The Things We Take For Granted
In a sleepy town in Tennessee, the water went dry and now fire trucks haul it in from a hydrant at a neighboring town. This is the stuff that novels are made of, these bizarre facts that have a haunting ring of truth to them. It reminds me of that creepy town on Camazotz that the kids visit in A Wrinkle in Time.
"I'm not God. I can't make it rain. But I'll get you the water I can get you," said the Fire Chief.
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-11-02 13:15:55
Brad on the Google
Brad and his car are now famous on the Google Street View.
Category: google
Date Posted: 2007-10-09 11:42:49
Will Microsoft crack Go?
One of my fellow CMUers, who worked on Deep Blue, thinks humans will soon crack go. And the company that will bring it to you are the same folks who invented Clippy and a search engine that only just recently learned the difference between drive and driving. Good luck guys!
Category: go
Date Posted: 2007-10-09 11:36:04
Steve GoldBerg's West Coast Tour
It seems my buddy Steve and his band are coming to play San Francisco on the 18th. Here's a link to the event on the space book, and here's where you can go check out his music. Should be a great show!
Category: Music
Date Posted: 2007-10-04 10:26:47
Leonard and Diane Johnson
I didn't know this existed, but my sister Erin pointed me at an article featuring my grandparents from the 80s.
Category: Family
Date Posted: 2007-10-04 09:38:21
The Way It's Always Been Done
Here's a shameless rip from a Navy site. Hopefully they won't send the fleet after me. So funny!
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, all of the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result, and all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon the monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be attacked.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.
Why not? Because as far as they know, that’s the way it’s always been done around there.
Category: Monkeys
Date Posted: 2007-10-03 10:08:21
GMail 1-2-3
Joel Sposky wrote up an interesting analysis of how the world of online apps will progress, and how the old ajax pioneers like Google will be supplanted. I'm not sure how right he is on the historical and technical nuance of the the whole thing, but he's always an entertaining writer. Snip:
"But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast. And Paul Graham gives them another 6000 boxes of instant noodles to eat, so they stay in business another three years perfecting things."
Category: Google
Date Posted: 2007-09-19 11:47:59
Great Response to Housing Ad
So, Anna and I have been looking for roommates to fill our apartment out. Here is one of the great responses we got. I'd love to help the guy out, but we got hundreds of responses, and this one didn't make the cut.
Snip:
I've been living in upper Haight for about two years where everything was going fine, until: Will. Will was my roommate from Atlanta. He is your typical eccentric painter type. Very "San Francisco". Unfortunately, he became very "Haight St.". He started experimenting with acid, alot. Eventually, he began to lose his mind and about a week ago he was flown back to Atlanta to be locked up in the Looney Bin. His quick descent to schizophrenia caused him to absolutely destroy our apartment. I mean butcher's knives in the walls, cryptic messiah-esque scrawlings on the ceilings, "street people" parties & sleepovers, numerous arrests; you name it he's done it---in regard to typical schizo stuff. So, my landlord kicked us out & now I'm couch hopping.
Welcome to the city!
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-09-18 21:04:55
Huskies Playing with Polar Bear
Polar bear plays with huskies. So cute!
Hi from Pittsburgh everyone. I will soon post some pictures of my camping trips in Emigrant Wilderness and to the Grand Canyon (of Pennsylvania). Yee haw!
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-09-10 08:21:41
Free Streaming Music... while it lasts
A friend of mine turned me onto www.deezer.com, which appears to offer a huge catalog of free streaming music. The playback works snappily for me.
So, enjoy it while it lasts. This French site appears to be a bit, shall we say, "illegal," but that doesn't mean you can't listen to a few tunes while the lawyers/governments work out their differences. And it's not like you don't have your own illegal copies of a lot of this music stored locally anyways. You big thief!
Category: Music
Date Posted: 2007-08-27 22:00:19
Practicing Java: HangMan
I have decided to learn a bit of Java. I haven't written any Java code since college, so I started with a HangMan applet using Swing. Click here to play... and you will have to navigate away from the page to close HangMan because it seems my close button code doesn't work as an Applet. Tricky, tricky... I'll figure that out tomorrow.
My next project will be a Bayesian filter for Google Alerts.
Category: Programming
Date Posted: 2007-08-26 20:46:49
A Great Despair
I don't know what happened, but this morning a great despair set over me, creeping in when I woke up, and deepening when I began to work. Maybe the seeds were sown last night when I learned that prospective apartment-mates didn't want Anna and me. I think I was perhaps even a bit dark on things before then.
I began to question my work, my plans to move, and my future. I wrote an email to my boss complaining of my disconnect (though I thankfully never sent it) and I complained to my roommates and Anna over my impending doom. I almost decided to switch jobs instead of switching apartments, and I thought blackly about everything in my life.
This despair began to lift after I had a meeting with my co-workers about an important upcoming sales call, and I felt the camraderie of it all. And it helped to chat with my friends and also to get some work done today that I felt really had some quality to it.
I wonder what my deal is and why my moods swing to and fro, from mania to bleakness. Is everyone like this? Am I more prone to the rollercoaster? I'm not sure, but I would give a great deal for a few months of serenity.
Either way, it left as soon as it came, life continues, moving quickly by, and filled with surprises. Tonight is Anna's 25th birthday, and we have some sushi and scotch to celebrate.
Category: Life
Date Posted: 2007-08-23 20:32:18
Too Much Email
I began this afternoon to not be constantly in touch with my emails. I think the constant attention to my Gmail and Gchat is sapping my productivity, ruining my attention span, and probably destroying my very soul. A lot like television did before I quashed that bad habit! So, I will close the browser and focus on whatever it is I am doing, checking my email just every two hours. So, if you really need me, you'd better give me a call! I began doing this after lunch today, and I got a lot of writing done, played a game of Go, practiced my guitar, and then went for a bike ride. A good day.
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-08-22 20:13:31
Added a cover of She Loves You
"She Loves You" was one of the first songs I ever learned, and I added a quick and dirty rendition to my music page. Enjoy or not.
Category: Music
Date Posted: 2007-08-17 15:48:54
Tax Bottled Water
This is probably a good idea, and I hope it catches on. We tax cigarettes heavily because it is non-smokers who end up footing the bill when smokers head to the hospital, and because cigarettes harm the people around the smokers as well.
The same is true of bottled water. Those who choose to drink endless bottles of water are greedily consuming their fellow citizens oil supply (because the plastics take oil and also because companies ship these bottles of water all over the country). Moreover, they are contributing to the production of billions of plastics bottles that will essentially last forever and pollute our already over-polluted planet.
So, as long as we're going to tax someone, lets tax the a-holes.
The topic of bottled water is a favorite of mine. There's nothing wrong with tap water people - you have been tricked by PepsiCo yet again.
Category: Environment
Date Posted: 2007-08-17 11:39:26
Republicans: The Anti-Science Party
Since I know not all Republicans are bad, this is how some of them must feel. Even if they believe in small government and extremely free markets (which are pretty good ideas), it must be tough to have to lock hands with people who don't believe in evolution, who think homosexuality is a choice and a sin, who want to curtail stem cell research, and who hypocritically espouse "family values."
Category: Politics
Date Posted: 2007-08-17 11:17:45
Barack Obama Floats Serious Transparency Reforms
Though I'm voting for whichever Democraic candidate gets the nod, outside of a serious independent bid, hats off to Barack Obama for floating some serious measures to help add transparency to the federal government.
Going past the weak political quote the AP writer lead with, the actual reforms would constitute a big step in reforming our government and leveraging the internet for some good. These would help restore my faith in the government, which has been shrouded in secrecy for the last 6.5 years, with Dick Cheney even inventing his own stamp of secrecy.
Barack's ideas to seek more feedback from the people are good, but the transparency measures are the meat:
*Posting meetings between lobbyists and bureaucrats online
*Issuing an executive order in support of the FIA act
Category: Politics
Date Posted: 2007-08-16 17:48:17
Sailing Stones Update: YouTube Contradicts Eggheads, You be the Judge
Surfing the net today, I found this video that purports that it is actually an ice lake that moves the "Sailing Stones." In the last post, I piggy-backed on Wikipedia and cited some high-falutin' scientists who wrote pages and pages about how wind could move 700 pound rocks. But a picture show is worth a bunch of erudite words.
Wind or water? You and these guys be the judge.
Category: Science
Date Posted: 2007-08-14 11:18:33
Did you know that Steve Martin is a sick banjo player?
This is a really cool video.
Category: Music
Date Posted: 2007-08-13 14:26:37
The Sailing Stones
What can move 700-pound rocks across a flat desert? If you said "Jews in ancient Egypt," that's not the answer we're looking for. In fact, the "Sailing Stones" of Death Valley are propelled by wind force across the sand, basically huge, heavy tumbleweeds. So if you are ever camping in Death Valley, or parking in your shiny SUV, beware of tumbling rocks. The picture comes as an unrequested courtesy of a fellow on Flickr. For more information on the Sailing Stones, you can also have a look at this wikipedia article.
The movements of these rocks were apparently mysterious enough for some eggheads to do a bit of research into the subject, and they concluded that it's the wind, though to this day, no one has seen the damn things move:
It is the conclusion of this research project that wind acting alone on a saturated, but not necessarily frozen playa surface is responsible for sliding rock activity. Saturation may be achieved after local precipitation events and/or as a result of ground water discharge through springs. The proliferation of cyanobacteria and the deposition of a fine clay film assist the process by establishing a remarkably low-friction surface. It is further concluded that rotating winds are likely contributors to the dislodging and incipient traction of rocks on the playa. Airflow is greatly influenced by the Racetrack’s elevation, flatness and surrounding terrain configuration, which results in a great degree of sliding activity toward the north and the northeast. However, until researchers actually observe the rocks in action, the cause still remains controversial.
Category: Science
Date Posted: 2007-08-13 13:07:50
Does it really make me a crazy liberal...
Does it make me irrational or crazy that I fear our government, that I think our democracy has slid halfway into fascism, and that the principles that once guided our government are so much dust in the wind?Our government incites fear in us with color-coded warnings, warns us to beware of brown people, and stages a security theater in our airports. We are told that to not support a war is un-American and to criticize our leadership is at best unpatriotic and at worst treasonous.
Now, I don't subscribe to theories about insider jobs around 9-11 or any sort of anarchist ideology, but I do recognize propaganda and fascism when I see it. Here's another echo of our quickly crumbling empire and the destruction of freedom. The U.S. government is body-cavity searching female, British journalists.
Poor woman. Poor us.
Category: Democracy
Date Posted: 2007-08-08 13:41:27
Series of Tubes
I don't understand why people think this is such a bad analogy. The internet IS essentially a series of tubes, with vats on the various ends called computers. And we are seeing more and more that the tubes need to be bigger, to allow more fluid (data) to flow through them.
Actually, I think people who mock this remark are just mindless Daily Show followers, or friends of mindless Daily Show followers.
As a savvy, tech-industry geek, I would like to go out on a limb and support Senator Stevens' remark. And you'll note that a Princeton professor agrees with my assessment.
Now, the VECO bribes are a different story.
Category: Internet
Date Posted: 2007-08-08 12:36:50
Richard Feynman Links
I first learned about Richard Feynman from my dad. One of the most gifted physicists of our times, he had the knack for understanding anything from scratch and also making the dolts around him understand as well. His writings are always entertaining and leave me with a sense of wonder about the world.
Today, I stumbled on this essay where Feynman takes a foray into the field of biology, and of course ends up giving a seminar at Harvard, after asking an eminent biologist for a map of the cat.
Another favorite of mine is Richard Feynman's commencement speech about Cargo Cult Science, warning of the danger of pseudo science and incomplete perspective. Related to that essay is the one in which he goes to observe Papp's engine, where a fraud is revealed, but it costs his employer (Caltech) a few bucks nonetheless.
And finally, here's another good piece not by, but about Feynman. It details his time at Thinking Machine Inc., where he worked on supercomputers, impressively about 30 years ago. It's a bit sad at the end.
Category: Science
Date Posted: 2007-08-07 19:20:08
Bill and Lexi's Wedding Photos
A couple include me, way back in October 2006.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lexi.drozd/SigNuWedding
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-08-07 14:08:49
The Great Hive has been updated
As you may have noticed, we suffered a fatal flaw that crashed the site for about a week. But, now I have investigated and fixed the problem. I have also gotten around to adding a few more pages and also made the commenting system a bit more usable.
If you log in and post a comment, you will be able to see it displayed next to the appropriate post. And also, if you click the link at the bottom of each post, you can see the comment page. When I next have time to do more Django magic, I will implement threaded comments and probably post a bio and resoomay as well. Tell your friends!
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-08-06 22:57:30
RANT: Bottled Water Represents the Decay of America's Culture
If the recent admission by PepsiCo and Coca Cola that their bottled water products are just tap water doesn't make you stop and think, it should. If you consume bottled water on a regular basis, then you are the victim of my trade: marketing. Some corporate smuck convinced you that water from the tap is impure and that bottled water is convenient.
Think again pal. Bottled water is largely the same stuff as from your faucet at home, and you didn't buy into convenience, you bought into laziness. If you need to tote water around, you should buy a Nalgene bottle or some other reusable container.
What is your excuse for, day after day, buying water bottles filled with tap water? You do know what you are contributing to, right? You are depleting the world's oil resources through the production of plastic, as well as the need to ship the damn bottles all over the country. You might as well drive a Hummer and deny global warming. If you drink bottled water on any kind of regular basis, then I would keep quiet about the environment. You should exclude yourself from any conversation, debate, or feeling of goodness about your environmental up-right-itude, because actions speak louder than words. You are lazily draining the world of its resources, and you don't have any good reason for it. None at all.
Bottled water should only be used in extenuating/emergency circumstances. You should plan ahead to have enough water with you for whatever you are doing, stored in a reusable container. I was disgusted by the attitude from industry hacks that it's about the convenience and need for water IN THE MIDDLE OF A CITY.
"Consumers have an affection for bottled water. It's not an issue of taste or health, it's about convenience," the newsletter's publisher, John Sicher, said. "Try walking up (New York City's) Third Avenue on a hot day and getting a glass of tap water."
John Sicher, you're right, but you are an evil jerk too. Consumers wouldn't believe that if they hadn't been misled. Taps are abundant and reusable containers are available.
I think we need to solve the commuting problem, preserve forests, and all that. But there are trade-offs in all of those cases, economics to consider. In the case of bottled water, it's pure American laziness and stupidity. Even recycling the bottles doesn't get you off the hook. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Or you are a cyst on the rump of society, and probably a hypocrite as well.
Category: Environment
Date Posted: 2007-07-27 13:48:05
Rye
I am up visiting my family at our place in Rye, Colorado. It's a beautiful stretch of 15 acres with a creek running through it. We're at 7,000 feet, and the stars are clear at night and the sweet smell of evergreens hangs in the air at all times.
I used to come stay with my grandfather Leonard Johnson each summer for a couple months, wiling the days away running around with a BB gun, riding a 4-wheeler, playing cards, and that's about it. He's passed now, but this place is thick with memories of him. Up in these mountains, he taught me many things, from salesmanship, to courtesy, to how to play any card game you can imagine.
I think he only ever got mad at me once in all the many years I stayed with him. For some odd reason, in my early adolescence, my cousins were visiting for a time, and I called my young, innocent cousin Nicole a slut. I don't even think I knew quite what the word meant, but I still recall my grandfather towering over me with his booming voice, soundly scorning and chastising me.
The whole property seems so small nowadays, when as a youngster it stretched out before me endlessly. Now that I am older, physical things seem much smaller and things that were once large matters to me seem trivial. But I still remember my grandfather as a giant.
I miss you granddad.
Category: Family
Date Posted: 2007-07-26 12:22:46
Bug in Google Analytics
In FireFox, when I click today's date, it selects yesterday's date. However, in Safari it works as expected. Here is my bug report to the Google.
--- See below. Screenshots attached. Do I get a cookie? I love cookies.
On 7/25/07, AdWords Support
Hello Andrew,
Thank you for your email and for informing us of your difficulties. I understand the problem you faced when you included today's date as part of date range in Google Analytics, is taking place only in Firefox and not in other web browser like Safari. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you're still experiencing this problem, please reply to this email with the following information to help us diagnose the issue:
1) What operating system are you using? (Example: MAC 9.2.1.)
Mac OS 10.4.10
2) What browser version are you using? Please specify the exact version. (In Internet Explorer, use 'About Internet Explorer' in the Help menu; in Netscape, use 'About Communicator,' also in the Help menu.)
Analytics is broken in FireFox 2.0.0.5
Works in Safari 2.0.4
3) When are you encountering difficulties? Are you receiving any specific error messages? (Example: Receive 404 error when logging in to Analytics.)
See screenshots. Calendar is broken for today's date. Looks like someone wasn't minding the boundaries of their arrays.
4) What is the URL of the page you're trying to access? (Example: http://www.google.com/analytics)
Yeah, that's the one.
5) How often does this occur? Is this your first time encountering this problem or has it been a consistent issue?
Always since a couple days ago. Revert! Revert!
6) If possible, please send us any screenshots that may help describe the issue.
Yep.
Category: Google
Date Posted: 2007-07-25 09:10:47
What Autism Says About Honesty
Here's an interesting article I plucked off of reddit.com that explores the concept of "deception" by looking at children, animals, and autistics. A couple of good points the article makes are that autistic people aren't retarded, and that animals do exactly what they are trained to do, including people.
Category:
Date Posted: 2007-07-24 17:11:52
Intel Mac X11
This man gets the "best dude all day" award for putting X11 for the Intel Mac on the internets. Thanks dude!
Link.
Category: Apple
Date Posted: 2007-07-23 20:24:38