Jen and I have just gotten a new camera (a panasonic dmc-fz28) to replace our venerable canon elph s410. I'm terribly excited.

rings (a poem)

by s

yesterday I found a park nearby
it's got some gymnastics equipment in it.
in particular, a set of rings
which is awesome

original code:

sample_dur = 1 / rate
time = end - start
n_samples = time / sample_dur

new code:

n_samples = (end - start) * rate

RCS comment:

really, it's the little fixes that make me the happiest.

I gained some important insight into my childhood dislike for mathematics this weekend. My adult life has been spent recovering from innumeracy, developing skills most people develop in grade school and generally learning to appreciate the beauty and importance of mathematics for a full and happy life.

Sunday I got to watch my mom doing what I can only imagine she believed was teaching Nora numbers. She had a giant rack of spools of thread (different sizes, shapes, colors) and kept holding them up to her and yelling (seriously, yelling --with a rising pitch contour) "ONE!" then she'd pick up another spool, hold it up the same way, increase pitch a half step and yell "TWO!" etc. Imagine this proceeding all the way up to "TEN!!!!!!!" with a constantly increasing pitch so that "TEN!!!!" was little more than a deafening high pitched squeal. The weird thing is that she did this four separate times; each time starting with a low pitch and each series of screams accompanied by an incomprehensible series of randomly selected, individual spools of thread. I expected it to end with someone tearing back the shower curtain and stabbing furiously.

It was utterly terrifying! Nora was honestly like "what?! what?! I don't get it. what!?" and kept shooting me nervous looks. I could only ask mom to please stop yelling at the baby, try associating the digits with equivalent numbers of pools of thread and to give Nora time to play with the spools while (calmly) repeating the number. She was freaking me out; I could tell that my feeling of panic was entirely disproportionate to the situation, but that didn't mean I could stop feeling it.

This must be how I first experienced numbers. This must be why I could read when I got to preschool but was already hiding when they tried to teach me mathematics. Mom's boundless energy and desire to teach was channeled through this most unfortunate pedagogical style. Seriously, mom, 'A' for effort, but please stop trying to teach Nora that the numbers are trying to kill her!

I find myself in need of a single 2' by 4' piece of 2" pyramid acoustic absorption foam. Unfortunately, all of the retailers I've looked at sell these in packs of Too Many for Way Too Much.

Anyone out there in friends land have some foam scraps they want to sell? Know someone who might? Been meaning to buy a shitload of acoustical foam and now is as good a time as any?

please let me know.

I don't know how long the Ann Arbor Spice Merchants has been around or how long they'll stay in business, but I'm very excited.

Dolphins are great and all, but have you ever *seen* a living, swimming tuna? They're bloody amazing.

3 cups cooked, drained chick-peas
several spoonfuls of mayonnaise or mayo-like product
1 stalk minced celery
1 T nutritional yeast flakes
2 green onions, chopped (I actually use yellow or red onion)
2 tsp soy sauce
1 teaspoon kelp powder (for that authentic "from the sea" flavor)
kosher salt & fresh pepper, to taste

Mash up the chick peas; they deserve it. Seriously, take out all of your aggression on these bastards. Throw everything else in the bowl. Stir. Eat.

I'm not entirely happy with this, but I have some css definitions for interlinear glosses that are good enough to start with.

I needed to type up some interlinear glosses on a web page and couldn't find a solution.

I noticed last night that Lily Allen in interviews circa 2008 is virtually indistinguishable from Robert Smith circa 1991. If you don't know Lily Allen you should spend some time checking her out on youtube. I particularly recommend the third and fourth videos embedded below of her and Keane. Then, if you really want to have a song wiggle its way into your brain like a pork worm watch the last video. I double dog dares you.

( lily allen, robert smith and keane (oh my) )

dough

• 2 sticks room temperature unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

coating

• 2 T brown sugar
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

in the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. incorporate the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Spoon the flour mixture into the stand mixer on medium-low speed until thoroughly endoughificated.

combine brown sugar and cinnamon in yet another damn bowl. scoop 1.25 ounce balls of cookie dough, roll them in the cinnamon mixture, and place on cookie sheet allowing a 1.75 inch radius around each ball for spreading. Bake at 350 degrees F for 12 minutes. Allow to cool.

Store in an airtight container such as your big, fat happy belly.

Fresh snow has fallen,
smothering dreams of springtime.
Down with Michigan!

I have developed a two step system that renders you 100% safe from scams. This systems works for e-mail, snail mail, in-person solicitation, telephone, skype, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, or message in a bottle. Ready?

Step 1: Don't be a greedy bastard.
Step 2: Repeat.

Step 2 may seem superfluous but it's essential.

We don't watch much TV which leads to two problems: 1. we can never remember when anything is on and 2. we have absolutely no patience for commercials. Solution? MythTV, of course. The machine doubles as a compute server for my longer-running stats/simulation/corpus tasks and makes TV completely usable. We've been using a Shuttle SN41G2 since some time in late 2003 ( I think ) and it's been great. Sadly, this venerable beast has gone the way of all things and needed to be replaced.

The old system was built entirely from sources and took days to get set up and working properly. I don't have *days* to do anything anymore so I chose to use mythbuntu which, it turns out, is great. The procedure to get my "supported" and "works out of the box" digital capture card working was:

1. do a basic install of mythbuntu 8.10, don't bother configuring anything yet & reboot
2. apply the 120+ waiting updates, don't bother configuring anything yet & reboot
3. Now that you have an up-to-datier kernel, install mercurial to get the most up to date v4l-dvb drivers. This includes both dvb support and ivtv support now so both my pvr-500 and the newer hvr-1250 will work after this update.

sudo apt-get install dvb-utils mercurial build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb
cd v4l-dvb
make
sudo make install
sudo make reload

and... reboot

4. turn off the stupid piece of crap black screen saver which mythbuntu sets to come on after 10 minutes of idle time ON YOUR TELEVISION!?! Is this some kind of subtle last ditch effort to keep people away from their TVs? the mind boggles.

5. now do all the fun mythtv-setup stuff: add the capture cards, scan for high (QAM) cable channels, etc. important tip: make sure the starting channel is set to one of the QAM channels or all you'll have it a tv that can turn black for a few minutes before dropping you back to the mythtv menu.

6. I'm still need to figure-out the xmltv id for each of the qam channels it found so I can get guide data for them. Anyone happen to have a lineup for the clear qam channels on comcast analog cable in Ann Arbor?

Anyway, the hvr-1250 card seems to work great. I really wish I could get its remote to work. alas. I hope this is useful to someone.


p.s. I've tried the 9.04 alpha based on jaunty and this card really, honestly is "plug and play" in the next release. If you can wait until April this will be a nice little <$50 qam/atsc tuner card.

In case anyone is wondering, the maximum number of files that MacOS X (v10.5.6) will allow you to drag and drop at once is 32,768.

So drag and drop responsibly this holiday season.

I've just placed an order for new glasses on Zenni Optical. $35 for frames, lenses, anti-reflective coating, magnetic sunglass clip thing, uv coating, and shipping. Hopefully they won't suck, but it means I have to spend 2 weeks depending on these epoxy-repaired frames. Hopefully the headaches will stop soon; I'm kinda busy.

I sat on my glasses and crushed them. Once, in college, I stepped on wilde_bee's glasses and we ended up buying a new pair at LensGrafters. The last two times I've busted my own glasses I've gotten new ones at see eyewear. Both of these places strike me as too expensive, my insurance is crap, and I need new glasses this week.

Where do you buy glasses? Are you happy with them?

damn! we already made our cards for this year.

http://mayihaveacheeseburger.com/please/

Of all the huge giant incredible wastes of time on the internets, this lame, unfunny piece of shit has to be the wastefulest.

In stark contrast, there is http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/.