I am better now
Thanks for indulging my bile-spewing rant on Monday, and to everyone who responded. I am much less crabby now. I went on a business trip last week, and as a result missed a few days of my regular exercise regimen, which is my mood regulator, and got really stressed out without it. As soon as I went to the gym on Monday night, the darkness lifted. It’s a bit of a problem on weekends, since I typically don’t exercise on Saturday or Sunday—gotta change that.
I leave you today with an observation: you don’t need to understand how it works—you just need to know how to push the buttons.
Hacker’s Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind’s oldest illusions.
Merry Christmas (or "Why I hate December")
My wife hates February, probably because it is cold and dismal, and nothing interesting happens during it—there are no holidays or breaks of any sort from the monotony of winter. But I hate December, for exactly the opposite reason: I never feel more stressed than during the holiday season.
Programming = magic
Computer programming is the closest thing you’re going to get to D&D’s arcane wizardry in the real world. This analogy, which I am sure other gamers have explored in the past, though I could find no articles online about it, provides some cool insights and ideas.
Best English ever
Spam is occasionally hilarious. E.g.:
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“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
—Albert Camus
I'm from the Internet and I'm here to help!
Snowclones are the new chiasmus!
The insane popularity of lolcats lends credence to my point.
“you’re just lucky you’re not in soviet russia- where i understand the subject and objects of a statement are reversed for the sake of comedy”
—kickedfortrolling, Slashdot
I am awesome!
Career meme stolen from lordaristar and noonereally:
The ultimate cohort
paul: So, next session you guys are facing an undead The Tarrasque.
curtis: Excellent, it will be no problem with my new henchman I got last level from my Supreme Leadership feat.
paul: *Nods* Did I mention he has 20 levels of Monk?
paul: He’s pretty good at weaponless attacks.
curtis: My henchman is a 100th level storm god pirate who has a giant, floating stone city towed by a 100th level dragon paladin, so I think we’ll be OK.
paul: That’ll help.
curtis: Don’t worry; I won’t call him for help unless the Tarrasque starts killing the party. ;-)
paul: I appreciate that.
curtis: Hmm, since I’ve never called my henchman for help yet, maybe I’ll switch him up. The storm god pirate thing has really been done to death. I have a better idea anyway.
paul: Oh?
paul: Hyperintelligent fiendish kitten?
curtis: My new idea is a 100th level mathematician/GM/scheduler named Pablo Mejor with a probabilistic annihilation rifle, logarithmic theorem generator, and magical fire breath.
curtis: He came to me in a dream, and has no resemblance to any person, living or dead.
paul: He sounds really powerful.
paul: And good looking.
curtis: Yeah, he is The Man. He would definitely beat the storm pirate. You just can’t win when the mathematics of the universe is rewritten to physically crush you.
curtis: (He usually doesn’t need the fire breath – that’s just in case of emergency, or to light cigarettes for attractive women.)
paul: *Nods*
paul: A bit of a raconteur, is he?
curtis: Oh, he’s a veritable epigrammatist.
curtis: But that’s not to say he can’t narrate masterfully at length, when he’s so inclined.
paul: Hmm.
paul: I’ll have to throw bees at him. I’d wager he’s likely terrified thereof.
curtis: Heh, another reason he picked up that fire breath. ;-)
curtis: If the Tarrasque snorts bees with machine guns, that would indeed be frightful.
paul: Hmm.
paul: *Writes that down*
curtis: Machine guns that shoot other, smaller bees with machine guns of their own.
curtis: If it were recursive, it would have at least a 35% chance of enthralling Pablo. He gets distracted by shit like that. ;-)
paul: *Nods*
Anyone listen to last.fm?
Because I am a huge nerd, I have posted an analysis of a tool for computing how eclectic your musical taste is from your last.fm profile. I found the algorithm lacking, and proposed my own instead, which I am considering implementing. If you are a huge nerd like me and enjoy algorithms, you should check it out!
Close, but not totally convinced
Singularity vs Collapse
For months—years, actually—I have been promising bitches_tyrone a post, first about my moral tenets, and more recently about my thoughts on civilization, its impending doom, and related topics. I have been continually struggling to write this entry, not only because I’m busy, but also because there is so much to say, and I don’t know where to start. At various times I have devoted substantial effort toward educating myself on these issues, but unfortunately, the more I read, the more I realize that the scope of the topic is far beyond what I have time to fully absorb.
I am a huge nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Gamer/Computer Nerd You enjoy the visual stimulants of a video game, chatting on AIM, or reading online comics. Most of these types of nerds are considered dirty who lack hygeine, of course they always end up being the ones who make a crapload of money. And don’t worry, that’s just a stereotype; I’m not calling you dirty. ^_~
Musician
Science/Math Nerd
Drama Nerd
Literature Nerd
Social Nerd
Anime Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Lookee what I did today
Hi, how are you?
The topics I have been meaning to discuss have been building up for quite some time now, to the point where I am fairly overwhelmed by them. A lot is personal, but some is heavily sociopolitical. Unfortunately, every time I sit down to write my sociopolitical thesis, I end up reading articles on the relevant subjects for several hours, staying up far too late without writing much down other than collections of links, sleeping in and being late for work the next day. Last night was no exception. So for this post I’m just going to cover everything that is not the sociopolitical epic; it’ll make my next post more focused.
Big surprise
Sexy woman: “Ooh, you’re so cool!”
Dude: “Yeah… God made me cool.”
—Paffendorf, “Be Cool”
Untitled (November 26, 2006)
Seen in Columbia, Missouri over the Thanksgiving weekend:
The Wiikend
NOR, Ryan and I decided to obtain Nintendo’s new console, the Wii, on the launch day (Sunday, November 19th), by camping out in front of a store the night before. We got in line before 6:00 pm; sixteen hours later, we were checking out of the store with our shiny new Wiis. I posted a few pictures.
So awesome!
This is the coolest thing ever! I’m trying to rationalize buying one by thinking of something I could actually use it for…
If you understand something today, it must be obsolete.
Fuck those grandmas!
Everybody’s suing grandmothers these days, and yet people continue to act like it’s a bad thing. They’re just trying to protect their valuable embroidery designs from evil companies like eBay. What’s the big deal?
“With the way things are starting to go in this country, if forced to choose between being caught with a van full of pirated DVDs or heroin you’d actually have to pause and think about it.”
—drunkenbatman, DrunkenBlog.com
Puzzles
We are going to interview some students tomorrow for a position in my lab, so I was reading about brainteasers in preparation (and also because they are fun). The switches puzzle is really cool. Reading it, I got pretty discouraged, but I really like the answer. I definitely started off with a lot of unnecessary assumptions. You can read the answer, but I suggest you give it a try first. Also, note that the answer is suboptimal—it can be done more efficiently. Anybody know how?
What makes you happy?
Today Lifehacker (have you seen Lifehacker? withouttalent, I think you would like Lifehacker) posted an interesting poll: What makes you happy? There are a few things about it I found noteworthy, but I’m going to cut so that my analysis doesn’t potentially influence your vote.