll take advantage of SML's automatic currying for now): fun ff (T fz) 0 = 1 \| ff (T fz) n = (n * (fz (T fz) (n-1))) - ff (T ff) 5; val it = 120 : int The above step is conceptually the most important and difficult in terms of getting Hindley-Milner on our side. `ff` has type `(int -> int) t -> int -> int`, meaning that we will need to keep the same `fz (T fz)` structure throughout the rest of this derivation. Without it, the type inference system will shun our circular definitions. Continuing the same argument as before, we wrap the ugly `fz (T fz)` inside a lambda, then pull it out as an argument (with a little acrobatics because we can't take advantage of automatic currying for this step): fun ff (T fz) 0 = 1 \| ff (T fz) n = (n * ((fn n => (fz (T fz) n)) (n-1))) (* now pulling the new "inner function" out ) fun ff (T fz) = ( ( fn z => ( fn 0 => 1 \| n => (n (z (n-1))) ) ) ( fn n => (fz (T fz) n) ) ) Now we're ready for fff, and ditching the `fun` syntactic sugar completely. (* fun fff n = (ff (T ff) n) ) val fff = ((fn (T fz) => ((fn z => (fn 0 => 1 \| n => (n (z (n-1))))) (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))) (T (fn (T fz) => ((fn z => (fn 0 => 1 \| n => (n * (z (n-1))))) (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))))) We're close now! Time for Fguts (returning for the sake of brevity to automatic currying) and then f3: fun Fguts z 0 = 1 \| Fguts z n = (n * (z (n - 1))) val f3 = ((fn (T fz) => (Fguts (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))) (T (fn (T fz) => (Fguts (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))))) So close we can taste it. Abstracting Fguts gives us the Y combinator once more: val Y = fn X => ((fn (T fz) => (X (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))) (T (fn (T fz) => (X (fn n => (fz (T fz) n)))))) Thus sayeth the interpreter: val Y = fn : (('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b - (Y Fguts); val it = fn : int -> int - (Y Fguts) 5; val it = 120 : int By the way, there is a ridiculously simple way to define precisely the same Y-combinator in SML: fun Y f n = f (Y f) n (* or, using the built in compose operator "o" ) fun Y f n = (f o Y) f n Of course, both of these "cheat" because they're explicitly recursive. [ permalink* \| 1 comment ] Mon, 08 Jun 2009 formalism paradox In perusing the veritable cornucopia of languages mentioned in my previous post (and others), I've noticed a curious pattern: languages with formal standards are, strangely enough, the ones most likely to have several competing, somewhat incompatible implementations. Languages like Standard ML, Common Lisp, Haskell, Scheme, and C are all standards-based, and yet their respective compiler/interpreter implementations have various incompatibilities. Conversely, Perl and OCaml, whose featuresets are basically defined by their implementations, have essentially one version each (OCaml has VM versus native compilation, but with common maintainers). Now, having multiple competing implementations certainly has its upsides, and I'm in no way arguing that it's bad to have a formal standard. It is really weird to consider, though: having a standard naturally encourages multiple implementations, which are almost certainly going to have at least some inconsistencies. By eschewing formal standards and adopting the perl "descriptive" (versus authoritative) documentation model, you virtually guarantee interoperability. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] postpartum bliss The chip taped out last Thursday; Friday I did some final cleanup stuff, and now I'm off until Friday. So now I'm just hanging out doing nothing. Not really nothing. I might go out and buy inFAMOUS at some point—the demo is freaking badass and you should stop reading this and play it immediately—but right now I'm busy. With what, you'll ask? Learning me some new programming languages. Yeah, plural—Standard ML right now, but I also plan to learn some subset of [Haskell, Erlang, OCaml]. In fact, Joe Armstrong's Programming Erlang is sitting right next to me on the couch because the nice mail lady just dropped it off; first impression is that it's a very decent deal at $25. The forthcoming Erlang Programming book from O'Reilly may also be good, but Armstrong seems to be universally loved, so I'm not going to argue. The SML book I'm reading right now is one available online, Programming in Standard ML by Robert Harper. It's well written and gets you going. I burned through 10 chapters of it in a couple hours yesterday, and I've been playing around with what I've learned so far to help the syntax set in. So far, my impressions are that type inference is an astoundingly cool idea, and while SML/NJ is friendly inasmuch as it has a REPL, MLton produces code that runs substantially faster. Identical implementations of Rabin-Miller (modulo the differences in library calls) yielded a 3500x (yes, ~3.55 orders of magnitude) difference in speed. I'm pretty sure this implies that my implementation is crap and MLton is optimizing away my painful scribblings. Also with regard to SML/NJ versus MLton, the build sequence for the former is more annoying than for the latter—but that's what makefiles are for, so it's hardly worth mentioning (though the documentation on the build process is admittedly somewhat annoying). Anyway, also on the menu for SML are UNIX System Programming with Standard ML (free online) and ML for the Working Programmer (can be had for like $12 used on Amazon). The MLton.org wiki's Standard ML page and the SML/NJ literature page also list some more resources, and the SML sourceforge project has good SML basis library documentation. For OCaml, the official user's manual is free, very complete, and is well regarded. There is also Introduction to Objective Caml by Jason Hickey, which despite being distributed from the Caltech website comes with ominous redistribution warnings. Apparently Practical OCaml by Joshua B. Smith is fucking terrible, so I'm not even bothering to link it. On the other hand, OCaml for Scientists seems well regarded. You can find it in DjVu format from a few pirate websites, but please buy the book if it's any good—or steal it brazenly if it's bad, I guess. Wikipedia lists a few online tutorials in the "External links" section of the OCaml article. Among Haskell books, the best received seems to be the newish one by O'Reilly, Real World Haskell. You can read the whole thing online and perhaps even get lost in the paragraph-by-paragraph comments. I don't know enough about other resources to make specific recommendations, but the Haskell Wiki's Learning Haskell page has a bunch. While I'm nerding on programming languages, I gave F# a spin under mono and, impressively, it works. It's pretty trippy to see this pop up in an xterm: [kwantam@muon ~/Desktop/FSharp-1.9.6.16/bin]$ mono ./fsi.exe Microsoft F# Interactive, (c) Microsoft Corporation, All Rights Reserved F# Version 1.9.6.16, compiling for .NET Framework Version v2.0.50727 Please send bug reports to fsbugs@microsoft.com For help type #help;; > _ Brings me back to my old QBasic days. Speaking of which, apparently the FreeBasic project is pretty badass. I say this just in case you're missing `nibbles` or `gorillas`. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Sat, 30 May 2009 mouserx My old work mouse, a borrowed-ish MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0A, had this odd habit of causing X to crash every once in a while. I don't know how this is possible, I only know that it had to do with the scroll wheel and it was very hard to reproduce. (OK, I can't say 100% for sure that it was actually the mouse, but the frequency of crashing with the same usage model dropped to zero abruptly after switching, which is good enough for me until I find a counterexample.) It may be that the thing is dying and somehow exposing a flaw in the xorg evdev driver. All of that is beside the point. I went out and bought a new mouse, which was a frustratingly difficult task: apparently everyone likes their mouse wheel to feel like rotting fruit, whereas I want positive, LOUD clicks like the nearly unused Logitech bottom-of-the-line optical mouse connected to positron. Aside: I really ought to do something other than VGA mode on a text console considering I spent the $80 on an 8800GT when I rebuilt positron last year, right? Oh well. So, because I wasn't particularly happy with any of the scroll wheels, but because I did still want a new mouse for work, I bought a $10 GearHead LM6000U laser mouse—if I can't be happy, at least I can be cheap. Laser mice, as far as I can tell, all use much higher resolution imagers than their diode-equipped optical siblings. As a result, when I move my mouse an inch, my optical mouse registers a 400-pixel movement, but the laser sees 1600 pixels go by. This is great, except that my fine motor skills haven't magically improved by 4x just because I spent a Hamilton at Fry's. So just turn down the mouse sensitivity, right? Well, kind of... X has an interesting way of doing mouse sensitivity. Basically, you say `xset m <accel> <thresh>`, and when your mouse moves more than `thresh` pixels in a "short period of time" (probably one or two mouse refresh intervals, but I'm too lazy to find out for sure), the movement rate is multiplied by `accel`. But what if you want to slow down the pointer instead? Well, `accel` can be a fraction (yes, you specify a fraction, not a float), and `thresh` can be set to 1, and then all mouse movements end up slower. But then you lose the whole long distance movement acceleration thing which is really the point of this setting. Well, now that we know that, we have to look a little more closely at the way X interacts with the mouse driver. In most modern implementations, e.g., default Debian behavior, X gets input device information from `hald` via the `evdev` module and sets up your pointers, ignoring any `InputDevice` sections in xorg.conf. While this is all soft and friendly, `evdev` is still a bit sparse in terms of configurability. The other option is to use the traditional `mouse` module, wherein you can specify mouse resolution and, more importantly, mouse sensitivity. To convince X to do this, however, you first have to tell it to ignore `hald`-detected devices, like so: Section "ServerFlags" Option "AllowEmptyInput" "false" Option "AutoAddDevices" "false" Option "AutoEnableDevices" "false" EndSection `AllowEmptyInput` disables the `kbd` and `mouse` drivers; `AutoAddDevices` is the setting that tells X to talk to `hald`. You don't actually need the third line; I just put it in there out of spite. You can see more about all of these options in the xorg.conf(5) manpage. Now that X isn't autoconfiguring your mouse and keyboard, you're going to have to specify them manually... but you can handle that. The point for us is to enable the use of the `mouse` driver in an `InputDevice` section pointing to our nifty high-resolution mouse so that we can take advantage of that driver's greater configurability: Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "CorePointer" Option "Resolution" "1600" Option "Sensitivity" "0.25" Option "Protocol" "Auto" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Now our nifty mouse is running at its maximum resolution, but we're scaling down the movements by a factor of four so it feels the same as the old mouse. This means that there are 4x the number of mapped mouse motion pixels in the same distance across the screen, i.e., you have higher precision control over your mouse pointer by a factor of 4 (no claims here about the practical limit of such things... if you don't think you need this, why did you bother buying a laser mouse?). It also means that we can go back to our friend `xset` and use the long distance accelerator function. One caveat (this one bit me!): you cannot have two different pointer devices set at two different sensitivities. Don't complain to me, that's how xorg works. If you have multiple pointing devices, the highest (numerically greatest) sensitivity setting provided will be used, meaning if you have another mouse and have forgotten to set the sensitivity option in its `InputDevice` section, the above snippet will seem not to work because the default sensitivity is 1.0. Another comment: for various reasons (basically I want firefox to work correctly), I run gnome-settings-daemon even though I use `fvwm2` and abhor desktop environments. If you use a desktop environment like gnome or KDE, it will very likely override your `xset` settings with the settings from whatever crappy mouse config applet you use. If you don't want this to happen, at least in gnome, you can use `gconf-editor` to set `desktop / gnome / peripherals / mouse / motion_acceleration` and `desktop / gnome / peripherals / mouse / motion_threshold` to -1; this will apparently prevent gnome from screwing with your settings. Then, of course, just call xset at login from your .xsession (or whatever you call it) file. Or just use your crapplet to set it up and get off my lawn. (Lest you point and laugh at my `fvwm2` use: come back and talk to me when your windowmanager's configuration file is written in a turing-complete scripting language.) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 18 Apr 2009 whitespace Nazis must die How am I the only person who sees how retarded Python is? It is, no lie, the worst programming language ever created. Seriously. This is a language for which scripts can go from working to completely broken because your text editor converted tabs to spaces or vice-versa. I can email a working script to you and have it arrive broken. Newsflash: no one bothers to preserve whitespace because you can't fucking see it. Differentiating between a tab and seven spaces makes you retarded. If you program in Python and like it, you are dead to me. If I see you programming in Python, I will kill you. Seriously, if you see me walking down the street while you're programming in Python you best jump right in the nearest coffin, I don't care if it's your birthday and you mama needs the coffin 'cause she's dead. [ permalink \| 8 comments ] Thu, 11 Dec 2008 shackleds' revenge Some of you might have read about this travesty of education. As a concerned resident of Austin, I did my part to help correct this injustice by writing the following letter to the AISD ombudsman: From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: ombudsman@austinisd.org Subject: Austin teacher versus Free Software Ms. Reeves, I'm writing to you today on behalf of "Aaron," the student mentioned in this article: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html To summarize: "Karen," Aaron's teacher, found him discussing and distributing copies of the Linux computer operating system, and responded by confiscating said copies and making outlandish and factually incorrect claims concerning computer software in general, Linux in particular, and the legality of distributing same. I urge you to familiarize yourself not only with the details of the article above, but with the facts concerning the Linux operating system and Free Software in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software Before I continue, I'll inform you of my qualifications and experience in this matter: I am not at all affiliated with Aaron, Ken Starks, or HeliOS Solutions; I hold a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; I write Free Software, both as hobby and at times in the past professionally; I am an avid Linux user nearly to the exclusion of all Microsoft products, personally and on behalf of my employer---I am a Senior Integrated Circuit Designer at Silicon Laboratories here in Austin; and like Aaron I have experienced oppressive ignorance at the hands of primary-school "educators." I shall not bore you by fully deconstructing Karen's claims concerning computer software. However, please note the following: - Dissemination of Linux and related software at no cost is completely legal. There are many organizations whose purpose is to package Linux in a user-friendly way and distribute it for free: http://www.debian.org http://www.ubuntu.org http://www.fedoraproject.org et alia - Most Linux-related software is distributed at no cost under a software license called the GNU General Public License, which requires distribution of human readable source code along with the software. For students who are learning about computers and programming, being able to examine and experiment upon the code underlying a piece of software is of paramount importance; thus, Linux and Free Software in general are superlative learning aids. - The claim that "no software is free" is so incorrect as to verge on frightening. Linux and related software have become pervasive to the point where they are used in everything from cellular telephones and computer networking infrastructure to video game systems and vending machines---precisely because the software and source code are available at no cost. - Karen's claim that she "tried Linux during college" is dubious; more to the point, it's apparent that if she did so, she certainly didn't learn anything from the experience! As a seasoned Linux user, the notion that Linux conveys a disadvantage is amusingly parochial (especially in light of the wide variety of applications in which it is being used). That Karen believes this is the case is evidence that she has already been surpassed in computer knowledge by her student--- and doubtless this gap will only grow as Aaron continues to use Linux. In light of the above, I strongly urge you to intervene on Aaron's behalf; moreover, if necessary I will happily testify in this matter. That your teachers are misinformed about matters beyond their ken is hardly surprising; that they would overstep so far as to discipline a student, confiscate his property, and engage in calumny as a result is inexcusable. Thank you for your time, -=rsw Bets on whether I get a response? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 25 Nov 2008 heavy irony Today I stole a book on ethics. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 05 Nov 2008 democracy rules I'm not normally a sentimental patriotic type, but spontaneous anthem choruses at 2a following an amazing and cathartic election night make me go all tingly. This is the first time I've ever embedded a YouTube video here. Slouching Towards Gamorrah, certes. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 15 Sep 2008 ultimate rickroll Last week, Jeff was out of the office on vacation. Since he'd previously pranked Ion, a few of us plotted to even the score. Stretch suggested that we take the MP3-filled 300Gb external hard drive on his desk and replace all the files with some godawful music. We settled on a slight modification of this plan: for each MP3, I took the first 5 seconds of the real song and pasted it onto the front of one of a selection of songs, including "Ventolin"—Aphex Twin "Heut' Ist Mein Tag"—Blümchen "Rollerskate Date"—Group X "Party 4u (Holy Nite Mix)"—Cranky "Call On Me"—Eric Prydz "Dragostea din tei"—O-zone (a.k.a., the Numa Numa song) "Quit Playing Games With My Heart"—Backstreet Boys "What Is Love?"—Haddaway "The Sign"—Ace of Base a few pieces of Romanian folk music provided by Ion and of course... "Never Gonna Give You Up"—Rick Astley As luck would have it, the first song Jeff chose to play had been stapled to "Never Gonna Give You Up"—a dead giveaway to him that something was very wrong. During testing, our favorite combination was "What A Wonderful World" cutting into "Heut' Ist Mein Tag". I learned a few things from this. First, most MP3 players will barf if you give them an MP3 whose samplerate (not the bitrate, the samplerate of the decoded PCM stream) changes halfway through. This includes some versions of mpg123, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and WinAmp; mpg321 seems to work fine. Second, the quelcom package is very nice, comprising commandline utilities to cut and paste together MP3s without reencoding (and WAV files, too); if qmp3cut doesn't like an MP3 file, cutmp3 probably will. Third, id3cp (from id3lib) is very useful when you want to replace every mp3 on someone's hard drive without raising too many suspicions. Finally, in retrospect putting 10-20 seconds of the original MP3 rather than 5 would probably have been a little more effective on the confusion front. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 25 Aug 2008 semilunar hiatus Or is it bilunar? Anyway... I haven't posted in a while, so here's what's new with me: About a month ago, we got a second dog! He's a Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever. His official AKC name is KD's Ten Thousand Gauss, but we call him Niko (shortened from Nikola Tesla. Get it? 1 T = 10 kG). Niko and Shockley are best friends, and while Niko will eventually be about twice Shockley's size (45 pounds versus 25), for now they're within a couple pounds of one another. To the right is a picture of him and Shocks eating. I'm turning into a soccer mom. Well... not really, but I am trading in my beloved STi for a Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDi. Apparently I have a penchant for three letter trim designators ending in "i," but this time it's not a rice rocket—it's a diesel. The wagon (similar in size to an Outback, but a little tubbier looking) will hold the pups nicely, transport too many people to ridiculous parties, and carry three or four kegs in the back, all the while getting 50 MPG. I'm picking up the car tomorrow in El Paso (the diesel wagons are ridiculously hard to find because there are only like 2000 of them being made this year, so I've heard) and I expect to get back to Austin on one tank with fuel to spare. Eat that, Prius. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 24 Jun 2008 pix plz kthx Here, you happy now? [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 16 Jun 2008 broken promise of a thousand words No pictures this time, patient readers. My apologies. Well! We finally taped out the Thursday before last, so I was off all last week catching up with things around the house. The main event was setting up irrigation for my poor parched yard, which involved lots of soaker hose for all the planters and a few impact sprinklers for the grass. I have things divided into two zones on each of the three spigots placed around my house, and as long as I only run one of the two sprinkler zones at a time the water pressure is sufficient to run soakers on the other two spigots. This strongly suggests my next project: none of the electronic timers I've found can be programmed for the odd watering schedule around here, viz., Wednesdays and Saturdays, so I'll just have to build my own. Either I'll make individual ones for each sprinkler, or I'll do a little control interface for some solenoid valves and hook it up to positron. Speaking of positron, that was the other time sink this week: positron Mk. V died a slow lingering death. A couple weeks ago I started getting random lock-ups; figuring it was a heat problem, I reduced the CPU core voltage, and this seemed to work for a while. Unfortunately, it started happening again, and the frequency of occurrences increased to the point where it wouldn't even get through a boot sequence. I swapped video cards, pulled RAM, and even swapped the processor (since I found one for $20ish), to no avail. My last effort was replacing the power supply, since I figured if I had to replace the motherboard I'd need one anyway. Fortunately, Fry's had a sale on the Antec Neopower 500 (for $65, no less!). Unfortunately, the new supply did nothing, but that just meant that I had an excuse to build positron Mk. VI. Initially I really liked the abit IP35-Pro, but decided that spending that much on a motherboard wasn't worth it unless I was actually planning on running a FSB upwards of 500 MHz. Instead, I ended up getting a DFI LanParty DK P35-T2RS, which is a reasonably priced board that's another favorite for dual and quad core overclocking. Since I'm kind of cheap, I only sprang for an Allendale E4600, which should overclock by 30% with relative ease; I figure by the end of the year quads will be even cheaper and I'll trade up. I also picked up 4 Gb of RAM (a new personal best!) and a reasonably-priced GeForce 8800 GT board (thanks for catching me up on the NVidia chipset line, Wikipedia). For now, Mk. VI will inherit Mk. V's RAID array, and yes, I'm still running Mk. III's 18 Gb IBM Wide Ultra2 SCSI drive as the boot drive. Pretty soon I'll go to a small (30ish Gb) 10k RPM SATA drive for the boot and get four 500 Gb SATAs for a new RAID5 array. Since I'm talking about positron, I think it's time for a retrospective: 1994: Pentium 133 MHz, 8 Mb RAM 1997: Pentium-MMX 233 MHz, 40 Mb RAM 1999: Dual Pentium II 450 MHz, 512 Mb RAM 2004: (July) Dual Pentium IIIs at 1 GHz replaced Mk. III's processors 2004: (October) Athlon64 3200+ (2.2 GHz), 1 Gb RAM 2008: Core2 Duo E4600 (2.4 GHz), 4 Gb RAM Just brings a tear to your eye... [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 30 May 2008 A-team pipevine dream Phew, busy! It's tapeout season, so layout is life, and life less than layout. A couple weeks ago one of the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars made his chrysalis on the frame of the porch door. I couldn't resist taking him inside and painstakingly hanging him with dental floss and tape from a piece of cardboard that I perforated and cut to fit in place of a mason jar lid. Well, last night my "hard" work paid off—he emerged! (Yes, "he," I checked the markings.) I know, this thread is worthless without pics. Sue me, my real digital camera wasn't charged and my phone has no flash, so taking pictures of him at night before letting him outside for his wings to dry wasn't happening. Second... virtual insanity. Okay, not really, but another animal! Well, two, kind of. My younger sister moved to Austin, so she's going to stay at my house at least for the time being. With her came Hank, who is now Shockley's new best friend. I'll get pictures of them playing ASAP. The other new animal was, erm, unexpected. Katherine and I talked a long time ago (before we got Shocks) about getting another cat, specifically a Turkish Van—a crazy swimming cat! Of course, we decided to get Shockley instead, so that never materialized. Well, a few days ago I was just randomly browsing through the Town Lake Animal Center website and was astounded to see that someone had turned in a Turkish Van! It turns out that her elderly owner had died and passed the cat to one of her children. Unfortunately, they didn't want the cat because the kids were allergic, so they brought it to the shelter. Well, I figured I'd just go down and see this cat, mostly to meet one in person lest I decide in the future to get one. Upon further inquiry, it turned out that she'd already been there a month with absolutely no interested visitors (it's kitten season; everyone's going for a baby), and she was sad and emaciated. Long story short, she was super friendly and polydactylic (6 toes all around) and I'm a huge sucker. Oh yeah, and TLAC has to kill about 70% of the animals that end up there due to over-crowding. We decided to name her Inara because the breed is from a region of Turkey that was ruled by the Hittites at one point. Also because we're nerds, Firefly is awesome, and Katherine insisted that Mnemosyne was too clumsy. I'll have more pictures up later; for now, here's her shelter portrait: [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 21 May 2008 absentee blog-lord Tapeout is getting in the way of entertaining you, faithful readers. Apologies. Best of friends. Ninja cat hides in bush. Why do they have to do it on my porch? I've got a bunch of Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars in the yard. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 23 Apr 2008 hey Hillary [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 16 Apr 2008 T + 12 weeks See, he can stand up: "I know kung fu." "Show me." pwned [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 30 Mar 2008 weekend update New pictures of the little one: Loving that pig's ear. Tired after herding the soccer ball. What? I ain't sayin' nothin'. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Mon, 24 Mar 2008 puppy update I got the puppy Saturday as planned; he's adorable and very smart. In the end the names came down to Shockley or Tycho, and I decided to go with Shockley despite Katherine's preference for Tycho. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm leaning towards feeding him a raw diet because it's better for him, I have backyard space in which to feed him, and he doesn't seem altogether impressed with dry food at the moment. Meanwhile, the cats are divided in their reaction. Anya is just pissed that we brought another thing into her territory (especially at me, because I'm the one who carried him into the house). If I go near her she'll grumble audibly, and if I pick her up she'll yowl and even hiss. She's not actually all that scared of him: she walked right up to him and sniffed him before deciding he was the enemy. Dinah, on the other hand, is a bit more affectionate since we brought the dog home, presumably in a bid to keep our attention. Meanwhile, she seems like she's trying to work up the courage to play with him. My guess is they'll eventually be best buds. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 20 Mar 2008 my new best friend This Saturday I'm finally going to exercise one of the privileges of having a fenced back yard and my own house: I'm getting a puppy! That's him on the right. He's a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and is 8 weeks old today. Though I'm not 100% on the name yet, I believe the leading candidate is Shockley (especially since this has been my planned dog name for approximately forever). Other possibilities include Ampere, Faraday, Heaviside, and Rayleigh. Also, since he's Welsh, I'm considering Aneirin. Katherine has suggested Thorin (since "Corgi" is believed by some to be derived from the Welsh phrase for "dwarf dog"), Panama (imagine yelling after your dog in your best David Lee Roth impression), and Goro, but I'm not particularly partial to any of them. Obviously I'll post more pictures as soon as they're available (hopefully ones where he looks less like Tommy Chong after a bender). In the meantime, please cloud the name issue with more suggestions! [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 16 Mar 2008 can you back it up? no, no, that box... back it up After a hard drive crash scare on proton (my colo machine) earlier this week (no data lost, fortunately!), I decided it was time to get serious about regular backups. I did a bit of research and initially settled on Bacula, but because of licensing issues the Debian packages do not link to OpenSSL. This means that I can't encrypt even the handshaking, let alone the data transfer, between client (proton) and backup server (positron). After a little more searching, I found BoxBackup, a solution geared towards backing up across a WAN. It uses SSL/TLS authentication: the server has a signing key and clients must generate keys and then have them signed with the server key before they can connect. On top of that, each client has another key it uses to encrypt the data it stores on the backup server so that it's transmitted and stored securely, and clients can be sure that their data is secure even from the backup server's admins. Setup was a breeze (somewhat simpler than Bacula, though neither is particularly difficult), and while the initial 1.6Gb of data was somewhat unpleasant to transfer over my DSL connection, I expect that the incremental change data should not unduly load my network connection. Now go set up your backup server already. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 05 Mar 2008 adventures in democracy or, Precinct Captain Sam(ir) Yesterday was primary day here in Texas. Most of the time the primary results here are meaningless, but this year the Obama-Hillary race is hot and every delegate counts. Thus, I was determined to do my civic duty and vote. Early in the morning, after dropping Katherine off at her lab, I headed to the middle school near my house that served as the voting place for my precinct. Unfortunately, when I got to the head of the line, it turned out that I was still registered in a different precinct—the one I'd been in last election, a 20+ minute drive away. I determined that I'd go vote around 6:00p and wait around to take part in the caucus at 7:15p (yes, Texas has both). I arrived at the polling place around 6:30p, well in time to get in the doors (which closed at 7:00p) and vote. Since there were only three voting machines, the people who were in the voting place at 7:00p took until almost 8:00p to finish their voting. After that, we waited for over an hour before they were finished "closing the books," as they told us. Apparently some time during that hour they got scared that the 150 people waiting around to caucus would get rowdy, because 6 police officers showed up—you know, to keep the peace. Now it got interesting. The dude came out with the caucus folder and asked who the Precinct Chair was. Turns out, there was no precinct chair, at which point it became rule of the unlame—in this case, me. After appointing a Secretary pro tempore, deputizing a bunch of people to run the sign-in sheets (despite starting almost 2 hours late, we still had over 100 people caucusing!), and getting everyone organized and signed in, I explained the process of the caucus meeting to everyone and (as prescribed by procedure) called for the election of a new Chair and Secretary. Now, whereas I was pro-Obama and our temporary Secretary was pro-Clinton, the roles switched: the Chair was a Clinton campaign volunteer (who turned out to be a nice guy once he calmed down a bit) and the Secretary was pro-Obama. Such was the tone for the rest of the meeting: I worked through the sign-in sheets checking voter ID numbers, counted the votes, and computed the delegates, all with oversight from the Clinton camp. Then a Clinton person independently verified my results with oversight from an Obama supporter. Things got a little hairy because we couldn't verify the identities of two of the people who had signed in, but I moved successfully that we compute everything with and without those two votes to determine if it made a difference in how the delegates were assigned. If it did not, we resolved, we would simply count them (to avoid having to go through the process of striking votes) and proceed. Luckily, the delegates were the same by both counts. Finally, we got to the fun part: picking the 8 Obama and 5 Clinton delegates to the county caucus (plus alternates). By then we were down to fewer than 30 people, so it was really just a matter of determining who wanted to be a delegate and then convincing the rest of the people that being an alternate probably wouldn't actually entail any work. At midnight—three hours after starting the whole process—we'd finished. Who knew that dispensing democracy would remind me so much of running a Random Hall general election? For that matter, who knew Robert's Rules of Order would come in handy when arguing with anyone other than Roger Ford or JHawk? [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Fri, 29 Feb 2008 white event Tonight I was playing around with Octave et al studying the frequency content of sequences generated by a 16-bit LFSR as a function of its feedback polynomial. Using a random selection from Philip Koopman's list of feedback polynomials that produce maximal 16-bit LFSRs, I generated the corresponding sequence and plotted its FFT in Octave. What I found, effectively, is that more terms in the feedback polynomial whitens the sequence rather substantially. For example, a short feedback polynomial (0x8148) produces the following spectrum: On the other hand, the spectrum for 0xfff6 looks like this: This suggests that feedback polynomials with lots of terms are better for dithering sequences. The downside of this, of course, is that each term requires an additional XOR. Fortunately, if you use a Galois LFSR the computation delay is independent of the number of terms. In case you're curious (more or less identical to what's in the Wikipedia article): #include <stdio.h> #include <stdint.h> int main(int argc, char argv) { uint16_t poly; uint16_t lfsr = 1; uint16_t period = 0; if (argc > 1) { poly = (uint16_t) strtoul(argv[1],NULL,0); } else { poly = 0xb400; } do { lfsr = (lfsr >> 1) ^ (-(lfsr & 1) & poly); printf("%d\n",lfsr); } while** (lfsr != 1); } All the data, code, et cetera is also available. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 11 Feb 2008 coincident queuage Over the weekend I finally took the time to code up a little hack to use my AirLinkTek MediaGate MG-35 as the playback mechanism for MP3q. Basically, my solution was to keep the MP3q server running on positron, but to configure the `playwrapper.sh` script (for those of you who have jacked around with MP3q in the past, you know what I'm talking about) to connect to the MG-35 and start playback. The default MG-35 firmware has no means by which to do this, but the kind folks over at the mg-35_firmware_mods Yahoo! group have a hacked version that runs a telnet server. Naturally, I'm lazy and don't want to assemble a MIPS uClinux build toolchain, so I just had to make `playwrapper.sh` smart enough to connect, make sure that positron was mounted, and start playback via telnet. Simple! (A good bit of information about the mp3 player executable on the MG-35 was also gleaned from the mediagate wiki.) In case any of you want it, you're welcome to the whole MP3q shebang. I'm not really interested in providing tech support for it, so probably if you write to ask questions I'll just berate you for not "getting it." Or maybe just ignore you. Something like that. As for strange coincidences: my blog is configured such that it always shows the 25 most recent entries on the front page. As a result, each post bumps an old one off the bottom of the list. Strangely, the post that this one is bumping off the post from a bit over a year ago wherein I mentioned that I had found the MG-35 and was intending to make it work with MP3q. A year of good intentions later, it's quite a surprise I'm not already in hell. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Sat, 09 Feb 2008 voyage of rediscovery So it turns out that my discussion yesterday is (as you would expect) a well known one among those who build digital filters. There is even some terminology to go along with it. The representation of numbers as plus or minus a fractional power of two is effectively canonical signed digit representation, and while my algorithm doesn't explicitly guarantee canonical results, it does so implicitly by minimizing the (log-wise) error in each step. It should be obvious that CSD is more efficient than two's complement at representing numbers, since digits are ternary (0,+,-) rather than binary. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 08 Feb 2008 multiplication is hard, let's go adding I was considering this problem the other day, and while it's simple to arrive at a solution, I rather like my particular solution. Thus: Let's say that you want to implement a digital filter of the form `y[n] = Σ_m=0..N A_m⋅x[n-m] + Σ_k=1..L B_k⋅y[n-k]` such that `A_m` and `B_k` are arbitrary precision constants. An example is this 2nd order Chebyshev(1) filter: `y[n] = .0027417⋅x[n] + .0054834⋅x[n-1] + .0027417⋅x[n-2] + 1.90020⋅y[n-1] - .91970⋅y[n-2]` (this filter is the result of the octave cheby1() function). An obvious way of doing this is to build some number of multipliers and adders to compute each term. But it's also possible to do this with only an adder as long as we are allowed to take time to do it. The way we do this is by expressing the constant coefficients as sums of powers of two and then do shifts and addition on the variables. For example, `.75⋅x = x - .25⋅x = x - x>>2` .75 is obviously a contrived example, but in general how do I come up with a representation of a number as such a sum? The simplest way I can think of is to express the number in fixed point binary with a chosen precision and then use the bits as a guide. Consider computing .718282 (the fractional portion of e) to 10 bits. `.718282 ⋅ 2¹⁰ ≅ 736 = 0b101101111` Since I'm using fixed point 0.10 notation, the n^th bit from the left represents 2^-n. The bits that are 0 are effectively the missing fractional pieces, so I quickly surmise that `.718282 ≅ (1 - 1/1024) - 1/4 - 1/32` (The reason I start with (1 - 1/1024) is because 1 is not actually representable in 0.10 notation; the largest possible number is 1 - 1/1024. If you ignore this subtraction, you will be accurate to 9 bits instead of 10, so you can always just produce the result you want by computing to one more bit than necessary and dropping this correction factor.) This works great! Let's do another one, say, π/4. `π/4 ≅ .7853982 .7853982 ⋅ 2¹⁰ ≅ 804 = 0b1100100100 ∴ π/4 ≅ (1 - 1/1024) - 1/8 - 1/16 - 1/64 - 1/128 - 1/512 - 1/1024 = 1 - 1/8 - 1/16 - 1/64 - 1/128 - 1/256` Ugh! That is a helluva lot of subtractions. Why so many? Note that .7853982 is just slightly greater than .75, and thus a better way to approximate this would have been to subtract .25 and then start adding small correction factors instead of sticking strictly to subtraction. What we've uncovered is that our initial algorithm, while yielding correct results, is very suboptimal. How can we improve it? Well, in order to get to the desired accuracy in the fewest number of steps, clearly we want to take the biggest chunk possible out of the error term. This implies that we want an iterative algorithm that makes a guess, then computes the error, then approximates the error as a power of two and recomputes the approximation: `do { error = estimate - number eapprox = sign(error) ⋅ 2^{round(log2(abs(error)))} estimate = estimate - eapprox } while ( error > tolerance )` Now, running this algorithm to the same precision on π/4 yields `π/4 ≅ 1 - 1/4 + 1/32 + 1/256` I'm sure there's some way of doing this from the fixed point trickery above as well. Let's call that an exercise for the reader. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 23 Jan 2008 Maxwellian riposte A couple days ago I gave a talk at the company's technical symposium on a power converter. On one slide, I discussed the classic conundrum of energy loss in charging a capacitor. In my discussion of this, I claimed that even if I have a perfect conductor, the energy loss can be understood as having been radiated away from the circuit because of the (infinite, in the ideal case) speed at which the capacitor E fields change. A member of the audience came up to me after my talk and told me that he disagreed with my summary of the situation, and that instead one need only postulate a resistance in series with the capacitors the limit of whose value approaches zero. I replied that while that model of the circuit seemed a valid one, it did nothing to invalidate my explanation. After a bit of thinking, some digging through my old E&M textbooks, and a bit of calculation, I concluded that I was right, and was determined to prove it. Gautham and Ion suggested that I might also check if anyone had published a paper on this question, since it is such an interesting one, and lo and behold, someone had! (see links below) Here, then, is the response I wrote to the disbelieving fellow: D___ (and cc: recipients, who had a stake in at least parts of the conversation): After our discussion yesterday about the problem of cap-to-cap energy transfer, I took some time to sort out the problem and have concluded that, in essence, we are both correct (literally, the full answer is a linear combination of our claims, though with a rather dissatisfying caveat). The best treatment of the subject in the literature I've been able to find on short notice is from Mita and Boufaida: K. Mita and M. Boufaida. "Ideal capacitor circuits and energy conservation." American Journal of Physics, Volume 67, Issue 8, pp 737-739, August 1999. It's not available for free from their website, but I was able to obtain a copy (along with a note in response and a quick erratum) via the MIT Libraries: http://web.jfet.org/~kwantam/AJP000737.pdf http://web.jfet.org/~kwantam/AJP000576.pdf (quick erratum; see p. 3 of the PDF) http://web.jfet.org/~kwantam/AJP000668.pdf (beginning on p. 3 of the PDF, see comment) In brief, your solution to the problem is one possibility, mine is an alternative one, and they can be combined into a third. The solution comes down to this (and here is the disappointing caveat): in order for the question to be coherent, there _must_ be a resistance or inductive reactance in the circuit; no solution is possible otherwise (note, however, that while there is in fact energy associated with the acceleration of the electrons from one plate to the other, it does not serve to explain the energy loss). So we have two choices: (1) assume electro- and magnetoquasistatic behavior (viz., no magnetization or displacement current), in which case we insert an infinitesimal resistance in series with the capacitors and all energy is dissipated therein, or (2) instead insert an inductance into the circuit, in which case the energy is still fully accounted for, though the resultant waveforms are dependent on the inductance (i.e., the area of the enclosed loop) and its Q. A few comments on what I proposed yesterday, which amounts to the second case: First, a finite inductor Q can be explained either by resistance in the windings or by flux linkage to "the outside world." You'll note that the former is simply a generalized combination of (1) and (2), whereas the latter admits the possibility of a cap-cap loop with precisely zero resistance but which is either magnetically coupled to a parasitic loop or via a lossy medium. If we combine these ideas, we arrive at a fully generalized picture of the circuit: two capacitors, a real resistor, and an ideal transformer with a nonzero magnetizing inductance the secondary of which is terminated on a resistor. We can vary any element with impunity as long as we are careful to keep some nonzero impedance in series with the capacitors. Second, in retrospect I was too quick in agreeing to your claim that as R->0 we can always claim that all of the energy is dissipated therein. While I made some small noise about quasistatic approximations and problems with KCL/KVL, I wasn't rigorous enough in my objection. More properly stated, it is this: as R->0, we have to be careful about when KCL and KVL break down. If RCtot becomes very fast compared to l/c (l = length of the loop, c = speed of light), then the resistor no longer explains the power dissipation because at this point we can no longer neglect the inductance associated with the loop (and thus we end up with the generalized combination of (1) and (2) as stated above). So the "discontinuity" at R=0 in my explanation does not exist! Rather, the loss from the resistor is simply dominated at smaller scales by the inductance inherent in the loop. Finally, I claim that while both of us are correct, my answer is more satisfying given the way I posed the question, to wit, a perfectly lossless capacitive circuit unfettered by the restrictions of any quasistatic approximations. In this case, we cannot possibly get around the fact that the loop has some dimension associated with it (else we wouldn't have capacitors, epsilonA/l et cetera), but I can easily appeal to a "perfect conductor" (rho=0, E=0, H=0) without any restriction on the length of the wires. In a sense, inductance is just more fundamental to Maxwell's equations than resistance. Best regards, -=rsw You should note that the last PDF above also has an interesting writeup called "Fourier transform solution to the semi-infinite resistance ladder." [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 31 Dec 2007 game, set, match Here's the final regular season results from the power ranker. I survived Giants stadium, and boy was that a helluva game. Dayum. combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 IND 83.550 DAL 85.473 PIT 97.353 GNB 81.437 IND 84.660 TAM 96.165 DAL 81.025 GNB 82.420 NWE 94.391 JAC 69.791 JAC 80.393 SDG 92.502 SDG 69.429 SDG 79.457 PHI 88.679 PIT 63.344 CLE 77.873 GNB 87.723 SEA 61.201 ARI 77.778 TEN 87.319 NYG 60.911 PIT 76.488 SEA 87.184 TEN 60.020 HOU 76.419 WAS 84.996 CLE 59.480 SEA 76.101 JAC 84.807 WAS 55.929 NOR 75.835 MIN 81.655 TAM 54.309 NYG 75.481 DAL 77.984 PHI 49.444 CIN 75.443 KAN 73.306 MIN 47.786 MIN 73.434 BUF 72.526 HOU 46.584 DET 71.618 CHI 70.148 ARI 44.346 PHI 69.812 NYG 69.974 CHI 40.076 WAS 69.787 CAR 69.706 CIN 39.276 CHI 69.706 NYJ 68.327 NOR 38.512 TAM 68.463 SFO 62.909 DET 38.176 DEN 68.353 BAL 60.311 DEN 37.230 TEN 64.535 CLE 57.525 BUF 37.228 OAK 61.328 HOU 57.233 CAR 36.631 BAL 60.510 CIN 54.852 BAL 24.038 MIA 59.189 OAK 54.015 SFO 19.305 NYJ 59.021 NOR 53.580 NYJ 19.274 CAR 58.823 DEN 49.725 OAK 17.474 STL 57.956 ARI 47.336 KAN 17.081 ATL 57.815 ATL 46.960 ATL 15.204 BUF 56.295 MIA 42.650 STL 8.993 KAN 52.336 STL 41.817 MIA 0.000 SFO 50.157 DET 40.666 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 NOR 93.634 TAM 89.678 JAC 89.477 BAL 92.623 GNB 92.761 PIT 85.517 PIT 87.538 PIT 79.423 DAL 89.694 MIA 77.027 NYG 87.413 WAS 79.171 CIN 89.081 KAN 74.569 TEN 86.048 TEN 76.518 SEA 87.335 NWE 72.792 OAK 84.324 DAL 74.625 DET 86.265 DEN 69.777 SDG 82.984 PHI 72.964 ARI 86.077 OAK 69.680 PHI 82.648 JAC 72.647 HOU 85.537 JAC 68.830 DEN 81.762 IND 72.441 IND 84.744 NYJ 68.516 WAS 79.345 NYG 70.000 PHI 83.881 TEN 67.531 TAM 79.289 NWE 69.303 DEN 81.794 NYG 63.236 CAR 78.041 ARI 66.994 WAS 79.591 CAR 58.293 NWE 77.795 GNB 63.531 CLE 79.012 PHI 57.981 CLE 76.979 NOR 62.602 TAM 77.258 DAL 57.626 BUF 76.736 SEA 61.745 CHI 77.072 SDG 57.449 BAL 76.636 SDG 60.815 ATL 76.672 WAS 57.438 DAL 75.120 TAM 55.692 STL 75.370 GNB 57.400 NYJ 73.573 CAR 53.090 KAN 74.661 ARI 56.065 IND 71.723 HOU 52.057 NYG 73.790 SEA 52.650 SEA 71.206 STL 47.466 JAC 73.105 CLE 51.635 GNB 69.803 SFO 45.150 PIT 72.632 BAL 50.674 HOU 69.385 CIN 44.750 BAL 72.257 STL 48.888 MIA 69.360 CHI 42.634 MIA 72.118 SFO 47.536 CIN 68.861 CLE 42.156 NYJ 72.025 ATL 46.576 ATL 68.459 BUF 40.356 SDG 71.901 CHI 46.003 STL 68.373 ATL 35.789 TEN 69.872 HOU 42.910 ARI 67.033 KAN 33.719 CAR 66.601 CIN 41.918 SFO 66.693 DET 32.676 MIN 66.389 BUF 41.319 NOR 65.671 NYJ 28.502 BUF 65.115 NOR 33.085 DET 62.578 DEN 21.225 OAK 64.461 DET 25.667 CHI 61.161 OAK 16.510 SFO 58.124 MIN 22.427 KAN 57.096 MIA 10.130 ...and the strength of schedule computation from this week. Note that since New England has San Francisco's 1st round pick, we would have preferred the Chiefs and the Raiders to win this week, but hey, we'll take #7 overall. NWE 16- 0 120-136 (.4687) 120-120 (.5) 120-136 (.4687) 120-120 (.5) IND 13- 3 132-124 (.5156) 129-111 (.5375) 95-113 (.4567) 95-100 (.4872) DAL 13- 3 127-129 (.4961) 124-116 (.5167) 94-114 (.4519) 94-101 (.4821) GNB 13- 3 120-136 (.4687) 117-123 (.4875) 93-115 (.4471) 93-102 (.4769) JAC 11- 5 132-124 (.5156) 127-113 (.5292) 81- 95 (.4602) 81- 84 (.4909) SDG 11- 5 128-128 (.5) 123-117 (.5125) 76-100 (.4318) 76- 89 (.4606) NYG 10- 6 132-124 (.5156) 126-114 (.525) 60-100 (.375) 60- 90 (.4) TEN 10- 6 128-128 (.5) 122-118 (.5083) 70- 90 (.4375) 70- 80 (.4667) PIT 10- 6 116-140 (.4531) 110-130 (.4583) 65- 95 (.4062) 65- 85 (.4333) CLE 10- 6 110-146 (.4297) 104-136 (.4333) 55-105 (.3437) 55- 95 (.3667) SEA 10- 6 106-150 (.4141) 100-140 (.4167) 60-100 (.375) 60- 90 (.4) WAS 9- 7 142-114 (.5547) 135-105 (.5625) 66- 78 (.4583) 66- 69 (.4889) TAM 9- 7 120-136 (.4687) 113-127 (.4708) 59- 85 (.4097) 59- 76 (.437) PHI 8- 8 144-112 (.5625) 136-104 (.5667) 56- 72 (.4375) 56- 64 (.4667) HOU 8- 8 132-124 (.5156) 124-116 (.5167) 50- 78 (.3906) 50- 70 (.4167) MIN 8- 8 129-127 (.5039) 121-119 (.5042) 55- 73 (.4297) 55- 65 (.4583) ARI 8- 8 111-145 (.4336) 103-137 (.4292) 54- 74 (.4219) 54- 66 (.45) CHI 7- 9 139-117 (.543) 130-110 (.5417) 56- 56 (.5) 56- 49 (.5333) DET 7- 9 139-117 (.543) 130-110 (.5417) 46- 66 (.4107) 46- 59 (.4381) CAR 7- 9 134-122 (.5234) 125-115 (.5208) 46- 66 (.4107) 46- 59 (.4381) BUF 7- 9 132-124 (.5156) 123-117 (.5125) 31- 81 (.2768) 31- 74 (.2952) DEN 7- 9 132-124 (.5156) 123-117 (.5125) 47- 65 (.4196) 47- 58 (.4476) NOR 7- 9 123-133 (.4805) 114-126 (.475) 49- 63 (.4375) 49- 56 (.4667) CIN 7- 9 118-138 (.4609) 109-131 (.4542) 38- 74 (.3393) 38- 67 (.3619) BAL 5-11 132-124 (.5156) 121-119 (.5042) 30- 50 (.375) 30- 45 (.4) SFO 5-11 119-137 (.4648) 108-132 (.45) 35- 45 (.4375) 35- 40 (.4667) NYJ 4-12 134-122 (.5234) 122-118 (.5083) 16- 48 (.25) 16- 44 (.2667) KAN 4-12 132-124 (.5156) 120-120 (.5) 30- 34 (.4687) 30- 30 (.5) OAK 4-12 132-124 (.5156) 120-120 (.5) 22- 42 (.3437) 22- 38 (.3667) ATL 4-12 132-124 (.5156) 120-120 (.5) 30- 34 (.4687) 30- 30 (.5) STL 3-13 131-125 (.5117) 118-122 (.4917) 16- 32 (.3333) 16- 29 (.3556) MIA 1-15 138-118 (.5391) 123-117 (.5125) 5- 11 (.3125) 5- 10 (.3333) Merry new year! Have some new code and data (with a bonus, too!) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 24 Dec 2007 an early present A new feature this week! See strength of schedule analysis, below. Also, note New England's move up the defensive rank this week. Hot. combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 TAM 100.000 IND 88.436 DAL 88.573 PIT 99.415 DAL 86.782 IND 87.421 NWE 98.846 GNB 80.736 GNB 82.202 IND 96.740 JAC 75.168 JAC 80.541 SEA 95.912 SDG 68.132 SDG 79.225 JAC 91.079 PIT 67.855 CLE 79.111 SDG 90.187 SEA 66.095 PIT 77.233 GNB 83.067 NYG 64.852 NOR 76.276 PHI 82.850 TAM 58.828 ARI 75.498 TEN 80.681 TEN 56.789 MIN 74.401 MIN 80.314 CLE 56.718 SEA 74.212 DAL 78.042 WAS 51.723 CIN 73.818 WAS 77.546 MIN 51.586 HOU 73.814 NYG 71.733 PHI 45.870 NYG 73.599 CHI 69.183 HOU 42.632 DET 73.079 BUF 68.755 NOR 42.057 PHI 70.841 KAN 68.433 DET 41.323 WAS 69.036 CAR 67.810 BUF 40.461 TAM 68.515 NYJ 62.419 ARI 40.166 CHI 68.271 SFO 58.647 CHI 36.059 DEN 68.200 BAL 57.390 CIN 35.342 TEN 65.152 HOU 56.162 DEN 33.238 OAK 61.394 NOR 54.164 CAR 32.540 NYJ 59.973 CIN 53.944 SFO 21.324 BAL 58.677 OAK 53.517 BAL 18.968 MIA 58.019 CLE 49.687 KAN 18.287 STL 57.996 ATL 49.320 OAK 18.168 BUF 57.756 DEN 45.991 NYJ 14.726 CAR 56.270 STL 45.538 STL 10.441 KAN 53.330 MIA 44.466 ATL 10.132 ATL 52.623 ARI 43.372 MIA 0.000 SFO 51.803 DET 40.314 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 94.996 TAM 84.417 JAC 90.704 BAL 85.323 NOR 93.844 PIT 79.103 PIT 89.889 PIT 83.172 DAL 92.275 MIA 78.007 NYG 88.749 JAC 76.069 CIN 88.368 NWE 70.465 TEN 86.960 DAL 74.292 HOU 88.199 KAN 67.352 OAK 84.321 PHI 73.169 IND 86.852 NYG 64.381 PHI 84.133 TEN 69.497 DET 86.829 DEN 63.881 SDG 83.429 IND 69.070 SEA 86.469 OAK 62.337 DEN 81.087 WAS 68.784 ARI 85.763 NYJ 62.214 NWE 79.624 NWE 64.526 PHI 83.088 TEN 60.451 TAM 79.599 NYG 62.889 DEN 82.475 JAC 60.383 DAL 78.509 ARI 62.110 WAS 80.182 GNB 54.503 WAS 78.468 SEA 60.946 CLE 80.169 DAL 53.685 CAR 75.713 NOR 59.875 CHI 78.236 CAR 53.482 BUF 75.323 SDG 59.325 TAM 78.001 SDG 53.170 CLE 74.956 TAM 58.587 STL 76.698 PHI 50.588 BAL 73.695 GNB 57.017 ATL 76.660 WAS 49.755 IND 73.615 CAR 50.521 KAN 75.773 SEA 49.577 NYJ 70.209 HOU 48.562 NYJ 73.624 ARI 49.276 CIN 69.668 SFO 46.378 SDG 73.476 STL 48.063 MIA 69.505 STL 46.176 NYG 73.432 ATL 47.029 STL 69.033 CIN 40.586 BAL 73.400 BAL 46.799 SEA 68.952 CHI 40.244 PIT 72.729 CHI 45.059 ATL 67.304 CLE 40.184 JAC 72.044 SFO 41.995 HOU 66.415 DET 38.006 MIA 71.632 HOU 41.834 ARI 66.105 KAN 37.538 TEN 68.602 BUF 41.179 SFO 65.996 ATL 37.500 CAR 67.101 CLE 41.156 GNB 65.693 BUF 35.123 MIN 67.065 CIN 39.393 NOR 65.288 NYJ 22.827 BUF 66.372 NOR 26.865 DET 63.978 DEN 21.607 OAK 64.299 DET 19.035 CHI 60.565 OAK 14.164 SFO 60.235 MIN 18.631 KAN 57.978 MIA 5.477 ...and a standard strength of schedule/victory analysis. In each column, the second ratio is strength of schedule excluding the team in question. SoS SoV incl excl incl excl NWE 15- 0 102-123 (.4533) 102-108 (.4857) 102-123 (.4533) 102-108 (.4857) IND 13- 2 113-112 (.5022) 111- 99 (.5286) 88-107 (.4513) 88- 94 (.4835) DAL 13- 2 110-115 (.4889) 108-102 (.5143) 88-107 (.4513) 88- 94 (.4835) GNB 12- 3 106-119 (.4711) 103-107 (.4905) 81- 99 (.45) 81- 87 (.4821) JAC 11- 4 117-108 (.52) 113- 97 (.5381) 75- 90 (.4545) 75- 79 (.487) SDG 10- 5 116-109 (.5156) 111- 99 (.5286) 66- 84 (.44) 66- 74 (.4714) NYG 10- 5 108-117 (.48) 103-107 (.4905) 54- 96 (.36) 54- 86 (.3857) PIT 10- 5 102-123 (.4533) 97-113 (.4619) 60- 90 (.4) 60- 80 (.4286) SEA 10- 5 94-131 (.4178) 89-121 (.4238) 55- 95 (.3667) 55- 85 (.3929) TEN 9- 6 107-118 (.4756) 101-109 (.481) 52- 83 (.3852) 52- 74 (.4127) TAM 9- 6 106-119 (.4711) 100-110 (.4762) 53- 82 (.3926) 53- 73 (.4206) CLE 9- 6 97-128 (.4311) 91-119 (.4333) 45- 90 (.3333) 45- 81 (.3571) WAS 8- 7 122-103 (.5422) 115- 95 (.5476) 49- 71 (.4083) 49- 63 (.4375) MIN 8- 7 114-111 (.5067) 107-103 (.5095) 51- 69 (.425) 51- 61 (.4554) PHI 7- 8 131- 94 (.5822) 123- 87 (.5857) 47- 58 (.4476) 47- 51 (.4796) DET 7- 8 118-107 (.5244) 110-100 (.5238) 43- 62 (.4095) 43- 55 (.4388) BUF 7- 8 115-110 (.5111) 107-103 (.5095) 26- 79 (.2476) 26- 72 (.2653) HOU 7- 8 114-111 (.5067) 106-104 (.5048) 37- 68 (.3524) 37- 61 (.3776) NOR 7- 8 108-117 (.48) 100-110 (.4762) 45- 60 (.4286) 45- 53 (.4592) ARI 7- 8 102-123 (.4533) 94-116 (.4476) 48- 57 (.4571) 48- 50 (.4898) CHI 6- 9 126- 99 (.56) 117- 93 (.5571) 45- 45 (.5) 45- 39 (.5357) CAR 6- 9 119-106 (.5289) 110-100 (.5238) 35- 55 (.3889) 35- 49 (.4167) DEN 6- 9 118-107 (.5244) 109-101 (.519) 38- 52 (.4222) 38- 46 (.4524) CIN 6- 9 109-116 (.4844) 100-110 (.4762) 32- 58 (.3556) 32- 52 (.381) SFO 5-10 103-122 (.4578) 93-117 (.4429) 32- 43 (.4267) 32- 38 (.4571) KAN 4-11 119-106 (.5289) 108-102 (.5143) 28- 32 (.4667) 28- 28 (.5) BAL 4-11 114-111 (.5067) 103-107 (.4905) 18- 42 (.3) 18- 38 (.3214) OAK 4-11 113-112 (.5022) 102-108 (.4857) 20- 40 (.3333) 20- 36 (.3571) NYJ 3-12 122-103 (.5422) 110-100 (.5238) 12- 33 (.2667) 12- 30 (.2857) ATL 3-12 117-108 (.52) 105-105 (.5) 18- 27 (.4) 18- 24 (.4286) STL 3-12 116-109 (.5156) 104-106 (.4952) 15- 30 (.3333) 15- 27 (.3571) MIA 1-14 122-103 (.5422) 108-102 (.5143) 4- 11 (.2667) 4- 10 (.2857) New data and code. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Tue, 18 Dec 2007 ain't no dollar short Only a couple weeks until James and I get our asses kicked at Giants stadium. I am psyched. combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 IND 87.299 DAL 88.799 TAM 98.917 GNB 86.205 IND 85.330 IND 92.640 DAL 84.669 GNB 83.911 NWE 91.703 JAC 73.349 CLE 79.743 SEA 87.818 PIT 65.448 SDG 78.730 GNB 86.782 SDG 65.237 JAC 76.365 JAC 85.521 TAM 63.496 NOR 75.080 MIN 82.794 SEA 62.470 PIT 73.759 SDG 81.548 NYG 61.005 HOU 73.652 PHI 81.290 CLE 60.814 ARI 73.544 WAS 75.354 MIN 55.584 MIN 73.393 TEN 73.470 TEN 54.100 CIN 73.356 DAL 73.289 WAS 47.508 SEA 72.628 BUF 72.923 NOR 46.339 DET 71.634 NYG 70.644 HOU 46.132 DEN 70.123 KAN 68.614 BUF 43.938 NYG 69.883 CAR 64.580 PHI 41.405 TAM 67.885 CHI 62.336 DET 37.476 PHI 67.054 OAK 60.647 DEN 36.905 TEN 65.821 HOU 58.949 ARI 36.097 WAS 65.813 NOR 57.761 CAR 35.233 CHI 64.574 BAL 57.481 CIN 31.052 OAK 61.390 NYJ 57.050 CHI 29.838 NYJ 60.897 SFO 55.682 BAL 21.616 BAL 59.430 ATL 49.940 KAN 20.910 MIA 58.659 STL 49.883 OAK 20.819 CAR 55.887 CIN 49.634 NYJ 16.381 BUF 55.583 CLE 47.292 SFO 16.207 STL 55.171 ARI 44.356 ATL 12.770 KAN 51.503 DEN 44.241 STL 12.403 ATL 49.489 MIA 43.679 MIA 0.000 SFO 49.243 DET 38.718 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 95.962 PIT 79.472 JAC 87.437 BAL 89.156 NOR 92.751 TAM 79.025 PIT 87.391 PIT 82.301 DAL 91.153 MIA 75.957 TEN 85.633 JAC 76.632 CIN 89.608 NWE 65.958 OAK 82.962 DAL 71.052 DET 88.200 OAK 63.291 NYG 81.854 PHI 70.034 HOU 86.935 DEN 62.230 SDG 81.200 TEN 66.995 SEA 86.458 KAN 61.423 DEN 80.394 IND 66.615 IND 84.065 TEN 60.448 PHI 80.142 WAS 66.328 DEN 83.042 NYG 60.094 TAM 79.670 NOR 66.022 ARI 82.598 NYJ 58.950 WAS 76.645 NWE 65.165 PHI 81.692 JAC 54.535 NWE 75.908 NYG 63.893 CHI 79.333 CAR 53.729 DAL 75.667 ARI 62.535 CLE 78.697 ARI 53.173 CAR 75.336 SEA 61.375 WAS 78.428 PHI 52.710 BUF 73.295 GNB 60.463 STL 75.108 ATL 52.535 CLE 72.630 SDG 58.627 NYG 74.559 DAL 50.783 BAL 72.073 TAM 58.546 TAM 74.097 WAS 49.806 IND 71.520 CAR 54.062 ATL 73.731 STL 49.785 NYJ 69.837 STL 50.192 BAL 72.484 GNB 48.819 MIA 67.591 HOU 50.092 SDG 72.392 SDG 48.783 STL 67.535 BUF 47.262 KAN 72.163 SFO 48.261 CIN 66.045 CLE 44.210 NYJ 71.666 SEA 47.689 HOU 65.879 SFO 43.750 MIA 71.523 HOU 46.095 ATL 65.347 CIN 43.061 PIT 70.235 BAL 44.803 ARI 65.170 CHI 42.099 JAC 69.982 CHI 41.370 SEA 65.159 KAN 40.649 TEN 68.269 CIN 39.863 NOR 64.564 ATL 36.255 CAR 66.817 CLE 36.129 SFO 64.246 DET 35.746 BUF 66.186 BUF 35.502 GNB 62.915 DEN 24.334 MIN 65.263 NOR 27.030 DET 60.616 NYJ 23.580 OAK 64.555 DET 24.301 KAN 57.297 OAK 20.169 SFO 60.110 MIN 20.745 CHI 56.634 MIA 11.090 data [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 10 Dec 2007 another one bites the dust combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 DAL 89.822 DAL 90.351 TAM 88.205 IND 85.988 IND 84.798 IND 86.466 GNB 85.537 GNB 81.785 NWE 84.689 PIT 70.829 CLE 80.893 JAC 82.309 JAC 70.389 SDG 73.729 SEA 82.165 SEA 67.774 CIN 73.413 GNB 81.664 NYG 66.274 JAC 73.301 MIN 77.028 SDG 62.794 SEA 73.042 SDG 75.722 TAM 61.223 NOR 72.558 PHI 72.961 CLE 58.273 MIN 72.547 TEN 69.547 MIN 53.866 ARI 71.913 WAS 69.023 TEN 51.696 PIT 71.898 NYG 68.940 BUF 50.089 DET 71.234 KAN 67.700 WAS 45.102 HOU 70.902 DAL 67.049 DET 44.225 DEN 70.225 BUF 65.568 NOR 44.069 NYG 70.121 CHI 59.727 HOU 43.470 PHI 67.383 CAR 57.775 DEN 42.949 CHI 64.190 OAK 57.319 ARI 42.471 TAM 63.836 BAL 56.220 PHI 38.986 WAS 63.783 NOR 55.836 CIN 37.578 TEN 63.013 NYJ 53.734 CHI 35.956 NYJ 60.686 HOU 53.401 CAR 32.960 OAK 60.501 ATL 52.712 BAL 27.529 BAL 58.247 STL 50.915 KAN 26.223 BUF 57.292 SFO 50.896 OAK 25.203 MIA 55.988 CIN 48.519 NYJ 20.290 CAR 55.010 ARI 45.325 ATL 17.745 STL 53.917 DET 45.202 STL 17.203 ATL 50.276 DEN 44.802 SFO 15.702 KAN 49.480 MIA 41.482 MIA 0.000 SFO 46.916 CLE 38.969 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 94.333 PIT 84.137 PIT 87.012 PIT 97.420 DAL 89.831 MIA 79.923 TEN 83.947 BAL 91.635 NOR 89.249 TAM 74.246 JAC 82.651 JAC 80.913 CIN 87.234 OAK 69.815 DEN 81.322 DAL 77.610 HOU 85.129 NWE 67.499 OAK 81.046 IND 73.253 DET 84.721 DEN 65.722 NYG 80.249 WAS 72.682 SEA 84.116 TEN 65.327 PHI 78.770 NYG 71.549 IND 80.887 KAN 64.569 DAL 76.944 GNB 69.906 ARI 80.712 NYG 61.741 TAM 76.267 PHI 69.780 DEN 80.561 ARI 60.900 SDG 74.833 TEN 69.354 PHI 80.039 NYJ 58.959 NWE 74.644 NOR 69.348 CLE 78.268 CAR 58.873 CAR 74.187 NWE 67.656 CHI 77.909 SDG 56.363 WAS 74.142 ARI 66.728 WAS 77.033 PHI 55.166 BUF 72.550 SEA 65.010 ATL 74.958 STL 53.878 IND 72.450 TAM 61.806 TAM 73.956 JAC 53.822 NYJ 69.466 SDG 55.332 STL 73.046 SFO 53.451 BAL 69.402 BUF 54.966 NYG 72.805 DAL 53.303 CLE 69.001 CAR 51.398 SDG 71.389 BAL 52.954 MIA 67.490 DET 49.282 BAL 70.222 SEA 52.131 CIN 66.587 CIN 49.059 NYJ 70.222 WAS 52.108 SEA 66.133 HOU 48.956 PIT 69.720 GNB 51.900 ARI 63.863 STL 48.484 KAN 69.341 HOU 50.959 ATL 63.632 CLE 46.298 JAC 67.223 ATL 50.854 GNB 63.538 CHI 45.395 MIA 67.033 CHI 46.767 STL 63.282 KAN 44.528 TEN 65.902 CIN 43.209 NOR 62.548 ATL 43.030 BUF 65.133 CLE 36.239 HOU 62.476 SFO 42.258 CAR 63.854 BUF 35.616 DET 62.316 DEN 28.574 OAK 63.664 NOR 30.694 SFO 60.750 NYJ 25.561 MIN 61.666 DET 24.997 CHI 57.821 OAK 16.917 SFO 57.576 MIN 22.588 KAN 55.695 MIA 14.288 data [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 03 Dec 2007 this just in combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 DAL 90.507 DAL 90.971 TAM 86.841 IND 86.448 IND 82.543 IND 82.682 GNB 85.885 CLE 81.880 SEA 78.677 PIT 76.479 GNB 80.224 NWE 77.681 JAC 68.156 CIN 74.689 GNB 72.804 TAM 67.674 SDG 73.787 JAC 72.382 SEA 66.180 PIT 73.372 KAN 70.639 NYG 64.851 MIN 72.092 SDG 70.372 SDG 60.517 ARI 72.084 MIN 68.388 TEN 56.809 NYG 71.203 PHI 66.943 CLE 56.283 JAC 70.971 TEN 65.553 MIN 50.736 NOR 70.930 DAL 64.920 DET 48.348 DET 70.273 WAS 63.523 ARI 47.582 SEA 70.053 NYG 62.167 BUF 47.534 HOU 69.722 BUF 60.480 PHI 42.574 PHI 68.743 BAL 58.636 WAS 41.242 DEN 66.839 CAR 58.477 NOR 40.163 TAM 64.947 OAK 57.653 CHI 39.734 CHI 64.663 CHI 56.484 HOU 38.863 TEN 63.109 ATL 52.720 DEN 37.945 WAS 62.939 NYJ 49.916 CAR 37.162 OAK 62.553 NOR 49.826 CIN 33.551 NYJ 61.115 SFO 48.476 BAL 29.581 BAL 57.244 ARI 47.807 KAN 29.559 CAR 57.119 HOU 46.990 OAK 27.067 MIA 55.685 STL 45.796 NYJ 21.933 STL 55.378 MIA 43.547 ATL 20.019 BUF 53.070 DET 42.019 STL 19.278 KAN 50.968 CIN 41.075 SFO 17.962 ATL 50.371 DEN 36.435 MIA 0.000 SFO 48.561 CLE 34.285 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 IND 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 96.504 PIT 95.037 PIT 83.290 PIT 91.622 DAL 91.780 MIA 78.431 TEN 82.026 BAL 89.325 CIN 91.160 TAM 72.183 OAK 80.749 DAL 84.505 NOR 90.006 OAK 71.421 NYG 79.076 JAC 77.856 HOU 88.265 KAN 64.672 JAC 79.019 NYG 76.510 DET 86.849 NWE 64.545 DAL 76.767 NWE 74.867 SEA 85.484 TEN 63.420 NWE 76.569 IND 74.458 PHI 83.287 ARI 62.031 TAM 76.462 TEN 74.422 DEN 82.284 DEN 59.353 DEN 76.343 PHI 72.183 IND 81.793 CAR 59.140 PHI 76.110 WAS 70.761 ARI 81.132 NYG 57.082 WAS 75.995 GNB 69.724 CLE 81.129 NYJ 55.330 CAR 75.053 ARI 66.480 CHI 78.003 SEA 54.033 IND 72.616 NOR 65.643 WAS 76.690 WAS 53.429 SDG 71.598 SEA 61.743 STL 76.215 BAL 53.330 BAL 67.947 TAM 60.560 ATL 75.242 ATL 53.055 MIA 67.556 SDG 58.646 TAM 75.193 PHI 52.079 NYJ 67.375 CAR 58.085 NYG 74.480 DAL 51.102 BUF 66.797 STL 57.462 SDG 73.072 HOU 49.212 CLE 65.702 KAN 53.163 BAL 72.700 SDG 48.722 SEA 65.219 BUF 53.007 KAN 72.635 CHI 48.653 ATL 64.673 DET 49.062 PIT 71.838 STL 48.649 ARI 64.130 CIN 48.721 NYJ 70.385 SFO 48.507 HOU 62.092 CLE 48.330 TEN 69.144 GNB 45.945 STL 61.921 ATL 47.817 MIA 68.023 JAC 45.386 CIN 60.957 HOU 47.091 CAR 67.313 CIN 36.178 SFO 59.643 SFO 43.156 JAC 67.216 CLE 34.718 NOR 58.761 CHI 40.173 BUF 66.815 BUF 30.923 GNB 58.724 NYJ 29.473 OAK 65.787 NOR 28.577 DET 57.450 MIA 22.825 MIN 63.250 DET 20.790 CHI 57.378 OAK 22.712 SFO 57.949 MIN 16.881 KAN 57.290 DEN 22.168 As always, new data available. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 27 Nov 2007 week 12 power rankings combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 GNB 91.348 DAL 88.412 TAM 91.899 DAL 87.502 CLE 81.795 IND 88.280 IND 84.628 IND 81.040 SEA 83.732 PIT 73.969 GNB 78.505 NWE 83.169 JAC 73.190 CIN 75.524 GNB 80.832 TAM 63.483 SDG 72.373 JAC 77.369 SEA 61.943 PIT 72.216 KAN 74.473 NYG 61.109 DET 71.292 PHI 72.405 CLE 59.826 ARI 70.420 DAL 69.258 SDG 56.212 NYG 70.343 SDG 69.141 DET 53.405 NOR 69.105 TEN 67.777 TEN 51.866 JAC 68.731 MIN 66.864 PHI 45.569 HOU 68.715 WAS 64.877 MIN 44.916 MIN 67.397 NYG 62.132 WAS 44.288 SEA 67.305 BAL 61.330 CHI 42.684 PHI 66.754 BUF 61.091 NOR 42.629 DEN 65.643 OAK 59.663 BUF 42.103 CHI 64.351 CAR 58.424 HOU 41.820 WAS 62.505 CHI 58.162 DEN 41.362 TAM 62.311 ATL 57.281 ARI 41.339 TEN 60.242 SFO 53.944 CIN 35.116 OAK 58.616 NOR 53.142 KAN 32.132 NYJ 55.344 MIA 51.429 CAR 30.489 MIA 55.247 HOU 50.821 BAL 29.212 BAL 53.785 DET 49.637 ATL 20.853 CAR 52.832 NYJ 49.264 OAK 19.455 STL 51.484 ARI 48.391 SFO 18.359 BUF 51.433 STL 45.438 NYJ 14.322 KAN 50.767 CIN 42.556 STL 11.407 ATL 48.921 DEN 41.844 MIA 0.000 SFO 47.145 CLE 36.398 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 96.487 IND 93.316 JAC 85.481 PIT 96.717 CIN 91.415 MIA 84.576 PIT 85.406 BAL 95.448 NOR 90.787 OAK 75.990 TEN 81.914 DAL 93.793 DAL 90.072 TAM 73.950 OAK 80.568 NWE 87.075 HOU 88.177 NWE 69.465 DEN 78.990 TEN 81.780 DET 86.451 TEN 66.651 WAS 78.721 PHI 80.144 IND 86.087 KAN 65.019 IND 78.708 NYG 78.202 SEA 85.777 DEN 63.093 NYG 78.328 NOR 75.435 CLE 85.650 ATL 62.469 DAL 78.313 WAS 74.430 ARI 85.513 NYG 62.175 NWE 78.269 GNB 73.229 PHI 82.731 WAS 60.301 PHI 76.086 JAC 72.006 DEN 81.538 CAR 58.975 TAM 74.879 IND 68.346 CHI 76.256 STL 58.883 CAR 73.957 SEA 68.256 WAS 76.106 SEA 57.932 MIA 71.569 KAN 62.558 NYG 74.211 BAL 57.409 CLE 71.393 TAM 61.679 SDG 73.406 NYJ 55.063 ARI 69.885 STL 59.905 STL 72.539 HOU 54.241 SDG 68.897 SDG 59.488 TAM 72.128 DAL 53.992 BUF 67.623 ARI 58.839 KAN 71.935 ARI 52.965 NYJ 66.070 DET 57.621 ATL 71.133 GNB 52.897 BAL 65.125 CAR 55.492 JAC 71.051 PHI 52.479 ATL 64.762 BUF 51.748 PIT 70.923 SDG 50.298 SEA 64.094 HOU 51.553 BAL 70.810 CHI 49.698 STL 62.251 CIN 48.104 NYJ 68.722 SFO 48.823 CIN 62.240 ATL 48.050 MIA 67.803 CIN 36.637 SFO 61.845 SFO 47.780 CAR 67.090 JAC 35.728 HOU 61.282 CHI 44.510 TEN 66.896 NOR 34.315 DET 61.212 CLE 38.427 OAK 63.995 BUF 31.657 NOR 59.513 MIA 23.702 BUF 63.564 CLE 24.313 CHI 59.096 DEN 23.594 MIN 61.092 DET 22.418 KAN 57.651 NYJ 20.708 SFO 57.466 MIN 16.898 GNB 57.358 OAK 16.649 ...or you can have the updated data. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 19 Nov 2007 week 11 power rankings A couple changes this week: I included individual yards for/against data for each team, and for the off/def rankings (including yardages) I scaled to 100 but did not shift; this lets us say, e.g., "Dallas has been 88% as effective as New England on offense this year." combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 GNB 89.948 DAL 88.125 TAM 98.084 DAL 87.434 CLE 81.142 NWE 96.117 IND 84.182 IND 79.909 IND 94.656 PIT 72.766 GNB 76.340 SEA 92.243 JAC 70.157 PIT 75.912 GNB 91.090 NYG 67.255 CIN 73.013 JAC 82.399 TAM 59.928 NYG 70.745 PHI 81.381 TEN 58.593 SDG 70.119 KAN 80.971 DET 58.409 DET 70.034 TEN 79.308 SEA 57.878 HOU 69.357 NYG 76.497 CLE 55.563 ARI 68.045 BUF 73.135 SDG 51.351 NOR 66.693 SDG 72.200 PHI 48.928 SEA 66.328 BAL 71.062 WAS 48.751 JAC 65.021 MIN 70.304 ARI 46.286 PHI 64.132 WAS 70.139 HOU 46.240 WAS 63.292 DAL 68.006 BUF 46.227 TEN 62.536 CHI 67.927 DEN 45.535 MIN 62.337 CAR 67.404 MIN 38.415 DEN 61.969 ATL 64.935 CHI 37.000 TAM 61.747 OAK 63.164 KAN 35.755 CHI 60.339 SFO 62.156 NOR 35.554 MIA 58.782 ARI 60.005 CAR 35.457 NYJ 57.953 DET 57.693 BAL 32.697 OAK 57.090 NYJ 56.483 CIN 27.393 CAR 54.860 HOU 55.949 ATL 22.319 BAL 53.537 NOR 51.081 NYJ 15.555 BUF 50.768 DEN 50.339 OAK 12.721 STL 49.504 STL 48.884 STL 12.007 KAN 49.457 MIA 48.326 SFO 11.159 ATL 48.534 CIN 39.694 MIA 0.000 SFO 40.331 CLE 36.990 passing offense passing defense rushing offense rushing defense NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 MIN 100.000 MIN 100.000 GNB 96.241 IND 94.924 PIT 86.426 BAL 96.494 DAL 93.756 MIA 83.989 JAC 84.965 PIT 93.830 NOR 92.684 TAM 83.613 TEN 83.786 DAL 92.796 CIN 92.543 NWE 80.982 NWE 80.100 TEN 90.362 HOU 90.274 OAK 74.020 NYG 78.808 NWE 84.442 DET 89.256 TEN 72.574 OAK 77.840 NYG 81.602 SEA 88.335 ATL 65.589 IND 77.661 GNB 79.707 IND 87.520 SFO 64.217 PHI 77.610 WAS 76.569 CLE 87.004 KAN 63.288 WAS 77.385 PHI 76.410 ARI 81.640 CAR 62.229 DEN 77.383 JAC 73.582 DEN 81.265 DEN 61.431 CAR 76.143 IND 71.732 PHI 80.910 BAL 60.435 DAL 74.956 NOR 71.138 CHI 78.497 PHI 60.345 TAM 74.224 SEA 70.164 TAM 76.287 STL 59.110 MIA 73.060 KAN 68.557 STL 75.044 NYG 58.184 ARI 69.101 TAM 64.435 NYG 74.965 ARI 56.332 SDG 68.567 ARI 64.271 WAS 74.907 HOU 56.049 CLE 67.940 STL 59.606 KAN 74.813 SEA 54.899 BUF 66.412 DET 59.124 ATL 73.792 CHI 54.203 NYJ 66.374 CAR 58.095 PIT 73.721 WAS 52.424 BAL 65.870 HOU 57.049 BAL 73.254 NYJ 51.089 SEA 63.124 SDG 55.997 SDG 73.207 GNB 50.571 ATL 62.646 BUF 54.536 NYJ 71.848 DAL 47.193 HOU 60.938 ATL 50.168 MIA 70.683 SDG 45.577 STL 60.199 SFO 47.750 JAC 69.687 CIN 36.339 SFO 58.075 CHI 47.443 CAR 69.304 BUF 33.569 CIN 57.624 CIN 44.197 TEN 66.335 JAC 32.741 DET 57.485 CLE 36.528 OAK 65.296 NOR 27.343 NOR 56.993 NYJ 25.887 BUF 63.750 DET 24.614 CHI 56.371 DEN 24.843 MIN 63.215 CLE 20.395 GNB 55.273 OAK 21.659 SFO 55.519 MIN 11.868 KAN 52.643 MIA 20.537 Updated code for those following along at home. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 14 Nov 2007 moooooooore powerrrrrrrrrr ...rankings. I was bored and decided to write some code to produce NFL power rankings. Perhaps one of my perenially disappointed faithful readers might care to peruse. (Gautham actually suggested splitting the offensive and defensive power rankings; previously I'd only looked at overall power rankings, which I present below.) First, a little explanation: these are split offensive and defensive power rankings; in other words, normalized rankings by points for and points against considering the record of the opposition as given by the same ranking. My assumption here is that my rankings should be zero-sum when offense and defense are combined. That is, every (adjusted) point counted towards an offense is counted precisely the same against the opposing defense. The rankings are determined as follows: Rank offenses and defenses by adding up points for and points against. Normalize to a 0-100 scale, with 100 being most points for and least points against. Given the above rankings, normalize the points scored: `pnorm = pscore * (1 - (offensive_rating - opposing_defensive_rating))`. Note that this is zero-sum, since the defensive rating for the team on defense is used against the offensive rating of the team on offense. Repeat the above, but this time use the rankings returned in the last step. Continue iterating until the algorithm converges on a set of rankings. These are now both perfectly self-consistent (that is, using the rankings to normalize the scores yields exactly the same rankings) and zero-sum (all points counted for a defense are also counted against an offense). Note that this is very much a discrete feedback system, and as such is subject to instability. To ameliorate this problem, we add a "gain" term as such: `pnorm = pscore * (1 - gain(offensive_rating - opposing_defensive_rating))`, where `gain < 1`. While monitoring the state variables, we experiment with gain until we get close to the largest value that yields a stable system, in this case 1/4. Yes, this is hacky. Bite me, Hippo. Finally, using approximately the same algorithm (details if you insist), I do the same thing for total performance, taking into account win/loss, point differential, defensive performance, and home field advantage. So now we have a mess of numbers. What are they? Well, in one sentence, they are normalized offensive and defensive ratings adjusted for relative strength of schedule. How, relative? Well, we look at the difference between the opposing defense and our offense (or vice-versa), not our defense versus the league average or some such. Think of it this way: if the worst team in the league had to play a bunch of mediocre teams, those would be hard-fought wins; conversely, the best team in the league should have little trouble with those same teams. Relative strength of schedule takes this into account. Here are the numbers: combined offense defense NWE 100.000 NWE 100.000 PIT 100.000 GNB 88.877 DAL 83.321 SEA 89.290 DAL 85.341 IND 72.842 TAM 85.638 IND 83.189 CLE 67.917 NWE 84.650 PIT 80.843 PIT 64.065 GNB 83.451 JAC 66.579 GNB 58.556 IND 81.508 TEN 66.043 DET 54.766 TEN 76.748 DET 64.926 CIN 54.511 BUF 70.769 NYG 63.272 NYG 53.387 JAC 66.878 SDG 56.904 SDG 51.525 KAN 59.164 TAM 53.994 HOU 49.478 BAL 56.930 SEA 53.481 NOR 48.993 PHI 56.024 WAS 52.787 ARI 41.471 SDG 53.106 CLE 51.385 PHI 40.369 CAR 51.544 BUF 50.391 JAC 38.916 CHI 51.263 PHI 43.508 SEA 37.553 MIN 49.928 CHI 41.806 TEN 36.275 NYG 49.785 HOU 40.583 WAS 34.992 ATL 49.339 ARI 40.051 MIA 34.039 WAS 49.119 DEN 39.732 MIN 32.003 DAL 45.858 NOR 39.701 CHI 29.441 OAK 43.484 KAN 38.975 TAM 29.306 ARI 36.620 CAR 38.408 DEN 28.936 SFO 30.923 BAL 36.894 NYJ 26.355 DET 23.899 MIN 32.504 OAK 23.123 NYJ 21.136 CIN 31.475 CAR 21.660 NOR 19.135 ATL 26.070 BUF 17.196 HOU 18.749 OAK 15.436 KAN 15.675 DEN 15.649 SFO 13.263 ATL 15.238 MIA 7.479 NYJ 6.447 BAL 14.313 STL 6.008 STL 3.783 STL 14.185 CIN 5.766 MIA 0.000 SFO 0.000 CLE 0.000 Sucks for Cleveland that they have a terrible defense, since their offense pretty much rocks... I'll keep these updated weekly until the end of the season. Edit:* here's the code if you want to play with it yourself. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 06 Sep 2007 for those keeping track my first post in a long time is kind of an inside joke. sorry. priestlich priestlanchette honkpeen anyone recall any others? p.s. if you hafta ask you'll never know [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Thu, 07 Jun 2007 knock yourself... ...a ProSLIC. Bust out the cigars, 'cause that's my baby. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 29 Apr 2007 mucho badassery Tonight I saw Chris Cornell at Stubb's. Holy shit. He played songs from Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Audioslave, and his solo album, as well as covers of Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, and—I shit you not—"Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson as a bluesy rock song. Cornell is a great performer and a seemingly nice guy. He interacted well with the audience and drove the emotional state of the crowd perfectly. In addition, umm, holy shit does he have some pipes. He didn't even get really warmed up until "Hunger Strike" or so, and by the time he hit his stride and belted out "What You Are," I knew we were in for a treat. "Rusty Cage" and "Pretty Noose" later, we were basically going nuts, and they finished off the show with 5 or 6 encores, including "Black Hole Sun" and "Jesus Christ Pose." His new stuff sounds really cool; can't wait for the album! [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 26 Apr 2007 this is the ultimate showdown Actually, it's the Ultimate Power Converter Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Unfortunately, you have to be a SiLabs employee to attend. The accompanying paper is called "The Si3226 dc/dc Converter, or, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Telephony Power Conversion." Beamer is hot. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 09 Apr 2007 getting it is easy. filling it with illegal substances and sending it across the border is not. Gentle(wo)men... behold! Bear witness to the first stuffed Ignignokt board in all its insanely bright glory. The lit picture does not do it justice—in person, it just hurts. Now for the Andy Warhol-style panel of differently colored ones... Edit: have a look at the writeup for a bit more info. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 03 Apr 2007 a sneak peak at the silent rage Pictures and a proper writeup are forthcoming, but for now, feast your eyes upon the pocket Ignignokt and a writeup of the cheapest dc/dc converter I could design. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 11 Mar 2007 rain, mud, snow, blood All these make one helluva weekend. First of all, Woz is in town until Thursday for SXSW. That's very hot! Thanks for visiting me, Woz... now if only other people would do so ahem Right now we're having our first thunderstorm of the year. This is most excellent, as I always enjoy a good thunderstorm. Earlier today, it hadn't quite started storming yet, but it rained a bit before we went out and played football, which made for quite the wet game. I wasn't the greatest of receivers, but on the play involving my glasses, a couple cuts on my nose, Matt's arm, and a relatively well-placed pass, I did manage to hold onto the ball. You know it was a good play when you're bleeding and you still did your job. So that takes care of the rain and the mud. By snow I actually mean Snow Patrol, whose concert Woz and I attended yesterday. I enjoyed it muchly, as they are very good on their instruments and I knew more of the songs than I expected to. Sweet! Finally, blood, and in no less than two forms. The first, electronic, courtesy of much Starcraft slaughter—always a fun time—and the second courtesy of our good friend Frank Miller, et al. Yup, I mean 300, which was more or less, umm, awesome. It was everything I wanted it to be, and then some. I'd say it might have a chance of unseating Braveheart, but I'll have to watch it a few more times—y'know, to be sure. Tomorrow, back to work, my beautiful baby (the new dual ProSLIC, whose functionality and performance are unparalleled; nya nya to those who said I'd never build a power converter—this one's getting sold by the millions, mark my words), and other good shit. And probably Pan's Labyrinth tomorrow night. Until next time, faithful readers! [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 22 Feb 2007 awareness FlightAware is really cool! You can track by tail number, airport activity, operator (i.e., FedEx, JetBlue, et cetera), or type, or you can just watch the pretty dots dance. If an airplane isn't currently in the air, it'll give you its last filed flight plan instead. Totally sweet. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 18 Feb 2007 CircuitCon I spent last week in San Francisco at ISSCC, which was very cool. Among other things, I saw an awesome paper on a hysteretic power amp for ADSL, learned more than I ever wanted to about imaging sensors, and saw bunches of papers on exotic futurey stuff like carbon nanotube and organic transistors. Also, I got to see some Bay Area buddies, went to a hottt sushi place with Katherine, and picked me up a new suit at Ralph Lauren. Unconscionably hot, unreasonably expensive. Next up: IVy, the aforementioned IV-18 clock. Also, Ignignokt and Err PCB layouts, one-sided for easy thermal transfer and home etching, and including a very clever 555 circuit for controlling a boost converter as cheaply as humanly possible. More details soon. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12 hot watts; senor senior; inGrid and IVy For this year's superbowl party, Cyrus and I decided that we should celebrate the happenings of last week by welcoming our guests with a hoax device. Twelve-and-some watts of pure LED brightness later, the image to the right was born. It's made of 192 LEDs, each of which are conducting about 30mA and dropping about 2.1V, and it is bright as all fuck. You can see it from the entrance to our cul-de-sac. Also, some good news today: I was promoted to Senior Design Engineer! I guess that means I'm getting old, or something. It also means that I beat my target, Senior Designer by 26, by almost 8 months. Woot. In yet other news, I'm running a group buy on the inGrid VFD clock for the NEONIXIE Yahoo! group. If you're interested, send me an email (hopefully with "inGrid" or "IV-18" in the subject) in the next couple days and I'll get a board for you, too. Soon to come, "IVy," the through-hole version (inGrid is SMT) based on an Atmel AVR processor and possessed of a crystal timebase and battery backup. This one will be available as a full kit (including case) from Adafruit Industries, Limor's site of kit hotness. Watch here for details. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 28 Jan 2007 down with the tickness New clock. Again. Hot. Y'know... clocks... tick? Yeah... Ari starts at SiLabs tomorrow. Hotness! [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 17 Jan 2007 house arrest ...or so it seems. Since Monday, Austin has experienced freezing rain and snow. Since they don't plow or salt here, and because Texas drivers are so bad they even scare me when the roads are slick, I've been trapped in the house with Matt, Lyra, Cyrus, and Katherine for the last few days. Normally this would be fine, except that Mike and Cyrus broke a window fighting over a pizza a couple weekends ago and it still hasn't been fixed, and on top of that on Monday the septic tank started to act up. All in all, not a great time to be trapped in the ManHouse. Of course, Katherine made it more bearable, first by being so kind as to keep me warm despite our lack of window, and second by being understanding with respect to the no showering on account of the septic tank. Now the weather is getting warmer, I worked out and then showered at the gym, Austin is mostly functional again, Cyrus has tomorrow off, and Austin Books has new comics. With the exception of the fact that Katherine returned to Berkeley today, Thursday is looking good. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 12 Jan 2007 it's like a koala bear crapped a rainbow in my brain Should my physical self feel created from untold millions of bubbles? No... but I do feel taped out. Bitches. Let the comp week begin (at least, after tomorrow, when I have to sit around and babysit the PG). [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 08 Jan 2007 medialicious hotness For Christmas I bought myself an AL Tech MG-35, basically a USB 3.5" hard drive enclosure that is also a media player. It's got coax and optical digital out; component, composite, and S-video; and is equipped with an Ethernet interface. It doesn't come with a hard drive (which was great for me, since I had an extra 160 Gb drive lying around), but in default trim it can mount NFS volumes and play all kinds of audio and video formats. The best part, though, is that it runs Linux and its firmware is therefore GPLed—and there's a Yahoo! group dedicated to firmware hacks if you're too lazy to do one yourself. I think I'm going to hack together a firmware image that uses mp3q so that I can get my bigass server machine out of the living room. Stay tuned if you're digging what I'm shoveling. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 07 Jan 2007 a new clock arrives Though I designed it a long time ago, I've only now put up the (very short) writeup of 2nix, my two-digit NIXIE clock. Have a look. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 30 Dec 2006 on the road ...but no boxcar for me. Since I worked through Christmas vacation this year, I'm only now beginning any kind of break, and that's only because I already had a flight and wouldn't even consider cancelling it. At the moment I'm in Denver waiting to connect to Oakland, where Katherine will also be arriving later this evening. Woot! Christmas this year was actually pretty damn good despite the fact that I worked. By some stroke of luck, Christine was in town visiting her aunt and uncle, so we hung out when she arrived. Then, in a demonstration of undeserved kindness, Christine et al invited me to celebrate Christmas dinner with them. Delicious, and muchly appreciated. By way of repayment, I showed Christine my three favorite places in Austin: my office (hah!), Sullivan's Steakhouse, and the The Gingerman. Oh yeah, and I came back from an amazing almost defeat at darts to win on two sudden death rounds. Ha HA! No really firm plans for New Year's Eve yet, except that we're hitting Chez Panisse early for some grub. In your face, Marissa! Now back to watching the Giants pummel the Redskins in a shitty sports bar in DIA... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 18 Dec 2006 lord of the stare, heck of a guy Today at work I'm crunching along on some layout or verilog or something when I get a call from Jeff. "Have you seen the eye? Come to my office, quick, before it disappears." Apparently someone decided to project a very bright, very creepy eye onto the side of the water treatment plant's tower. Now I'm feeling like the next logical step is a laser projection vector graphics system so we can play asteroids. Click the picture to enlarge [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 14 Dec 2006 Rear Admiral "Tapeout" Crunch Ahh, the final push for tapeout, that time of year when a young man's fancy turns to digital synthesis, place and route, top-level simulations, ESD structures, and—of course—layout. I hope you'll pardon the fact that I haven't blogged in a month and a half. I've been embroiled with not one, not two, but three tapeouts of three completely separate parts. The last, "mine" (inasmuch as I am the project leader), is going to take a miracle to come out before Christmas, and Herculean effort to keep it from pushing more than a few days past. At this point I'm sure that Christmas will be spent poring over DRC violations (if I'm lucky and we're at top-level DRC). Such is the level of my dedication. Thank you, Catholic schools: you really taught me how important it is to hate myself. So yeah, after that I'm driving to Iowa for a couple days before heading to Cali on the 30th to spend New Year's with Katherine. Given that I haven't seen her since Thanksgiving, and considering that both of us have had rough Decembers, that will be a relief in several respects. In other news: Ariel accepted an offer from SiLabs, so he'll be starting at the end of January. Yeah, bitches! Now the rest of y'all have to move here. It'll be bad ass. Ahh yes, one last thing: someone (not me, honestly) came up with a more realistic schedule for my project than the one we'd been officially working from. Note that, much to my chagrin, we haven't actually hit the "Act of God" phase quite yet. We'll get there soon, I'm sure... [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Mon, 30 Oct 2006 all the news unfit to print Nigh on four weeks since my last post. Sorry, dear readers. I know you wait with bated breath to hear the details of my rockstar life. Let's see here: Work. Three(ish) weeks ago I went out to Cali to visit Katherine and wound up hanging with all my West Coast peeps (even Hippo and his hawt chica) for a night. I'll be back there over Thanksgiving, so if y'all'll be around, let me know. I posted my first (and second, as of this week) fantasy loss in each of the leagues I'm in, but I'm still well in the running for the playoffs. I know you wanted to know that. Work. I'm presently sitting in Phoenix Sky Harbor waiting to catch a flight back to Austin after a week in Hawaii for Mike's wedding. There were a few notables from this trip, so I'm whipping out the sub-bullets: I surfed the North Shore of Oahu. This sounds much more impressive than it actually is, but I'm actually a not-altogether-horrible surfer. The downside can be summed up in two words: nipple chafing. Ouch. We went fishing on Thursday the 26th and I caught a 90 pound Striped Marlin. I also assisted Katie's (Mills, née Todd) dad in reeling in a 200(ish) pound Blue Marlin. Altogether we caught four Marlin, two tagged and two taken. Matt, Cyrus, and I observed that the women who live along the north shore of Oahu are unreasonably hot. Surfing apparently does a body much good. It may well be the case that in the pursuit of the perfect wedding, all women become completely unreasonable. I nevertheless have hopes that my future wife won't go psycho. Am I just dreaming? Our last day in Hawaii was almost perfectly engineered: Jacksonville @ Eagles with cereal (and later, burgers and chicken), then a hike up Diamond Head preceeded by a quick stop at the Banzai Pipeline (at which point Mike, having been there swimming earlier that morning, admitted to having come across a bikini photo shoot, much to Matt's chagrin). After the hike, Matt, Cyrus, and I repaired to LuLu's to watch the Cowboys @ Panthers. Finally, we swung through Honalulu's Chinatown and feasted at a noodle house before repairing to the airport (by way of what must be the sketchiest alley in Honalulu, courtesy of my apparently unfailing nose for the seedy underbelly of any city). Believe it or not, I was the week's designated cook, preparing fish, chicken, burgers, and vegetables in various ways to absolutely no complaints (I highly recommend searing Marlin: take a half to three quarter inch steak, add a little lemon juice, some season salt, pepper, and paprika, then eight seconds a side in peanut oil heated to its smoke point; the center should still be only barely warm if done right). Woot. Katherine arrives in Austin on Thursday and will be there until early Sunday morning. Nice. Ariel gets here Sunday for an interview in my group on Monday. We'll take him out for some Austin-style carousing, fer shizzle. Ahh yes, work. I'm supposed to be taping out a chip in two weeks. All I can say is, that shit best get done before Thanksgiving, 'cause I's got plans to be with mah baybee. (Imagine that last in a sort of Tim McGraw drawl. Really. I know you want to.) That, folks, about wraps it up. Signing off, but not for long: pictures from the trip are forthcoming, along with details of Ariel's visit. Fear not: details of Katherine's visit will be withheld. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 05 Oct 2006 questionable verbiage (17:27:05) viscellaneous: i get to pick her up after 4 (17:27:15) viscellaneous: but the vet called to say she did well (17:27:33) viscellaneous: and i microchipped her (17:27:48) viscellaneous: so she is my little robokitty now (17:27:50) scrap1r0n: is it RFID compatible? (17:27:53) viscellaneous: yep (17:27:55) scrap1r0n: nice (17:28:01) scrap1r0n: I'm totally gonna hax0r your cat (17:28:07) viscellaneous: nooooooo [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 21 Sep 2006 adhocronism n - an inelegant but expeditious solution; a kludge Act now! I'm only charging a nickel for use of the above. That's 50% off my standard rate! [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 04 Sep 2006 mixed bizzness or, breaking radio silence It's been a busy three weeks! I finished and (preliminarily) wrote up Heaviside, my headphone amp. Work was crazy busy, culminating in a mostly-complete architecture specification (and partial design, really) for the block I'm currently working on. Matlab is officially my best friend, but xcircuit and LaTeX rate up there too. Oh yeah, and I saw Talladega Nights. The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, indeed. Most interestingly, I was on vacation last week. Starting on Friday the 25th, I headed from Austin to Fort Dodge, where I intended to drop off the truck and pick up the Harley for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, the weather in Iowa didn't cooperate, so I ended up driving the whole trip. Also, though I'd originally intended to head to the east coast, I instead turned left at Iowa and went to the other ocean. Starting Monday the 28th, I drove from Fort Dodge to Berkeley, CA over two days, stopping overnight in Wendover, UT (on the UT-NV border). From Tuesday through Saturday I stayed with Katherine in Berkeley and hung out with her along with Sherv and May—even making it to May's b-day party and getting May, Justin, Sherv, and Katherine to accompany me to, yup, Motherfuckin Snakes on a Motherfuckin Plane. Saturday Katherine, Sherv, and I threw a rather successful barbeque involving not only the standard BBQ fare but some rather delicious seared tuna with an awesome wasabi something-or-other that Sherv whipped up for us. It went quite swimmingly with Katherine's tequila-lime chicken and my humble-by-comparison-but-I-didn't-hear-any-complaints burgers. The drive back occupied Sunday and Monday. I made it from Berkeley to El Paso on Sunday by way of an interesting route: I-5 to CA-46 to CA-99 to CA-58 (to Barstow!) to I-40 to US-95 to CA-62 which becomes AZ-95 to AZ-72 to "Vicksburg Road" (it has no other name) to I-10 to US-290 to Austin. If/when I figure out how to put precisely this route into Google Maps without spending hours on it, I'll do so. To cap it all off, I got a ticket for doing 7 MPH over on I-10 just 5 miles from where I was going to turn off onto US-290. Fucking bastards. Oh well, maybe I'll reqest a trial by jury. Also, entertainingly (though not at the time), I was caffeinated (and, well, myself) to the point where the policeman was asking me why I was so nervous, and whether I was on drugs or transporting contraband or weapons. He went so far as to ask me to smile so he could confirm from my teeth that I wasn't a meth user. As Peter Griffin would say, "This isn't the first time my magnetic personality has gotten me into trouble." To make myself feel better, I did an oil change and hair cut when I got home. Call it centering, or something. Oh, and that reminds me, screw Mobil1 for replacing the old badass 5W-40 "Truck and SUV" oil with this ersatz 5W-30 shit. It's got friction modifiers, for Chrissake! Breeeeeeeeathe. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 11 Aug 2006 like eating glass I went and saw Bloc Party last night at Stubb's BBQ with Alida. Those dudes don't need no instruction book to know how to rock. They are, all four of them, excellent musicians, the lead singer dude is entertaining, and of course all the girls swooned because they all had British accents. I believe they're going to be releasing a new album soon, and they claimed that they'd "be back next year," so I'll be looking for them to tour again. I just wish I had two more hands so I could give them four thumbs up. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Thu, 10 Aug 2006 can't catch me Last night, Matt and I discovered the McCormick and Schmick's has an awesome bar food menu that is extremely cheap, e.g., a half pound burger and fries for two dollars! A ton of hummous and pita for three! After this discovery, we walked the couple blocks to the Ginger Man to celebrate, or maybe just to play darts. Last night marks the single worst dart defeat I've ever suffered. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and Matt was on. The game ended 319 to 0 and I left bulls wide open. On the upside, good ole' Ginger Man had some new arrivals, including a restock of St. Bernardus Abt 12 on tap, which was excellent shit (but not really better than in a bottle, since it's a bottle conditioned beer). In addition, I finally tried Chimay Cinq Cents, which I found entirely underwhelming. It had a thin, unremarkable flavor and mouthfeel like a glass of water. Chimay Gran Reserve is, to my memory, much better, but I'll admit it's been a good long while. The other new one I tried was Avery Maharaja, continuing my IPA kick. This has hop content rivalling the hoppiest beers I've ever had (it's over 100 IBUs for sure), but its flavor doesn't go much beyond that. Since Wednesday is $1.50 "taster glass" night, I back-to-backed it with my current favorite, at least in this arena, the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, and there's simply no comparison: the latter has a complexity of flavor that puts Avery's offering to shame. If you're a nut for hops, though, Maharaja will punch your ticket. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 08 Aug 2006 complexify First off, a couple new t-shirt designs: [ 1 \| 2 ] I've been lax about posting my new beer experiences, so I'll give a quick rundown: La Fin du Monde, Rochefort 10, Hercules Double IPA, Oak Aged Yeti, St. Bernardus Tripel, and Ayinger Celebrator. They're all pretty awesome. La Fin du Monde and St Bernardus are both excellent tripels, though I think the latter is slightly more complex and in the end gets the nod. Rochefort 10 cannot be described by any word short of "ridiculous." The Oak Aged Yeti was excellent, like Samuel Smith's but with a bit more hops; I'd have to do them back-to-back to decide which I favor. Celebrator is a damn good beer, but I'll have to have more before I really form a more specific opinion than that. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 28 Jul 2006 good ol' sam Last night, while we watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, I nursed a pint of Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout. Call it followup research, call it what you will, I call it a damn good beer. It has none of the harsher notes present in Old Rasputin, and yet is every bit as flavorful. This is the hands-down winner between the two. Next up is the Oak Aged Yeti. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 26 Jul 2006 ego trippin at the kalends of august Last weekend I visited May and Sherv in the Bay Area—a totally badass trip! What with the hanging with Sherv and classmates (...and in particular...), seeing Clerks 2, the Flaming Lips, and Ween, and Dim Sum on Sunday before heading out, the weekend was packed with teh awesome. Clerks 2 was actually good! Don't expect the first Clerks—I'd say this is Kevin Smith's take on a romantic comedy (by contrast, Chasing Amy would probably best be called a romantic tragedy), but with the usual View Askewniverse trappings. Go see it, but maybe see the original first if you're fuzzy on the details, since you'll surely appreciate the references more that way. I have to admit, though, seeing Randal and Dante in Clerks 2 made me feel old. Fuckin' fuck. Now that I'm back in reality, my head is spinning. I have basically no time for my own crap at work ("can't-say-no-itis" has apparently rubbed off of Marius), which means this weekend will probably be flooded with midnight oil to get some architectural design done. Fuck it; at least after that I'll be able to hide in the lab and have some real fun. I picked me up a Fluke 175 at Fry's today, and promptly came home and found the nagging bug on my headphone amp board (which has been sitting in my room waiting for attention for too long now). Flukemeters are hot. And now, to bed. Yay. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 17 Jul 2006 epicaricacy (n) Taking pleasure in others' misfortune. a.k.a. Schadenfreude. According to wikipedia, this word does not appear in most modern dictionaries, but appears in Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary. The more you know... [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Thu, 13 Jul 2006 never say die Grabbed me a four-pack of Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout at my local liquor store. Matt and I each had one, and agreed that while it's just as flavorful as your average stout, it ends on a much sharper kick than, e.g., Guinness or Young's Double Chocolate Stout. As this is my first Russian Imperial Stout, I don't know if that's a peculiarity of the beer or of the type. More research is clearly needed. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Mon, 10 Jul 2006 undead shirt returns from the dead; football shoes, but for football It's back! Of the Dead, one of my most favorite Threadless designs, has just been reprinted. You know you love killing zombies. Also, yesterday I got what seemed to me a total steal on a pair of Puma soccer shoes. Now, you might say, "but Riad, you don't play soccer!" Well, yeah, but I do play football, and soccer cleats are comfortable, readily available, and, it turns out, reasonably inexpensive. Man, you can really work out your legs when you're running routes in cleats—but I think the bigger difference is actually when playing defense. All around, an incredibly satisfying investment in weekend fun. And who knows, maybe I'll start playing soccer now. Then I can get really famous and then headbutt someone. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 08 Jul 2006 in the noise Mike, Katie (Dominus), Cyrus, and I were grabbing a bite at T.G.I. Friday's last night and talking about Al Gore appearing on the Daily Show and claiming (tongue-in-cheek, at least to an extent) that he really did win Florida. This jump-started us on a discussion of the issue, and opinions flew: Gore really did win it, we fucked up, this, that, whatever. I take exception to such claims, not because I'm a fan of Bush (at this point it must be admitted that the country has taken a turn for the worse under his presidency, and no I'm not turning into some pinko commie liberal weenie), but because the reality of the matter is one that our electoral system is not designed to handle, namely, the result was so close that it was literally undecidable. The 190-odd votes one way or the other were below the noise floor. In other words, because of the particulars of the way votes are taken and counted, the election cannot be resolved with enough precision to give a number to each candidate which is more accurate than, say, plus or minus a thousand votes. The election in Florida was metastable, and the Supreme Court ended up acting as the bounded-time arbiter. Having stated the matter this way, I realized something else: the electoral college makes this problem much worse. Here's how: the noise level in the system is more or less independent of the number of participants, since it arises largely from very local phenomena (i.e., it is generated in each voting precinct, and the number of people per precinct is approximately constant). The signal, on the other hand, scales directly with the number of people participating in a given election. Because of the electoral college system, however, the apparent number of people voting is artificially limited, since each of the states happens as an independent voting event (and thus we really have 50 small elections, not one large one). Thus, assuming that we had 50 equally-sized states (we'll come back and deal with this in a second), we have 50x less signal versus the same noise, i.e., an apparent 34 dB rise in the noise floor per election event due to the electoral college. Now, when you average all of these back together, you should get exactly a 34 dB fall in the noise floor, right? Wrong. The problem is this: because of the way electors are assigned (one per Senator or Congressman), the SNR cannot be recovered completely: small states are actually overrepresented in the electoral college (because Representatives are a function of population, but Senators are a constant for every state, and in small states the Senators represent the majority of the electoral clout), and it is in these very states that the SNR is worst. Thus, we end up averaging a set of results which has been distorted in a way that cannot fail to increase the noise—the results which get greater marginal weight are exactly the ones where the SNR is worst. So what is this added noise, really? It's distortion and quantization noise! Instead of keeping everything high resolution (i.e., in terms of actual votes), we quantize on artificial boundaries and then make the final decision on a set of discrete values which are not only low-rez, but skewed. What, then, does this suggest about fixing the electoral college? Clearly, one way to fix it is to get rid of it. But it's worthwhile to imagine instead what would happen if we had a thousand states instead of fifty: we'd be making a final decision based on bits which, while they each hide a greater quantity of "thermal" noise (due to imprecisions at the precinct level, et cetera), contribute less quantization noise to the final outcome. At this point, the quantization portion of the noise goes away, and we're left only with the problem of distortion. So really, to fix the electoral system, we need each elector to represent precisely the same number of voters, and for the number of electors to be enormous. Isn't a popular vote just better? Side note: what if instead of electing based on a single event, we oversampled the voting population? Say, everyone votes in 16 elections, and we actually feed back the results from the previous election, in effect shaping the quantization noise from the decision while simultaneously attenuating (by way of the gain in the feedback loop) the noise contribution of the election process itself. Seems like overkill, but holy shit it would be cool if our electoral system were more like a delta-sigma data converter. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Fri, 07 Jul 2006 yaaargh Saw a Pirates 2 matinee with Mike and Cyrus today. Honestly, don't bother. Wait until it comes to video and then watch it the night before Pirates 3 comes out. There is absolutely no resolution whatever, just an abrupt ending. Davey Jones is really badass, as is the rest of his crew, and the Kraken is also awesome. Unfortunately, they just can't carry the movie. There's also about thirty minutes of worthless non-plot-advancing crap shoved in at the beginning, and Kiera being all "oh no do I love Jack or Orlando 'The Hotness' Bloom?" Jack does have some good lines, though. When is Pirates 3 out? I have a feeling that Pirates 2 will be a better movie when it can be followed directly by 3. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Thu, 06 Jul 2006 beersperado Central Market was useless in locating the 120 Minute, so I turned to Grape Vine Market. They were most helpful in locating not only the 120 Minute, but also the 90 Minute, some Delirium Tremens, and a newcomer, Delirium Nocturnum. Also, I've now got some Victory HopDevil and some Duvel in the fridge waiting to be drunk. Wow we have a helluva beer shelf going on right now. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] el beeriachi Sid and I had intended to go to the Ginger Man on Monday night because it was Saint Bernardus Abt 12 logo glass night. Unfortunately, they ran out of logos early on, and Cy and Mike wanted chicken wings first, so by the time we were ready to head over to the GM we instead decided to hang out at the Man House and digest. Turns out, this wasn't the best plan: when we finally went to the Ginger Man last night (two days late...), they were out of the Abt 12, its spot on the wall now occupied by the Saint Bernardus Tripel. I didn't get a pint of it, but I did back-to-back taste it with my "go-to" beer, the Tripel Karmeliet. I'll have to drink a bit more of it (facilitated by the 750 in my fridge—thanks, Sid!), but the Bernardus offering is a bit more complex and finishes on the slightly sour side, as opposed to the Karmeliet, which is sweet through and through. So I've told you what I didn't drink, now how about what I did? Stone Arrogant Bastard. I can't get over how much this tastes like grapefruit at the start! Next up were tastes of several different IPAs, including Stone, Titan, and Dogfish Head 90 Minute. Surprisingly, though it is technically a "double IPA" and should thus be much stronger than the former two, it was the latter upon which I settled as my favorite of the bunch. Damn good stuff! Next, two sharp turns to the left. First, a quick sample of Live Oak HefeWeizen, at which point I dropped to my knees, forsaking all other Hefe Weizens before the Live Oak offering. Goddamn is it good. Not to mention, the Live Oak guys are friendly! I went and watched a Texas game at the Live Oak brewery last year, and it was totally cool. The other sharp turn was a New Belgium 1554. I've enjoyed this one before, but I felt like it was time for operation get-behind-the-dark-ale, since we were heading to the pool table (where I managed to run both Cyrus and Sid right out of our cutthroat game before scratching on the last ball, bringing them both back to life and giving Sid the winning setup). Don't ask me why dark ale is the right thing to drink when playing cutthroat. I declare it so. Next, some head-to-head sampling in little 1/6-pint nips, starting with my beloved Karmeliet versus Pauwel Kwak. The Kwak is damn good stuff, in a broad sense comparable to Delirium Tremens, though much more straightforward: caramel up front, tailing off nicely but not really going anywhere else. After those two, another interesting pairing: Maredsous 8 versus Aventinus. The Maredsous served as a reference point, since I've enjoyed it many times (it's Matt's default Ginger Man selection). (Moreover, I really wanted to taste the 8 again because the night of the 4th I finally broke into my bottles of Maredsous 10 and Delirium Tremens. I didn't like the 10 nearly as much as I thought I would—it was a bit too harsh and finished with a very sharp ethanol taste.) As regards the Aventinus: holy shit! This is, quite honestly, the first German beer that I've ever thought I could marry. I shall be coming back for more of that one, guaranteed. Finally, as the night was finishing up (just after defeating Cy and Sid at darts despite the fact that I let them throw twice for each time I threw—hah!), I had a half pint of Mackeson XXX Triple Stout, something I'd enjoyed in bottles but never on tap. Interestingly, unlike many other stouts, Mackeson's is pumped with carbon dioxide, not nitrogen. I suppose one would expect this to make the beer a bit more tart, but that's the furthest taste from your tongue when drinking this stuff—it's like a loaf of sweet bread. Delicious. So what did we learn? For one, I absolutely must swing by Central Market and pick up a bottle of the Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA. I expected the 90 Minute to be so abusive that I wouldn't even want to think about the 120, but instead it rocketed itself into my top ten beers. The 120 Minute is a very different beast (and hard to find for sale, the reasons for which include its high cost and 21% ABV!), but I expect that if they do the 90 that well, the 120 is worth a try. Meanwhile, I think I'll have to make a concerted effort to try out the other well-regarded IPAs—perhaps they'll even get me off my Belgian kick (hey, the probability isn't high, but it's there). Another thing I learned is that my recollection of Leffe Blonde was embarassingly inaccurate, except for the part where I remembered that I was underwhelmed. Finally, I learned that I get better at darts and pool when I decide to showboat a little bit. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 02 Jul 2006 speeding bullet Went and saw Superman. It was really good. I especially liked all the references to older Superman stuff and other DC lore. Examples: at the beginning of the movie, when it shows Superman as a kid, he can only jump (this is consistent with the early Superman cartoons, where his travel power of choice was leaping, hence, "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound"). Marlon Brando plays the voice and face of Jor-El (which is to say, they reuse the footage from the Fortress of Solitude in Superman 2). More subtly, at one point a newscaster mentions Gotham City. Woot. Another reason to catch the movie: the Spiderman 3 teaser beforehand is pretty awesome. Yeah, you can just download it, but whatever, it's still great to see in the theatres. Upcoming excitement: Pirates 2 (next weekend), the Flaming Lips in Berkeley (7/22), and Miami Vice (7/28). Woot. [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Mon, 26 Jun 2006 Groupe Sp�cial Mobile or the modern title, "Global System for Mobile Communications," is far and away the most popular form of mobile telephone service in the world. In the US, T-Mobile was the first to provide GSM service, but Cingular has established an extensive network and is slowly subsuming the TDMA remnants of AT&T Wireless Services (mostly by "upgrading" TDMA towers to GSM, thereby dismantling the old network and forcing their subscribers to move from their old cheap plans to newer, more expensive ones). Because of its worldwide popularity, cell phone manufacturers tend to make their best phones for GSM, and other services (notably QualComm's CDMA, used by Sprint PCS in the US) often don't get comparable models. This means that the cell phone hardware market for non-GSM service providers is much less than efficient—in other words, having Sprint forces you into a phone that's crappy, expensive, or both. Moreover, with GSM you can swap your SIM into another phone and you're good to go—a thoroughly awesome feature of the GSM standard. Why am I telling you all this? Because I switched to GSM, of course. Real Soon Now I'll disconnect my 617 number and replace it with a shiny new 512 (yes, I could have taken my number with me, but I know Johnston agrees with me that phone number portability is an abomination). My old number will work for a while, and I'll send out my new number to everyone in my phone book at some point, but if you don't get it from me, send me an email. And the hardware? Motorola's hot little L2, with nothing a phone doesn't need (no more camera phone for me). Exactly the phone I wanted, and it was free from Cingular. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Sun, 25 Jun 2006 no sharks were jumped in the making of this Sunday Matt, Mike, Marissa, Dylan, and I rented a ski boat and went water skiing for a few hours today. Having elected to wear no sunscreen, I'm deliciously burned (yes, Christine, despite my protests when you claim to like getting sunburned, I actually wanted to—I'm trying to move away from the whole "day-glo white" thing). Also, as of now I claim the "best of" title—at least for this weekend. Matt must not have brought his A game, 'cause his attempts at wake jumping met with considerably less success than mine. Also, he didn't manage to show off an open-handed windmill air-asspunch. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Fri, 23 Jun 2006 mister fix stuff who do you think you are? The other day I was in Whole Foods at the self check-out machines. Two of the three of them were dead, and this guy was trying to get them to work. Some cryptic error message was coming up, and he had no freaking idea what was going on. I (correctly, it turns out) surmised that it must be because they were trying to warm-boot and failing to retrieve their previous state from the server. I said to him, "here, just... do this." I guess I'm kind of like the fairy godfather of broken computers. Also of interest: we went to Central Market for lunch yesterday, and I swung through the beer aisle on the way out. Sitting on my desk impatiently waiting to be drunk are a nice-looking Maredsous Tripel (the Maredsous "8" Dubbel is one of my favorites from the taps at the Ginger Man, though it turns out that my Ginger Man default beer, Tripel Karmeliet, is Beer Advocate's third- or fourth-favorite tripel-style beer—gotsta get me some Saint Bernardus) and my old friend, Delirium Tremens, the latter courtesy of my intern, Sid (thanks, Sid!). Lastly, I bought Blue October's new album, Foiled. You might know the single, "Hate Me," which has received lots of radio airplay (in these parts, anyway). The whole album is extremely solid vocally, instrumentally, and with respect to production. The songs are great, and several of them are really catchy. The mood of the album is well represented in the single, viz., life-on-the-edge-of-depression-and-madness (though not in the same way as The Soft Bulletin by any means). It's kind of like if Trent or Maynard decided to go with ballads and wrote the album just as they ran out of Prozac and were riding their falling blood concentration back into oblivion (what's the halflife of Prozac in the body, anyway? Too short to write this whole album, I'd say). It's not depressing, exactly, but it's getting there. Of note: "She's My Ride Home" (a strange Natural Born Killers-syle love song), "Into the Ocean" (the opening reminds me of Simon and Garfunkel, somehow), "Congratulations" (features Imogen Heap!), and "Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek" (Prozac levels falling critically low, you can feel insanity's barbwire fence cutting the insides of your elbows on this one). Forgive me if my descriptions are self-indulgent. I got to work at 7a today as part of my master plan to never hit traffic once we move downtown by coming in unconscionably early. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Tue, 20 Jun 2006 the girls with the bulletproof vests Saw Beck tonight, accompanied by Meester Hester. Bad. Ass. Highlights: the "puppetron"—they had four live puppeteers putting on a puppet show of the performance as it happened, and had it on a projection screen via cameras and some whiz-bang visual effects. Beck's mid-Debra break wherein he told us the story of writing the song, involving R. Kelly, some Alice in Chains references (unfavorable ones, at that), some sort of gospel radio station, and undershirt shopping. Hilarity itself. Two songs apparently from a forthcoming album. No, I didn't just fail to recognize them. A rendition of "Clap Hands" wherein he segued into "One Foot in the Grave"—and back again! At least one song from every album since Mellow Gold except for Mutations (admittedly, that was somewhat disappointing, but still, the man played for a straight high-energy 90 minutes, so it's hard to really get upset). Superb renditions of "Get Real Paid," "Sexx Laws," "Devil's Haircut," "Novacane," and "Pay No Mind." an amazing back-to-back "Lost Cause" and "Golden Age" involving a dining table in the middle of the stage with four of the umpteen band members sitting around it banging on myriad vessels of liquid. Astoundingly cool sound from such a simple idea. Oh yeah, the opening/backup band was Jamie Lidell (on the same label as Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada). We got there a bit too late to really enjoy the opening performance (though now I think I'll pick up the album), but they were damn good as backups. Wow. Just wow. Next week: INXS. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 16 Jun 2006 biannualism I forgot to mention that as of Wednesday the 14th, I've been working at SiLabs for 2 years. Woot. I love my job. (Now I need to start taking vacation—I'm clipping 'cause I've still never used a vacation day.) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] pleasing the customer Atlanta was both entertaining and educational. This, this business of sales, is somewhat different than I'd thought, but it seems to work out in the end. I met our regional sales manager for the southeast, a fine gentleman who has previously worked with the likes of Bob Widlar. Most impressive! This weekend, who knows. The Heaviside boards came in yesterday, but I haven't started looking at them yet because Miz September and I were hanging out downtown last night. I'm sure I'll have time at some point, and I'll of course! report any significant developments (after all, I know you all wait with bated breath). revC came back the day before yesterday, and things are looking pretty good. I've made a firmware fix or two, but on the whole things look damn solid. Always good. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sat, 10 Jun 2006 scene d'un ballet Or something. I don't actually speak French. Last night, SCS and I went to this amazing show called Requiem, performed by Blue Lapis Light. Think Cirque, but actually performed in the shell of a 6-story building. There was rappelling, the giant sheet climbey things, and lots more amazing stuff. In short, holy balls! You Austin types should check it out. It's this weekend, next weekend, and the weekend after on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8:30. The crowd gathers in front of the gate to the ex-Intel construction site at San Antonio and 5th. Yes, this is a dance production that takes place in a construction site. That's kinda cool, isn't it? Oh yeah, also, I actually took half a day off to go to Fredericksburg (also with SCS) yesterday. That was supah coor! [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 07 Jun 2006 quick turn Wow. Someone decided it would be a good idea to unleash me (in my capacity as lead analog designer, not because of my awesome personality or marketing know-how, though the latter are of course self evident—now I'm really earning my last post's title) on some of our difficult customers, so I'll be going to Atlanta one night next week to meet with them. How can they fail to appreciate that I'm a danger to both the living and the dead, and as such shouldn't be allowed to venture outside my office, let alone trapse across the country to go scare the nice people who might otherwise buy our products? I guess this means I need to peruse the latest GQ (which I should have done already, given that Christina Aguilera is ruthlessly gorgeous on the cover) to learn the latest styles in summer suits. Can I get away with a khaki, or will I look like I lost my Pith helmet on safari? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 05 Jun 2006 too big for my britches On a whim, I decided on the following title for the paper I'm writing at work: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of Short Loop Ringing¹ ¹ With apologies to John Locke, who in no way condones or endorses any particular method of ringing. It's important to entertain the well-read members of your audience. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 04 Jun 2006 tunes and two-steppin Quite the busy day yesterday! Some swimming and general lazing around in the sun (at least I look a little less day-glo now, jeezus, and for the record, sucks to you paleface bastards who can't take a few hours of direct sun without burning—I'm the fairest I've ever been and I have nary a touch of the stuff) followed by some general walking around downtown ending up at this nifty authentic Mexican place. A tacos al pastor and guac-made-right-at-the-table later, we were out and about again, only to stumble into some gelatto (including what's probably the strongest lemon-lime flavored shit ever—like eating concentrated lemonade powder in sorbet form). After a bit more ambulation, it was time to head home and clean up for the evening's festivities, but not before stopping by Waterloo Records and picking up entirely too many Van der Graaf Generator CDs, and one by a newish local band, Thirteen of Everything. All you prog lovers will enjoy their shit immensely—a dash of Floyd, a punch (no, not a pinch, a punch) of Genesis, and a solid instrumental foundation slathered in originality. Said festivities comprised Texas two-step (and some swing and waltz and what-have-you) at the Broken Spoke. SCS and I were joined by Marissa and Dylan, and we all had a grand ole' time (once the drama of accidentally running into The She-Devil and Sloppy Seconds blew over, anyway). Now, back to work for a little while. Little baby VoIP boxes everywhere will be lost without their ringing spec. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 29 May 2006 wahboid omnibus A few things of note: Wednesday night I went to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert. It was kinda cool, though I have to say that I think they were better opening for Sevendust back-in-the-day. Jared needs to be a bit more disciplined with his vocals, and for fucks's sake turn up the mic! Saturday night, Mike, Matt, Cyrus, and I had one of the greatest days of all time. We started off with some sammiches, played Starcraft while our food digested, then went to the park and played football. After that, we returned to the ManHouse for some swimming and then a bit more Starcraft before heading out for dinner. On the way home from dinner, we noticed that there was a movie theater up north playing Transformers. No shit. We had to burn a little time before the midnight showing, so we played some pool. How can you beat a day like that? Yesterday we had a barbeque, so I mowed the lawn, cleaned off the deck, and cooked up some mean shit. We ate and then all hung out in the pool (like a dozen of us at one point), which was truly excellent. Especially water football. Now, bed. I know, it's not technically Monday until I wake up. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 25 May 2006 intense research (01:35:18) scrap1r0n: y'know (01:35:22) scrap1r0n: I was doing some rezerch (01:35:48) scrap1r0n: and I've come to the conclusion, as you can see from my earlier missive to F-A, that I need to know more about nonlinear dynamics (01:36:00) krazyllama: I see (01:36:17) krazyllama: maybe you should focus on the classical humponic oscillator instead [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 23 May 2006 a momentary lapse of reason In a fit of duty-to-the-company, I decided to forego the opportunity to work on the project I really wanted to do in favor of being the lead analog designer on the Si3226 project (because there's no one else to do it, and business-wise this is the more important part). This means that I will actually have up the threeeeee (probably more like four or five) people working dirrrrectly under me. It also means that all the fun design stuff I'd already done on Kiera is kind of lost (but not quite, because I think I'll still try to work some with Tim on the design). Too bad Mike went over to the Wireless coughevilcough division, else he'd have done the job that's now mine. He's better at organizing stuff... Strangely enough, somehow he's still doing a block similar enough that we're probably going to share digital design and a good bit of the architecture. I wonder if that means one of my previous ADC designs I'd been planning to reuse will end up in a Wireless part. That would be kinda hot! Tesla (the new name for my headphone amp) is nearing completion—I just have to sit down and grind out the last of the layout. I have my Digi-Key order together, and the power transformers and tubes are already here. ...which reminds me, I'm probably building enough of them that I can give away one or two at cost. Let me know if your headphone listening needs aren't presently being satisfied and we'll see what we can do. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 15 May 2006 business is good. business is booming I've been doing my best impression of a shiftless layabout for the past week—they comp'ed us a week of vacation after tapeout to thank us for all the overtime we put in, so I've been catching up on life—but I did manage to do a couple interesting things. First, embarassingly enough, Mike convinced me to start playing City of Villains (remember last summer and City of Heroes? I sure don't), but I've only played a small bit of it thus far. It does seem damn cool, and I'm intrigued by the way they've subtly changed the hero archetypes to make altogether different-feeling characters that are still very familiar in their powers. May, you gonna start playing with me now? Second, I decided that I'm done "missing out" on that "magic vacuum tube sound," so I've designed and am now in the process of building the amplifier you see to your right. whamp (Wahby's headphone amplifier) is the best name I've come up with thus far, but please feel free to suggest others. Note that a couple years designing circuits for ICs has rendered me completely incapable of anything approaching simplicity. Also, the extent to which an op-amp with a non-inverting second gain stage is a pain in the ass to compensate is left as an exercise to the reader (and then note my solution, a pretty cute one if I do say so myself). For those of you about to protest, "but that's mostly solid-state!" you're absolutely right, but consider that the majority of the amplification is coming from the vacuum tubes, and thus the majority of the audible distortion (which is what really creates the "magic"). Put another way: input refer all the distortion, and all but the distortion from the 12AX7s is attenuated by the gain of the input diff pair. Thus, the "sound" of the amplifier will be mostly dictated by the input pair. This claim is supported by my simulation results, which show that most of the harmonic distortion is in the even-order overtones, the characteristic distortion profile of a vacuum tube amplifier. By the way, I expect that at reasonable volumes I'll get less than .002% THD into my 250 Ohm beyerdynamic DT-880s, which may actually mean that I've designed it so well that it doesn't sound like a glass amp after all. At least it'll look cool... Edit: updated the schematic to the latest version, which now uses a slightly different compensation scheme and some snazzier output transistors. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Sat, 06 May 2006 taking no responsibility Wow. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] then cigarette Guys, go find yourself the video of the Pussycat Dolls featuring Big Snoop Dog (his newly-assumed moniker, it would appear) performing "Buttons." Girls are also welcome to watch it, but either (1) I'm right and you won't enjoy it nearly as much as the guys, or (2) you've been keeping secrets from Papa Wahby. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 04 May 2006 and we're off Just got the email. The PG has been inspected and approved. Hawsome. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] next time, it's a grenade My boss has started giving me cans of soda and warning me that next time it'll be a grenade. I wonder if I should be worried about this. We've just about finished the arduous PG checklists, but we already know we're taping out with a code bug—one that I introduced. Shit. Fortunately, we have the ability to patch the ROM while the chip is running, so it's not a problem (literally a one-line patch), but how much does it suck to be the source of the first known bug? This whole leakage cal fiasco really bothers me, but hey, screw it. I mean, yeah, it was my fault and all... In my defense, what the hell were they thinking having an analog designer write the code? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 03 May 2006 in the throes Tapeout hasn't happened yet, despite 18-hour days since last Friday. It looks like today will be the day, assuming that we can get the ROMs generated and all the antenna diode violations fixed. Then I shall take some comp time. Much-needed relief came today in the form of two beautiful new Dell 20 inch 1600x1200 flat panel displays the IT guys delivered to my office. LCDs may suck for gaming, but for shit like layout they are a God-send. Between these two and my laptop running dual-headed with my 2401FPW, I could theoretically have a 7040x1200 display going on my desk (using xdmx). At some point I might just have to do that for shits and giggles. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 26 Apr 2006 from the boardroom Today I gave an extremely well-received presentation to a boardroom full of SiLabs's finest, and participated actively in the ensuing discussion. It was a great opportunity to get cozy with the brass and get better acquainted with the really cool badasses who steer the Good Ship SiLabs. Also, I could swear I heard the Jeffersons theme song playing at some point in there. Moooovin' on up... [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 19 Apr 2006 fs la or, the other kind of acl It turns out that the Flaming Lips will be playing at this year's Austin City Limits Festival. Upon learning this, I immediately bought my three-day pass to the show. It doesn't even matter who else is playing (though usually it's a bunch of really good bands, so I'm sure that things are even better than they seem now). It's September 15 to 17. Get yer asses down here. Edit: according to the ACL News and Rumors Blog, the New Pornographers have also confirmed that they'll be appearing, along with a bunch of others. Badass. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 16 Apr 2006 at war with the mystics is the title of the latest album from everyone's favorite Okie band, The Flaming Lips. It's great, especially in the way that the various songs on the album throw back to different periods in their earlier work. For example, track 1, "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," rekindles images of Clouds Taste Metallic (Kim's Watermelon Gun, maybe?), and some other tracks go back even further. There's also a very Beck opening to the second track, "Free Radicals." In looking back to their earlier work, however, the Lips don't ignore the polished, tight sound that they've developed over their last few albums. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was an achievement for them in terms of how "professional" it sounded while retaining the essence of Lips, but it was also made of altogether different stuff than, e.g., Finally, the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid. That they've been able to leverage their technical development and simultaneously return to their, what, youthful? roots is both impressive and really freaking cool. I'd totally recommend buying this album ASAP. I'm also going to go out and buy the 5.1 DVD version of it when it comes out (to go along with the 5.1 versions of Yoshimi and The Soft Bulletin, both of which I highly recommend). It's on Lapnap and positron, so you can test drive it first, but dudes, please buy this one. It's just that damn good. Also of note: today I think I broke my finger playing some football with Mike and Matt (maybe it's just jammed, but fuck is it swollen). I know you wanted to know that. Oh yeah, and Beck is going to be in town on the 20th of June. I'm gonna get tix, so if anyone wants to make the trek down and watch, lemme know and I'll pick one up for you. The man puts on a helluva show. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 14 Apr 2006 Rube-Goldberg variations Most impressive. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] morality, squats, and a twenty-four incher Until a couple weeks ago I considered the use of wrist straps for deadlifts a travesty—after all, you should have forearm strength commensurate with your back strength if you're going to do deads! Then I realized that my deadlift routine was way too easy for me because my forearms were unable to keep up, and I changed my tune. Now I use them twice a week (normal deads on Tuesday, Romanian deads on Thursday) and they completely rule. While we're on the topic of the gym, I might as well also mention that I've started doing front squats instead of normal squats in order to more effectively work my quads while keeping my back from suffering too much. In addition I do work on the sled at higher weight, since my front squat technique isn't quite up to three-and-a-half plates yet (though hopefully in a few weeks...). I highly recommend them to you lifting fools—they're great fun, and inflexibility doesn't cause nearly as much cheating. Finally, I should mention that I finally broke down and bought a flat screen monitor—and boy did I get a doozie. In particular, I got a refurbished Dell 2405FPW that was even cheaper because Ms. Todd graciously allowed Mike and me to exercise her employee discount. Holy jeebus this thing is large, and hot (1920x1200, 24 inches... wow). [ permalink \| 6 comments ] Sun, 09 Apr 2006 punch you ROUND EYE I finally went back and dug through the image of kung-foo's hard drive, only to strike gold: Midnight Snack starring Sean and Dwip. Also, PORK CHOP SANDWICHES! [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Tue, 04 Apr 2006 b to the izzay My bay area visit this weekend was some good shit. In no particular order, impressions from the weekend: Maymaymay!, the new Spike Lee movie is good, wow I'm allergic to Katie's cat, the community of MIT alums out there is pretty impressive in its extent, holy shit you can deep fry a turkey (the official food of France, which is now called RoboFrance 29), Sherv's apartment is cool, sup Hippo, let us all bow before Woz's powers of perception, and did I mention the turkey? I can totally see why people are irresistably attracted to the Bay Area. Some day, when Mike, Matt, and I buy the 49ers, I guess... Oh yeah, at the right is me in bad lighting most of the way up a lamppost right near Sherv's house. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 30 Mar 2006 bathroom display Sweet. The foo bathroom display has been resurrected. That's some funny shit. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 26 Mar 2006 ex recto Tonight, in a rousing round of Trivial Pursuit pitting me, Katie Todd, and Katie Butler against Matt, Cyrus, and Mike, we pulled off a victory that verged on humiliation. In the process, I pulled answers ranging from "James Cagney" to "Baghdad Betty" straight out of my ass, laying them on the table in exchange for slices of pie. Apparently my ass is a gamer. Once again, the master of minutiae pulls off the ridiculous victory. Score another for the fat man. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 24 Mar 2006 trent I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert tonight with Cyrus, Jame, Dylan, and Katy, and dizzam was it badass. We were pretty high up in the nosebleeds, all better tickets having sold out within minutes of the box office opening (I called continuously until I got some and we still ended up on the second level), but it was nevertheless a stupendous concert. Having seen Nine Inch Nails from the moshpit before (on the Fragile tour with Christine, Rodin, Matt, Amrys, Tanis, LeeAnn, and Stephanie), I actually kind of appreciated being able to see throughout the concert and not being bruised and battered by the end of it. It cannot but be said that Trent is a consummate performer. He had superb control over the mood of the audience throughout the show, bringing them "up" in time to introduce songs from their new album, relaxing the tempo a bit to encompass Hurt, gradually bringing things back up, and ending on the frenzied screams of the audience singing along to Head Like A Hole. Listening to him perform, it's no wonder he's credited with having revolutionized (or is it created?) the genre. Head (almost) back down: layout calls this weekend, but football, the driving range, and probably some biking lie in wait as well. [ permalink \| 8 comments ] Thu, 23 Mar 2006 g dawg Whoa dey! A warm welcome to Dr. Dahlsim, a.k.a. gva. Bad ass. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 17 Mar 2006 abrasive rhinoplasty I'm not bitching here, I'm explaining: my silence is not due to lack of interest, but lack of time. I have averaged over 12 hours of work a day since returning from Boston last week. Tapeout has been delayed due to an error in the generated digital route (a complete rework takes nigh on two weeks because our timing is so fucking tight), which means that firmware freeze (Mike and I, both nominally analog designers, are making the lion's share of the code changes, mostly having to do with self-calibration routines) is pushed back, cal work can continue, and I'm now in charge of all layout fixes and verification. The good news is that, other than being exhausted, I'm very happy with work at the moment. I take great satisfaction in the steady-to-breakneck pace of progress, and believe it or not my social life isn't actually suffering all that much—only my ratio of waking hours to those spent in much-needed (just look at me, for Chrissake) beauty sleep. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 13 Mar 2006 three things I only did three things this weekend. They were: breakfast at Magnolia football layout Guess which one took up all but 19 hours of the weekend? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 10 Mar 2006 by way of the fates —and by that I mean Sherv, a.k.a. fates at berkeley dot edu—a new entry can be found in the blogroll. Yo Stephanie. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 03 Mar 2006 another milestone along the road to the perfect email subject line From: Riad Wahby <riwahby@...> To: DL.ProSLIC@... Subject: the lkgcal or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the discrete BOM [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 02 Mar 2006 a nice fellow It's official: as of two(ish) weeks from now (when we tape out), I'll be working for our newest company fellow. Tim Dupuis is a cool guy and a card-carrying Analog Ninja, and I'll be the lead designer on a chip with his mentorship. I'm psyched as all hell. So much so, in fact, that I've already started designing one of the hard blocks. Yay. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 27 Feb 2006 hot lot On very short notice, I'll be in Boston over the weekend for VI-A interviews. I arrive some time midday on Saturday and leave on an early morning flight on Wednesday. Cool beans. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] productivity Last weekend was thoroughly productive. Friday I went out clubbing—starting at the Firehouse, we then hit Oslo, Glass, Barcelona, and then headed back to Oslo. Given that I was parked by the Firehouse, that amounts to walking across town and back twice—and thank God! because I don't know what I'd do if women weren't so fickle. Saturday Cyrus, Marissa, and I hit Juan in a Million for the Breakfast Tacos Touched By Christ. Cyrus and I then went to Game Stop and Fry's, and there was much rejoicing (in addition to the music I detailed below, I picked up a used copy of God of War for the PS2 and a copy of the American Psycho DVD—woot). After that, I went to the office for a few hours and did some layout, then Cyrus, Matt, and I got dinner and played Starcraft. Sunday it was biking with Alida in the morning/early afternoon (out along Bee Caves to Lakeway and back, almost exactly 20 miles and a thoroughly excellent ride, though quite hilly). Then it was work-on-car time: Dagny got synthetic rearend and tranny fluids courtesy of Specialty Formulations (yes, I shamelessly put "boutique" lubricants in my car. So what, wanna fight about it?). Also, some good ole "German Castrol" Syntec 0W-30 (it may smell like bubblegum, but it still tastes like motor oil). Thank you, Castrol elves. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 26 Feb 2006 resurrection Over the last week, I've been doing a metric assload of layout, which means I've consumed (in a manner of speaking) lots of music. Through a strange series of associations, I was thinking the other night about Nimrod from the Enigma Variations by Elgar, so I listened to it. Somehow this turned into listening to that entire CD, which contains what has become a new favorite among orchestral pieces, Elgar's In the South (Alassio) (check it out, it's hot). Having gone through that, I turned to some other standbys, including Mahler's 2nd and 5th symphonies (now do you get the title?), Beethoven, Shostakovich (a certain piano quintet never fails to bring a smile and a minor deluge of memory), Prokofiev, Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra remains, to my mind, the ultimate test of any speaker system), and more. Basically, what I'm saying is that I'm listening to more classical music than you can shake a stick at. Today when we were at Fry's, I picked up some more Mussorgsky, Stravinsy, and Prokofiev, and also got my hands on Sir Andrew Davis's complete Dvorak cycle—a 7 cd set for $30. Bad ass. Also on its way: more Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Brahms. You might be wondering why the hell I'm buying the CDs, and the answer is simple: you can't download good recordings of much of the more obscure stuff, and the recording makes a huge difference (my Beethoven cycle is an el cheapo one, and it's painfully obvious when you listen to it). Moreover, even the best classical recordings are pretty damn cheap compared to pop music. I'm not sure I agree with this list 100%, but it's a damn good start. Get to work. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 22 Feb 2006 fornicaliabound Hey all you Bay Area peeps, this is a heads-up that I'm flying into SJC at 6:44p on Friday, March 31. Y'all betta bring it. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Mon, 20 Feb 2006 Japan wins There was a moment yesterday in which I realized why Japanese cars are just better. That moment occurred as I was finishing up a brake job that, on a Bimmer, would have taken the better part of three hours. That's because BMW doesn't design their cars to be quickly and easily maintainable. Acura (or their parent company, Honda, really), on the other hand, most assuredly does; as a result it took all of 10 minutes per wheel, including pulling off the wheels and putting them back on. As Matt points out, designing your cars not to fail (as the Germans claim to) is just not as effective as designing them to be quickly and cheaply repaired if they do fail—Gauss and Poisson just aren't on your side. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 17 Feb 2006 heading 090 I got an email this morning letting me know that Woz's baby, the Women of the East Side Calendar, has been born. It's for a good cause, and it's eye candy. How can you say no? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 15 Feb 2006 knock-down drag-out This week I've called two meetings which have turned into the electrical engineering equivalent of a barroom brawl. This is a good thing—in the first one, we made two decisions critical to the way that we will proceed towards the tape-out of the two chips I'm currently working on, and in the second we discovered and subsequently fixed what would have been a show-stopping error in a modification we only had to make because somewhere between customer and marketing we were never told that we had to support a mode of operation we'd never before seen (in particular, ringing the telephone with both a positive and negative battery as opposed to just one big negative one, the historically preferred approach because (a) telephones are fully differential systems anyway, so you can get positive and negative tip-to-ring voltages even with only one battery, and (b) with a negative battery you don't get electrochemical corrosion). Also, that was quite a friggin sentence. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 10 Feb 2006 plasma facelift How's that for a burning discharge? To the right you see the new face of my plasma tweeter, i.e., my old Sony CDX-F7705X (now sans CD mechanism because it broke and I decided that if I couldn't fix it, at least I could have fun breaking it more). I'm using it for three purposes: further preamplification, audio filtering, and for EMI isolation of whatever is actually providing the audio. If I got an antenna, I could use it as a radio, too, I suppose. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] their powers combined What do you get when you take an old Dell laptop power brick and a car stereo with a broken CD mechanism? You guessed it, a nifty-looking preamp for your plasma tweeter. Unfortunately, replacing the 22V zener in the brick with a 13V one to get something more like automotive voltages seemed to trip some sort of overload sensor, so I just went with the poor man's solution: a 4 ohm resistor in series with the supply drops the voltage by between 2.5 and 5 volts. So what if I'm burning 6 watts in the process? That's what power resistors are for. OK, it's 3a. I've got a design review (attending, not giving) in 7 hours, so it's definitely bed time. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 09 Feb 2006 moved in As of last night, the last of my crap is put away. I'm officially moved into the manhouse. OK, well, not quite, since my bicycles, air compressor, and one or two other random things are still hanging around the garage of my apartment, but I plan on grabbing that crap on the way home from work tonight. To save space at the manhouse, I'm just leaving my truck parked at work all the time. It makes me look very dedicated, since mine is the only car in the parking lot at, oh, 1a on a Saturday. Also, it means that I can move stuff even if I drive Dagny (my STi—had I mentioned previously that I've named her Dagny? Think: some linear combination of Gabrielle Anwar's character in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, and Atlas Shrugged heroine Dagny Taggart) to work. On a different note, yay for design reviews. Two today, one tomorrow, and, to cap it all off, a meeting with the boss. Hooray. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 05 Feb 2006 sharp lateral move Sweet. Steelers won. This weekend I moved from my apartment to Mike's house, where I'm now roommates with Matt and Cyrus (Mike moved out in observance of the end of his life, i.e., his imminent marriage to Katie. No offense to Katie, who is totally cool—mostly I just like making fun of Mike). After I grab the last of my stuff tomorrow, I'll be completely moved in. Watch out, Woz: if you're not careful, I'll actually manage to move twice before you finish unpacking. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 30 Jan 2006 jetblue ...is great. I flew roundtrip Austin-Boston over a weekend for under $170, and since they were nonstop flights, I was able to leave early Monday morning and get back to Austin in time for work. How hot is that? To those I missed this time around: fear not, I'll be back. To those whom I saw: be afraid, I'll be back. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 25 Jan 2006 do not taunt the metal rev Tonight (well, this morning, whatever) I stayed at work until about 1a heroically (yeah... my ass) fighting to PG (= "Polygon Generation" = tapeout) a metal rev of the Quad so we can get it to the fab before the start of the Chinese New Year (if it gets in before, it gets processed through the holiday, otherwise it doesn't start until afterwarfds—ugh). I am basically the owner of this whole thing; Ion made the couple little schematic changes, then handed it over to me for layout, and now I'm doing all the PG verifications. I guess it's good practice for when I'm leading a chip. I took the opportunity while waiting for the LVS, DRC, etc to run (fuckin' DRC takes almost two hours on a dual Xeon with 4 gigs of RAM) to finish designing the ESD pads, so now it's just a matter of getting them to fit into the pad ring, doing some sim-yoo-lation, and getting them consecrated by Marius, High Priest of HBM. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 23 Jan 2006 a new soul arrives ...the title I wanted and couldn't quite have a few days ago. Hooray Soul Calibur. I've been meaning to add Cyrus to my blogroll for a while now, and have continually forgotten to do so. So now he's added, and everyone knows I'm lame. We cool? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] burning discharge Not that kind, sicko. I've just been tasked with the ESD clamps for a high-voltage (200V) telco line interface chip (SOI, baby). It has been handed down from on high that they shall be finished this week, since tape-out looms close on the horizon. I'm pretty pumped to be working on them, and I see plenty of opportunities for area-saving cuteness already. ...after all, everyone knows I'm all about cute. For the record, transistors in high-voltage processes look funny. They're hexagonal! (You know, like the IRF "HEXFET" thing). [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] quux nexxus FYI, quux.ws is now officially pronounced kwuks-us. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 22 Jan 2006 an oldie but a goodie God I love the internets. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Out of my way! I WILL RUIN THIS PLAY WITH MY ANGER!!!!! Troy Polamalu is an unstoppable juggernaut. I have decided I will grace his jersey with my torso come Superbowl Sunday. Also, more info on the Flutie drop-kick—video of it happening, and an interesting article about Flutie from 1998. Also, see Wikipedia's entry on the drop kick. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 21 Jan 2006 denouement The cases are done. Feast your eyes. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Thu, 19 Jan 2006 a new career path arrives Just in case I get demoted from design, I can always become a layout mercenary. I had to do some emergency metal revisions for a chip we're sending out next week, and I ended up scavenging a few dummy transistors into a couple usable circuits. It's always fun to take a random assortment of transistors, some of whose terminals are connected to points in the circuit from which they can't be disconnected, and turn them into a useful functional block. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 18 Jan 2006 talkee talkee Wow, lots of entries today. After work and a quick dinner (after which Mike managed to spill a soda all over the front seat of my car) a bunch of us headed over to Tim's to watch Underworld—in preparation, of course, for the release of the sequel this Friday. I couldn't sleep when I got home, so I went ahead and made the magnetic shields for the CRT clocks. It seemed like one layer of 6 mil AD-MU-80 (80 Ni/20 Fe) would have been enough, but I went ahead and did two on each just to be certain. Success! I suspected given the magnitude of the distortions I was seeing that the field strength wasn't too great, and it appears that I was right. Now what to do with the 14x60 sheets of 4 mil AD-MU-80 and AD-MU-00 and the remaining 4x36x6 mil... what else needs some shielding? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] maybe it's just the ozone talking... ...but I strongly prefer the nitrogen peroxide that the tweeter is feeding me. I think Marduk still prefers Stimutax, though. Someone ought to give me a helium environment for Christmas so I don't kill myself or something. From an article on tweeter technology by NewForm Research: Think of it as an arc welder driven by an audio signal. No moving parts, therefore no resonances. As fast as the air itself. And now the fatal flaw. The developers left the driver on overnight and returned the next morning to find everything in the room white from the ozone produced by the process. If this tweeter had proved otherwise practical in the early 60's, we would probably all be dead of skin cancer by now. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] random thought before I go to sleep What if we weren't engineers? We wouldn't be able to dream up stuff and just make it. Mmmm... I love making. And dreaming. 'nite. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] from the frontline It's 1a and I'm still at work. To be sure, I haven't been working for the last several hours—I was just using the wondrous laboratory facilities here to build up the new audio modulator for my plasma tweeter. Success! After adding an LC pi network between the emitter of the output follower and the plasma modulator, the audio section worked perfectly. Good thing we have an assload of high voltage caps and high current inductors around this place—I needed 'em. Even with the filter, when the plasma is running the E fields coming off the stub are strong enough to induce 5Vpp ripple on the 300V supply—which is bypassed with no less than 680 microFarads of bulk capacitance! Admittedly, I do need to add a liberal sprinkling of lower-valued caps whose impedances actually look capacitive above, say, 10 kiloHertz... By the way, do the math on that shit... those caps are storing a lot of energy! Those of you who were around at the time probably remember when I literally VAPORIZED a resistor—leads and all—on the very power supply from which this whole thing runs. ...oh yaah, and measurements indicate that when the flame is about half an inch high, I'm burning about 180 Watts into the 22 MHz carrier. Fuck yeah RF burns, baby. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 16 Jan 2006 on the epistemology of humor (excerpt) It's a work I'm planning for later this year, but for now you get this glimpse: Humor in its most basic form draws from one or more of five areas, which I will call the Five Pillars of Humor. These are, Xenophobia—Is it different? Then it's funny. This includes homophobia, racism, sexism, and religious humor. Violence—pain is good for the soul. Also, it's good for a laugh. Irony—it may seem like a compliment... until your sarcasm melts their flesh off. (...and that was funny because it was violent.) the Ridiculous—the one category that truly does not require humor at someone else's expense, the ridiculous is humor nevertheless. Puns and Chuck Norris's cancer-curing-too-bad-they-don't-exist tears go here. Poop—in the words of Lord Opticord, "dog poop! ahhh hahahahahahaha, dog poop! That's a good one!" Regular readers will note that this is a substantial revision of my earlier work on the five pillars. I feel that broadening its scope from the previous instantiation makes this a theory which appeals more to the masses, thus driving up book sales. Also, before anyone else says it, "yay, a non-technical blog entry!" [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] gorgeous models for whatever you want I found a stash of spice models. Man, that's just hot. Also, reading this makes me sad. I always thought that the audio hobbyist community was at least a little competent, but these guys understand almost nothing about circuits. It's kind of painful, and a little disappointing. I will continue to choose to believe that amateur radio hobbyists are more knowledgeable than these guys—admittedly, given that there's even more voodoo up in the closer-to-daylight reaches of the spectrum, if I were a betting man I might have to reconsider my position before setting any odds. (In case you're wondering, I ran across that page searching for a spice model for the MPSA42 transistor.) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 15 Jan 2006 a thought experiment Every once in a while, one ought to derive the complete transfer function for some relatively nasty circuit by hand—just to, you know, stay in shape. Simulation is an evil crutch. In that vein, I decided to redesign the audio modulator for my plasma tweeter and make it a bit higher performance (the last one was embarassingly simplistic and st00pid). To make it more fun, I decided to make it closed-loop but ac-coupled, and I wanted to use a minor loop for the DC biasing. Thus, the circuit you see to the right, which is perfectly serviceable as a gain-of-100(ish) audio amplifier with independently variable DC output voltage (via the pot in the loop). This'll let me run the screen bias where it wants to be for the appropriate plasma flame size, and simultaneously give me decent audio fidelity. Note the DC loop right around the op-amp to bias the common-emitter stage and the inverting feedback (to the wrong terminal on account of the inversion in the external circuitry) that handles the AC loop. Yay. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 12 Jan 2006 ...but I only have eyes for μ After a minor circuit redesign (resulting in the savings of two high-voltage caps) achieved with the old boards by way of some trace-cutting, my first scope clock now has a friend. Like George says, you just need two of some things, like helicopters. The next thing I had to start thinking about was how to magnetically shield the clocks when I put them in their cases. Since space will be tight, the CRT will be sitting basically right on top of the power transformer, which rudely spits off this rather large 60Hz field that causes the picture to swim (very!) noticeably. Since my refresh rate is not quite at 60Hz, the swimming ends up happening at the beat frequency between the mains 60Hz and the draw rate from the PIC. If the two are synchronized—something I've played with in code—you don't get swimming, but you do get static distortion. Plus, I can't quite get the refresh rate up to 60Hz with the code as it is right now, and while I can probably hit 55Hz, I'd have to draw fewer points in order to squeeze out that last bit of performance. I'd rather just shield the bastards and not worry about synchronizing the refresh. After some research on what's available, I've decided to turn to Advance Magnetics, purveyors of a few different kinds of flexible high-permeability materials with which I"ll wrap the neck of the CRT. There is something very suspenders-UNIX-jiggaHertz cool about talking to the guys who work at a company like that—I mean, how often do you call up a company and start talking physics with the person who answers the phone? But don't take it from me—have a look at their engineering catalog. OMGHAWT. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 11 Jan 2006 scientific progress goes boink ...but only after much fizzling, popping, etc. I cooked a good half-dozen transistors and several high-voltage caps getting this sonofabitch working (mostly because I was being an idiot with respect to the return current paths), but that's to be expected—after all, any time I build a power supply, some magic smoke earns its freedom. The results speak for themselves, and yes, the time displayed on the clock is correct. The whole enchilada. Old and busted? Blue hotness. Let me count the hacks. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 10 Jan 2006 productivinsanitillness RCA Also, clock construction is progressing nicely. The board is assembled except for the deflection amps (didn't have the 430k resistors; I'll have to borrow some from work), and I actually fired up the CRT and got a hot little blue-white dot. A tweak or two on the focus and control grids and it was dialled in nicely. Since the trafo is rated for 480 VRMS center-tapped (240-0-240) at 40 mA and I'm only drawing about 3 mA from it, I'll have to add a series resistor on the primary or risk blowing up the power supply caps (they've got about 390 V across them right now, whereas they're only rated for 350 V—by the way, the United Chemi-con KXG line of electrolytic caps gives exceptionally high charge storage density; I highly recommend them for your next high-voltage project). Pictures forthcoming, and enclosure on its way. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] will of the overmind Submit. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 09 Jan 2006 step aside, James Brown Get up, get down, get dressed. I couldn't find the logo in high enough resolution, so I just drew my own. The corners of the square overlap the diamond more than they should. Such is life. I think I'm going for bright green. Ladies, don't be shy—we all know that pink is the new black. Edit: not satisfied with just one, I also had to do a General Radio one. That's a hot little logo. Next up is probably the old-school RCA (with the lightning bolt coming off the bottom of the A). [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 07 Jan 2006 can't stop the funk I can't claim credit for the title—Woz suggested it when I failed to come up with anything. I guess I'm in an unstoppable funk of my own. Wow. That's completely hot, and art.com actually sells them. Also at Woz's suggestion, I'm going to make a bunch of t-shrets out of the logos of various old-school engineering firms. I'm thinking Telefunken, RCA, Burroughs, Weston, General Radio, stuff like that. Respond with other ideas—you know you have a favorite or two I'm forgetting. Oh, also, feast your eyes upon my latest clock project. The boards were delivered via FedEx on Friday, so next week I'll be assembling, testing, and tuning. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 06 Jan 2006 leavin' on a jet plane ...bound for Vegas. Today I head out for a weekend of CES, Cirque, and general schwag whoring with Ms. Wozniak. I'm psyched as all shit. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 05 Jan 2006 coming up roses Last night Tim, Mike, and I joined many others in watching UT play USC in the Rose Bowl at Dylan's (on his breathtakingly gorgeous Runco 3-chip DLP projector). Despite the best efforts of USC, the announcers, the fans, and even some of their own players (witness the many fumbles), UT came out on top in what turned out to be a game every bit as great as we'd expected. You heard it here first: Vince Young is some sort of cybernetic alien being from a planet where football isn't just a game, it's the only viable means of survival (as well as the mating call, although I'd imagine it functions well that way here on earth too, at least for Mr. Young). This morning at the gym, I met a very interesting person, Seton Motley, a rock musician-cum-conservative political columnist here in Austin. I spotted him on the bench, and we got to talking about music—his knowledge of Cornell, Vedder, Gozzard, and their ilk was first-rate, and from talking to him I'd guess he is himself a reasonably good musician as well. He recommended to me, and so I shall recommend to you, Soulhat, a band from Austin whose song Bonecrusher I've just realized I have heard on the radio (and even enjoyed). I'll have to check them out further. After going from Axl Rose to Dave Brubeck by way of Robert Plant, we moved on to politics, local, national, and international. Being somewhere rather far to the left socially, he and I needless to say didn't see eye-to-eye on several issues, but the conversation was at the very least entertaining. At the end of it (after the passage of no small amount of time!), he mentioned his website, NewsOfTheDay.org. Interesting people are cool. Sonofabitch my 5-day simulation just died because some incompetent jackass in IT decided to kill the license server. I'm going to make a quick stop by his office on my way to what I can only assume is prison given how angry I've just become. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 02 Jan 2006 <title goes here> Well, I'm disappointed that my last attempt at finding a USB-serial converter that'll work with my PIC programmer has failed miserably. Now I have to send the sumbitch back—but at least I get the shipping back, since UPS screwed up. If you were waiting with bated breath for a link to the Imogen Heap album, wait no more. Also check out So Young But So Cold, a collection of underground French music from 1977-1983. This is what the French were doing while we were punking out, apparently. Whatever else you can say about it, you have to admit it's damn good stuff. Enjoy. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 01 Jan 2006 backbreaking criticism I'm not clever enough to keep my titles entertaining. Shoot me. With a .30-30. I went with Cindy and Casey to see Brokeback Mountain. I didn't have any particular expectations, except that it would be something of an Oscar-chaser. Turns out, I was wrong to expect that—it was a genuinely well-done film and a very good story. It's one of those movies you should probably see so you can talk about it at cocktail parties or on dates, or if you genuinely like somewhat depressing unrequited love stories. If I were you, I'd wait for DVD. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 30 Dec 2005 more new music Watching the last few OC episodes of Season 2, I noticed a cool song during the funeral scene (sorry, not to ruin it—at least I didn't tell you who dies). Turns out, it's by an artist who calls herself Imogen Heap. I don't have it up on positron yet, but it'll get there eventually, at which point those of you "in the know," as it were, ought to grab it, give it a listen, and buy the CD. Yeah, yeah, the feedback loop is attenuated somewhat, but some positive feedback is better than none. If you like Bjork, give Imogen a try. I think it's pretty good stuff. [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Wed, 28 Dec 2005 shiftless layabout Apparently, until a couple days ago, I was the only person in my family who knew the joy of teh OC. Like I said, until a couple days ago, when Aziza decided to pick up the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2. As I write this, we are in the final minutes of episode 26. Once season 1 is defeated, I'm going to bed. Anna is still the best of the Seth coven, and I'll never forgive him for fucking that shit up. My work at the bench (conveniently located in front of the Provider-of-teh-OC) has been fruitful, and various documents shall soon be published discussing my progress. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Tue, 27 Dec 2005 old friends, new progress Vacation has treated me well thus far. I've been slaving away at my makeshift workbench, the coffee table in the family room—now the home of two laptops, my trusty Tek 2465 (brought along from Austin in lieu of my usual Christmas companion, my PS2), a breadboard, and assorted signal and power wiring for the whole thing. My work thus far has produced a reasonably large amount of PIC code, a brand-spanking-new PCB layout, a couple really nifty high-voltage circuits, and a newfound appreciation for the GNU PIC utilities, notably gpasm and gpsim. Today Dave Crimmins, a friend I haven't seen in something like three or four years, came over and hung out for an hour or so. He just got back from Iraq three days ago—he was in the Army in Korea just after we got out of high school (yup, we still have an active military presence there) and was called up from the reserves a bit over a year ago. He was in an engineering crew sweeping roadways for explosives, and had some interesting stories to report, from Iraqi police helping the insurgents plant bombs along the roadways to the overblown reports of the quality of the Republican Guard. Quoth Dave, "It would've been fun to go out and fight those guys in the desert—it would have been like a video game." Indeed. I'll probably go get a drink with Dave later this week, and will certainly pass along any other interesting stories I hear. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 21 Dec 2005 xmas xperimentation I adore my laptop, but it is pretty friggin big. Beyond that, it doesn't have a serial port, and as we all know, USB-to-serial converters are never good enough (with the exception of this one, I believe—we shall see tomorrow). That really sucks, because I was planning on doing some stuff at home over Christmas that would require a PIC programmer, and for that I need a real serial port. Then it hit me: I can just get IT to give me a Thinkpad T30 over the break, complete with a real honest-to-God serial port sticking out of the back. Hotness. Next problem: Windows! The answer, of course, is Knoppix to the rescue. Persistent data? Thanks to Dell (who gave me a "free" 128MB USB stick when I got my computer), I have that taken care of, too, as Knoppix can, since version 3.8 or thereabouts, save persistent data on a USB stick and seamlessly reintegrate it at the next boot. This vacation, then, will be a test of two things: first, how well does this Knoppix persitent thing work? Second, can my cantankerous disregard for all windowmanagers post-fvwm2 survive the week with nothing but KDE to get me by? All of this, and more, shall be revealed! [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 19 Dec 2005 a look at what's to come Just a little peek. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] ace (defensive) driver Hey, remember that whole ticket thing and the defensive driving and all that jazz? Well, I took the course yesterday, and I am truly a changed man. I'll never speed again. No, the course didn't convince me to drive better. It was, however, fucking torture. According to the rules set out by the State, the course must take a minimum of 6 hours, including 1 hour of mandatory break. So I couldn't just run through it in an hour like any reasonable person would—I had to flip back and forth between the course and a few lively games of C&C Generals while watching the Chargers defeat the Colts (woot!) and then the Cowboys get eaten alive by the Redskins (Little Big Horn, indeed). But hey, apparently I'm a really safe driver, because I got 100% on the final test. Remember that next time you're clawing for the oh shit! handle as we blow past some poor old woman at 140, horn and stereo punctuating the screams of the passengers and the sirens blaring behind us. ...and just think, we won't even have three stars yet! [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sat, 17 Dec 2005 wardrobe, in spare oom I went and saw Chronicles of Narnia tonight, and it made me way happy. My older sister called me last weekend to tell me that she'd gone and seen it, and recommended that I do so as well. See, when we were little, my sisters and I loved the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—and the new version stands up to the test of memory-inflated-over-time. Visuals get two thumbs up. The special effects were done by Industrial Light and Magic (Lucasfilms's CG/makeup/effects house), and they were everything you'd expect. Best visual in the whole thing, for me, was the brief phoenix animation in the middle of the big battle. Tilda Swinton was great as the White Witch, Liam Neeson's voice acting as Aslan was everything you'd expect it to be, and (as I managed to call in the theater!) Michael Madsen lent his voice to Maugrim, the Witch's wolfish chief of security. The kids were, well, kids, but they played their roles well enough. Oh yeah, and the Professor, despite his very brief appearances (just as in the book), was very cool, too. Go see it in the theatres. It's worth the big screen. Next up, King Kong. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Fri, 16 Dec 2005 digital in disguise I'm slouching towards Gomorrah, and it's DSP code all the way down. As of yesterday, I'm being so presumptuous as to write patch code for the DSP on the ProSLIC, which is actually an interesting challenge. The code that's already in there is on a ROM, so it can't be modified, but we have a 1024 word patch RAM and an 8-entry patch table, so with a little sleight of mind you can turn its brown eyes blue, so to speak. In other news, I've found a new project to work on over Christmas break. I can't tell you what it is, but it does involve the AD7302, mostly because I'm too lazy to bother assembling a pair of 8-bit resistor/op-amp DACs. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 13 Dec 2005 a cappucino machine. no no, a sno-cone maker. Watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Mike and Cyrus tonight. It's like a combination of Assassins and True Lies. Really fun. Angelina is almost as hot as Charlize—pretty much the highest praise I can give. Guerolito isn't as much a remix album as an album remix; that is, the track ordering is the same as Guero, except they're all remixed. I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, but it's really fucking good. Now it's bedtime. Tomorrow I get to start on calibrations! [ permalink \| 4 comments ] with a quickness Running to Best Buy to pick up Beck's new album, Guerolito. I don't care that it's a remix album, it's still badass that he's got another one out. Full report forthcoming. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 12 Dec 2005 that's unpossible! What's more incongruous: a guy wearing a football jersey walking into an Aveda store, or the notion that anyone would wear a Tim Rattay 49ers #13 jersey? Either way, I was getting some funny looks. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 11 Dec 2005 a pyrrhic victory Another such fantasy football victory and I am undone. Actually, I'm undone regardless, but I managed to pull out a win on the last game of the season to keep Mike from going to the playoffs. With regard to fantasy football, I am talented in one respect: to cause injury. This year, I drafted Javon Walker (out for the season after the first game), Patrick Crayton (out after three or four games), Braylon Edwards (out for the rest of the season as of last week, the only week in which he had a decent game), Brian Westbrook (out for the season and probably half of next season with a Lisfranc fracture), Darrell Jackson (out for most of the season, but coming back just in time for the last couple games, and probably the playoffs, if the Seahawks make it), and probably some others I'm forgetting. Apparently getting drafted by me is as bad as appearing on the cover of the Madden NFL video game. Anyone have any requests for next year? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 09 Dec 2005 gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal goal goal goal goal goal goal goal It's official: the FIB fix I proposed on Monday and worked out Tuesday with Marius works perfectly. Also, I've confirmed on more than one part that Zhiwei's "40μA" current isn't. Score one for the fat man. In other news, I've decided that amber (#FFBF00) makes a much better foreground color than gray for my XTerms. It looks horrible against this medium gray, but against either white or black it's quite visible. I knew you wanted to know that. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 07 Dec 2005 Texans are idiots ...when the weather turns "cold." Right now outside it's pretending to spit "freezing rain." I drove home from Mike's and people were literally going 25 MPH on the highway—and they just don't get that it's braking you have to worry about. On one hill on Loop 360, there were about a dozen cars just pulled off—some crashed into others, some just stopped out of fear, apparently—and the people still on the road were doing unspeakably stupid things in an obvious attempt to claim money from their insurance company. Oh, also, we watched D.E.B.S. tonight. Holy crap that's a bad movie—about high school-aged female spies, one of whom happens to get into a lesbian tryst with the archvillain. I think they knew their target audience well. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] we can't stop! it's too dangerous! I've begun to bittorrent every episode of Top Gear I can find, because this show is awesome. In short, it's a (very!) humorous show about serious cars. It's funny to hear British guys making fun of the French and Germans (and, well, everyone else, too). [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 06 Dec 2005 allow us to probe you... More probing today at work. This time, I discovered the solution to the other mystery I've been chasing down—the supposedly accurate 40μA current I'm getting from the bandgap is a couple percent off! Woot. Acquitted on all charges. We now return me to my regularly scheduled programming, consisting of finding shit other people fucked up (not that I wasn't doing that already, as it turns out)! [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Mon, 05 Dec 2005 Sunday slumber mirthfully broken; manic Monday; submitted for thirsty Thursday On Sunday morning, I dreamed that a group of Fort Awesomeites were sitting around shooting the shit. Someone (I'm not sure who) asked, "what the fuck is a brainchild?" Ian, in my dream, replies (with perfect Ian nuance), "deeelicious." I actually laughed myself awake. Monday was an extremely productive day. First, I learned the basics of probing a de-capped, de-passivated chip fabricated in .18μM CMOS with a probe tip so small that you don't actually see the tip under the microscope—you see only an interference pattern in approximately the spot where the tip should be. Man that fucker is small. After learning some probing techniques, I was able to track down (with Marius's help) the source of all (most?) of the problems we'd been seeing with my circuit—a switchcap resistor which had been unaccounted for and which managed to screw up the gain of a particular sensor by a good 5%. Holy shit! I'm fucking pumped as shit about this, since I've been beating my head against a wall on this particular issue for a week or more, and have just cracked it wide open. Bad ass. A FIB fix is in the works as we speak. Finally, Cyrus suggested tonight while hanging out with Mike and me that we needed to invent a new drink—the Basra Bunker-Buster. After much brainstorming, we settled (by way of thoughts of Bomb Pops, Jell-o shots, and some godawful ideas too horrible to even mention) on the following: Fill a highball glass a bit over halfway with a strong mix of Red Bull and vodka Pour a shot of Blue Curaçao into a shot glass Add a packet of red Pop Rocks to the shot glass Immediately drop the shotglass into the highball and drink like it's going out of style This Friday is the SiLabs Christmas party. The afterparty, at Mike's house, will feature these. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sat, 03 Dec 2005 sex in a (six-speed gear)box The KartBoy shifter and bushings are installed. My transmission officially makes me horny. Rodin, if you're looking for a relatively inexpensive upgrade to your car that will make you smile every time you drive it, they make short shifter and bushing kits for the Impreza wagon, too... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 02 Dec 2005 a Monican agent! I went and saw Aeon Flux tonight with Alida, Matt, and Cindy. I know, this movie has been completely panned by the critics, and I guess I can kind of see why—I doubt any of them have seen the entire animated series, which would probably have enhanced their appreciation for the whole thing a lot more. So how do the two compare? Well, they don't, really. The cartoon is still clearly better, but I appreciated the way that the movie borrowed certain elements from the cartoon—a nod to fans of the series—and turned them into something distinctly different. How else are you going to turn a show consisting of fifteen episodes (comprising the 6-part pilot, four shorts, during each of which Aeon dies, and ten full-length episodes) which provide only a glimpse at some overarching plot into a coherent film that lasts ninety minutes? So the world is somewhat different and the plot and characters are a patchwork of transplants from different parts of the series. How about the action? Well, not great, but not bad. The special effects, though not altogether in-your-face, are kind of cool nevertheless. The fight scenes are the standard too-close-and-cutting-too-fast bullshit that Hollywood tends to produce on account of a fundamental lack of martial arts talent and bad choreography. Oh yeah, and Charlize Theron is almost believable in her role as the best and most ruthless covert ops agent in the world. Hey, at least they eventually get the hair pretty close to right—though, since it's Charlize, the scenery, though not always correct, is always good. The verdict: unless you're catching a matinée or, like me, you absolutely couldn't wait for this movie to come out, wait until video (hey, you can probably even get Muth to rent it for you). Oh yeah, and if you have the chance, watch the cartoon series first. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Thu, 01 Dec 2005 rabbit rabbit Happy December. Also, for your viewing pleasure, another Nürburgring run, this time in a Subaru STi Spec C. Seven minutes, fifty-nine seconds, baby. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 30 Nov 2005 skillz This video is hot as hell. Executive summary: the Nürburgring Nordschleife is one of the most fearsome racetracks in the world. Many people would kill for the chance at a few laps, and some are even lucky enough to get them. One such person is one of the guys from the BBC2's show Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson. After taking lessons from a professional and practicing like a bastard, he barely manages to break a 10 minute lap. Upon announcing this accomplishment to his instructor, she (yes, she—how hot is that?) replies "ten minutes? I could do that in a van." This woman has done about 15000 laps around the Nürburgring—now including two in a diesel-powered Ford Transit. Note that a 10 minute lap time equates to an average of 80 MPH. Edit: another link. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] he's got the sickness Yeah, yeah, I just can't leave well enough alone. I promised myself that I wouldn't make any power mods to Dagny until after she hits 10k miles, then promptly found a loophole—suspension and drivetrain don't count. By the end of the week she'll be sporting a brand new KartBoy short shifter. Suspension will have to wait until I get more time, but springs, hats, sway bars, and end links are all happening eventually. The sickness is here, and in full force. Nothing appeals to me like the intersection between tinkering and optimization. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 27 Nov 2005 didn't ask for a fuckin' travelogue Nothing major happened on the way back, but there were two minor incidents of note. I was stopped in Wichita for going 80 in a 70, but he only gave me a warning and made fun of me for trusting my radar detector too much ("just slow down and stop payin' attention to that thing!"). In Missouri I saw a pretty bizarre scene: a truck hauling bales of hay had caught fire and was parked on the side of the road. Fire and police crews were just arriving as I drove past. I don't think anyone was hurt, which makes me feel OK saying that it looked pretty damn cool. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Sat, 26 Nov 2005 positive flux Scott (one of my best friends from high school, and sadly one of the few with whom I'm still in contact, though even in his case somewhat rarely) and I watched the Aeon Flux box set in its entirety last night: ten episodes, four shorts, and the pilot. Damn, but that show ruled. The box set saw a substantial amount of rework. It's been fully color corrected, sharpened, and, in certain parts, recut and even revoiced. I don't have a list yet of the differences between the original cuts and this "director's cut," but I'm sure someone more knowledgeable in the ways of Flux will put up a list somewhere. Maybe I'll even link to it. The verdict is a strong yes on this box set—super excerrent; two thumbs up, fine holiday fun. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 24 Nov 2005 happy Thanksgiving! I haven't slept since 6a Wednesday. This is what I call a throwback T-day. The Aeon Flux DVDs arrived just as I was leaving my apartment yesterday; I'll watch them soon and let y'all know what I think. Also, I drove my dad's new M3 convertible when I got home. Hot damn, that's a sweet little car. The two features which most assert themselves upon your senses are the incredible feel of the brakes and the absolutely silky smooth Getrag six. If it were me, I'd have gone for the coupe—I hate convertibles—but the point is somewhat moot given that neither could unseat Dagny as the automotive queen of my heart. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 23 Nov 2005 someday... ...I'll synthesize one of these and use it for something hot. Also, I think it would be badass to build a discrete, fully-analog OPL3 synthesizer. I might just have to do it. If you think that's dumb, check this out. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] talk about lilly friggin white Holy crap. My high school is as crackerass as they come. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] don't pick up hitchhikers? My mother called me yesterday because a friend of hers has a niece in Austin whose family still lives in Fort Dodge (Algona, actually). Would it be OK, she asked, if Nicole hitched a ride with me to Fort Dodge? Hell, why not—company is (almost) always welcome on a 14-hour car ride, and how can one refuse someone a chance to see their family on Thanksgiving when there's room in the car? It is kind of weird to drive across the country with someone you've never met before, though. Here's hoping she's not psycho. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 21 Nov 2005 frustration is... ...successfully debugging everyone's problem but your own. There have been several breakthroughs with the chip thus far, and pretty much all of them have been as a result of some suggestion I made—"try it without the choppers," or "move the common-mode around," or whatever. No one has come forward with any brilliant ideas regarding the gain error in my beloved monitor ADC. The precision is there, but some strangeness is causing channel-to-channel variation in the gain (to the tune of a couple percent). Fuckin' shit. Here. Y'all read this and tell me what I'm doing wrong. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Sun, 20 Nov 2005 don't know my own strength Last night doing a brake job I managed to tear apart a Craftsman 16mm 6-point socket. I didn't think such things ever happened, but now I have proof. I'll definitely take a picture before I exercise my lifetime warranty (thank you, Sears!) and get me a new one. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Thu, 17 Nov 2005 magic smoke mirage Sweet. I'm officially attending CES in January. Unlike some cough Woz cough my employer isn't sending me, so in addition to attending the show I'll probably be relocated to the basement and asked to take care of the roach problem, but screw it. Given that in previous years I've bowed towards Las Vegas five times a day over a certain weekend in January, I'll be way too embroiled in the hotness to notice the rats gnawing at my toes while I sleep. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] whoa, good No need to comment; I know I'm a l00zer for appreciating this. Edit: the original link went down, but here's another one. This also answers the question "who rendered this?" since it's apparently an easter egg on the Revenge of the Sith DVD. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Wed, 16 Nov 2005 money laundering I spent my morning laundering drug money. OK, not really. What I did was sold my Camaro to a guy from Louisiana who drove up with a flatbed and drove her off—after paying me in cash. I then went to the bank and deposited said cash, whereupon several forms were produced, identification checked, various documents stamped, identification rechecked, money counted, amount noted, surreptitious glances exchanged between clerk and manager, and finally I was given a deposit slip and sent on my merry way. That is without a doubt the largest amount of cash I have ever handled. All I can say is, transactions that "sanitize" the process (electronic banking, credit cards, &c) do not do proper justice to our great instrument of commerce—there's nothing quite like holding a fat stack of cash in your hands. I recommend you sell a car in cash some day—it's breathtaking. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 14 Nov 2005 milking the system I've been meaning to do this for a while, but I finally got my ass in gear and went about abusing my position at SiLabs in order to get free shit. In particular, I got one of the development kits for the C8051F320 microcontroller on the cheap (free, really). Now I have to figure out what I want to do with it. Y'all should totally start using these things (6.115, anyone?). They're really sweet. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] portability, here we come The 300-MHz 2465 and 150-MHz 2445 represent the leading edge of technology, establishing higher standards in both value and performance for today's portable oscilloscopes. They enable faster and more precise measurements than ever before possible in a portable oscilloscope. So reads the datasheet on the Tektronix 2465 scope. I just managed to pick one up off eBay for a cool $250—a damn good deal, even now, as most of them will go for upwards of $400. Woot. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 13 Nov 2005 a cute trick Marius showed me an interesting way of thinking about the input stage of the classic μA741 as designed by Dave Fullagar (not Bob Widlar, as many people think—he designed the first monolithic op-amp, the μA702). The first picture to the right is a Widlar current mirror; as you'll remember, it's a feedback-biased mirror that copies the input current to the output current as shown. If we add a PNP transistor between the NPNs on the output side, we can crank on its base in order to change the voltage on the input side, thought the current is unaffected. We can also modify it by splitting the upper NPN; assuming matched transistors, the current is split perfectly between the two outputs, since they share the same collector-emitter voltage. If we combine the two modifications, what do we have? As we move the common-mode voltage on the two PNP transistors, we change the voltage on the input side, but don't change the way the current is shared. If, however, we apply a differential voltage, we change the way the current is shared between the two sides; add a mirror on top in the standard op-amp fashion and you get a pretty cute input stage. Why would you do this? The transconductance of the input PNP diff pair actually adds with that of the NPNs; if you can only make (extremely shitty!) lateral PNPs, as was the case in Fairchild's process at the time, you get fucked either in the input stage or the output stage if you want to have any reasonable common-mode range. This lets you get around the biasing problem and the transconductance problem by using PNP inputs in the first stage without sacrificing Gm. Note that I've drawn this flipped around—the schematics to the right are a sex-changed version of the real μA741 (also, they have a "helper" transistor, some degeneration, and offset nulling inputs for the turnaround diff pair). [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Sat, 12 Nov 2005 marvellous diction I think that's what struck me the most about Good Night, and Good Luck—David Strathairn's amazing diction as Ed Murrow. That, and the observation that literally anyone could look cool if filmed in black-and-white while smoking a cigarette. Too bad they kill you. GNGL is a quality movie—even Hippo might approve of it, after a fashion. It covers serious material, so don't go if you're looking for a lighthearted flick or date fodder, but do see it (on DVD, at the very least, as it doesn't get all that much from the big screen, but is good enough to be worth the money anyway). Oh, I also caught a sneak of Just Friends on Thursday night. It's one of those painfully funny movies (main character gets shat upon something ferocious) on completely trite subject material, but I still laughed a whole lot. I rate it a must-rent-and-get-drunk—two beers up. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 10 Nov 2005 xcircuit, Xorg, and NVidia GLX In case you're wondering, Xcircuit now supports OpenGL (though I don't know why it's really necessary, as such...). If you want to get it working with a machine that's using Xorg and the NVidia GLX drivers, you'll have to go through some contortions, though. In particular, you'll need to link against libpthread and libXxf86vm, which can be accomplished by adding `-lpthread -lXxf86vm` to the `configure` script everywhere that either `LIBS="-lGL"` or `LIBS="-lGLU"` appears. Also, how awesome is it that two Panthers cheerleaders were arrested for battery after getting into a fistfight with a woman who was yelling at them for fucking in a bathroom stall? [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Wed, 09 Nov 2005 in the court of the traffic king I got a speeding ticket last week for doing 70 in a 55. Now, in Texas, you can plead no contest and take a defensive driving course once a year to nullify a ticket, but doing this sucks for a couple reasons: first, it costs $100 plus the course (another 50ish), and second, you have to actually spend six hours doing the fucking class. Here's the beauty: there are a couple attorneys in town who specialize in traffic law. By that, I mean that when you get a ticket, you hire them and they make it disappear. I've used their services once before, when I got four simultaneous moving violations (80 in a 50, following too closely, failure to use turn signal, and passing unsafely). They just went away, and for less than a third of the cost of the ticket itself (not to mention the insurance rate hike and all that). I believe you can actually have these guys on retainer if you'd like, and for a monthly fee, they'll take care of all the tickets you want. Texas is kind of crazy. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 06 Nov 2005 delaying the magic Boston ruled, as expected. Also, as unexpected—but definitely ruled. Now I'm dying of boredom in the Newark airport. Delayed flights can suck the root. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 04 Nov 2005 thirsty thursday fallout, or stars and bruises in and around my eyes Well, this week's Thirsty Thursday was a rousing success. The handles of Daniels (that almost rhymes...) and Cuervo seemed to go over well (though somehow I remained almost wholly unsuccessful at forcing the adoption of the Armadillo Sunrise—George and Ian tried it, but I noted that they didn't ask for seconds). Also, I punched Radio after he threatened (empowered by vodka muscles) that if I did so he'd punch me back, and in the face. Apparently the man doesn't bluff when faced with vodka, 'cause I now have my very own little black eye. I'm kind of proud of him, actually... I got up (after about 3.5 hours of sleep—when I called to ask for a wakeup call, the woman on the other end of the phone said "but that's less than three and a half hours from now! Is that enough sleep?"), showered, and headed to campus, where I'm now burning some time before the CICS review starts. So here I'm sitting when who but Paul Gray (of Gray and Searle, not Gray and Meyer) walks by. I stopped him to say hi, and while I'm pretty sure he didn't remember me from 6.002 back in 1999, it was still pretty cool. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] woot That is all. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 31 Oct 2005 quality ringer material I've always thought the best cell phone ringers were NES game songs (evidence: I've got a good couple dozen of 'em on my phone), and now the hotness gets hotter: the NES Sound Format is basically a wrapper around the 6502 code that drives the NES sound system; the result is a perfect facsimile of the original songs. The OCRemix website has a reasonable archive of NSFs, and you can find more laying around in various places. Moreover, Zophar has a (windows only) utility that converts them to MIDIs. Swoot. Of course, that one isn't quite good enough, so I'm planning on writing my own soon enough... [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 30 Oct 2005 doom, doooom, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM It has the Rock and the BFG. What else does it need? OK, it also has plot holes big enough to pass a chick with whom George might have slept after getting drunk, but you shouldn't attempt to pick apart the marvellous tapestry of plot placed in front of you. Instead, appreciate the hotness of the chick, watch the Rock discover "a big fucking gun," and note the altogether-too-long "first person shooter" homage scene. Yeah, maybe you should see it in the theatres. Don't worry, once you tell people you went and saw Mortal Kombat with Christopher Lambert, they're not gonna bother making fun of you for this. Also, go listen to the Doom Song. Edit: Alida points out, rightly, that I failed to mention that she's the one who finally sat me down and made me watch Invader Zim. It's hawsome. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Fri, 28 Oct 2005 the ultimate song Gonna be in Boston again. Getting in Wednesday night, leaving Sunday night. Woot. SiLabs is paying for it. If you understand the origin of the title of this entry (yes, it has a specific, semi-sensical meaning), one thousand bajillion ego points to you. [ permalink \| 9 comments ] Thu, 27 Oct 2005 late for a very important... rendezvous The story goes something like this: Charles Lelouch, a French filmmaker, released a short film called C'Etait Un Rendezvous in 1976, apparently in an attempt to answer the question "what do you do when you want to see Paris and only have 9 minutes and a Ferrari?" There are apparently no special effects, and the speed of the film is not altered in any way. Holy crap. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 24 Oct 2005 now I get it, George Remember when you were completely addicted to Project Gotham? Now I understand. As of Saturday, I'm hooked on Gran Turismo 4. Also, Soul Calibur 3 is coming out tomorrow. My week is shot. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Fri, 21 Oct 2005 Jeff Goldblum... ...is watching you poop. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] the interviewee has become the interviewer Sweet! I did my first interview today. It was kind of cool. Last night, while trying to come up with reasonable interview questions, I got to thinking about how an emitter follower can have a negative real input impedance when driving a capacitive load. In particular, I wanted to show that it was the case, so I busted out the small-signal model and started burning through some lead. It only took two pages of engineering paper, but I decided that it made an exceptionally poor interview question (because it was all math and no intuition). Instead, I went with a simple question about BJT device physics and a basic switched-capacitor integrator. The BJT question is cute and quick: say we have an NPN transistor. OK, now consider that a diode is just PN, so if I have two of them back-to-back, I have NP-PN—somewhat similar, but does it act like a transistor? No. Why? Ohmic contacts; more specifically, what we get is infinite recombination velocity in the base, which reduces β to 0. So what does that imply about the relationship between base doping and β? Lower doping gives higher beta, because it increases the time before the minority carriers we inject recombine. We could also change β by making the base region narrower. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 20 Oct 2005 UNIX admin? I hear tell that we're presently looking to hire a "very talented UNIX admin to help support the design engineering environment." UNIX, in this context, means a mix of Solaris and linux. Anyone want a job in Austin? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 19 Oct 2005 fully fluxified Rodin, your wishes are coming true: there is a complete Aeon Flux collection slated for release on November 22. Mine's already pre-ordered. Yes, that's 3 Aeon Flux posts in 2 days. Shaddup. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] spammers, begone I finally got sick enough of the comment spam to implement one of those authimage things. I just hacked it right into the writeback plugin (a 5ish-line change) and made a script to generate the images with PerlMagick. Simple. If you want to use my kludge in your blog, let me know and I'll help you get it set up. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Tue, 18 Oct 2005 greasemonkey to the rescue Have you noticed that the Aeon Flux website is broken in Firefox? It is for me, anyway... greasemonkey is an extension that lets you modify web pages using JavaScript. Until now I'd dismissed this as total crap, but it turned out to be useful here. Observe: (function () { t=document.getElementsByTagName("table"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } t=document.getElementsByTagName("td"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } t=document.getElementsByTagName("th"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } t=document.getElementsByTagName("col"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } t=document.getElementsByTagName("embed"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } t=document.getElementsByTagName("object"); for(x=0;t[x];x++) { t[x].setAttribute("width",768); } })(); The above is a large hammer for a small problem, I'll admit, but it does what it needs to do. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] flux capacitor OK, not really. But I did find the entirety of "Aeon Flux 1995," a two-DVD set that came out in (you guessed it) 1995. It's encoded as divx, but it still tastes good to my palate. If you want it, let me know. You can either download it from me (1.4 gigs, so it'll take a while) or I can do the old burn shuffle. Or, if you're in the Cambridge area, talk to George, who will have it shortly on account of torrenting it. "What doesn't kill us makes us stranger." [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sun, 16 Oct 2005 certainly no Samus Aran A bunch of us went and saw Domino last night. Yeah, she's a bounty hunter, and yeah, she's pretty hot, but no, this movie wasn't as cool as I'd hoped it would be. Lessons learned: wait for video, and always trust the tomato. All was not lost, however: the Aeon Flux trailer looked pretty friggin sweet. I also want to go see Serenity at some point; maybe I'll just wait for video... [ permalink \| 6 comments ] Thu, 13 Oct 2005 rally addenda For those of you who are fans of a certain Xbox driving game, another car which is comparable to the STi and the Evo is the Nissan Skyline GT-R (though both my Subee and the Evo are somewhat faster). The GT-R is not, nor has it ever been available in America (and why the hell not!?), but it would appear that the Infinity G35 (the US-spec Skyline equivalent, after a fashion) might some day be made in GT-R trim. Wouldn't that be hot? Take a gander over at rsportscars.com for more on these and other cars you can take off of totally sweet jumps. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] road rally Dagny, as I've named my STi, belongs to a class of cars known as rally racers. On the US auto market, only two other cars, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and the Audi S4, are similarly classified. Of those two, the S4 is the much milder-looking, lacking the gigantic spoiler and bigass (yes, that's a technical term) hood scoop. Last night (really, this morning) driving home from Mike's, I happened to spot on the road ahead of me a fellow rally car driver piloting his Mitsubishi Evo. By happenstance we both took the same exit, and the same turn onto Southwest Parkway, a several-mile stretch of mostly-straight road. Having spotted each other's telltale "shopping cart" wings, we had no choice in the matter: it was pedal to the metal "lessee whose rocket is faster." After hanging more or less neck-and-neck for a couple miles at 120+ MPH, we both slowed down and drew abreast for a "slow" 80ish MPH conversation through open windows. We exchanged thumbs ups, a bit of the old "sweet car" kind of stuff, then waved good-bye just before he came upon his turn. A single-serving rally buddy. Cool. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 12 Oct 2005 data heaven Yesterday I happened to stumble across a couple bittorrents on isohunt which together comprised a nearly exhaustive collection of Shadowrun books. As Stormy would say, "Holy bejeezus!" So yeah. If you want me to burn you a DVD of all of 'em (upwards of 4 Gb, all told), let me know. So far, one's on the way to George, and one will live over at the Man House (wow... can you believe manhouse.org wasn't taken? It is now...) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 07 Oct 2005 such dynamic range! Less than a week ago, it was over 105 degF here. Today, it's been around 52. A factor of two in a matter of days... wow. [ permalink \| 6 comments ] Wed, 05 Oct 2005 all you ever wanted to know about motor oil... ...can be found at Bob is the oil guy. Wow. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 04 Oct 2005 caffeine of the ottomans Yesterday, Marissa gave me a superb birthday present: a Turkish coffee pot and some delicious coffee to go with it. I'll need practice to become a real pro, but I'd say my first try was a success. My grandmother (on my father's side) used to make this stuff when I was little. I was still in the yummy phase (I owe you a dime, Hippo), so I didn't really appreciate it, but damn is it good stuff. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Fri, 30 Sep 2005 entertainment and sports weekend A couple interesting things: I saw my uncle, Peter Bonventre, on ESPN this morning at the gym. That was cool. It also reminded me that I have to call him and say hi. On Sunday, because Katrina killed the Superdome, the Saints are playing a "home" game in San Antonio against Buffalo. Tickets were plentiful and cheap, so Mike, Matt, and I picked some up. An especially exciting aspect of this game is that I'm starting Willis McGahee and Ernie Conwell in my fantasy league this week. This means they'll actually have a chance of hearing me yelling at them to get me some more fucking points. (To be honest, I'd be yelling even if I were watching them on TV...) [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] literary acquisitions I forgot to mention that Marissa and I hit Barnes and Noble the other night and I was sucked right into the sale rack. I was thinking "I should get a Chuck Palahniuk book," and Choke was sitting right there in front of me on the buy-N-get-M free rack. It was a sign. Also in my sights that night were Breakfast of Champions, The Big Sleep, and American Psycho. Unfortunately, since it was buy 2 get 1 free, Chandler failed to get the nod. I'll get some Sleep later. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Thu, 29 Sep 2005 a STi-mulating birthday present (to myself) Even as we speak, my plan to reduce the number of vehicles I own is progressing. Unfortunately, before taking a step forward, one must often take two steps back. To that end, I've purchased a 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STi (and in that color, too). Any comments about the rear wing (no, it's not optional, and yes, it's functional), how many miles it can drive on a pound of Uncle Ben's Long Grain, or how many illegal immigrants I can hide in the hood scoop will probably be, umm, right on target. I defy you to find a car more fun to drive, though. This thing is a fucking ROCKET. Up next: divest myself of the Celica and the Camaro. Yes, I've only had the Camaro for 9ish months, but I've realized in that time that as a form of transportation it's not terribly practical, and I have neither the time nor the shop space to keep it as a tinkering car at the moment. On the upside, I should be able to get out of it more than I put into it. As far as the Celica is concerned, hell, I've saved enough money on gas driving that piece of shit that any money I get out of it is just gravy—or perhaps remunerations for my suffering (and that of my passengers). That will bring me down to the truck, the STi, the Ducati, and the V-Rod. I have a sneaking suspicion that my father really wants my truck (my first clue was when he said "I want your truck!"), so I might dip into single-car territory before the year's end. What is the world coming to? [ permalink \| 4 comments ] hat trick I'm officially 24. Yes, this makes two birthday blog entries in a row where I've made reference to that cartoon. So what? Wanna fight about it? [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Wed, 28 Sep 2005 Spartacus outdoes himself At lunch today, Powell busted out with this one for the scrapbooks: "I'm not committed to the idea that women are stupider than men; I'm just committed to the idea that they're stupider than me." [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] new music I've recently grabbed a few new albums from the aether. While I haven't listened to any of them enough to form an opinion yet, I thought I'd mention it just in case one of y'all wanted to grab them. They include a couple each by My Chemical Romance (I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge) and The Mars Volta (De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute), Out of Exile by Audioslave, Lullabies to Paralyze by Queens of the Stone Age, Pressure Chief by Cake, and To the Teeth by Nine Inch Nails. I'll report on them as I form opinions. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Mon, 26 Sep 2005 drunken postscript Oh yeah, another thing that came of Saturday's party is a firm definition of the Armadillo Sunrise: (diet) Mountain Dew, Tequila, and a splash of Grenadine. I can't speak to how good it is, because I was already somewhat toasted by the time I decided to make it, but anecdotal reports from others on the scene indicate that it might not actually be fit for human consumption. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] party on, Wayne Saturday's Hurricane Party was a success. Decent music, ping-pong (I'm not bad at all when I'm drunk, except that I can't for the life of me hit the forehand with any accuracy), several drinking games (quarters, up and down the river, &c), and even a round of Settlers of Catan (which I managed to win by taking longest road and then getting largest army on a gamble) numbered among the festivities. Yesterday consisted of football, chicken wings, and dancing. I decided to ride Rosalyn on over to Mike's house to watch the games. In retrospect, it wasn't the greatest decision, considering that it hit 105 degF in the afternoon. Today it's only supposed to get up to 102, and by the end of the week we should have fallen all the way to the high 80s on account of a cold front coming through. Here's hoping for good golf weather next weekend. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Thu, 22 Sep 2005 hurricane fever As I write this, traffic along I10 in Houston is moving at a whopping 2 miles per hour, and has been doing so for the last 14 hours or thereabouts. Better yet, every gas station in Houston is out of gas, and many people on the road are starting to run low. Pop quiz, hotshot: what exactly do you do when you have 5000 cars on an interstate all of which have run out of gas? On a lighter note, I'm encouraging Mike to have a Hurricane Party this Saturday (when it should be hitting us, more or less). It's gonna rule. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 20 Sep 2005 tri-force... in da hood? At Elysium the other night I saw a dude wearing a shirt that said "Don't Make Me Go Zelda On Your Ass" and had a bunch of the power-up graphics from the original Nintendo game (potion, shield, sword, boomerang, bomb, &c). I was utterly compelled to walk up and pay him a compliment, at which point he informed me that he's an aspiring DJ who remixes video game music. Some samples of his work, he told me, can be found at his MySpace site. Wow! You do that for science? [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Thu, 15 Sep 2005 back in the saddle This is what's called convergence. First, I went back to my gym-in-the-morning schedule. It makes me 1000% happier. Anyone who doesn't get up at 6a is a heathen. Next (actually, I've known this since last week, but didn't blog about it), the Monitor ADC works. That was one of the first circuits to be in an known working state once we figured out that there was a PLL problem at powerup (and FIBbed some parts to fix it). It's also completely badass, because that fucker was complex as shit and I was worried that somewhere along the line I'd failed to specify some aspect of the digital controller properly with some catastrophic failure (think: powering the chip up causes a tsunami) as the result. Fortunately, no Pacific Islanders were harmed in the testing of revA silicon—as far as I know... Third, it appears that as of last night we're confident that the other ADCs are doing their thing. I haven't gotten to testing them just yet (I want to run the piss out of the MADC first), but Ion reported that he was able to get it working in a mode that requires several blocks, the DC ADC included, to work. Hua. Fourth, I'm spending all my time in the lab now. Damn does it make me happy. I'm an engineer again! I'm soldering shit, poking at stuff with meters and scopes, controlling the thing via USB... OK, scratch that last one (all real engineers—in the Roberge sense—despise USB instinctively). ...and finally, I think I'm becoming convinced that I can actually control the neon JUST FRIENDS sign that apparently floats overtop my head whenever women are around. Who'd'a thunk it? [ permalink \| 14 comments ] Tue, 13 Sep 2005 mod_proxy + openssl s_client At the gym today, I was ruminating on how to run both an HTTPS and an SSH server on port 443 of a machine so as to allow it to both serve secure content and function as the outside endpoint for proxy tunnels which exploit open HTTPS access and/or HTTPS `CONNECT` tunnels. Until earlier today, I'd completely forgotten about Apache's mod_proxy, a cute little module that provides basic proxy functionality from Apache. Clearly, this little honey is exactly what we want, though: a proxy server which supports `CONNECT` and runs in parallel with your HTTP server. Setup is extremely easy on the server side. For you debian users, make the appropriate symblinks in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled and edit /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf as appropriate. You can telnet to port 80 and verify that `CONNECT` works as expected. Now, give it a whirl using the OpenSSL binary (`openssl s_client -connect yourserver:443 -nbio -quiet` is a good start) and you'll be disappointed. Yup, there's a bug in mod_proxy_connect that makes it bypass HTTPS and just dump unencrypted data directly on the socket once the CONNECT session starts. Never fear, however, for that same link has the patch you'll need to fix it. `apt-get build-dep apache2`, `apt-get source apache2`, cd into `upstream/tarballs`, untar it, apply the patch, tar it back up, and `dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b`. Now, armed with your hot new Apache build, you're ready to take on the world. The only thing left is a daemon for the client side. Mine is called sprox.pl. I decided to use a wrapper around the `openssl` binary because I found that IO::Socket::SSL is substantially slower. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 08 Sep 2005 silicon cherry Today our first silicon came back. At the moment they're going over a bunch of digital stuff, but the first thing they tested was one of my circuits—the digital regulator. After some initial reports of brokenness, it was discovered that the sockets we were using, putting it mildly, sucked ass. One hundred soldered pins later, the Vdd18 regulator comes up and happily runs. Hooray for my first silicon circuit. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Mon, 22 Aug 2005 hello, room Back home. Hooray. No one blew up my plane, and I didn't trip and fall off the jetway onto conveniently placed spikes left over from the Prince of Persia set (ye gads! only ten minutes left!). After some laundry, I went to bed. This morning I practiced the fine art of sleeping while listening to Ventolin. I'm getting good at it. Updates will continue as events warrant. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 17 Aug 2005 green grass Damnit. Damnit damnit damnit. Why is the grass greener in Boston? (No, I'm not referring to the fact that it doesn't rain enough in Austin.) Remember that part in Mulholland Drive where they put the blue key thing in the blue box thing and, as Rodin puts it, it's like someone just grabs the whole movie, shakes it up, and lets things resettle at random? That's kind of what it's like coming back to Boston—the actors are the same, but the roles are different. Thing is, I'd prefer the new lay of the land—'cept I'm nowhere to be found. Fuckin' hell. Couldn't someone have done the key-in-lock thing three years ago, when I was still here? [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 25 Jul 2005 Coming Soon To a City Near You You've been waiting for it, and now it's here: the Wahboid Monstrosity Northeast Tour is hitting Boston August 12 through the 21st, and you're invited to come and party hardy with, um, me. Green Violinists for everyone! LAN gaming, hacking of various electronic equipment, Beiruit, gratuitous ATHF quoting, sitting around and bitching about the twinkies—it's all gonna be there. Post a comment and let me know you're gonna be there or I'll throw down and blow your ass away. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Thu, 14 Jul 2005 Armadillo Sunrise This morning I watched a beautiful sunrise through the Armadillo conference room windows at work. Today officially marks the first all-nighter I've dedicated to the ProSLIC—and hopefully also the last, at least for revision A. As of 7a, Mike and I finished the last of the layout verification matrix, saved it, and checked it in. Some random factoids concerning my recent life, for those of you who are curious: Since June 26th, I have had one day off from work. Since Mike and I have been burning the midnight oil pretty constantly for the last couple weeks, we've started just leaving our speakerphones on and talking while we work. Our longest telephone conversation to date was six hours and forty-five minutes. For a couple short times, Sherv, Mike, and I were all on speakerphone, thanks to the magic of Sanyo cell phones. I've been listening pretty much nonstop to a combination of the Foo Fighters album In Your Honor, "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service, di.fm's Vocal Trance channel, Justice Radio (yes, the City of Heroes web radio station—shut up, sometimes the music is pretty good), and Mahler's Symphony No. 5. At this point everyone in Starbucks knows me by sight if not by name, and they're more or less undaunted when I order 8 iced espresso shots. Thought I'd be able to come up with more than that... oh well. There it is. Edit: Doesn't the Armadillo Sunrise sound like a drink of some sort? What would you put in it? Maybe some tequila, some sort of citrus... hrm. Suggest away. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Tue, 05 Jul 2005 tossing corncobs... The ProSLIC will be done next week. I have decided. This also means I have decided to live, breathe, eat, and sleep ProSLIC. Not much of the latter, though. More updates when I emerge from my work-cocoon. (BTW, a million ego points for anyone who gets the title.) [ permalink \| 6 comments ] Thu, 16 Jun 2005 you know you're going nuts when... Me, speaking to myself, just a second ago: "That's some fucking ground right there. Damn, woman!" [ permalink \| 9 comments ] I am layout Yesterday Marius decided that today was the day that we'd finish all the layout reviews. All of them. Like twentysomething reviews. A layout review takes between an hour and two hours, depending on the complexity of the block. If it's not a block you designed, it'll take longer, since you have to familiarize yourself with the design before trying to screw around with the layout. Mike is mired in the throes of a design review, so he's not doing any reviews. That leaves me, Marius, and Ion. At 8 blocks each, we're talking about 16 hours of straight layout goodness. The work isn't quite going to get divvied up that way, though. So far today (since 10a; it's now about 5p) I've done 7 reviews. A good average, but several of them were quick ones. The big hurdles are yet to come, in the form of a few op-amps I didn't design (and one VERY simple one that I did—that review should take me half an hour, I'm going to start it as soon as I'm done writing this, and I'll reward myself at its completion with a break for dinner. Mmmmm... dinner...) Tonight I'm going to dream very regular geometric shapes in green, yellow, blue, and red. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Wed, 15 Jun 2005 new tunes Yesterday I finally grabbed (off the internet, not the shelf at BBY) the new Foo Fighters, Garbage, and System of a Down albums. I must say, all three are good, but In Your Honor (the Foo Fighters album) is certainly the best. I don't know if it gets the Petarman seal of approval, but it definitely gets a thumbs-up from me. It's good to hear new tunes from Shirley et al., but Bleed Like Me isn't as strong as their self-titled or Version 2.0. Then again, I haven't given BLM all that much time to grow on me, and Garbage and V2.0 are both pretty high standards to begin with. One could argue that In Your Honor, which required no time to grow on me, must be better, but I don't necessarily buy it, since Beck's two most recent albums both took at least a couple listens to get me really going, and both are excellent, IMHO. I haven't had a chance to listen to Mesmerize all that much yet, but judging by the single it's much weaker than Toxicity was. "BYOB" just doesn't compare to the likes of "Aerials," "Toxicity," or "Chop Suey!" (POWER CORD!!!). Enough. If you know how, download them from positron. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 13 Jun 2005 debootstrap and knoppix In the past I've been a vocal supporter of the debian-installer project; it's a much better installer than debian's previous attempts, and it lets you configure, among other things, md and/or LVM very nicely. Now I've found a glaring weakness: it's based on kernel 2.6.8. This means that it doesn't support the SATA controller in my new laptop. What I really should do is make a version of the debian-installer with the latest kernel on it and release it so that others can enjoy the hotness, but I'm a lazy bastard. My solution is to use Knoppix and debootstrap. This allows me to use the shiny new kernel already built into the latest Knoppix CD without doing very much work at all. I know, y'all have probably discovered and squeezed every ounce of hotness out of this idea already. I'm still entertained. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Sat, 11 Jun 2005 exceeding lowered expectations Dell reported to me when I ordered my machine that it would probably ship on or around Monday, June 13. You can imagine my surprise when I found it shipped on Wednesday—and it actually arrived in time for the weekend! All silver linings have a cloud, though. The cloud in my case is the fact that Dell computers no longer come with an OS install CD. Instead, they have a "restore" partition that will re-image your hard drive. Fuck that—I want to be able to dual-boot. I called them up and talked to "Sam" (no, really, that's what he told me his name was), and convinced him to send me the system restore CD set. I guess I can't worry about wiping and reinstalling until they get here, so in the meantime I'm going to "enjoy" my hot new Windows XP machine. My god Windows sucks my ass. I'm not all complaints today, though. The NVidia 6800 is a beast of a video card, and this must be the most gorgeous display I've ever seen on any computer, period. This laptop is a fucking MONSTER, no doubt about it, but OMGSS!!1!one is it sexy. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Tue, 07 Jun 2005 bitten ...by the MMORPG bug. As if I didn't already get too little sleep, I'm now playing lots of City of Heroes with Mike, Matt, Cyrus, and the gang. I have to admit, it's addictive as hell. May, tell them I'm not a loser because I play MMORPGs. You're still playing WoW, right? [ permalink \| 6 comments ] Sun, 05 Jun 2005 glutton for punishment (or just a cheap whore?) Considering how much I've bitched about Dell in the past, you'd think that I would never purchase another Dell product as long as I live. The problem is, my desire to optimize my monetary expenditures kind of overrides my desire not to deal with "Dan" in Delhi. Check it out: Dell has a promotion going on right now where you can get $750 off of an Inspiron 9300 (that's the beastly desktop replacement with a 17-inch screen). It's a gorilla of a machine (both power- and size-wise), and it can be had for about $1400. Compare that to $2600 for an IBM in a not-really-comparable configuration, and you see the problem. When it gets here I'll let you know how I like it. BTW, what should it be called? wahboid-monstrosity, perhaps? [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Tue, 31 May 2005 it's a wrap I just got back from turning over the keys to my old apartment. It's official, I am no longer a North Austinite. I have to say, that thirty-second commute this morning was HAWT. Another thing: the Gold's I now go to has substantially better-looking women than the one to which I used to go. I first noticed this when I went in yesterday, but chalked it up to the fact that I was in there late (10a) on Memorial day—the place was truly packed. This morning at my regular time (6a), however, I was stunned to note that the quality hadn't declined any on account of the early hour. Damn. Oh, one other thing regarding last night: apparently I'm now "the little guy," or at least that's what the waitress noted as I shattered the previous second-place record: "it's always the little guys..." I dunno, though; it really took all my fatty powers to pack away those last eight. [ permalink \| 8 comments ] Mon, 30 May 2005 ...like giving birth in reverse Tonight Mike, Cyrus, and I went to Pluckers for all-you-can-eat wing night. Prominently featured on one wall (the "Wall of Flame") are the top five wing-eaters of each gender. The women's records are somewhat unimpressive—first place is 50, and second through fifth are all in the 30s. The men, on the other hand, put away substantially more. In particular, when we arrived, the records were 119, 77, 75, 74, and 71. I'm happy to report that 71-guy is now off the list, and yours truly holds second place with 78 wings. I'm gonna kill the next chicken I see. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 28 May 2005 move: defeated I'm now basically moved. Everything from my old apartment is now in my new apartment, and I've transferred everything between my garages as well. The only thing that remains is cleaning up my old apartment a little bit (to ensure that they don't try to withhold some of my deposit), dropping off a shitload of clothes at Salvation Army (why didn't I do that last year?), and shuttling my unreasonable number of vehicles to my new place. Since I don't have DSL any more, I'm not planning on having a land line at all this year. I guess this means I'll need to be more diligent about charging my cell phone... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 26 May 2005 that's where I keep my stuff! I'm now in the process of moving. Tonight, I moved most of my non-furniture stuff into the garage in preparation for tomorrow, when it will actually be moved from here to there. Observation: milk crates are still the king of moving supplies. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] ddns is cool Now that I'm not going to have a static IP at home, I'm probably going to use dynamic DNS so that positron.jfet.org still points to my home address. It turns out that this is pretty easy with bind9. The first thing to do is generate yourself a new dnssec key: [kwantam@positron ~]$ dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-MD5 -b 512 -n HOST positron This generates two files, one called `foo.private` and one called `foo.key`. Take the key (a base64-encoded mess) from the `foo.private` file and put it in `/etc/named.conf` on the static machine: key positron { algorithm "hmac-md5"; secret "<your key here>"; }; Now, in the zone entry for the domain you want to dynamically update, add an appropriate `allow-update` clause: zone "jfet.org" { type master; file "named.jfet.org"; allow-update { key positron; }; }; Now you're all set. You can use `nsupdate` to perform the updates from any client machine on which you have the `foo.private` and `foo.key` files: [kwantam@positron ~]$ nsupdate -k /etc/bind/tsig/foo.private > update delete positron.jfet.org A > update add positron.jfet.org 1200 IN A 18.243.0.246 > ^D For more info, see the `dnssec-keygen`, `nsupdate`, and `named.conf` manpages. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] now I can relax Everything seems to be working fine. ...except that I forgot to alias rsw to myself, and have been bouncing lots of email for the last 12 hours or so. Oh well. That's fixed, and cypherpunks seems to be working. What more could I ask for? [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 25 May 2005 the waiting begins All necessary setup is (should be?) done; at this point, all that remains is for dns changes to propagate. The name of my CoLo'd machine is proton.jfet.org, in case you're wondering. Here's to getting it right on the first try... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 23 May 2005 nope, just dead After much celebration last week at the fact that I was to become a Speakeasy customer, it turns out that I'm, well, not. Apparently the loop on which I'll be living just doesn't support DSL, period, so I'm going to have to get a cable modem instead. This is good and bad. Good because now I'll actually have cable instead of stealing it, and bad because I won't have a static IP at home. ServerPronto to the rescue—I now have a dedicated machine at a CoLo (dedicated means I'm basically renting an entire machine plus network from them, so I'm root and they're not). This has the additional benefit of letting me transition pretty much seamlessly from my current situation without any downtime. I just have to get everything working on that machine first. To do: kernel dns mysql sendmail imap apache2 svn horde2 cypherpunks ??? profit [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Fri, 20 May 2005 revenge of the Sith I went and saw Sith yesterday. (No, I wasn't insane enough to go to a midnight showing.) It's certainly the best of the first 3, but I still don't think it's as good as 4, 5, or 6. (OK, maybe it's about as good as 6.) But it is nice and violent—lots of severed limbs—and Yoda and Windu are both badasses. Be warned, Mar: Natalie Portman hit a wall. Hoooooooooooooooooooooooly crap. Also, she can't act for shit. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Thu, 19 May 2005 vader is everywhere ...or at least, he's hiding in some very strange places. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] dsl is dead! long live dsl! Looks like I can't get SBC service at my new apartment. Fortunately, I can get Speakeasy! It's cheaper, and I don't even have to have a working phone line (they now offer "dedicated" packages). Hot. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Wed, 18 May 2005 fancy footwork After literally months of saying to myself "I need a new pair of shoes," I finally went to Nordstrom's and bought me some Puma NuMostros. I highly recommend them to all y'all; they're fucking comfy as hell. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] deep thoughts (19:33:09) scrap1r0n: layout is kind of like masturbating to thoughts of an ex-girlfriend---it's the kind of guilty pleasure in which everyone participates at some point, and you're just not supposed to admit to doing and/or liking it. (19:33:29) truculent eunuch: ? (19:33:36) truculent eunuch: i admit both to doing and liking layout (19:34:03) truculent eunuch: and, for that matter, masturbating while thinking about ex-girlfriend(s) Look out, Sherra. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] taking out the euro-trash I hate when people spam all of campus. That's why I always respond, also spamming all of campus. Cognitive dissonance rules. From: Rachel Ingwer Subject: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 08:59:53 -0400 To: (lots of people) WWW.MITDIVEST.COM Don?t let MIT support the Sudanese government. Sign the petition and Speak out against Genocide. For more information, see www.sudanactivism.com or www.divestsudan.com Never again, pledged the international community after the Holocoust Never again, it repeated after Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda Now, a genocide is being committed again DARFUR, SUDAN Since February 2003, the crisis in Darfur has killed more than 380,000 and displaced almost 3 million. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls Darfur little short of hell on earth. While governments and the UN stall, 15,000 people die every month. Citizens can and must take a stand against this genocide. From: "Riad S. Wahby" Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 08:34:55 -0500 To: Rachel Ingwer (lots of people) Rachel Ingwer <ingwerr@MIT.EDU> wrote: > [snip] Perhaps you should put your money where your mouth is and go volunteer or something. Hopefully you'll become another statistic. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 08:57:04 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: "Dustin J. Rabideau" Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan "Dustin J. Rabideau" <rabideau@MIT.EDU> wrote: > So, sure. List spamming--not that cool. Wishing someone dead? > Pretty much off the scale. > > Grow up. Take a minute to think about the shit that's coming out of > your mouth. You ought to consult a dictionary for the definition of hyperbole. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan From: Heather M Pressler To: "Riad S. Wahby" Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 09:51:23 -0400 Cheers, I was thinking the same thing when I got that email and just didn't have the balls to say it. The website is ridiculous... MIT "might" be funding companies that "might" be funding the Sudanese government. The petition is a waste of time. Heather Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:42:31 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: jxxxxx@alum.mit.edu Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Jxxxx Gxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: > Totally unnecessary. You should be ashamed of yourself. > > ...and, yet, as much of an ass as you have made yourself, I wouldn't > wish death upon you. Hmmm, perhaps you're a better person than me? No, wait, I've got it: you're weak-minded and unable to discern sarcasm. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 11:08:17 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: jxxxxx@alum.mit.edu Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Jxxxx Gxxxxx <xxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: > whatever helps you sleep at night, dude. You imply that I have a guilty conscience, yet you're the one spewing sanctimony. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:38:01 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: Ben Ward Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Ben Ward <benward@MIT.EDU> wrote: > You're a jerk. Just because you don't like someone sending a message to > you, you spam everyone a second time. > No one wants to hear you spewing malignant thoughts about a tragedy > involving millions of people. Actually, I was spewing malignant thoughts about Rachel. I could care less about your so-called tragedy. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:38:50 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: Shankar Mukherji Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Shankar Mukherji <mukherji@MIT.EDU> wrote: > You really thought that your two line little comment was so beautifully > insightful that you had to send it to virtually every student on campus? > Holy hell, I think I see the light now! God..thanks man, if only you had > responded I little earlier - I wouldn't have wasted my thirty seconds (!!!) > helping out a cause I have spent 2 years working on!!111!!! > > How come you right-wingers never know when to just shut up? Just do me a > favour - next time you feel like showing off what an incredible moron you are > to thousands of people, remember that without liberals like us there would be > no America, no precious freedom of speech that allows us the pleasure of > learning what a pathetic excuse for drivel passes for discourse on the right. Do me a favor, stop breathing. You're wasting valuable oxygen. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 11:34:38 -0500 From: "Riad S. Wahby" To: Shankar Mukherji Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan Shankar Mukherji <mukherji@MIT.EDU> wrote: > The oxygen's only valuable because you wingnuts keep burning trees. Hey I > hear there's a war going on Iraq, I bet the military is looking for smart > people like you to go blow themselves up "for freedom" - interested? > > Stop sending e-mail. You're wasting valuable electrons. You're so cute when you're pissed off! The women must go CRAZY! -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org [ permalink \| 3 comments ] the end of an era? Last night the right hinge on kung-foo broke. I'm definitely going to have it fixed—it's still under warranty, so it's free—but this has me thinking that maybe I ought to get a new laptop. Maybe an IBM this time? [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 17 May 2005 nude no more Yesterday I got my new I Am Analog t-shirt from threadless, so today I wore it to work. Shut up. My co-workers already know I'm a nerd. I really want Ctrl + Z, but unfortunately it's sold out at the moment. Maybe the'll reprint it. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Fri, 13 May 2005 embrace the dark side I like being pissed off. I don't think that's quite normal—most people are upset when they're, well, upset. For the most part, when I get angry, there's an undertone of amusement. This isn't always the case—when I really lose my shit and my vision goes red and I actually want to kill, that's different, but that doesn't happen more than once or twice a year. You might think I'm in this state when I'm repeatedly punching the steering wheel while shouting "I'll fucking KILL YOU" at the sonofabitch in front of me going ten below the speed limit, but even that doesn't count as truly losing it. (Hint: those of you who witnessed me nearly tear apart one of my Kinesis keyboards in Destiny Kitchen have seen the real thing.) Anyway, back to "normal" pissed. Let me give you an example. I walked out of the gym today and found that some fucking bitch (not an assumption—her purse was clearly visible on the passenger seat) in an Eddie Bauer edition Explorer had parked about six inches from me. I was pissed. Then it occurred to me—I have paper (and not just any paper—my emergency stash of engineering paper) and a pen! next time why don't you park even closer you dumb cunt I hope she's crying right now. I smiled all the way home. [ permalink \| 9 comments ] Mon, 09 May 2005 surrounded by midgets If you watched the heart-wrenching idiocy of the 49ers in the draft this year (I was subjected to substantial discussion on this topic because Mike is—though after this draft he claims was—a die-hard 49ers fan), you were probably completely appalled at the fact that most sports analysts actually gave them a good grade on their draft performance. It's a painful fact that basically everyone in a position of power in the NFL completely misunderstands the correct way of running a draft. Yes, there are exceptions—but they generally pick at the bottom of the draft, since they tend to be the good teams. Teams at the top, on the other hand, tend to stay there, because they overextend their cap in an attempt to pick up a magic pill of a player who will carry the rest of their pathetic franchise to—being optimistic here—a better than 50/50 record. If you've gotten this far, you'd probably have some interest in reading Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League, an analysis of the draft which concludes something basically anyone with half a brain should be able to intuit—picks at the top of the first round are just not worth it. Some day I'll fix this, though I haven't figured out how to become the GM of an ailing NFL team just yet. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] badass 101 If you want to look cool in the gym, be sure to wear a t-shirt prominently featuring Horowitz and Hill's transistor man on the front. For extra style points, add the simplified LM741 schematic to the back. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 08 May 2005 ...it's highly addictive! I went into 7-eleven today and bought two cans of sugar free Mad Croc and a couple summer-sized (translation for non fa-ites: 20 oz.; other possibilities include term-sized, i.e. 1 liter, and diabetes-sized, i.e. 2 liter) diet Mountain Dews. The cashier sort of looked at me funny—"that's a lot of caffeine," she said. "Once you get locked into a serious caffeine habit, the tendency is to push it as far as you can," I replied without pause. She was confused for a second, then she chuckled when she decided I must be joking. In other news, here's another candidate for bachelor chow: 1 can tuna 1 can Great Northern Beans Open tuna, drain water. Open beans, drain fluid. Transfer contents of tuna can to bean can (yes, there's enough room) and mix well. Add condiments to taste (I recommend pepper, garlic, and vinegar, though some of you will doubtless opt for mayo instead). Note that on top of requiring no cooking, this requires the use of nothing but a can opener and a fork. You don't need a dish at all—a sign of true bachelor chow greatness. [ permalink \| 8 comments ] Sat, 07 May 2005 heaven in a handbasket Tonight I went and saw Kingdom of Heaven with Tim, Mike, Katie, and Alida. I went into it expecting Braveheart, but set in the crusades. It wasn't that exactly. First of all, the ratio of battle to not-battle is way too low. Don't get me wrong, there's some high-quality medieval gore in this movie, and the siege machinery is delicious, but at times it really drags. Also, and maybe this is the towel-head in me talking, it's hard care that much about the Christian army—I really wanted Saladin to crush the Crusaders. On the upside, Jeremy Irons is a badass as always, and Liam Neeson, though his role ends pretty early on, is sweet, too. If you read the credits, you'll see that Edward Norton plays the king, but don't get your hopes up too high, ladies—he's a leper, and his face is always covered by a mask. Whatever... you're all gonna swoon at Orlando Bloom the whole time anyway. By far the best part of this movie is Sibylla, played by Eva Green. Her eyes are, in a word, breathtaking—think Jennifer Connelly in Hulk. If you haven't seen it yet, my vote is you can wait for it to come to DVD. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 05 May 2005 fuck it dude, let's go bowling OK, you have to admit: a movie theater that has a wait staff serving food (and alcohol!)—during the movie—is pretty sweet. That's the Alamo Draft House. Check this out, though: they also do a "rolling roadshow." They bring a projector, sound system, and screen somewhere thematic and show a movie. Currently, that would be The Big Lebowski—at a bowling alley. Admission includes a lane. Other entertaining rolling road shows of the past (according to Tim): raft down the river to a remote undisclosed location and watch Deliverance. Better yet, float on a tube on Lake Travis with a screen set up on the shore and watch Jaws. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] MASTer blaster OK, I have to vent a little bit. At work I'm using a simulator called Saber to do mixed-signal simulations (Verilog code alongside analog circuits). In place of some big nasty analog circuits I'm using behavioral models. These models are written in Saber's modelling language, MAST. An aside: have you ever considered that creating a good circuit modelling language requires a decent knowledge of mesh theory? It's actually kind of cool, when you think about it... OK, so here's what I need to bitch about: the MAST parser requires a particular bracing style—what kind of crap is that? if (output_state == l4_0) { // ummm... do something } Yeah, it doesn't matter that much, but it just bothers me on general principle that their parser is so bad it can't accept any other kind of bracing. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Tue, 03 May 2005 something cute At work recently, I was trying to make a bunch of ratiometric resistors robust against systematic process variation (of, e.g., poly sheet resistance). A good way to do this is to build all of the resistors out of identically-sized subunits. The problem was, I had to make some rather inconvenient values, e.g., 25.3666... After some reflection, a rather elementary method of synthesizing an arbitrary resistance occurred to me. Now, I'm guessing that this is not a new discovery, but since I'd never seen it before, I figured some of y'all might appreciate it, too. Basically, you normalize the desired resistance by the unit resistor. The integer portion of the quotient tells you how many unit resistors to connect in series; you then invert the remainder, resulting in a normalized conductance value. This tells you how many parallel branches you need, plus the remainder, which you convert back to resistance to get more series branches, et cetera. For example, let's say I want 8.7k out of 2k units. Then: 8.7/2 = 4.35, so I put 42k in series. 1/.35 = 2.8571, so in series with the above I put 22k in parallel. 1/.8571 = 1.16666667, so in parallel with the above I put 2k. 1/(.16666667) = 6, so in series with the above I put 62k in parallel. So we have 42k+(2k\|\|2k\|\|(2k+(2k\|\|2k\|\|2k\|\|2k\|\|2k\|\|2k))) = 8.7k. Note that while this will always give a solution, it's not guaranteed to be a minimal one. In perl: #!/usr/bin/perl $unit = $ARGV[0]; $res = $ARGV[1]; $precision = $ARGV[2] \|\| 1e-2; unless ($unit && $res) { print "Usage: $0 <unit> <resistance>\n"; exit(-1); } $norm = $res/$unit; for ($i=0;;$i++) { $whole = int($norm); $norm -= $whole; print "(" . ($i%2?"1/":"") . $whole . "x"; last if $norm<$precision; print ($i%2?"\|\|":"+"); $norm = 1/$norm; } print ")"x($i+1) . "\n"; By the way, the above syntax highlighting was done using code2html. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] dear santa... I already sent this to fort-awesome, but I'm going to put it here anyway. You know what I want? I want to be able to synthesize board layouts directly from Verilog. Also, I want the synthesis tool to be able to use different logic families—including families based on discretes. A 64-bit carry lookahead adder in 2N3904 ECL would be like the Raquel Welch of circuits. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 02 May 2005 a great molecule On Saturday, Mike, Cyrus, Matt, and I celebrated the first of what promises to be the greatest holiday of all time. Initially it was called "Man Day," appropriate because it was celebrated at Mike's house, a.k.a. "The Man House." In the tradition of Fort Awesome, however, I suggested that we instead dub it "Misogyny Day." The inaugural Misogyny Day went down like this: get up, cancel plans to go biking because the weather was rainy in the morning (I went to the gym instead), grill up some meat in Mike's back yard (utilizing copious quantities of lighter fluid and strike anywhere matches—you know, for kids—in the process), watch Fist of Legend (quite possibly the greatest Kung Fu movie of all time, though Iron Monkey would also be a strong contender), then watch a bunch of battle scenes from other movies (including The Last of the Mohicans, Braveheart, Gladiator, and The Matrix). After that, we wasted several hours playing video games, then finished up the night by going to The Yellow Rose (no, "Joanie" was not working). Ahh, 17-ß-hydroxy-4-androstene-3-one, how we love thee. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 28 Apr 2005 happiness is [kwantam@positron ~]$ set -o vi [ permalink \| 4 comments ] hot sluts ...er, actually, thermal strippers. Recently Mike, Ion, and I were sitting around talking about this and that when Ion provided a nugget that I just had to pass along to all y'all. Ion is from Romania; before he came to the US he was a professor of EE. He's one smart dude, and he's got tons of stories and some damn good interview questions tucked into his sleeves. During our conversation yesterday, we somehow strayed onto the topic of winding inductors. One thing led to another, and I was reminiscing about burning the shit out of my hands trying to get the shellack off of Litz wire. Ion said to me, "well, of course, you just use Aspirin, right?" Turns out, if you put the Litz on top of an Aspirin tablet (no fancy enteric coating or any of that shit) and heat it with a soldering iron, the salicylic acid reacts with the insulation and it's gone in no time. Bad ass. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 25 Apr 2005 hit the road... Summer's here, and I'm happy to say I'm finally getting back into road biking. Step one: buy a bike. It turns out that the used bike market strongly favors the buyer. That is to say, fancy road bikes hold value about as well as a wet baby T holds in Britney Spears's implants. I was able to pick up the ridiculously hot Kestrel 500SCi (see picture, right) for about 1/4 of what it would have cost new. A Kestrel with Dura-Ace all around for less than a new Cannondale R700 with 105s. Score. [ permalink \| 7 comments ] mothafuckin' hustla! It's official: you must go see Kung Fu Hustle. It is fucking hilarious. Watch for an incredible number of references to other movies, including the Matrix (duh), about a million other Kung Fu movies (double duh), Spider-Man, the Shining, and others. Also, prepare to laugh harder than you've laughed at any movie since, oh, Jackass or so. Best. Movie. Ever. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Thu, 21 Apr 2005 fun with design reviews Once again exercising my design review announcement skillz, I just wrote and fired off this beauty: SI3240a MADC Design Review, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ProSLIC Summary: SI3240a MADC design review, Friday, 2p, Gecko. It will almost certainly not fill up all 3 scheduled hours. -- The long form: Gentle(wo)men... BEHOLD! Short on notice, long on caffeine, it's... The design review for the ProSLIC's shiny new MADC! I'll be discussing incremental delta-sigma theory, its application to our lovely MADC, and the implementation thereof. You'll be dazzled with tales of integral nonlinearity and regaled with intimate phase diagrams you can't get anywhere else! ...but that's not all! Respond now and I guarantee there will be no mention of the dreaded phase margin. That's right! Not a single previously-unreviewed transistor-level block will be presented, guaranteeing maximum design review efficiency. Where will you find this spectacle, this marvel of modern meetings? ConfRM.Gecko, Friday, 2PM! Be there or 4a^2x^2/(b^2-4ac). Humbly submitted, Riad Wahby "Knock yourself a pro, slick." [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Tue, 19 Apr 2005 cheap Sox tickets, illness, and guilt One advantage of watching the Sox other than at Fenway is that the tickets are MUCH cheaper. In particular, Tim and I picked up lower infield seats (section 20, row 13) at the July Sox-Rangers game at Ameriquest for just a bit more than bleacher seats go for at Fenway. Total hotness. In other news, I managed to catch some sort of mutant superflu (which is to say, I've been sick for more than my usual 24 hours) from Cindy—no surprise there, since she works with little kids all day. I ended up staying home from work in the morning yesterday, but by the time the afternoon rolled around, guilt overtook malaise and I went in and ended up working a (very productive!) full day anyway. Oh well. [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Wed, 13 Apr 2005 strange bedfellows What do the IEEE and Playboy have in common? Apparently, an interest in naked chicks. "I don't care who you are, that's funny right there." [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 10 Apr 2005 trophy husband Damn, is this really only my second April entry? Fuck me... life has been nothing but work, and will continue that way until we tape this bitch out. Yay! OK, no, it's not that bad. Weekends have been relaxing, and the weather here is gorgeous. Today I went to the driving range for a few hours and discovered that my swing hasn't completely left me! I had some trouble with my hands on the mid irons, but I managed to figure out what I was doing. What had left me were my callouses, and now they're on their way back—heralded by some moderately painful blisters. Maybe next weekend I'll play 9 holes instead of just going to the range... Right now I'm watching the Discovery Channel, and I've just learned the strangest thing: the male deep sea anglerfish is actually a parasite on the female. It attaches itself permanently to the female (they even share a circulatory system!) and basically degenerates to nothing, except that its testes develop substantially, giving the female a permanent supply of sperm. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 01 Apr 2005 Sin City is... AWESOME! I wish there were something bigger than <h1>. No, really. A few reasons why: Cyrus is a really big Frank Miller fan, and according to him the storyline is preserved almost perfectly from the books. Quentin Tarentino is a guest producer, and you can tell. Jeffrey Westhoff's quote from rottentomatoes sums it up well (even though apparently he didn't like the movie—unwashed miscreant): "You know you've gone beyond run-of-the-mill movie violence when you need to use the plural for 'castrations.'" Yup. The visual style is literally breathtaking. It's insanely cool. Clive Owen is a badass. Mickey Rourke is even more of a badass. Elijah Wood is a fucking psycho. Holy shit there are a lot of hot chicks in this movie. No, really. Take a glance over the credits. By the way, have any of y'all ever noticed how much Kurt looks like Josh Hartnett? Also, one of the trailers before Sin City is for a movie called Domino that looks really cool. It's based on the true story of Domino Harvey, daughter of Laurence Harvey, who was a fucking bounty hunter. Samus-style, biaaaatch (but without the Metroid). [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Wed, 30 Mar 2005 the engineers' conceit (or is it just MIT?) Haven't blogged in a bit, but I had a realization a few days ago that I thought I might share with y'all. The other night, I went to TGI Friday's with a horde of friends. During dinner, I was talking with Matt Powell, a co-worker of mine who's also MIT '02, M.Eng '04. Somehow, the topic of raising children came up, at which point I asked the age, in his opinion, at which one was capable of grasping calculus and differential equations. After some discussion, we settled on 12ish as probably the earliest one would want to teach their child such things. A couple of the people sitting near us (not engineers) overheard this and questioned why any sane person would ever do something like that. I immediately, almost instinctively, responded that a person couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation about anything technical, or even really understand much going on around him, without a grasp of calculus and diff. eq., and (in so many words) that people who didn't have such a grasp were basically worthless. Matt expressed agreement. Then we remembered that we were in non-engineer company, and that there were maybe two or three other people at the table of fifteen who'd taken anything beyond maybe "college algebra." This apparently failed to cause Matt any discomfiture, since, well, he's Matt, and he tells it like he thinks it is no matter how unpleasant that might be. I, on the other hand, was somewhat embarrassed. I still think I'm right, though. People who don't have at least some basic grasp of calc, diff. eq., mechanics, and E&M (the latter two being little more than the application of the former) must go through life in some sort of epic fog. [ permalink \| 11 comments ] Mon, 28 Mar 2005 spoken of in legend, it's... brilliant! (so say the Guiness guys). [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 23 Mar 2005 no going back now ...at least not for a couple months. I'll put up a pic of my new hairdo at some point... [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Tue, 22 Mar 2005 get 'em all cut? I'm considering going back to the clipper-number-two-in-the-bathroom approach to hair cuts. What do y'all think? Will I look like even more of a retard as a skinny guy with a buzzcut than I did as a fatass with a buzzcut? [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Mon, 21 Mar 2005 9 days of... nothing Yeah, it's been a while, but there's honestly not been much to blog about! Yesterday it was gorgeous outside, so I woke up and ran my new 12k loop. I think my loop is hillier than the course is going to be in July (though I don't know for sure yet), so I think I'm in good shape. I need to try and get my speed up a bit, though—at the moment I'm only averaging about 6.5 MPH (shut yer ass, I know I'm slow), and I'd like to run the 12k in under an hour in July (gotta have goals, even if you can't quite hit them). I'm guessing my HIIT routine during the week will help with this... This morning I got a call from a recruiter out of southern New Hampshire. He apparently had an old copy of my resume (well, OK, a completely up-to-date one doesn't actually exist at the moment...), and thought he was trying to hire me away from Analog Devices. I talked to him for a little while, telling him essentially nothing about myself but eventually worming out of him that he was trying to recruit me for Silicon Labs! Heh... Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go see the Ring 2 yet, but maybe I'll try and go some night this week... hmmm... Oh yeah, by the way, the PDF I linked to on MAX-OT kind of sucks. If you want to read more about it, go to AST's site and log in with username max-ot@jfet.org and password max-ot. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Sat, 12 Mar 2005 great things to come Holy shit there's a lot of good stuff coming up. Queens of the Stone Age at Stubb's BBQ - March 15 (and their album comes out on March 22) The Ring 2 - March 18 (next weekend!) Beck's new album, Guero - March 29 Sin City - April 1 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - April 29 Autechre at The Parish - May 25 Batman Begins - June 17 SiLabs Relay - July 4 Other upcoming events (dates not yet fixed): ProSLIC tapeout, me visiting Boston... have I left anything out? Mmmmm... here's to the future. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Fri, 11 Mar 2005 editing a URL = hacking Wow. Sloanies are even dumber than I thought. According to this post over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Sloan has decided to deny admissions to several people who did nothing more than edit a URL provided to them by the admissions department, discovering in the process that their admissions letter had already been posted to the webserver and reading same. Sloan claims that they "hacked in" to their files in order to view their admissions status; meanwhile the fucking morons made the admissions letters publicly available on their webserver. This goes to show you that stupid people should not be permitted to be aware of the existence, let alone in any way have a hand in the operation, of computers. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] a new routine I'm a routine kind of person. Yeah, I know, this might be surprising to some of you. Honestly, though, I like to have things planned out, I like to know what's happening when, I like to feel completely in control of the forseeable future (this last part being key: I'm an unmitigated control freak; perhaps even `:s/control//` applies here...). Even though I like the control afforded by having a plan, I do tire of same old, same old eventually. That's why it's time for a new routine. By this, I mean a new lifting routine. Stop reading now if you just don't give a rat's ass. Since it's getting nice here (i.e., it's almost warm enough to ride my bike to the gym before dawn in shorts and a T-shirt), I want to start riding to the gym and back (5 miles each way) so that I'm getting a bit of cardio every day. Doing this with my current lifting schedule is nearly impossible while still getting to work at a reasonable time, though—my current split has me lifting 75 to 90 minutes four days a week. So I'm going to a new one, known as MAX-OT. The MAX-OT philosophy is that shorter sessions (30 to 40 minutes a day, leaning towards the low end of the range) with a 5-day split is much better for you. Moreover, MAX-OT claims that you should never train the same muscles within 5 days of each other, meaning that my current routine (3-day split plus full body workout on Saturday) needs a complete makeover. Not only does this change things up, which ought to break the plateau I've been seeing lately, it gives me time to ride to the gym and back every day. Total hotness. I start Monday. Damn, I'm excited. My only worry is that since I haven't been riding much, my ass is going to get sore. I did about 9 miles on my bike this morning (started around 6:15a or so) and I was OK (it was also a hillier course than the route to the gym), so I'm guessing all will be well. Hooray for controlled change. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 07 Mar 2005 scrolling hotness One of the many things that sucks about Cadence is that it doesn't support the scroll wheel at all. The same is true of Acrobat Reader and many other programs. Today I was thinking that I should write some code to capture button 4 and 5 events and massage them into some form that older programs could digest. Then it occurred to me that someone must already have done this, and it turns out that I was right: imwheel is a package that grabs events from mouse buttons 4 and 5 (and more, if you've got a sideways scroller as well) and translates them into keypresses. It's pretty sweet. In addition to being compatible with X, it's apparently compatible with GPM, so you can even use your scroll wheel on a console. Now that's pretty hot. A quick tip: it seems that imwheel will die if you have a catchall @Exclude rule, but you don't actually need one—if it doesn't have a rule in place, it'll apparently just pass the events through to the underlying window. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Sat, 05 Mar 2005 best. game. ever. Next time I'm in Boston, I expect to play a rousing round of the getopt game. How was I reminded of the existence of this game? Dragonball GT just came on Cartoon Network and I misheard the name of one of the characters (Trunks) as "Trux." That got me thinking, "Hmmmm... trux... -Acdtrux... tar!" Wow. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] don't panic I know this isn't really new, but if you haven't yet, go see the trailer for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. I'm, like, dying of excitement. April 29, here we come... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 04 Mar 2005 no soup for you Looks like the ProSLIC well and truly hates me. We're in "critical crunch mode," so vacation ain't gonna happen—at least, not until we tape out. Currently that puts me in Boston around finals at the earliest. Y'all should let me know right now what your plans are before and after finals so I know when to plan my trip. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Wed, 02 Mar 2005 my new clock I got the boards back from Advanced Circuits yesterday, and promptly made a mess of my kitchen table stuffing one of them. My desk at work has a new decoration, and my GOD is it hotness. You know you want to make one for yourself... [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] decisions, decisions DAMNIT. On May 25, Nine Inch Nails is going to be playing at Stubb's Barbequeue. Normally that would be great, except that Autechre is playing The Parish that very same night! Why must I choose!? [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Tue, 01 Mar 2005 a young lady's illustrated primer Generally my blog entries at least attempt to have some original content, but not this one. Reason has a good interview with Neal Stephenson that I thought y'all might enjoy. edit If you haven't already, go and read In the Beginning Was the Command Line. It's great. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Sun, 27 Feb 2005 motorcycle diary It was really nice out here today, if a little cool (bright, sunny, 60ish), so I went and hit Lime Creek Road (perhaps the most awesome stretch of motorcycling road on the face of the earth, or at least in Texas) on Rosalyn, and DAMN was it a blast. The disposition of my motorcycle ownership has seen some changes recently. First, Rosalyn got a new Termignoni full race exhaust and an STM slipper clutch (funny, STM doesn't seem to have a website; I suppose that's not surprising, considering it's a tiny little shop in Torino, Italy where they make clutches by hand). The difference in performance (not to mention sound!) with the new exhaust system is nothing short of incredible, and the new clutch makes her shift like a dream. Simultaneously, I reexamined my overall vehicle situation and discovered two things: I have too many vehicles. There's no way I'd choose to ride Layla over Rosalyn. As a result, I decided a while ago that I would sell Layla if the opportunity arose. A couple weeks ago, said opportunity did arise: a guy contacted me saying he was looking for a black ZX-10R (they stopped making the black ones in 2005, dumb bastards). Mine was fucking trick (damper, stainless brake lines, -1 countershaft sprocket, double-bubble windshield, speedo healer, exhaust, swingarm and frame sliders... the works), so we both walked away happy: he with a hot motorcycle, me with my asking price. Hooray for free enterprise. Maybe I'll ride Valentina to Elysium tonight... [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Thu, 24 Feb 2005 some look-and-feel updates My blog started annoying me because the load time was getting too long, so I cut down the default number of posts displayed to 25. Then, so that it was easy to get to older stuff, I had to add the index links you now see off to the left. These are generated by a slightly modified version of the flatarchives plugin. The other thing I did was hack the writeback plugin slightly so that it put an extra little piece of encouragement in the writeback link for stories with no associated comments. It's so simple, it's a wonder there's an entirely separate plugin to do this in the blosxom plugin registry. Has anyone implemented some sort of authimage thing for blosxom yet, or am I going to have to do this at some later date? [ permalink \| 5 comments ] Wed, 23 Feb 2005 ghetto fabulous Today Tim's car had a flat, so he asked me to give him a ride over to the tire place to pick up his car. On the way, we spotted perhaps the most ghetto thing ever: a golf cart with motherfucking spinners. Behold: Thanks to Tim for taking the pictures while I drove. Also, thanks to whomever owns the golf cart for not spending as much on the rest of the cart as he did on the wheels; otherwise, we might never have seen it riding down the road on the back of a flatbed. This is the kind of event that makes me glad I carry my camera with me at all times. By the way, there are some new pictures available. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] fruit of last weekend's labor Last weekend I had some spare time while I was doing laundry, so I decided that it was time to set down a board layout for the single-digit Nixie clock I made a long time ago. I didn't have any more B-5853 tubes, but I do have a large number of B-5440s, which are even better for this purpose because they have stiff legs. I even found this nifty little page, the soculator, that will generate an Eagle script given some tube parameters. Hawt! I was pretty anal about this layout, and I actually put the switches and transformer directly on the board. I ended up making a few Eagle library parts in the process, but it was a good refresher in using Eagle (though I suspect that these days the Orcad interface might be more intuitive, given that I'm using Cadence, which is made by the same company). Other than the Nixie and the 74141, I believe all the parts are available from Digi-Key. I love Digi-Key... By the way, gerbv is a hot little program. It'll do cool things like superimpose several Gerber files, and it allows you to turn individual layers on and off. You can also control how it superimposes layers (e.g., xor, or, and, invert), which would probably make for some interesting pictures given the right Gerber file. It can also export PNG files, the result of which you see on the right. Another incredibly hot utility is gbtiler, which lets you take one or more Gerber files and tile it, thereby putting several copies of the same (or even several different) layout(s) in the same Gerber file. Since Advanced Circuits allows 66 square inches (used to be 88; I'm not sure when it changed) for $33, you may as well take full advantage, right? Technically, they don't want you doing this, but I just put through an order for four of these guys tiled up and they didn't bitch too much. You just have to explain that you need several on the same PCB for an "experimental apparatus" or some such nonsense. Hehe. I can't wait for everything to get here... [ permalink \| 8 comments ] another reason fvwm2 rules I'm a devout fvwm2 user. My desktop is ugly and plain, but it's completely useable. For example (from my .fvwm2rc): # shift- to move a few pixels Key Left A S CursorMove -1 +0 Key Right A S CursorMove +1 +0 Key Up A S CursorMove +0 -1 Key Down A S CursorMove +0 +1 # shift-meta- to move 1/4 page Key Left A SM Scroll -5 +0 Key Right A SM Scroll +5 +0 Key Up A SM Scroll +0 -5 Key Down A SM Scroll +0 +5 # shift-control- to move a full page Key Left A SC Scroll -50 +0 Key Right A SC Scroll +50 +0 Key Up A SC Scroll +0 -100 Key Down A SC Scroll +0 +100 So I can hit shift-<up\|down\|left\|right> to move my cursor around the screen, thereby shifting focus (sloppy focus goes without saying, and anyone who doesn't like it needs a trip to the Ministry of Love). I can do basically everything without taking my hands off the home row—no time wasted moving my hand to the mouse. (Note that the reason that ctrl-shift-<left\|right> only moves 50% in the x-direction is because I have a double-wide screen thanks to my dual-headed setup. A virtual screen fills both of them, but by moving over 50% I can straddle two adjacent ones.) I think fvwm2's slogan should be something like fvwm2: finally GUIs don't suck [ permalink \| 7 comments ] Tue, 22 Feb 2005 homeless fireman Like George, I've now had the experience of starting a large fire on my stove (my experience ended with a pan cover and a wet towel, however). Fortunately, I was able to continue my cooking unhindered. It's interesting to note that my smoke alarm is nothing more than a very loud particulate-activated beeping device; no one beyond earshot is alerted to its state. Is that a good thing? Speaking of my apartment, I am apparently "in danger of being evicted" because one of my fucking neighbors keeps complaining about the volume of my stereo (what "in danger" constitutes is unclear... I have a feeling it just means "we are now giving you a warning"). What pisses me off is not that there's some danger of eviction, but that if I hadn't gone into the office to retrieve a package today, I would never have known about any of this. I checked my lease agreement, and my landlord is required to notify me of complaints from my neighbors. Guess I'll just have to turn off my subwoofer until I move out... [ permalink \| 4 comments ] OSX Exposéd I finally got around to, ahem, obtaining a copy of Panther, and I installed it on dagny (did I mention that I decided to rename the GettoBook dagny-taggart?) last night. Seems pretty cool; most things appear not to have broken too badly, with the notable exception of XDarwin, but that's nothing a little dedicated poking can't fix. Having been looking forward to it for a while now, Exposé still managed to impress. Man, it's too damn sexy. I just wish I could run it on an x86 instead... [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Mon, 21 Feb 2005 Beck-tacular! There's a new Beck album, Guero, coming out on March 29th. Moreover, it's being released not only on CD, but on vinyl. Holy SHIT. In addition to that, he's already come out with a new single and a new EP this year, all based on tracks on the forthcoming album. Because I drink way too much Diet Mountain Dew, I've already gotten all of it for free from the iTunes music store: E-Pro Single 01. E-Pro (Edit) GameBoy Variations (Hell Yes Remix) - EP 01. Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes) [Remix by 8-Bit] 02. Gameboy/Homeboy (Qué Onda Guero) [Remix by 8-Bit] 03. Bad Cartridge (E-Pro) [Remix by Paza of The X-Dump] 04. Bit Rate Variations in B-Flat (Girl) [Remix by Paza of The X-Dump] These tracks all rule, but my two favories are the first and last from GameBoy variations. As an aside: Apple has made it increasingly difficult to break these damn songs out of m4p format. I'm glad I got these for free or I might be annoyed at the inconvenience. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Sun, 20 Feb 2005 movies movies movies I went and saw Constantine yesterday, and it was actually somewhat better than I expected! Who would have thought that cancerous exorcists made good superheroes? Also, I want one of his crucifix-flame-shotguns. Almost as exciting as the movie itself were the trailers that preceded it: the Ring 2, Sin City, and Batman Begins are all coming out in the not-too-distant future. I am like crapping my pants in anticipation! OK, well, since I have off from work tomorrow (yeah, OK, I'll probably work anyway...), I'm gonna party like a rockstar tonight. Gotta go get ready... [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Fri, 18 Feb 2005 I... am... job. Goddamn I've been working a lot. I've been at work past 9:30p every day this week. We're now in emergency-get-this-motherfucker-taped-out mode. In fact, we got an email from the division manager saying that they need everyone to push hard, and that they understand that this is a burden, so any time we work late, feel free to expense meals. Mike's response: "sweet! The ProSLIC team just got a raise!" I'm just glad that digital is the critical tapeout path. Amazingly, working late didn't stop me from going out to a couple bars last night, which in turn led to meeting some new people, which led to dinner plans for next weekend. Sweet! [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 16 Feb 2005 an anti-policy move Normally I don't touch "satisfaction surveys" with a ten-foot pole, but when I saw a SPAM from Dell asking me to rate my satisfaction (which reminds me... how in the fuck did they get my email address when I explicitly refused to give it each and every time they asked for it?), I couldn't resist. Highlights from the survey: If Dell failed to keep any commitments made to you, please explain what happened: I explicitly informed the technician that I had changed my address, and that the computer should be shipped to the new address. This was at least somewhat understood, since the RMA box arrived at my new address in Texas. Unfortunately, upon completion of service, the computer was shipped to my old address—in Massachusetts. I spent a total of five hours on the phone with Dell and DHL straightening things out. The majority of that time was with Dell, not DHL, and I found that while DHL's agents where knowledgeable and helpful, Dell's were unable to communicate effectively, did not know what to do, and were completely unhelpful. This experience has convinced me that I will never buy another computer from Dell again. Sure, the price is right, but that savings of a couple hundred bucks is more than made up for in the abysmal technical support and customer service. What does Dell Technical Support currently do well, and what can be improved? I can only assume that the first half of that sentence is intended as a joke. As to the second part: bring your call centers back to the US, for the love of God. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Tue, 15 Feb 2005 hey-la, hey-la... ...my laptop's back. Perhaps Handel would be more appropriate than Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer [1], but you get the point. Turns out that they decided to go all-out; in addition to the aforementioned replacements (mobo, cpu, heatsink, fan), I also got a new keyboard out of the deal, this one with a working stick-pointer-device-thingie (a.k.a. "clitoris"). HAWT. [1]Robert Feldman, Gerald Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer wrote the words and music to The Angels's My Boyfriend's Back. No, I didn't know that off the top of my head, I just work that hard for you, dear reader. [ permalink \| 4 comments ] Fri, 11 Feb 2005 instant karma I think that I've now been repaid for my angry rampage against poor "Kim." That, or Dell's incompetence is some unbounded function of a random variable. I sent back my laptop. The technician called me yesterday to tell me that he was replacing the motherboard, CPU, heatsink, and fan—basically, everything but the keyboard, display, and case. They send it out yesterday, it's supposed to get here today, everything is happy. They sent it to Boston. I just spent an hour and a half on the phone straightening things out. Hopefully I'll see my laptop again some day. I'm just glad that I didn't send them the hard drive. [ permalink \| 1 comment ] did I ever tell you... ...about the time I had three stars? Y'all can decide for yourselves whether this is a true story or not. I was out riding Layla with a couple buddies last Labor Day weekend along FM 1431 from Lago Vista to Marble Falls. It was around noon, and we were doing about 110 or thereabouts when we blew by a police officer going in the opposite direction. I don't know why I decided to do it, but as soon as I'd done it I couldn't go back: hammering the throttle to the stop, I took a few miles of 1431's wide sweepers at 150+ MPH, all the while looking for a side road onto which to turn and hide. After putting some distance between me and the po-po, I dropped off onto a little twisty side road, got out of sight, and dismounted. About a minute later, I saw the cop blast by, siren blaring, and decided that the best thing would be to lay low for a while. Remember, this was Labor Day weekend, which means that the cops were out in full force already. Moreover, 1431 is close enough to Lake Travis that there was a roving police chopper aloft. Noting that, although I was well hidden from the road, my bike was quite conspicuous from the air, I hid it and myself under a small stand of trees and tall weeds, took off my riding gear, and hunkered down for a while. The buddies of mine who had been riding with me weren't so, ahem, decisive as I, and had pulled over immediately upon seeing the trooper's lights. Not able to be in two places at once, however, Mr. Trooper had left them unmolested on the shoulder of 1431 as he gave me chase. Now they were calling my cell phone, leaving messages warning that "the cops are pissed and looking for you; get off the road and stay off for a few hours!" Of course, I'd already planned on doing this, but having confirmed that I'd be laying around for a while, I decided it was best to take a nap. When I woke up about an hour later, I decided I was sick of having three stars (remember, there were choppers involved...), so I called another buddy of mine (who owed me something of a favor, considering that I'd found him and called for assistance after he supermanned off the outside shoulder of Lime Creek Road while taking its nastiest turn and ended up hidden from the view of the road with a pelvis fractured in three places) and had him bring me a change of helmet and jacket. (He happens to live not far from where I was, so it wasn't a terrible inconvenience for him.) Having new clothes (and thus down to only one star), I pulled my bike out of the ditch, hopped on, and cautiously followed him back to his place, where I returned his gear and recovered my own. I didn't ride Layla again for a couple weeks. You know, just in case. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] ugliest... code... ever. Or, at least, close. I have a feeling that my bash coding is going to get uglier now that I've started regularly using array variables. for i in ; do IFS='%'; DATA=($(id3v2 -l "$i" \| perl -e \ 'chomp(@foo=<STDIN>); $outstr = int(${[split(/: /,${[grep(/^TRK/,@foo)]}[0],2)]}[1]). "%". ${[split(/: /,${[grep(/^TT2/,@foo)]}[0],2)]}[1]. "%". ${[split(/: /,${[grep(/^TP1/,@foo)]}[0],2)]}[1]; $outstr =~ s/\//-/g; print $outstr."\n"')); \ mv -i "$i" \ $(printf "%2.2d" ${DATA[0]})"-""${DATA[1]}""-""${DATA[2]}".mp3; done; Yes, Jim; at the point where I'm invoking perl, I may as well just have it do everything. Whatever. This is the product of my evolutionary style of commandline coding, not some (clearly aesthetically inferior) process of careful design. [ permalink* \| 1 comment ] Mon, 07 Feb 2005 fucking tech support It seems like everyone's bitching about tech support, so I figured I'd join in the fray. My laptop has, for the third time, decided that it wants a new motherboard. That is, it refuses to power up, instead flashing its Caps Lock light at me. "Call Dell," it's telling me. So I did. "Thank you for calling Dell technical support, my name is Kim, how may I help you?" a voice answers. Fuck you, I think, with that accent there's no way in hell your name is Kim; it's fucking Vishnu or something. I politely give her my name, then read off the "express service code" (express my ass) and service tag number (what's the point of having two separate numbers, anyway?) from the back of my laptop. That's when things start to go downhill. "Riad, can I please get your email address?" No thank you, I tell her, I'd rather not receive emails from Dell. She starts to protest that they won't give out my address, that I'd only receive customer catalogues and other information of interest to Dell customers, and I explain—just as patiently, for now—that information of interest to Dell customers is of no interest to me. She insists, telling me that the information they would send me via email was necessary for a happy life or some such bullshit. Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what reason she was giving the second time around, because I interrupted her halfway through, saying "ma'am, I am not going to give you my email address. I do not wish to receive any email from Dell regarding anything at all, period. If you insist that I give you an email address in order to continue this call, I'll give you a fake one. I don't have time to waste arguing about this with you; let's proceed directly to my technical issue." She gave up. I explained what was going on, noting that this had happened several times before, and that each time I'd gone through the same debug process, only to arrive at the conclusion that I needed a new motherboard. As I expected, she launched straight into the boilerplate debug process as if I hadn't said a thing. I played along, and we reached the conclusion that yes, my Caps Lock light was flashing. Her next approach was new: "you said this has happened before; has the memory been tested?" Wow, she's more clever than the last few tech support people I've spoken with, but no cigar this time, "Kim." Between the first and second motherboard failures, I completely replaced the memory, upgrading from two 128 MB DIMMs to two 512 MB DIMMs. I explained that the last time I experienced this failure, I swapped back in the old memory and still got the same behavior. This, I thought, will surely put this line of questioning to bed. I was wrong. "Kim" kept at it, saying "let's try removing the new—" "Kim, I've already explained to you that I've ruled out memory issues, and I've explained the process by which I ruled them out. The computer fails to behave whether I have one or two of the new DIMMs, one or two of the old DIMMs, or no memory at all. It is most emphatically not caused by the memory, nor is it caused by any other device installed in the system. We can remove the hard drive and the PCMCIA cards as well; it'll do the same thing. I assure you, the only course of action that will result in a working computer is a motherboard replacement. Let's skip this futile debugging effort; just issue me an RMA number and stop wasting my time." It worked! By some miracle, "Kim" skipped the remainder of the debugging charade and just issued me a return! By God, being a prick got me somewhere! I think I managed to shock "Kim" when, just before hanging up, I thanked her for her quick help and wished her a great day. She kind of choked, then returned the greeting and cut the line. Look, I realize it's not her fault, but frankly I don't care. Whether she's the motivation or just a cog in the machine, she's a waste of my time, and that's a good enough reason for me. [ permalink \| 3 comments ] Fri, 04 Feb 2005 I am your nerd-God; you shall have no false idols before me Issel offered up a nerd quiz on her blog. According to this quiz, I am a nerd GOD. Then again, given my previous entry, y'all knew this already. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] when I think apt-get synaptics, I touch(pad) myself Gentlemen... BEHOLD! [root@kung-foo /home/kwantam]# apt-get install xfree86-driver-synaptics (foo foo foo) [root@kung-foo /home/kwantam]# more /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (foo foo foo) Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Synaptics TouchPad" Driver "synaptics" Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Protocol" "auto-dev" Option "LeftEdge" "1700" Option "RightEdge" "5300" Option "TopEdge" "1700" Option "BottomEdge" "4200" Option "FingerLow" "25" Option "FingerHigh" "30" Option "MaxTapTime" "180" Option "MaxTapMove" "220" Option "VertScrollDelta" "100" Option "MinSpeed" "0.06" Option "MaxSpeed" "0.12" Option "AccelFactor" "0.0010" Option "SHMConfig" "on" EndSection (foo foo foo) Now I can use the far right side of kung-foo's touchpad as a scroll wheel. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 03 Feb 2005 problem-solving Mike and I decided that we weren't going to waste our time with part 2 of Monday's design review, scheduled for this afternoon. Thus, we both brought laptops to the meeting and proceeded to do work and ignore the review except when interrupted by the one or two nuggets of relevant information. Unfortunately, the conference room in which we were having the meeting only had one conveniently-located network jack; fortunately, both of us had wireless network cards. Thus: [root@kung-foo ~]# cat /root/adhoc-route.sh #!/bin/bash if [ $1"x" = "x" ]; then OUTIFACE="eth0" else OUTIFACE=$1 fi iwconfig eth1 essid "kung-foo" iwconfig eth1 mode ad-hoc iwconfig eth1 channel 3 iwconfig eth1 rate 11M ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 modprobe iptable_nat iptables -t nat -F iptables -t nat -s 192.168.1.0/24 -A POSTROUTING -o $OUTIFACE -j MASQUERADE echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server start I can specify a different outgoing interface so that I can, for example, route through ppp0 when I'm connected to my cellphone. Note that this entry was written while in the design review. I should blog from meetings more often... [ permalink \| 1 comment ] Wed, 02 Feb 2005 elevator music Here at work they just installed a new transparent HTTP proxy that does virus scanning and filtering. I dislike it for two reasons: first, it's slow, since all the HTTP traffic in the company has to go through it, and second, you have to authenticate to it. I'm not willing to send my password over the network in cleartext, so I, well, don't. Instead, I'm back to doing what I did for years at Analog Devices: I ssh (fortunately, I don't have to tunnel through a proxy to do so; I can just ssh directly anywhere I like) to graviton (yes, the machine in Random), where I have squid set up as a proxy, and I forward a local port to the squid proxy port on graviton. My browsing is faster and more secure than everyone else's, and I don't have to be subjected to occasional "this site is being scanned" tripe. I've once again gotten into is bittorrenting lots of stuff at home. This makes positron slightly too unresponsive (due to an easily-saturated uplink; fuckin' SBC...) to stream MP3s, which is how I'd been handling my need for a constant audio barrage at work (delivered via my supremely sexy Bose TriPort headphones). Fortunately, I've rediscovered (yet again!) Digitally Imported, a web radio station that broadcasts several streams of (IMHO) good trance—the perfect music to work to, at least if you're me (I listened to di a whole lot while writing my thesis, which cemented my association of trance music with productivity). di's free stream is only 96 kbit; you can pay to get up to 160 kbit, and I used to be a Platinum subscriber, but frankly the difference in quality isn't so noticeable when it's only background music. Nevertheless, I might renew my subscription just to support the service. See? People are willing to pay for web radio if it doesn't suck. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Mon, 31 Jan 2005 today's design review Also, it was at fucking 9 in the morning on a Monday. Marius, Mike, and Jiangtao didn't actually show up until after 10, leaving the first hour or so in the hands of Ion, Shaung, and me. Bastards. Yes, the font in the above image is none other than Apple's Chicago. You have to take pleasure in the little things. [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Sun, 30 Jan 2005 running man As of Friday, I'm the captain of Team Posse; we're competing in the Silicon Labs Relay. I guess I'm gonna be a runner. Yay! You know, I never realized what a difference the shoe makes. I bought myself a pair of running shoes today, and man do they feel much better on the ol' ankles than my Airwalks! Because they felt really good, they'll double as trail shoes, and they were on sale, I got me some Adidas ClimaProof Radiates. They're also ugly as all hell (see picture), so I can be sure that I won't be tempted to wear them unless I'm actually going running. So Hippo, you wanna come down here this summer and run with us? [ permalink \| 4 comments ] how to parallel park I both entered and exited this spot with the cars on either side of me in precisely the configuration captured in the images below. Casey can bear witness to this fact. Incidentally, new pictures are up. The skating rink party was in Casey's honor. It ruled. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] on "other people" Tonight I went out to a few bars downtown. On leaving one bar, whose patrons had been Harvey Danger's prototypical cretins—cloning and feeding—I remarked to Tim and Casey, "if people weren't so fucking contemptible, I might be a misanthrope." [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Fri, 28 Jan 2005 a little ancient history, #2 Some of you never got a chance to see this. Since it is, in my opinion, one of Sherv's most brilliant pieces of work, and indeed a goldmine for insulting phrases (especially those pertaining to the carriage in the midsection of an excess of triglycerides), I've reproduced it here in full for your enjoyment and erudition. To: random-hall-talk@mit.edu From: The.Seat.of.Justice@mit.edu Subject: Random Hall, arise! Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 22:03:56 -0400 Sender: gkl@mit.edu Random Hall, arise! I must call your attention to a monumental problem which asserts itself more strongly by the day: Riad Wahby. His creeping flab-heap shell drags itself sickeningly through our collective consciousness with the sound of a wet explosion. His loathsome ejaculations reverberate unsettlingly through our skulls, nesting uncomfortably between the limbic system and the pituitary like a cancer. Riad Wahby is the source of all the adipose evil which affronts our otherwise normal lives. Wahby must die. To this end, I suggest we as a society bring to bear the full force of the blessed Social Contract which binds us all: The Random Hall Constitution. We must provide, from this day forward, for the elimination of Wahby from our hallowed halls. The Random Hall Constitution states in its second article (hereafter referred to as "Purpose") that our government, first and foremost, is intended "to promote the welfare and well-being of its members." This overarching consideration is being flaunted: Wahby, enemy of all our happinesses, is allowed to stalk through our home, his frowning gut rubbing the paint slowly from our walls. No matter how distasteful the thought, the third article (hereafter referred to as "Membership") provides that all official residents "at 282 and 290 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, shall be members of Random Hall." This further indicates that Wahby the Woe-Bringer is a part, if a parasitic part, of our collective person. This brings us, finally and most satisfactorily, to the fourth article of the Random Hall Constitution (hereafter referred to as "Authority"). I have reproduced Authority here, in full: "Random Hall shall govern itself through the House Meeting and the Executive Committee of Random Hall. Together they shall have full governing authority in making judicial and executive decisions for the members of Random Hall as granted by the Dormitory Council at MIT and in accordance with the Uniform Judicial Codes and this Constitution. All acts and decisions of the House Meeting of Random Hall and the Executive Committee of Random Hall shall be considered to be acts and decisions of Random Hall. Random Hall shall have sole authority to regulate the use of the name 'Random Hall'." It is indisputable that the Dormitory Council will lend its assent to any judicial decision made by the residents of Random Hall proper as well as its Executive Committee, especially in light of the menace with which Wahby hangs over our heads and those of our peers in the glorious MIT community. I call for the immediate pursuit of the following goals: 1) That Wahby be expelled from our premises in cooperation, based on mutual distaste, between MIT, its Housing authorities, the Dormitory Council, and Random Hall proper. 2) That a place be appointed for the quenching of Wahby's lipid-rich flame through both corporal and capital punishment, including but not limited to: a) hanging, b) shooting by firing squad, c) drawing and quartering of Wahby's person, d) mincing of Wahby's flesh, e) lethal injection, f) gassing in a suitable chamber, g) alcohol poisoning a la the late M. Scott Krueger, h) bamboo shoots underneath the finger and toenails, i) burning at the stake, j) drowning as a witch for the creation of flesh golems, k) work as a poisonous animal masturbator, l) tickling by women of great beauty, m) whips and chains, n) &c. &c. as provided at the time of execution. 3) That Wahby's remains be transported to a location suitable for the disposal of (bio)hazardous waste and distributed widely, to prevent creation of a hideous Wahboid mostrosity from beyond the grave, 4) That President Vest donate funds for the execution of the stated plan. 5) Finally, that the proceedings be recorded for posterity and posted at each door of Random Hall as a proud declaration that problems, indeed, have solutions. To this end, I have drafted the following petition, to be signed by at least 20 voting members of the Random Hall community (viz Random Hall Constitution Article IV, Section 3), as provided by Membership, which calls for the exercise of Authority in pursuit of our all-important Purpose: Dated on the 29th day of our Lord, in the blessed Spring month of April, in the year 2002, We, the Undersigned, call for a House Meeting on the 10th day of May of this jubilee year in our history. In light of the encroaching, flabby menace of Riad Wahby, it is imperative that we gather to discuss what must be done. Let us gather together and bring the full force of our collective will against Riad Wahby: The Triumph of the Grill. Ozok be with you. Signed, Shervin Fatehi (further signatures to be gathered) Yours in Christ, Shervin Fatehi, JudComm Member at Large, Defender of Justice and the Thin, Sexy Way of Life [ permalink \| 1 comment ] two new additions to the roll My blogroll has been updated with two new additions. The first is Captain Sam Makes a Generalization—it's Captain Sam in all his glory! Let's hope he puts in some choice nuggets about Asian women and orgo recitation instructors. I'm sure he will; he's a big boy. The other one is Left2Right, a blog written jointly by a couple dozen people, all of whom seem to be philosophy or poli sci professors. Among them is none other than MIT's own Joshua Cohen, the professor from whom I took 24.04J (a.k.a. 17.01J). Larry Bacow once described Professor Cohen as one of the three smartest professors at the Institute. Since I can't imagine how one can possibly evaluate intelligence precisely enough to make such a claim, or indeed how you compare the intelligence of a political science professor to that of a member of the electrical engineering faculty, it's almost certainly the case that what Bacow meant (whether he knew it or not) was that he is a most impressive rhetoritician, conversationalist, and lecturer. I know I don't disagree with the latter, and it bodes well for his posts at Left2Right. (As you might guess by the name, Left2Right is a blog where (politically) left-minded thinkers make arguments whose intended audience is the right. (Note also that this parenthetical contains (other) nested parentheticals. Wow.)) Anyway, enough of my drivel. Go read them. [ permalink \| 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] Thu, 27 Jan 2005 in case you were wondering The smallest valid GIF image can be generated with the following command: /usr/bin/printf "GIF87a\x1\x0\x1\x0\x80\x0\x0\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\xff\x2c\x0\x0\x0\x0\x1\x0\x1\x0\x0\x2\x2\x44\x1\x0\x3b" Correction: Jim correctly points out that you don't actually need a color table. Moreover, only one byte of image data is actually necessary. Thus, /usr/bin/printf "GIF87a\x1\x0\x1\x0\x0\x0\x0\x2c\x0\x0\x0\x0\x1\x0\x1\x0\x0\x1\x1\x0\x0\x3b" [ permalink \| 2 comments ] Wed, 26 Jan 2005 a new (multi)home? I've recently become frustrated with my lack of bandwidth at home. The main issue is that I live far enough away from a CO that I'm instead serviced by a remote terminal on a DLC. The problem is, unlike at the CO, Speakeasy doesn't operate through the RT, since SBC owns it. This means that my only option for DSL service is through SBC Yahoo!. Since I'm within a mile of the RT, I can get very good bandwidth; the problem is, SBC Yahoo! won't sell me anything faster than 384k upstream. If I want faster upstream, I have to go to cable through RoadRunner—costing me about $200/mo, since I'd have to get a business package in order to get a static IP address. Recently I did a little research, and it turns out that for $30/mo I can essentially rent hardware and bandwidth from, e.g., ServerPronto, and get root on my own Linux box housed at their colocation facility. Once I have this, it's as if it's my machine sitting in my house—`vi /etc/apt/sources.list`, `apt-get update`, `apt-get dist-upgrade`