Baldr vs. Watermelon

July 6th, 2009

We’ve been teaching Baldr that destroying watermelons is a good thing. “Why?” you might ask and the answer is clear: because Baldr attacking watermelons is awesome. On account of awesomeness and the fact that we actually had two watermelons lying around, there are two sets of watermelon destruction involved. Proof follows.

(Matt helped a little with the second watermelon)

Posted in animals | No Comments »

Boat Sketch

July 6th, 2009

Sketch of a small sailboat made on my N810

Sketch of a small sailboat made on my N810

This is a small sketch of a person sailing a small boat that I made on my N810’s touchscreen while passing some time recently. I’m rather pleased by this little sketch so I thought that I’d toss it up here.

Posted in compositions | 1 Comment »

On airplane bandwidth and latency

July 2nd, 2009

Having recently used Virgin America to transport myself across the country, I was very pleased to have Internet access while I was in the air. This, however, is not the sort of airplane bandwidth and latency that I am going to talk about. Instead, I would like to discuss a comparison between the bandwidth and latency of typical Internet connections with those associated with taking a hard drive on an airplane.

Let’s say we compare a high speed (15Mbit) DSL connection to taking a moderately large hard drive (500GB) on a plane for data rates between San Francisco and Boston (~7 hours):

Bandwidth:
DSL: 15 Mbit/s
Airplane: {{500 GB} / {7 hr}} * {{1 hr} / {60 min}} * {{1 min} / {60 s}} *{{8000 Mb} / {1 GB}} approx 150 Mbit/s

Latency:
DSL: ~100ms
Airplane: >7 hours

For fun, let’s try something a little bigger on both sides: OC-768 vs Boeing 747-400F plane filled with 2TB hard drives.

Bandwidth:
OC-768: 38 Gbit/s
747-400F: {{250,000 lbs} / {7 hr}} * {{2 TB} / {1.7 lbs}} * {{1 hr} / {60 min}} * {{1 min} / {60 s}} *{{8 Tb} / {1 TB}} approx 93 Tbit/s

Latency:
OC-768: <100ms
747-400F: >7 hours

Clearly, hard drives on an airplane will win in a purely bandwidth driven application but airplanes suffer from incredibly high latency. You will have to decide which is best choice based on your particular use scenario.

Posted in computers, intzorweb | No Comments »

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

June 29th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be considered good. Transformers 2 is, however, an awesome movie in the sense that summer blockbusters are designed to be awesome. It’s pretty typical to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is somewhat farcical, in my opinion.

The logical conclusion to the trend of summer blockbusters is that story/plot isn’t actually that important and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what happens if you reach that logical conclusion and make a movie that is an open acknowledgment of the frivolity of plot in summer blockbusters? You end up with something that is a gorgeous, shiny, moving piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intellectualism; you end up with something that every traditional movie-watcher will think is terrible as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in looking for plot and traditional quality, have failed to see the gorgeous, shiny, sense-satiating, monster of an experience that Transformers 2 is. The critics made a similar experience with Speed Racer, which was not very compelling but nonetheless excessively beautiful.

In addition to the amazing experience that Transformers 2 is, its quality has also inspired, what is probably the finest review of anything, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I completely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because people don’t understand that this isn’t a movie, in the conventional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get overstimulated; and enjoy the culmination of all that is the summer blockbuster.

Posted in movies & tv | No Comments »

[PROTOTYPE]

June 29th, 2009

At the suggestion of my good friend Rodin, I grabbed a copy of the game [PROTOTYPE] (which I am going to refer to as “Prototype” because the brackets and capitalization are annoying to type) for my Xbox 360. Rodin’s suggestion was a very good one and so I am passing it on to all of you; Prototype is awesome, you should go get a copy and start playing it.

Discussing the story behind Prototype won’t really give you a sense of why you should be playing it so, instead, let me start off by saying that it’s a game where you can jump kick helicopters. Let me say that again, you can jump kick helicopters; this includes apaches, and you can destroy them by so doing. Other things you can do include consuming people for their knowledge and powers, shooting spikes through the ground to destroy entire city blocks, or throwing tanks at mutated monsters. All of this massive destruction and awesomeness takes place within the context of being able to run up the sides of buildings so as to jump and glide from one to the next. Your character is truly superhuman in a ridiculous and completely amoral manner; you will consume civilians just to restore a little bit of health.

The controls are tight, if a little complex, the camera is ok, and the gameplay is as cathartic as video games get. I’ve sunk, and enjoyed, enough hours of Prototype to say that it’s worth the $60 that I paid for it. It doesn’t matter what you’re playing these days, you should put it down and go get a copy of Prototype; unless you’re boring, you’ll thank yourself for doing so.

Posted in video games | No Comments »

Oubliette (was Abyss)

June 17th, 2009

I recently considered the naming of abyss and decided that the word oubliette made a better name. Oubliette is a much more appropriate description in understanding the theme and purpose of the machine as a replacement for thevoid.

The name change happened a while ago but I’m bringing it up now because oubliette is on my mind. Having just purchased six Western Digital 1.5TB drives and another SATA controller, it is finally time to obsolete the last remnants of thevoid. This actually stirs some amount of sentimentality in me but, even though the hardware and operating system are no longer that of thevoid, oubliette will carry the purpose and data forward. It is almost as though oubliette is my ghola thevoid.

For those with technical interest, the drives will be arranged in an mdadm RAID6 array with luks dm-crypt. This should provide me with 6TB, secure storage, and two drives worth of failsafe.

Posted in computers | No Comments »

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

June 3rd, 2009

Thanks to hunch, I recently discovered the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or just Gurren Lagann, which I have really been enjoying.

Gurren Lagann is, at its heart, a mecha anime and, as anyone who knows my love of Transformers and Battletech will understand, that is a plus in my book. The art is great and the battle scenes are just awesome. On top of that, there are some pretty great characters in the show; I am especially fond of Kamina. Also, Gurren Lagann has already run its full 27 episode course, which means that I can watch it and enjoy a degree of completion, which is a thing that I really enjoy being able to do.

As far as anime series go, Gurren Lagann is the first one that I’ve seen and really enjoyed since Trigun. I wouldn’t say that Gurren Lagann is not Samurai Champloo caliber but it’s certainly worth hunting down and giving a shot.

Posted in movies & tv | 2 Comments »

Sleep and stress: inversely correlated

June 3rd, 2009

I have noticed in my life that there is an inverse relation between the quantity of sleep that I get and the degree to which I am experiencing stress. It is unclear to me in which direction causality lies and it may be nothing more than a correlation but I recall times in my past where I went as many as three nights without sleep. All but the last of those such times were before I understood the sensation of stress–such is my disconnect from my emotional state.

As I think about it, I am inclined to suspect that not sleeping is a sort of coping mechanism. In the extreme of those three night vigils, I would reach a level of exhaustion that was so strong and pervasive as to be able to wash over any other stress that I might have been feeling. Eventually, I would sleep and the rest would be needed to such a degree as to make everything else seem insubstantial.

It seems as though, for quite a long time, I have had to approach my emotional state from an indirect point of view; sussing out how I might be feeling by watching my reactions and back-tracking to the most appropriate descriptor for my state. This is an arrangement that I have come to accept and although it often works well enough, it can be a little slow as far as processing is concerned.

I’m sure that there exist other thoughts on these matters and things that I might express but, mostly, I am finding the issue rather pertinent at this (just after) one in the morning time. I intended to go to sleep a number of hours ago and, at this point, I will not get much sleep, which causes me to suspect that I am avoiding sleep in some manner correlated to stress. Unsurprisingly, this continues to be my standard way of being; such is my life, I guess.

Posted in waksman | No Comments »

Electronic Organs: the old school analog synths

May 30th, 2009

Conn 580 Organ

Conn 580 Organ

Conn 580 Organ side view

Conn 580 Organ side view

Because indulging impulses and ridiculosity are both things that are fundamental to my being, I purchased, off of the craigslistnettertubes, an electronic organ. Most specifically, I purchased, for my apartment place-thing, a used Conn 580 manual organ. There was a wonderful alcove in our apartment that was the perfect size for an upright piano or similar; I was browsing the interwebworknettubes and went to the craigslisternettertubewebworks and happened to find this wonderful organ for sale. To my advantage, the man I bought the organ from was nice enough to deliver it to our apartment. Of course, hauling the organ up two flights of stairs was quite a hastle but it’s here now and it’s not moving again for a very long time.

Conn 580 internals

Conn 580 internals

This organ, much like most other electronic organs, is a complex device composed of gobs and gobs of analog electronics. It would be accurate to describe the device as an early analog synthesizer. Amongst the many other awesome things about this organ, the top can be flipped up exposing the crazy mass of wires, oscillators and other circuit craziness. The number of switches, buttons, keys, and such on this organ is rather mind-boggling and I’m only starting to figure out what half of the stuff does. That said, I’ve been pretty successful at tossing out some pretty awesome sounds without knowing what I’m doing.

With luck, having a keyboard in the house with provide me sufficient impetus to get around to relearning how to play a keyboard. I feel like I want to get back to knowing how to play the piano (or, in this case, organ). Failing that, though, I’ve got the potential to make some pretty fun sounds.

Posted in science & technology, waksman | 1 Comment »

TCHO

May 29th, 2009

A while back, I was introduced by a boingboing video series (1, 2, 3) to the chocolate manufacturer TCHO. Sometime after watching the video series, my friend Josh showed up to one of our poker nights with a block of TCHO chocolate. That, beta bar that Josh brought was fantastic and TCHO has further perfected their recipes in the interim. Having recently discovered that TCHO has opened a retail store at Pier 17 on the Embarcadero, which is quite close to where I work, I decided to pop over and grab some chocolate on my lunch break. I grabbed a TCHO-A-DAY 60-pack and have thus far tried the “Citrus” and “Chocolatey” flavors, which were excellent. This may well be the best chocolate that I have ever had.

If you would like a little bit of truly wonderful decadence in your life, I highly recommend getting yourself some TCHO chocolate. The engineering, quality and flavor to this chocolate is truly top-grade.

Posted in food & drink | 1 Comment »

Theme caught up for Wordpress 2.7

May 26th, 2009

Took me a bit of doing but I’ve updated my old theme to work with the latest version of Wordpress. Most of the effort and time was taken up because I decided to do it in as much the, so to speak, right way as possible.

Other than changing two lines of functions.php, everything is accomplished using CSS.

If you want it, you can grab my theme.

Posted in this blog | No Comments »

Influenza Influence

May 23rd, 2009

Arising from a nap taken while sprawling across three seats on MX976 from Guadalajara to San Francisco, I am reminded of a desire to comment on the so-called swine flu. Of the five flights taken during my trip, none have been at capacity and two have provided me with full rows for myself. The true utilization is in stark contrast with the near full planes that were described when I purchased my tickets; I understand Mexicana was allowing refunds of some sort on account of the flu.

Cancun was, I have been led to understand, empty relative to other years at this time. The resort at which I stayed was likely at no more than 30% occupancy; near full capacity is the norm. Other resorts and hotels were closed due to a lack of guests. This, of course, meant that we largeley had the resort to ourselves but, selfishness aside, it also means that the local economy is suffering an absolutely horrible collapse and any locals without sufficient savings may need to seek other work. Compounding with the general global downturn, there will likely be a profoundly negative effect on Cancun and other Mexican resort areas.

The response of the Mexican government is rather interesting as well. The government had health checkpoints set up at airports and state borders. Individuals are required to fill out a questionaire as to whether or not they are suffering any flu symptoms and then have their temperature checked by thermal camera or infrared probe; neither of which I suspect is particularly accurate. What they would do to one who fails such testing is unclear as they did not seem set up for any sort of quarantine. Furthermore, a few tylenol, aspirin and lies ought to be enough to get anyone through. The whole exercise reeks of security theater, a topic which I fear raising lest I rant far beyond your patience.

Posted in politics, travel | No Comments »

Frank Herbert’s deeper meaning

May 23rd, 2009

Having just finished Heretics of Dune, I am, once again, wowwed by Frank Herbert’s skill as an author. There exist very powerful thoughts within his writing that seem to plant themselves in the psyche as Leto II planted himself in the worms of Rakis. As I sit here, I can’t help but react with a desire to better myself mentally, physically and socially. I feel as though this is a moment of openning and from here my choices are to pass through into the chapel perilous or step back, allowing the doors to close.

As to which path I shall take, I cannot say but it is my great hope that I will have the strength to push forward.

Posted in books, musings | No Comments »

Dreams have flowed like sand down a beach dune

May 22nd, 2009

Something that I have been acutely noticing is that I have had extremely vivid dreams every time that I have slept or napped. The dreams have been vivid to a degree that might be described as bordering on hullucination. I suspect that the dreams have been present on account of the adequacy of the sleep that I have been receiving. I am inclined, however, to attribute the vividness to the potency and desication of the sun and heat. It is, perhaps, as if I had ventured into the desert to undertake a vision quest of sorts.

I am enjoying this dreaming to an extent that strongly suggests the adoption of a decent sleep regimen.

Posted in dreams, travel | 2 Comments »

myStress = 0; myEnlightenment += 1;

May 21st, 2009

Today, shortly after spending ten or twenty minutes following a sea turtle and listening to another thirty minutes of the Heretics of Dune audiobook, I found miraculously that my personal stress levels had reached zero. This stress level turns out, as one might suspect, to be wholely pleasant.

I am inclined to suspect that this state is not driven purely by the vacation; the Dune books tend to put me in a particular philosophical/spiritual state. In this case, I blame the combination; that is, I suspect that some trigger was pushed whilst I was in a receptive state.

There exist other aspects to my current state, which extend beyond a lack of stress to a calm clarity. This clarity and calm may well be of greater import to me than the pleasant lack of stress. The question that I find arises for me now is, how can I make myself receptive and intentionally self-trigger; this will, hopefully, serve as a continued avenue of self-inquiry in the future.

Posted in musings, travel | No Comments »

Cancun trip thoughts, so far

May 21st, 2009

Today is Wednesday of my Sunday through Saturday week in Cancun. It is currently the evening, about 11p and, before I go to sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s activities, I thought that I should check-in with y’all. I think that Im going to structure this as a summary of some of what’s been going on and follow with some more general thoughts that have been crystalizing.

It being Cancun, the obligatory sun bathing, swimming and strong, frozen beverages have been happening but, as that is largely not interesting in any detail, I’ll leave it at that. I have been staying with friends at the Royal Sands, a timeshare resort. This is one of five timeshare resorts owned by this company and I have to say, it’s pretty sweet; honestly, if my family didn’t have property on Cape Cod, I would strongly consider signing in to this whole timeshare thing. The amenities are nice, the weather is fantastic and, let me tell you, the water is amazing. Evenings here have primarily finished off with games of Dominos, Fluxx and Set,which has been a wholely pleasant experience, and makes me want to play more casual games with friends.

This morning, we traveled to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, which were truly fantastic to see. The degree of engineering, architectural and astronomical knowledge expressed by the structures of the ruins is truly impressive. I am certain that the experience was greatly enhanced by the quality and character of our tour guide. One of the major things that caught root in my mind as a result of the experience is the impermanence of everything that I am doing with my life. Even a relatively modest Mayan dwelling still exists and expresses something about its inhabitants; what mark have I left on this world that will not be gone two generations from now? For that matter, what mark am I really leaving now?

Certain, deeper things seem to be gaining focus for me as well. One that seems truly clear is the degree to which I have missed the Atlantic Ocean and Woods Hole. Hopefully, my plans to work remotely from Woods Hole this summer will succeed and I shall get some substantial time there.

Another thing that occurs to me is that I need to spend more time with my good friends and, perhaps, make a few more.

Posted in travel | No Comments »

Leg two: ugh, customs

May 17th, 2009

Today, for the first time, my travel was slowed down as a result of not checking baggage. With a two hour shift, it is now 4:00p, and I am eating a so-so ham and cheese with a freely provided Tecate. Having just left Mexico City, I feel as though I almost didn’t make it.

So, I debarked my first flight, passed through immigration and proceeded in the direction of “Connecting Flights”. Before reaching my gate, I encountered a checkpoint where I was asked how many bags I had checked. Having checked no bags, with the intent of expediting my journey, I said as much and was told to go back through immigration and go to customs. Passing immigration again, I was told to continue as I had the first time. Please realize that my inability to speak or understand Spanish was not to my advantage. Returning to the checkpoint, again, running out of time to catch my flight, I was turned back once more. This time, asking for very precise instructions from the quite competent English speaking head of the checkpoint. It turns out, what I had to do was go through immigration, again, ignore “Connecting Flights”, and pass through customs as though Mexico City were my destination. It was then necessary to turn around, pass through a different entrance and find my gate as a domestic flight. With about twenty minutes before departure, I was very pleased to catch my flight.

All is now well and that was a mighty tasty Tecate.

Posted in travel | No Comments »