March 02, 2007
Gluttony
Mike started the day today off with a moment of gluttony. A simple email with the following link AHamburgerToday. The important bit was the review of all the In & Out Burgers they could find. Followed by the link to this ugly feat of gluttony: Man Vs 20x20.
Andrei couldn't resist adding to it and sends in the addition of the 5lb burger + toppings in 30 mins entry.
Lastly the find on AHamburgerToday, the Grizzlie Burger. A burger wrapped in Krispy Kreme donuts. Oh my. What a wonderful breakfast to think about.
Posted by Dan at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2006
Santa Con 2006
It's that time of year again; Santa Con. This year was another excellent year with a only minor amounts of chaos included. No firecrackers that I know of, and all bars were able to handle the entire crowd of Santa's (from what I could tell).
Highlights for the day's events included the reindeer games, the botched Santa takes a Christmas boat journey (only a few got on the boats), and the disorganized chaos that came later. A couple of infidels tried to subvert the route, creating splinter cells of Santas.
It was a long day of drinking and I had to leave before many of the really crazy antics started up. Ahh well. Good memories none the less. Can't wait for next year!
Update: Helps to include the image. Oh and here are a few more galleries...
http://scotist.com/caco/santacon/Site/santacon.html
http://leler.com/gallery/v/santa06/
Posted by Dan at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
Zippy
Apologies to Engadget for linking directly to their image.
Posted by Dan at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2006
Italy
Watched the Italy vs Germany game today, it was a good game. I've been cheering for Italy for some time now, and it feels even better to see them winning.
Choice quote of the morning though, one girls interest in the game for the men in attendance. Too bad none of the guys were interested in anything but the game :\
Posted by Dan at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2006
Addicting Music
I did something bad. I found a copy of Aphex Twin's Powerpill Pacman song and loaded it on my iPod last night.
Despite the lame title, lyrics, and completely ripped off beat... I've had it on replay a couple times today. I had forgotten how awfully addicting this song can be. Especially with it's rehashed Pac-Man sounds.
It ranks up there with DJ Qberts Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze.
Posted by Dan at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2006
Top Jobs
From an entry on CNN Money today, a listing of the top 10 jobs. At number is Software Engineer:
1. Software Engineer Why it's great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it's not for everybody.Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you've got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.
The profession skews young -- the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired -- but consulting and management positions aren't hard to come by once you're experienced.
What's cool Cutting-edge projects, like designing a new video game or tweaking that military laser. Extra cash from freelance gigs. Plus, nothing says cool like great prospects.
What's not Jobs at the biggest companies tend to be less creative (think Neo, pre-Matrix). Outsourcing is a worry. Eyestrain and back, hand and wrist problems are common.
Top-paying job Release engineers, who are responsible for the final version of any software product, earn six figures.
Education Bachelor's degree, but moving up the ladder often requires a master's.
I'm kind of confused on this one. First off they have the what's cool and what's not cool down pretty good. I don't hide my dislike of my position within Chipzilla, an organization that typically views software as an after thought (as opposed to someone like Apple who views software as essential... it's made for some interesting teleconferences).
What I don't understand is commenting on telecommuting. Out of all my friends, only one (Brian) has the ability to work from whereever he'd like to. Even in my current state of searching, no employers seem to enjoy this idea. I've heard lots about this great option, but I've yet to see it offered.
I'm also not sure where they got their salary data from. Unless living in California (which I guess is a number large enough to sway the standard), most companies don't offer salaries anywhere near that. Possibly I'm not the greatest negotiator. Possibly I'm just applying for the wrong jobs. Or possibly I just suck. In any of the cases, just show me where the distributions are!
Oh well... we'll always have out-sourcing...
Posted by Dan at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2006
Sanity Check
Keeping life in perspective isn't always easy. This past weekend was certainly a reminder that things need not be so serious. The pictures are online.
Pages 1, 2, and a bit of 3 cover Friday night. A massive pillow fight downtown with around 200 people. I somehow made it through the center about 4 or 5 times, and breathed in enough feathers to make my own pillow later that night.
Page 3 and on are snapshots from the Urban Iditarod. Despite my damaged foot stopping me from running more than 3 blocks, I had an excellent time joining in the fun and follies of others. Couldn't have asked for a better day.
Posted by Dan at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2005
Santa Tracker
Last night while driving around I was reminded of something I hadn't thought of in a LONG time; the NORAD Santa Tracker. Looking at it last night, the site has changed drastically since I was involved in it many years ago, it's really awesome to see just how much this site has expanded, how well it's running, and frankly how popular it's become (even was mentioned on Fark.com, twice in one day).
In honor of it's success, I feel I should feel I should share in what was probably it's worse year ever for historical capture, but also so that you might get some idea of how much work really goes into this.
Back in 1997 I was working for a company called Analytical Graphics, who made a piece of software that could plot and track various bits of data typically relegated to military aspects. For years before I was born, NORAD had been running a yearly "Santa tracker" via a telephone calling system. Rumor had that it began after a child one year found the number for NORAD, called, and asked where Santa was at the moment. It became a pretty cool and fun tradition since then. Somewhere along the path, it was decided that putting the Santa Tracker online would be a really great idea, and that the team at AGI was ready to help make this happen.
For weeks the execs at AGI, the creative department, and one of the IT staff had been working on creating, what they thought would be, the coolest online version of the site ever (granted it was the first version too). Apparently it was just a little too cool. On December 24th at about 9am, I arrived at work like usual and proceeded to head upstairs to work on some final development bits and pieces. The network was running beyond slow and into the realm of unusable. Since my position was time shared between IT and development, I went downstairs to see if there was something I could help with. There was a lot of chaos during the time, but from what I can remember and pieced together a few things went wrong.
A bit of the timeline as I remember it, much of which has probably been forgotten or skewed due to time.
9AM Dec 24th - I arrived downstairs to see a flurry of activity. Our head IT/Network guy, Dave, is scanning through log files and router traffic trying to decipher why this influx of traffic is coming. Our web-master is sitting in front of the web-server machine sweating bullets as his machine is non-responsive. He proceeds to reboot it multiple times, but never really gains control of it again.
9.30 AM Dec 24th - I've since become involved in the process in trying to reestablish network stability. The issue was really that we had external sites VPN'd in, and losing that connection became an utter pain in the ass to reestablishing the connection. Dave and I soon become aware of what is causing the network traffic spike, and look for some answers.
9.35 AM Dec 24th - It's painfully obvious this wasn't the expected response for the site and a huge disaster has now hit. Dave and I begin to step in and take the logical steps to save what has already failed. We begin by calling our upstream provider to see what kind of services they could offer us for hosting space.
10 am Dec 24th - MSNBC declares the NORAD Santa Tracker to be one of the worst failures of Internet-dom. The head web-master noticed this and printed out a copy of the page for all of us to read during the process of the rescue.
10:30 AM Dec 24th - Our upstream provider having not moved quick enough was quickly becoming not an option. Dave and I had already set up round robin DNS'ing and replicated the web server to multiple machines. The machines themselves were responsive but we still had no bandwidth to serve pages anymore. I take a chance and contact a former employer of mine, Microserve Information Systems, and ask if they might have some bandwidth they could burn and disk space to spare. I explain the situation, and with no hesitation the head of sysadmin there, Dan, agrees to help us. In a matter of 5 minutes we have multiple machines on a different network which we can upload pictures to.
10:32 AM Dec 24th - We take the external sites offline and use a series of multiplexed dial up connections to upload the images to Microserve.
10:38 AM Dec 24th - We begin to change three of the local 4 web servers to send people to Microserve for the images. We were later planning to setup the entire site there, but DNS propagation stopped this from happening. We could round robin internally, but not to external sites.
11 AM Dec 24th - Dan calls to let us know he's seen a drastic spike in network traffic. We haven't yet seen it locally, but are happy that people are now being served the pages properly. The web-master has been busy creating lower resolution graphics that he's begun to distribute out everywhere now.
11.10 AM Dec 24th - our upstream provider has the ability to share some bandwidth and space with us. We begin to spread ourselves further and setup yet another web-server to distribute the content from the upstream provider.
12 PM Dec 24th - lunch was purchased for us by upper management who had been watching with concern the entire time.
1 PM Dec 24th - we get to eat lunch.
1:30 PM Dec 24th - CNN interviews various members of the Santa staff for updates on Santa's location, how the tracking is done, and how we were able to coordinate this back to the website.
2 PM Dec 24th - traffic levels begin to level off, and things seem to be okay. Everyone exchanges cellular numbers again, schedules checkin times, and promises to be on call all night long. We break for Christmas all a little wary.
8 PM Dec 24th - After driving back to my parents for 3 hours, I catch a little of CNN who is regularly advertising the URL and showing updates from it. I check the servers and everything seems to be handling the load okay.
The rest of the night went rather quietly. The servers stayed fairly stable, I could get to a lot of the content without problems, and more importantly CNN could too.
When I returned to work after the weekend, it was interesting to see the massive amounts of email we received about the site. Many were thankful for such an awesome website, and how it made their kids day to see where Santa was at that exact moment. What really confused me were the number of emails received complaining about who we used for hosting.
Important pieces that we learned in the aftermath:
Days later we did some tallying from log files and believe we served up some 6 million individually unique IP addresses in that short period of time. This did not include the crunch time where everything just stopped working early in the morning. We estimate that had to be a couple million more, all said about 10 million was our estimate. A consultant at the company somehow injected his hand into everything too, and that upset a bunch of people.
A few months later, I was invited to a dinner where I received a nice little plaque from NORAD for my efforts. I still have it today.
The second year went much smoother. Partially because we outsourced the hosting to IBM who was boasting the use of their Olympics' server farm for our use (we crashed that too).
Posted by Dan at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2005
Santa Needs Some Beer
That was the call to arms heard regularly on Sat, as the 100+ Santas invaded downtown on what was a really bizarre event. Starting with a bar stop at noon, we then proceeded to march around for an (simulated) elf toss, and sent explosive fruit cake to the depths of the river.
A little more beer, and we're off to spread Christmas joy throughout the town. Kids were more than excited to see 200+ Santas (we grew in numbers as time went on) at this time dancing around offering out candy and gifts to all. We later invaded a series of fine establishments here only to find they really didn't mind the behavior.
I left around 6pm having reached a point of being too cold and hungry to continue on. Good memories. Some pictures can be found here.
[UPDATE: A lot of other photos can be found here. This site is not maintained by me ]
Posted by Dan at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2005
Memories
Mike sent me a link today to the Resurrect Dead website. According to the website this is a really big mystery as to what this means, who(m) is acocmplishing the tiling, and how long it's been going on.
I can remember walking over these tiles regularly on my trips through the city, and never quite understanding what the point was. The website helps clarify it a bit, but leaves enough mysterty to make things fun. Go check it out, and help solve the mystery if you know anything about it. And yes, these tiles have been literally pressed into the street many many years ago, so it's not some randomly new viral marketing ploy.
Posted by Dan at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2005
Snap Judgements
I don't normally like to write about happenings at work, beyond the odd moments of corporate mentality that exist (probably) in all companies (to some extent). Mostly because nothing that happens there is terribly exciting, but also because there seems to be no corporate wide policy on blogging. The main observations for this happening are worthy of note and happen at work, although it seems they are not limited to the corporate scope.
The other day we had the company "Country Fair", which can basically be summed up as "science project day" from grade school. Each group makes up a series of posters, prepares a 10 minute blurb about their project, build prototypes, and drag out demo gear for all to see. Often times they have cannibalized their homes for some of the gadgets needed. Yep, just like a science fair in grade school. The only big difference is now you've got the wondering geeks who try to outsmart the presenter geek.
I spent the time walking to different exhibits with Katy, a former intern now graduated to a full time status. Outside of her ability to author code, she's a good electrical engineer with some solid understanding and a immense amount of excitement at making things, well, electrical. After the third or fourth exhibit though she made a comment on how everyone presenting would talk to me and not her. I asked her a bit more, and she pointed out how each presenter would discard her presence and focus mainly on me. I had thought I noticed this too, but it became difficult to judge as my field of vision only works so far. Actively ignoring the presenter in a one on one situation doesn't bode well for showing an interest in the project.
We didn't get to test the theory if it was just me, or any male would be acceptable. Nor could we test it as a process of proximity to the presenter. As part of her revenge, Katy took sodas, cookies, and whatever else was being given out free. Hit 'em in the pocket book.
The behavior is confusing though. I've worked with plenty of people of both sexes over the years. There seems to be very little correlation between the good and the bad as far as engineering knowledge is concerned. I've probably worked with more "good guys" though thanks to the sheer number of males in the engineering industry. It certainly doesn't mean they're all worthy of attention though. I've also worked with a few women who've made me stand back and reevaluate what I know. Maybe I'm a rare case in this sense.
What I'm trying to get at is, how can a corporate culture change the behaviors of people, when many of the people don't even realize what they're doing? Having asked a few other women in engineering, each has agreed that this behavior does exist and is very readily seen. Could this be why there are so few women in engineering positions? This kind of juvenile behavior really isn't for everyone.
Okay enough thinking aloud now...
Posted by Dan at 01:25 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2005
Bad CEO?
In the recent years we've had a lot of corporate mongering against the C-level employees (CEO, CTO, etc etc). Oddly enough, ComputerWorld has a little twinkling gem that basically tells us; "Yep, CEOs really have no control over the company". A fun 30 second read, go check it out.
Posted by Dan at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
Decypher Corporate Speak
I'm absolutely awful at corporate speak, I admit it. In fact, much of the email at work is sent around with TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) that I have taken to calling it encrypted email and just ignore it for the most part. There are no magic keys to de-cypher anything, so you're on your own for what each means. This is one of the primary reasons why I think corporate email has become completely useless. That mixed with the fact that I'm forwarded about 80 pieces a day that have no direct impact on my work (isn't that what weekly status meetings are for anyhow?).
On the other side of the fence are the corporate speak moments that make me go "huh?" and not in the good way. For example, in a job posting putting the terms "Senior Software Engineer" and "Visual Basic 6" in the same sentence seems contradictory to me. Andrei says "you lose -5 points in coolness" (which I think gains you 5 cool points if you deconstruct it logically). Eric gets the "chills just thinking about" those two terms merged, then proceeds to tell me about how amusing VB worms are.
Posted by Dan at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2005
Rants On Patriotism
Orson Scott Card is normally recognized as an author of fantasy and science fiction books. His book "Enders Game" seems to be a required reading for most CS students at some point in their careers. That's what I was shocked to find a published rant authored by him online at the Ornery American.
The piece details what he sees as the current rift in American ideals, and why it's becoming so ugly between the two. It's a very good read, and worth taking the time out to finish it. It even avoids the preachy pro-Mormon tone a lot of his books absorb (well two or three paragraphs don't count). Go read, and let me know what you think of the article...
Posted by Dan at 03:37 AM
April 23, 2005
With Teeth
After having listened to it a few times, I've come to the conclusion the new NIN album, With Teeth, really has none. If you haven't bought it yet, check it out on the streaming side before you buy it. I know I was disappointed. I do like the fact that they released the first song as a GarageBand file though. Now I can easily remix the song into something I think is better....
Posted by Dan at 12:59 PM
March 09, 2005
Job Satisfaction Rates
It took a little while to find it, but I did. The Conference Board recently released details on a study about job satisfaction that are really interesting. Hopefully the link will work and not expire. One of the choice selection of data in the piece:
The largest decline in overall job satisfaction, from 60.9% to 49.2%, occurred among workers 35-44. The second largest decline took place among workers aged 45-54, with the satisfaction level dropping from 57.3% to 47.7%. The smallest decline occurred among workers 65 and over. Overall job satisfaction declined from 60.8% to 58.0%, making this group the most satisfied with their jobs.
Posted by Dan at 12:27 PM
February 17, 2005
The Importance of Being
The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway... I've started to make a tape... in my head... for Laura. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.- Rob, High Fidelity 2000.
With that in mind go check out Tiny Mix Tapes, one of the most fun websites seen in awhile. I've spent entirely too many hours at this site already.
Posted by Dan at 09:14 PM
February 09, 2005
Fun Stuff via Links!
Got busy tonight playing around with some video files that were not correctly playing on my PowerBook. Seeing as they were AVI's I was hoping to find something similar to GSpot on Windows (yes, it's safe for work). While I didn't find that, I did find a couple other really cool tools.
CSSEdit - makes editting CSS files almost... tolerable again. Wow.
Not really software, but some damn cool high resolution photos of snow flakes.
Posted by Dan at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2005
World Events
Surprisingly, the start of an event that wasn't at all noted in the popular online news outlets today (CNN, MSNBC, ABCNews etc); the liberation of Auschwitz.
Posted by Dan at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2005
Ivy League Redux
About two years ago, I had made a post about the perceived benefits of gaining an Ivy League education. Earlier today, Slashdot actually had a useful posting to an article on Slate.com about the very same topic.
While the article goes into a bit more detail with regards to citing other works to back it's arguments, it's main data comes from an article co-authored by an acquaintance of mine named Monika Hamori. Congrats Monika! The paper itself is well worth reading, discussing the trends in how education has been playing a role in big business recently.
Posted by Dan at 01:12 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2004
Fear of Folding
My entire life, I've been accused of being a not-folder. This is a slightly misleading label, as all code I've ever written was designed to be code folded. Well, at least it was once I discovered the feature in VIM. The label is applied to my clothing and means of folding/storing it to preserve the non-wrinkled look. Personally I don't often care if it's wrinkled or not, but the general public seems to make a fuss about looking proper.
Various people in my life have tried to correct my folding (parents, friends, girlfriends, etc), each reaching a point of frustration and discontinuing their attempts. Enter an article on Readymade that shows the 3 second fold (link thanks to JWZ). I've now got a completely new AND unorthodox means of folding. My laundry will never be the same...
Posted by Dan at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
Keeping Things Happy
Not to move the postings in towards a political realm, especially now that the election season is over, but I couldn't help but get a good laugh at this video. Check it out.
Posted by Dan at 02:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2004
The Incredibles are it
I braved the crowds over the weekend to checkout the latest Pixar animated film, The Incredibles. It's been getting some rather rave reviews from the mainstream media outlets, which isn't all that surprising given the current run Pixar films enjoy on the box office. Beyond the manipulation of the main stream media, I've been an enormous fan of director Brad Bird's work since his release of The Iron Giant to the big screen. The Iron Giant paid attention to many little details so meticulously, like the print on the wallpaper or countertop, that it just helped to completely absorb you in the story without having to constantly remind you that it's set in 1957. As such I had high hopes for such things with the release of a new movie.
The Incredibles lives upto the hype you've been reading about. Worth every cent you pay. I was completely sold on the story, characters, and action throughout the way. The movie is more of a spoof on the James Bond style action films with over the top adventure sequences, a secret island base, and of course a super villain with a twisted sense of right. I won't say much more about the film other than certainly do go see it. Brad Bird, if you ever read this, thanks for another great film! I certainly hope that Pixar allows you to continue writing and directing movies for them.
One thing yet to be seen, in both of Bird's films, the ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel. Unfortunately there has never been one for the Iron Giant, and I doubt there ever will be. Could this change for the Incredibles? I also wonder how many people will catch one of the most important tribute/homages in the film. At one point in the film, two older men are shown on the screen in a close up discussing what just happened. These men are Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, two of the most famous Disney animators of yesteryear, and Bird has somehow incorporated them into each of his movies. A wonderful gesture and trademark if you ask me.
There were no "outtake" credits on this movie. One thing that did catch my attention in the credits though, rendering power donated by Intel corporation. It's surprising mainly because Steve Jobs runs both Apple and Pixar, I would have thought he'd try to bring in Apple based systems for the rendering.
Posted by Dan at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2004
Post Election
I'm not going to rant on about the election, for the most part it's done.
I will say I have never been a fan of Michael Moore, finding his style of "documentary" telling to be very very one sided and opinionated. As such, I found it really funny to see this on Fark. It will probably be gone soon so get a laugh while you can.
In what is probably the best rumor from the election though, Drudge has a rumor that "Attorney General John Ashcroft 'plans to submit his resignation to Bush in the next several days'...". Unfortunately that is all the news that gets attached to the rumor. I so hope there is some truth to this, and that the Asscrufts replacement will be someone with a more sane view on things. Yes I have high hopes and am destined for failure.
Posted by Dan at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Cut Nose, Save Face
A little while back, NPR had a small segment on how the current crop of youth voter opinions are not being reflected in the polls. Unfortunately I have been unable find the article anywhere online. Up steps Wired with an article talking about much of the same thing, although leaning a bit more towards the youth voters.
The basic premise is traditional polling methods use telephone polls to query participants on their opinions during the election season. This helps create those nifty graphs seen all over the news that help to confuse and disorient the public (me opinionated? no!). It turns out that you cannot call a cellular telephone, only a traditional land line based phone. This works out nicely in the US, mainly due to the bizarre scheme of charging for incoming calls with no way to reverse the charges (even on 800 numbers). One of the hidden gotcha's in this scenario is that the youth of America have begun to leave traditional land lines and begun to only use cellular telephones. Hence the not having their opinions counted/heard for the poll.
The quote on the NPR segment that caught my attention went (roughly) something like "this doesn't impact the polls at all because that demographic typically doesn't vote." While the validity of this statement can be debated (I for one don't know any truth to it), I think the polling organizations have their large blinders on a little too tight. If this trend is starting now, what is to say that these upwardly mobile youth will be using a land line by the next election? As they become older, they're obviously going to stay happy with their current constant connectedness. What about those who move from actual telephones to VoIP communication over their computer?
I give the polling organizations one to two election years to adapt or perish unless cellular companies change their billing rules. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
O'Doyle Rules!
Posted by Dan at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2004
Finally Proof!
The Weekly World News has finally found conclusive proof of what the rest of the world knew: french is a guttural! Check out the article!
Posted by Dan at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2004
Laws Gone Wild
In what has to be the most absurb arrest ever, the news article makes it almost all worth it. Check it out for a good laugh.
Posted by Dan at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2004
Applying Newtons Laws
Reading the Wall Street Journals online site today, Walter Mossburg has an article on the new Sony portable music player set to "destroy" the iPod. Of particular interest was the following:
One major downside of the new Walkman is that it can't play MP3 files, or any of the other standard formats. It can play back only a proprietary Sony format called ATRAC3, or a variation called ATRAC3plus. This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony's PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files. Sony claims it designed the player this way because ATRAC3 produces superior sound, and because it has features that extend battery life.(Emphasis mine)
Where does this superior sound come from? Considering most people today are already using MP3s, a lossy-compresion algorithm by design, how can Sony hope to inject audio quality into this conversion process? Are people truly this ignorant?
Posted by Dan at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2004
The Money Shot
The SF-Gate had an interesting article this weekend on the proliferation of pornography via the Internet, and it's general effect on the psyche. Arguing that the Internet brought about a distribution medium for porn that no longer required embarrassing moments at the video store, the "artists" having made serious moves towards legitimizing themselves, and the mass commoditization of sexual body parts, the article begins making some excellent points.
The most interesting point within the article comes towards the end, where the author hypothesizes that eventually this behavior will end. Not due to any foreseen behavioral changes by the porn industry itself, but rather by our own internal filters on life relegating the simple sex push to a status of white noise. That for this style of "simple" sex to continue to sell, it will be forced to evolve into something of more interest, or face becoming a dinosaur or worse: white noise.
It could be argued for many that this is already the case. Examining the non-tech websites I frequent, the borders are surrounded by ads that flash in a futile attempt to catch my interest. Some are simple words, some are images, some are even porn related. Yet the number of times I've actually noticed these ads, or more importantly tried clicking on one of these ads, is minimal to nonexistent. I scan the page for usable content without even realizing that I've become desensitized to the large amounts of distractions found on the page.
In any case, it's an article worth a read if you're interested in commentary on life.
Posted by Dan at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2004
Video game memories
Found tonight on Fark, is a link to one of those video games of days gone by that isn't easily forgotten: Lemmings. Here's the catch though, the entire site is done in an amazing abuse of DHTML.
Now if only we can see California Games and Winter Games like this.
Posted by Dan at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2004
Questions to Ask
Chris picked up on the some recent commotion with regard to DVD encryption standards. The important question to look at is, are consumers really ready to upgrade all their movies yet again? Personally, I doubt it, especially when the quality advances on DVD still cannot yet be taken advantage of by the casual consumer (high end AV bufs need not apply).
Posted by Dan at 04:16 PM | Comments (1)
July 06, 2004
From the How to Screw With Marketing Files
BugMeNot is probably one of the greatest uses of internet abuse to a prevailing meme on marketing. That meme being the concept of "registration" to track viewer/reader interest in articles on a website. Oddly enough, it's traditionally newspaper sites that promote these login style systems. Odd because if you look at the traditional distribution mechanism of newspapers (corner stands, markets, etc) there is little demographic data that can be collected about stories of interest.
BugMeNot was found on Kevin Kelly's Cooltools.
[EDIT: corrected kk.org link]
Posted by Dan at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2004
Bubba Ho-Tep
I finally got to see the latest and greatest of the Bruce Campbell movies, Bubba Ho-Tep. It's rather unfortunate for me that I didn't discover this gem playing sooner, as Mr. Campbell was local to discuss the film after it's opening last week. A classic indy movie with some bad effects, and the typical overacting on some scenes. Mr. Campbell isn't quite believable as a walker bound old man, but he doesn't do too bad at the whole Elvis thing. Even more bizarre, the last showing of the film at the theater (which is what I went to), the theater wasn't empty. While it wasn't packed either, it did contain at least a good 1/2 of the theater full. From the looks of it, it will be hard to catch this movie anywhere else.
Posted by Dan at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2003
Car Fun
This article from the Online Sun is just odd, frightening, and funny at the same time. I'd like to know how you could argue against such a ticket.
Posted by Dan at 07:09 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2003
Structural Enginneering humor
I was pointed to this article today: A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown. A good laugh for those of you engineering oriented (despite it's lack of photos).
Posted by Dan at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
Birth of a meme
A mailing list I'm on currently began a small discussion on the history of Murphy's Law, it's birth, original meaning, and rise to popularity. One of the members noted that Oxford English dictionary keeps a record of the earliest mention of such phrases, and can point it back to 1955, suggesting that everything in this article is actually kept to date. Oddly enough the article also (makes small indirect) mentions of this later on.
All of this began with someone posting a link to a piece of this article, which mentions the book Murphy's Law And Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong published in 1977 that sparked the authors original interest. The article itself is a completely fascinating read on the history of a phrase so commonly used today. A personal favorite part of mine is the General Yeager quote about the Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation.
The timing of this article falls inline almost perfectly with Richard Dawkins recent article on wired.com about the birth of a new meme: bright. It seems someone has decided that the word bright should no longer represent what has traditionally been associated with it, but rather to represent those people in life whom do not follow a religion. I am not entirely sure I agree with this change in term, nor do I even see how this connotation will become popular. In the case of Murphy's Law, it became instantly recognizable to most engineers, had a humorous note to it, and began to penetrate the psyche. I don't see bright making it much past the world of academia. If you were to ask any college student about life, you'd come to realize that academia isn't associated with the world beyond the academic walls. I guess this is my chance to watch and see if/how a meme will expand into the thought-space of everyone else.
Posted by Dan at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2003
Public Domain
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am a big fan of keeping knowledge in the public domain. Kevin sent me a link this afternoon that shows the introduction of the Public Domain Enhancement Act was sent out yesterday. Lawrence Lessig has posted some good commentary on the proceedings. If you haven't heard of this movement, it's time to start following what's going on. Sign the petition if you haven't done so already.
Posted by Dan at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
Elevator Madness
My daily routine forces me to take an elevator daily to get to my desk. What I want to know is, what possible advantage can using a CLOOK algorithm be for elevators? If on the first floor, and I need to go up to the 8th floor (for example) all of the following situations will happen:
1) The elevator in the basement will proceed towards the top floor bypassing the 1st floor without stopping.
2) Another elevator above the 1st floor will decide it's time to race towards the top floor and wait there for the first elevator.
3) The last elevator will arrive on the first floor, only going down despite the fact that no one requested and no one is inside it.
Once all elevators make it to the top floor they will begin a decent towards the first floor to pick up passengers. This has been a source of endless amusement and frustration for those of us in the lab, mainly because we know we can optimize the algorithm and even know where to do it. We just haven't. Stay tuned for future exploits in correcting elevator control.
Posted by Dan at 08:57 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2003
Movie Ying xiong
One of the things I enjoy about slow times is my ability to catch up on movies I've missed. I recently rented Ying xiong (translated: Hero), and have to say this is an amazing film. The story line revolves around a young man called Nameless (Jet Li) retelling how he has defeated the most potent assassins in the land. Add a little controversy, some themes of love, romance, honor, duty, and you get a story with characters you care about.
The part that impressed me the most, locations. Some of the most amazing scenery is caught on film, creating a world that is almost hard to describe. From the raining Go boards to the lake top battle, the visuals are extremely well done and kept in check. A few times the CG became intrusive, but not enough to detract from the film as a whole.
The sword fight scenes are rather well planned out, but do not dominate the film as a whole.
I do suggest going to rent it, but be wary this is an english subtitle only film. Finding the subtitles on the DVD can become rather painful as well since none of the menus have an english equivalent.
Buy: Very possible
Rent: Definitely
Posted by Dan at 07:57 AM | Comments (3)
May 29, 2003
Spirited Away, annd The Duel
Recent movie rentals have included Spirited Away, and The Duel.
The Duel - a Hong Kong film about a challenge from one swordmaster to another, with a murder mystery surrounding the whole event. I had rented it hoping to see some interesting shots of sword handling, but was sorely disappointed. Each shot was in close on facial expressions, and provided little to no sense of skill. It was disappointing.
Spirited Away - wow. I didn't have a chance to see this while it was in theaters, and now really regret that (on the other hand I may not have appriciated it as much). While it is an animation, the story, characters, and imagination in this film are just astounding. It's worth renting, possibly buying. I don't know if I can say anything more about it, outside of go rent this film.
Posted by Dan at 09:14 AM | Comments (3)
May 19, 2003
Surreal letdown?
With a huge deadline looming over one's head, what is the best possible means to procrastinate? Why, goto a new movie of course! With that in mind, I saw the Matrix Reloaded.
The movie on the whole was mediocre, and left me rather annoyed really. The constant re-use of bullet time effects for fight sequences became tiresome. The bits of the story that I enjoyed from the first were almost completely destroyed, but I do believe that was the point. It leaves the third and final installment to build a new world, which is fairly likely to happen.
The highway scene was fun, but as far as story elements went seemed rather useless. Much of the fighting seemed to become really unnecessary at times.
The real let down of the movie? The Burley Man scene. The scenario is seen in all the trailers. You know, the one with Neo fighting a mob scene's worth of Agent Smiths. The animation actually began to look too cartoonish for me, with motion blurs that stood out tremendously. Things that also didn't fit: at times facial mappings just seemed to be off by a few pixels, making each participants face look long and extended, or disconnected from the body. I think the scene would have flowed better with less bullet time as well, but each slowed down smack to a cranium caused the interactive theater experience to spring to life so I guess it did it's job. All in all the scene felt like it was a video game (the kind with repeating villains), not a movie clip.
Posted by Dan at 10:10 PM | Comments (1)
February 27, 2003
Beijing Bicycle
Having been in a Hong Kong film mood for the past couple of weeks is both good and bad. On one side it gives me a chance to move away from the American mind set of film and experience the culture of the world as best as I can from an armchair. On the other side, you sometimes get some truly awful films. Thankfully Beijing Bicycle is just an excellent story and film. The story as a whole is about a guy (Guei) who moves to the city from the country. He's pretty fascinated by the world around him, and soon gets a job as a bike messenger. Since he has no money, the company gives him (and other employees) a bike to do his job. The catch is he has to work off the debt through a percentage of his paycheck. Breaking this down a bit, I found this interesting. The company could be seen as the government giving each of it's employees/citizens a chance to be equal... but you have to pay taxes for that (bike payments in this case). Despite doing his job well, Guei eventually has his bike stolen and becomes determined to find it. We discover later that a young teen has stolen it to be accepted by his peers, and win the fancy of a girl. Ah youthful ignorance of trying to impress a girl by riding a bike. Guei decides to steal the bike back, and the story moves from here. The illusions of communism though return later in a solution for the bike. Watching the movie, I felt it was a really fantastic movie. Well made film (nice color, angles), enjoyable script, and interesting characters you begin to care about. After having thought about the film for a bit though, I began to see a lot of political under tones. The communism mentality being one of the larger. Another idea later, that you can't keep the hard worker down, is repeated over and over again. Buy It: If you like foreign films, sure Rent It: definitely TV: I doubt you'll ever see this on a channel other than Sundance.Posted by Dan at 09:09 PM | Comments (2)
February 23, 2003
Commericals and Movies
I'm a few days behind on it's initial posting, but thats okay, it's the content that matters. Right? This article, from the Chicago Sun-Times, was found by someone else, and forwarded to me.
What's it about? A lawsuit to remove the recent trends to include commercials before movies. I, for one, am absolutely for the removal of these doubly-paid for premium crap ads. Think about it this way, the theater gets to not only make money from the showing of the ad, but they've also increased the cost of your ticket to make even more money. Yes, I know this is a rather simplistic view of things, but you'd expect the extra bit of income to cut down other costs.
It still baffles me how a fast food establishment can offer a large all-you-can-drink soda for about $1, while a movie theater offers a cup full of ice with minimal soda for $4-$5. I won't even get into the $4 candies ($1 at your local CVS), and the crazy cost of popcorn ($2.75 per pound of yellow corn). I could understand the slightly higher costs from before (independent movie theaters, etc), but now most theaters are national chains. It makes no sense. Check out the article in any event it's worth reading.
Posted by Dan at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2003
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Saw it. Sat through it. Was bored to death about it. I couldn't stand the washed out "testimonials", the odd angles, and frankly a lot of the story. Bob seemed to love it at least.
I'm not sure I can say much more. A lot of it was very predictable, a lot of it was not in sync, and frankly a lot of it I just didn't care about. A few good hidden jokes throughout the movie, but not enough to warrent the $8 or whatever it was to see it.
Buy It: No
Rent It: No
Catch it on TV: eh, if nothing better is on, sure
Posted by Dan at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
The Big Kahuna
So when I remember this being out in theaters I completely missed it. Not being a movie that I particularly remembered for much of anything via media hype or reviews by friends, I wouldn't have picked it up again... except for the fact that I found it in the video store by chance. The Big Kahuna on the cover has a great title, and a nice photograph of Kevin Spacey acting like a big chieftain.
I thought it would be an interesting and thought provoking film, and it was almost all the way through. The build up was good, with a lot of tension and ground breaking between the three main characters. You're given enough of their backgrounds to get a feel for how each thinks. Kate said it best with the comment "It really feels like you're watching a theater production." She was right, this movie is obviously a stage adaption. The single room set, three characters working off of each other, a strange and simple situation with a lot of dialog... it was an excellent stage play. Looking on IMDB shows that initially this was a stage production. Interestingly enough adapted by the original author, Roger Rueff.
The end... the end is where the movie fell apart. I'm still trying to figure out what the phone call was about. My theory is that the phone call shows Phil was having an affair with Larry's wife, hence his semi-morbidness throughout the production. Others have disagreed with that opinion, but none had any better suggestions. If you know what it was, let me know.
Buy: If you like theater, and movie adaptions possibly.
Rent: Definately
On TV: I can see this not being as interesting with commercials
Posted by Dan at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of A B-Movie Actor
Bruce Campbell is the man. Everyone knows it. If you ever watch his acting you would see and recognize this fact. But if you were too blind to see it through his acting then, just listen to him talk about his acting, film, and numerous other topics to soon discover his brilliance.
Jim got me a signed copy of his book a couple months back. It took me awhile, but I've finally gotten around to reading it. It's not a terribly difficult read and ended up taking all of one snowed in weekend between shoveling contests. Rest assured though this is classic Campbell with comments and views on life and movie making that are great.
I'm not typically one to read autobiographies either, but I'd recommend this to anyone thinking of starting to make movies. Mr. Campbell shares with the reader many of the issues that had arisen during the filming of his numerous low budget extravaganzas. Granted, I'm still unsure how many of these issues were brought upon themselves by themselves, but it does let you realize that everything will go wrong somehow. The trick seems to be to keep on laughing about it. :)
It's worth buying. Or at the very least loaning from the local library. I'm just happy mine has been signed, too bad I've almost ripped the back cover off...
Posted by Dan at 07:12 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2003
Catch Me If You Can
Saw this movie for the Christmas holiday, and I've been meaning to write about it a bit. A very sweet movie indeed. I won't say it was great, but it was a nice mental movie. I was excited to see next what would happen, but without having to go through a series of black helicopters or explosions to make the transitions. Not that I mind black helicopter movies.... but it's good to get away from them at times.
Major complaints with it? The whole he did it because of his parents divorce. Not having gone through a divorce (thankfully) I can't really say if the outcome is true or not. Then again society today has a much more open idea of divorce than a 1960's time frame.
I wouldn't recommend buying this though. Sorry it's just not worth the money.
Posted by Dan at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2003
The Closet
The other night while at Kate's place we rented a few movies for the weekly movie review party. One of those rented was The Closet. It's a French film where the main character devises a scheme to not get himself fired... pretend to be gay.
The story moves along and Francois soon discovers more and more about himself and his life. The process of this self-discovery though is what makes this movie a classic in humor. I can't really say much more about the film's premise as it will give away a lot of the fun.
Acting wise, the entire cast puts on a great show. From the super jock down to Francois neighbor. One of the parts I found really great was his teenage sons interaction with his mom. It just reminded me of conversations with brother I've had over the last few years.
If you're in the mood for a good laugh, don't mind reading subtitles, I do suggest renting this one. Very enjoyable.
Posted by Dan at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)