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Tue, 31 May 2005
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 | 7 comments ]
writebacks
May wrote
Where little means SKINNY!
That's hawt.
When I visit I'll show that paltry 50-wing woman her place.
May wrote
Where little means SKINNY!
That's hawt.
When I visit I'll show that paltry 50-wing woman her place.
May wrote
Dammit. I'm stupid.
May wrote
Multiple comments, ho!
May wrote
There needs to be an idiot proof way to get back to your blog after posting a comment.
repak wrote
there is!
the little ^ in the upper right corner of the page takes you to the top
-repak
May wrote
Mon, 30 May 2005
I didn't know that. It's not in sparkly gel pen, so I didn't see it.
...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!) ]
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Sat, 28 May 2005I'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!) ]
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Thu, 26 May 2005I'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 ]
writebacks
gwax wrote
damned right
Milk crates are the king of all sorts of crap: including moving supplies and makeshift furniture components.
jim wrote
hmm
Even closer to Mexico...
repak wrote
more to the point...
Even closer to work.
Home: 6636 West William Cannon.
Work: 7000 West William Cannon.
Whee.
-repak
woz wrote
dude
closer to work is the path of darkness. you'll be tempted to go in at all hours of the night, and doing so will be trivial.
repak wrote
My former commute sucked, though. It wasted nearly an hour of my day.
Plus, all my friends live much nearer here, and I'm closer to downtown as well. It's just an all-around better place to live.
Unfortunately, it's a nicer area, which means it's more expensive, so (since I'm cheap) my apartment is now smaller. By Boston standards it's huge, but by Austin standards it's, well, not.
That's OK. It's nice here.
-repak
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.
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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 ]
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Sherv wrote
Ba-dum CHK
Cypheprunks? Is that some kind of Danish farming cooperative?
repak wrote
biaaatchWed, 25 May 2005
fixed.
-repak
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!) ]
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Mon, 23 May 2005After 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 ]
writebacks
jim wrote
bitbucket
You should put /raid5/bitbucket on it, so I don't have to wait so long to download stuff from you.
repak wrote
parts, perhaps
...but I only have 40Gb of storage on that machine (went the cheap route), and apparently they're not so happy with piracy originating from their network...
Also, my uplink speed will be faster once I'm on a cable link, and I'm going to be doing dDNS, so you should still be able to get stuff directly from positron.
-repak
gwax wrote
HavenCo CoLo
Speaking of colocation, HavenCo runs a colocation facility in the Principality of Sealand, giving you all sorts of freedoms from oppressive governments.
gwax wrote
stripped links
since your blog stripped my links: HavenCo (http://www.havenco.com/) and Sealand (http://www.sealandgov.com/).
Sherv wrote
Shreevin Fattie says:
On the other hand, some people I know out here apparently know one of the guys who run the Sealand CoLo service. At times the boats don't have diesel and they can't go anywhere. Other times they power goes out *and* the boats are out and they can't go anywhere. Plus, this dude in charge is apparently a total asshole whom you might grudge every cent (*if* you knew him).
So I guess the key thing is not to know him and not to care about the well-being of the Sealanders.
Hoo!
repak wrote
The main downside to HavenCo is their exorbitant costs.
I'm well-versed in the political problems as well---it was a longtime discussion topic on Cypherpunks.
-repak
repak wrote
whee!Fri, 20 May 2005
...now migrated to my new machine.
-repak
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 ]
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J.W. Holloway wrote
Natalie Portman
Does anyone _actually_ find her attractive, or have we all just been told she's attractive by hollywood?
repak wrote
Mar certainly did, as did I, but after yesterday, I don't know...
-repak
Sherv wrote
f that b!
I don't think she's attractive. My friend who was at Harvard when she arrived also notes that she's short and greasy.
Gautham wrote
Dude, Windu's no badass. Died crying like a bitch. Definitely disappointing.
But the movie was awesome. And only one unbearably painful scene in terms of dialogue.
repak wrote
WTF!?Thu, 19 May 2005
Dude, Windu holds off the Emperor's lightning nearly as effectively as Yoda. I'd say that's pretty badass.
-repak
...or at least, he's hiding in some very strange places.
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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.
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Wed, 18 May 2005
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.
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(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 ]
writebacks
Sherv wrote
byob
Bahahaha!
Say, how about that new System of a Down album?
repak wrote
Armenian Nu!
I've only heard one song from it. Seems pretty reasonable.
-repak
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: jesseg@alum.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan
Jesse Geraci <jessegeraci@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: jesseg@alum.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Ask MIT to Divest from Sudan
Jesse Geraci <jessegeraci@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 | 2 comments ]
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J.W. Holloway wrote
Wasting electrons?
All those electrons you're wasting... man.
Well, at least you're staying positive.
-Jack
repak wrote
Ouch. That was... bad.
-repak
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?
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Tue, 17 May 2005
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 ]
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Scott wrote
That's pretty sweet.
I'll let you know when we finally make those
"Miller Time" amplifier design shirts.
That's gonna be the ultimate analog shirt.
repak wrote
HOT
That's a GREAT idea. Let me know what I can do to make this happen as fast as possible.
-repak
Sherv wrote
YOU ARE NOT THAT THIN YET
For a second I thought that was you, but the skin is way too white. Or are you going down the Michael Jackson trail now, too?
repak wrote
wait, you mean
sleeping with Macaulay Culkin?
-repak
Sherv wrote
fux0rFri, 13 May 2005
Who *is* that??
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 ]
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Sherv wrote
fux0r mctitwich
That is *hilarious*. Also misogynistic, a bit, but that is totally mitigated by the hilarity.
Don't forget that you also love the feeling of being paranoid.
Priestlanchette!
jim wrote
That distance
would be considered generous around here. And wait, weren't you the one who wedged your car between two others?
repak wrote
I'm not talking about parallel parking, I'm talking about a parking lot that covers an acre or more. Completely different beast.
-repak
May wrote
I think I'd have appreciated it more if you hadn't called her a cunt. There's just something about that word that makes me cringe.
repak wrote
PROOF!
Women instinctively hate that word. I KNEW IT!
John, Scott, and I, back in high school, theorized that it was the hard consonant sounds that made it so deliciously offensive.
-repak
jim wrote
Oooh
I thought you meant bumper-to-bumper was 6 inches. Side-to-side was 6? Then your response was perfect.
May wrote
Actually, I think I'm more offended by it's usage: describing women as objects. Soundwise, it sounds just like cum, and that's a beautiful word to me.
repak wrote
whoa
good
-repak
May wrote
Mon, 09 May 2005
: )
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 ]
writebacks
Gautham wrote
I also was a hardcore 49ers fan -- through high school at least. The problem with the 49ers is that since the departure of Eddie DeBartolo, the franchise has been turned (by Eddie's sister and brother-in-law) into just another extension of The DeBartolo Corporation. Eddie D cared about winning; the new owners couldn't care less. It's pretty sad, given the fact that the 49ers were such a dominating team from the '80's through the late '90's. Last season was especially painful.
As for assessing talent in the draft, the NFL is like any other professional sport: the people that run teams generally tend to be the ones that are least capable of understanding the nuances that are required to put together a successful team. People that run professional sports team tend to be ex-players and coaches whose view of the sport is skewed by their participation and/or general stupidity. At least this seems to be shifting in baseball, where they're moving away from solely using the opinions of some random scout to incorporating statistical analysis as a major factor in evaluating talent.
repak wrote
In baseball that works; you have statistically significant numbers of games. The problem with the NFL is that you only get 16 games with a given team, and random fluctuations are enough to fuck up the statistical data to the point where it's almost useless.
Beyond that, it's nearly impossible to measure the efficacy of individual players in the NFL. Position players look much better when they're behind a good offensive line (look at Denver, who can essentially manufacture stats for their offensive players via their line). Compare that with baseball, where the difference between one at-bat and the next is essentially deterministic (pitcher, ballpark, etc.).
-repak
repak wrote
The really maddening thing is that the 49ers are going to probably go 5 and 11 or so this year; fans will look at last year, look at this year, and say "we improved!" Fact is, last year they were the most injured team in the NFL; if they can avoid that, their record HAS to improve. They're still worse off with Smith than with Rattay.
-repak
Gautham wrote
Small sample size is definitely problematic, and in college the sample size is even smaller. The other difference between baseball and football is that while baseball is essentially the same game at the high school, college, minor league, and major league levels, the way football is played changes dramatically between different levels. Statistics from high school and college baseball are meaningful; statistics from high school and college football (especially for quarterbacks) are almost useless. Almost no quarterbacks in high school can actually throw the football, so teams run a lot more than at other levels, especially quarterbacks. It's almost the same story in college football. The action in the professional game also tends to be more quick (this is one of the complaints you hear from rookies in the NFL). It's probably one of the reasons why college coaches like Steve Spurrier have such a hard time adjusting to the professional game, and college quarterbacks are especially notorious in terms of progression from the college to the professional game.
As a result, scouting becomes incredibly important in draft preparations for these teams. They drill the hell out of these guys, interview them, and come up with all sorts of obscure stuff to try to measure physical and mental characteristics. There was a great article on ESPN (I can't find it right now, unfortunately) about how the Niners had a workout with Alex Smith in Salt Lake City where they made him do all sorts of bizarre shit (like running down the field while juggling the ball through his legs) in order to judge his "mental makeup". Personally, it seems like madness. Every scout has some gut reaction or intuition about which guy's going to make it big. The Kahneman and Tversky papers on decision theory mentioned in the paper you linked to (one of which we read in 24.280) show the fundamental problems with this. Like the paper says, teams overestimate their own strength in assessing picks (and the differences in potential between players) and as a result over-value picking early in the draft.
Probably the most egregious example of this happened in 1999 Mike Ditka (in New Orleans) essentially traded the rest of his draft away to go get Ricky Williams. Williams wound up being a decent player, but he was traded to the Dolphins for two first round draft picks two years later. Now he's studying at some Ayurvedic medicine school in California because he doesn't like football anymore, or some such craziness.
I guess if I was running a draft, I'd try to capitalize on this by stockpiling draft picks in the middle rounds through trades with teams desperate to land certain players. Capitalizing on other people's stupidity is always a good strategy.
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.
writeback
Scott wrote
Sun, 08 May 2005
This one always cracks me up:
http://www.artofelectronics.com/sm/smimages/maidlite.gif
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 | 3 comments ]
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gwax wrote
Jolt
You should make a hunt for the new Jolt cans, they're addict-o-rific!
dmax wrote
pshaw. kid stuff. swing on by and I'll show you what a *real* man gets addicted to...
Rodin wrote
Sat, 07 May 2005
That tuna/beans concoction sounds nastier than the bacon-lard-soaked two-pounder grilled cheese that we made at my house. And that was NASTY.
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.
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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.
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i wrote
Get yer @R$3 over Here!
haha YES -- let's go bowling. I've never bowled w/ you, though I bet Mar could toooooootally beat ya. haha And thanks for thinking intensely in my direction. :oD
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.
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gwax wrote
Master & BlasterTue, 03 May 2005
The Midget and the Retard! Oh man, Beyond Thunderdome you have brought us some truly great things.
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 4*2k in series.
- 1/.35 = 2.8571, so in series with the above I put 2*2k 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 6*2k in parallel.
So we have 4*2k+(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.
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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.
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Mon, 02 May 2005
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.
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