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January 9th, 2009
06:19 pm - A kind of ambient I'm not into
Why do you suppose American drivers generally crank the dashboard illumination in their cars to the max? Don't they like to see at night?
Is it because the rental car companies do that as part of the prep? Because, they also seem to crank the bass and treble to the max on the stereo too, and I don't think that's such a hot idea either.
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November 28th, 2008
12:58 pm - Next up: red-black trees
While playing a number guessing game with my 5 year old son today, I ended up teaching him bsearch as a way to play when the number range is big. He got it right away. He also falls back to linear search when the range is down to ten numbers.
What ultra-nerdy thing do you do with your kids?
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November 26th, 2008
10:45 am - SRV
It's too bad about Stevie Ray Vaughan. I wish he were still around.
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November 11th, 2008
09:24 am - On footwear
For those of you who don't know me in person, I ride my bike to work most days. This means I keep a set of shoes at work, so I don't have to haul shoes back and forth every day.
Those shoes are skate shoes. Why do I wear skate shoes when I don't skate? Same reason I wear a baseball cap when I don't play baseball, I guess. I mostly wear skate shoes at home too. On my bike I wear some Shimano cycle touring shoes.
I recently had occasion to bring new shoes to work. I grabbed an old pair of running shoes out of the closet. My knees suck, so I haven't run in years; consequently these shoes have pretty much been languishing.
And when I put them on at work, I learned something: holy crap, running shoes are light!
Or, conversely, all the other shoes I wear are heavy by comparison. Skate shoes are heavy because they have a thick and fairly rigid rubber sole for better traction on your sick deck. Cheap bike shoes (like the ones I have) are heavy too, because they have a thick and fairly rigid insole made of plastic, to which you bolt a heavy metal cleat. Expensive bike shoes have insoles made of carbon fiber for a greater rigidity-to-weight ratio.
I forget what the name of the effect is where the salesman shows you the $2,500 suit, and all of a sudden the $1,500 suit doesn't seem that expensive. But that contrast effect really hit me.
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November 5th, 2008
05:22 pm - Bleg: I just want to type
Here's what I want in a keyboard.
- Split or "batwing" configuration.
- No freaking F-Lock key.
- Normal (not sideways) 6-pad.
- Windows keys on both sides. This makes it easier to lock my machine one-handed.
- No numeric keypad. I don't do numeric data entry for a living.
- Media transport and volume HID buttons.
- Bonus points: USB instead of PS/2.
"batwing" + "no numeric keypad" turns out to be the tough combination to find. If I find such a beast and like it, I'll buy approximately four of them - one for work, one for home, plus two spares.
Anyone know of such a thing? Price no object.
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October 18th, 2008
12:25 am - What I want for Christmas
If someone doesn't get me one of these for Christmas, you are all fucking fired:
( cut for width )
I can alternate it with my current favorite t-shirt (it's the one on the left - I'm wearing it RIGHT NOW):
Also, Peggle Nights is addictive.
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October 8th, 2008
September 23rd, 2008
08:30 pm - You know what would be awesome?
Here's a form factor I'd like to see. The new HTC/T-Mo Android phone has a display that slides on the long display axis to reveal a keyboard. Great so far. Only, instead of just sliding, it would be pretty nice if it could slide open then flip over, like a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso wristwatch.
The flip side could have a small, thin, cheap, secondary, ruggedized display like a low-resolution monochrome OLED. Or it could just be hard plastic to keep the BOM down (and to add some good sticker real estate). That way you could jam the device in your pocket without fearing for your fancy-pants fragile expensive HVGA display.
Ideally the user could answer calls with the display closed, but I imagine that would entail plenty of firmware design problems.
Design of the hinge mechanism is left as an exercise for the reader. The very, very smart reader.
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July 23rd, 2008
03:20 pm - Too true
(3:19:31 PM) Message could not be sent because a connection error occurred:
christ msn messenger is flaky lately
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July 14th, 2008
09:54 am - Today's inspiration
A doppio and a Coke is the programmer's morning equivalent of a shot and a beer.
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July 11th, 2008
10:48 am - Software develpoment news flash
If you're about to start an operation, and you know ahead of time it will probably take a long time, you owe it to your user base to make that operation cancelable. This greatly decreases the probability that some of your user base will show up at your office building with fifty half inch wide zip ties, a 5 gallon can of kerosene, and a Zippo inscribed "MY LIFE FOR YOU".
For bonus points, you can learn what we all learned in school: just don't do the expensive operation on the UI thread in the first place. That way you don't have to stop and restart the operation to do UI stuff. This is especially important on Windows, where a hung app causes all kinds of nasty side effects for the whole winstation.
I'm talking to you, Outlook and Firefox.
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June 12th, 2008
10:48 pm - Best setting ever
Why was I not informed about this wonderful little checkbox?
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April 30th, 2008
01:33 pm - I use the R-word a lot lately.
"This error may be the result of trying to delete more than 4,000 messages at one time. Outlook can delete no more than 4,000 messages when it is working with a server message store.
To avoid this error, delete fewer than 4,000 messages in a single operation.
It is also possible you do not have the appropriate permissions to delete messages. If you need to delete content from a folder owned by someone else, contact the owner of the folder to obtain the necessary permissions, or have the owner delete the content for you."
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April 16th, 2008
04:24 pm - Perforce error message of the day
WARNING: Client map too twisted for directory list.
Awesome.
Also, if you google for that error message, hit #4 is porn.
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April 14th, 2008
11:39 am - Remember: Your bank is not your friend.
I have been on vacation in Mexico for a week. Before I left, I called my credit card's bank and told them I'd be going, so I wouldn't set off their anti-fraud stuff.
The way this works is, you call them, get to a human, and tell them what you want to do. Then they have to authenticate it's you calling, not some guy who just stole a credit card number and wants to use it in Mexico. So you answer questions. The bank's ability to generate good questions is pretty spooky. For example, "What's your wife's sister's birth month?" or "Which of the following three street addresses sounds familiar?"
Anyway, after all that jazz, they said "OK, your account has been updated, thanks for calling." Success!
The next day we went out to eat. When I got home, I attempted to buy a book on Amazon, and failed due to the credit card not going through. So I called the bank again. Same rigmarole, different but similar questions. Turns out I'd set off their fraud detection code by going out to eat (we bought food at two nearby restaurants in a food court).
Three interesting things about this otherwise fairly mundane story:
(1) Does anyone else wonder whether P( raise fraud alert | customer has called in to modify their fraud settings recently ) >> P( raise fraid alert ) ?
(2) How'd you like to see the database they use to generate those security questions? That's some sensitive stuff.
(3) The book I was trying to buy? Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity. It looks pretty good, though I haven't really gotten into it yet.
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March 24th, 2008
10:45 am - One way my new job differs from my old job
At my old job, email like this would not have been work-related:
Does anyone here have an accurate human skull here they may want to sell. I wanted to ask before I purchased one from online.
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March 12th, 2008
10:37 am - I miss bash
C:\imissbash>dir /b *.php
imissbash.php
imissbash.php~
C:\imissbash>dir /b *~
imissbash.php~
C:\imissbash>rem WTH?
C:\imissbash>
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February 27th, 2008
10:46 pm - zomg cute
This is Hellion the Younger, or rather, Dread Pirate Hellion the Younger:
( Cut for width )
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February 10th, 2008
10:30 pm - Hills? We got 'em.
Someone asked me the other day what my bike route was like to work. I explained which roads I took and they said something like "Wow, you're either going up or down on that route."
This is actually pretty typical for this area; there are just not a lot of flats around here. But it got me thinking.
I took a look at the aggregate GPS data from my commutes last year. I didn't put the GPS on the bike every day, and it under-reports by up to a mile on the way home because I start pedaling and cold-boot the GPS at the same time, and it takes a while to find the satellites.
So the aggregate data are: 93,266 feet vertical climb; 785 miles traveled. If you assume that there were in fact no flats, and that all pedaling was either climbing or descending, then that means 392.5 miles or 2,072,400 feet of that were spent climbing. And 93,266 feet climbed in 2,072,400 feet pedaled equals an average grade of roughly 4.5%.
Now, this number could be a bit higher than reality, because any noise introduced into the altitude readings (e.g. from having part of the track be right as the device gets its initial fix) will inflate the climb numbers. But even if it's, say, 25% off, that's still an interesting number. However, I don't think it's 25% off, because using the data only from morning rides (when the GPS was fully warmed up) yields an answer of 4.2% rather than 4.5%, which is pretty darn close. And yes, my office and house happen to be at almost exactly the same elevation.
The assumption that there were no flat parts of the commute would simply mean that, insofar as there actually are some flat or near-flat parts, the average hill around here is steeper than 4.5%. This may seem obvious if you try to haul your fat ass and your big heavy steel commute bike with lights and fenders and a pannier and wheel rims seemingly made of lead up one, but when you're not sucking wind it's a surprising number.
So no wonder I gear down like a crazy person. How do the guys with the 53/39 and 12-25 do it?
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January 28th, 2008
10:13 pm - Groundhog Day
I just got another $.67 bill from AT&T Wireless for my closed account (again marked "do not pay").
Like a skin-popping character in Heroes, I actually knew it was coming a few days ago. Well, not exactly like a character from Heroes, because I didn't have to shoot up. Instead, AT&T Wireless, bless their little hearts, kindly emailed me a link to the web version of the bill — complete with a link I can't use to pay it.
Anyone care to make a wager how long it'll last? My money's on six bills in total, which would make May's the last. I'm sure I could drag it out a bit by sending them a check for $.66 or less, but that would violate the spirit of the experiment.
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