Fiddling Marcus

SoC

2012-02-03T03:22:00.000-05:00

I was told that we can have books delivered from the university library to our office mailboxes. So the other day I put in a request for "Skippy Dies" and I got it in my mailbox. It was quite easy and I didn't even have to step out of the building. It looks like my leisure reading will be going up.

Over Christmas break, I re-read The Catcher in the Rye.* When I first read it in high school, I remember thinking highly of it because 1) Colden Haulfield was a rebel and 2) stream of consciousness is awesome. When I re-read it, I thought less of it because 2) Colden Haulfield is a brat and 2) stream of consciousness is awesome.

* According to Will, The Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that everyone can relate to. There's a word for that, but he could never remember it.

By the way, stream of consciousness is awesome.

Ulysses is first on the Modern Library's list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It's apparently the canonical example of the stream of consciousness narrative, therefore it is on my perennial to-read list. I don't know if I'll ever get around to reading it for real, since it's supposed to be a difficult read, but I really do enjoy the stream of consciousness style.

Getting a Kindle has made reading classic books a lot easier. Most of them are out of copyright so I can grab them for free on Project Gutenberg or the Amazon Kindle store will have them for free (usually just the same as the Project Gutenberg version). Also having Amazon Prime and the Prime lending library makes it easy to have enough to read on my Kindle. So if I use the library for leisure fiction reading or recently published book borrowing and I use the Kindle for classics, I should be able to have access to pretty much everything I want to read.

Except for maybe comic books. Not that I read them. One time, while we were hanging around the Graduate Library down on Central Campus, (Little) Jason bet me that the Asian section had comic books, more specifically anime. I found that to be preposterous. We never resolved that bet. Actually we didn't even make the bet. We bet, but don't bet anything. It's more a point of right or wrong. Like how I bet Mark that the population of Ithaca (proper) was less than 100,000, but he was convinced it was over. I was right.

Google knows everything about me

2012-01-31T13:51:00.000-05:00

The other day I googled about VPSes (Virtual Private Servers) and I didn't think anything of it because I've googled thousands of things before. Over the past few days I've noticed something odd though. I've been seeing ads for VPSes on websites I visit all around the Internet, like the New York Times and YouTube (which, granted, is owned by Google). I didn't think anything of it at first, until I realized that Google was correlating my searches with which ads they should display to me (the website, like the New York Times, probably uses Google Ads and can then use my Google search information to display personalized ads).

So this got me thinking about how much data Google has on me. It knows:

My web searches (Google/Google History)
The people I know (Google/Gmail contacts/Plus+)
The people I talk to and the contents of my chats(Gchat)
My email, both personal and professional (Gmail)
My appointments (Calendar)
The news I read and sites I visit (Google News/Reader/Search)
My Sleep Schedule (kept in a Google Doc)
My Stock portfolio (Google Finance)
My Blog

Luckily, Facebook stores a good amount of data about me that Google does not have. So I've at least split it up.

Clocks and Time

2012-01-30T10:09:00.002-05:00

I used to wear a watch all of the time. One of those athletic watches, not one of those fancy watches that you see Eli Manning advertising for. One of the last memories I had of wearing my watch was me sitting out in the sun during a Cornell lacrosse game and getting a massive watch tan.

Ever since I got a cell phone, I've found watches to be anachronistic. I keep my cell phone in my pocket all of the time (except for when I leave it in the car, which has been happening with increasing frequency. I take it out to call someone, put it down in the car, then get out of the car, forgetting the phone. Also I forget to lock my car a lot).

Increasingly I've found the clocks around me to be wrong. My car clock is 50 minutes fast because it was 10 minutes slow and then I never moved it back an hour at the end of daylight savings time.

My alarm clock is 20 minutes fast. I don't intentionally set it fast it's just that the clock adjustment buttons are right next to the snooze button. So in my attempts to hit the snooze button I accidentally move time forward. I also don't bother to change it because I keep thinking that it'll help me get up earlier/on time. But I can't trick my brain into thinking that because it's like trying to give yourself a placebo.

I'll make a man out of you

2012-01-30T01:08:00.000-05:00

I decided to go to church last Sunday. I'm not sure what spurred this decision, considering I hadn't gone to church on an ordinary Sunday in about a year and half. When I was walking into the parish, a child in front of me grabbed a whole bunch of pamphlets and then proceeded to drop them on the floor. He was kind of just standing around trying to pick them up, so I waited for him to do his thing and move out of the way. His mom then told him to "let this man through."

Let this man through

What? I'm not a man. Look at me. Being called a "young man" would be acceptable, "boy" would be acceptable. Not man. I'm not a man. I haven't accomplished enough in my life, I haven't matured enough in life. I still eat bags of candy (so much so that my teeth hurt). In my every day speech, I constantly quote and allude to cartoons. I still want to be Batman. I watch an unacceptable amount of TV. I make weird noises and I meow at things.

I don't think I'm ready for society to call me a man yet.

How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?

Coming up with heuristics/rules to live life by

2012-01-23T19:53:00.001-05:00

A bus stops outside of my apartment and goes to campus every 10 minutes from 7am to 7pm. I only live about a 1 mile from my office and my apartment parking pass will let me park in the parking lot across the street from my office. So I have three options of getting to the office every morning: 1) Take the bus, 2) Drive, 3) Walk. I came up with a way of determining which form of transportation to take in the morning. If I step outside and I don't see the bus, then I drive (the bus makes three stops around the cul-de-sac). And I never walk to the office.*

* For my return trip, I never take the bus because the bus stop is out of the way. I will walk if I took the bus in the morning, or I'll drive back.

It's a simple rule for determining how I will get to the office in the morning. Since I'm so finicky, it helps me make one less decision during the day.

A few days ago I came across this New York Times Magazine article about decision fatigue. The crux of the article (more or less) was that the mind gets tired from making decisions. And when the mind gets tired, it will either 1) default to the "safe" decision or 2) put off making a decision until later.

So I guess my way of mitigating decision fatigue was to come up with a simple way of determining how I will get to school and making one less decision in the day.

I'm trying to this of any other instances where I can apply quick and easy rules like this. I'm going to come up with a list of places to eat lunch/dinner and then write a script that will randomly pick a place whenever we decide to go out for lunch or dinner. That should save a significant amount of time and decision making.

Detroit Auto Show

2012-01-21T15:53:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so I only have one picture that I took with my dumb phone's camera.

It was pretty cool -- all of the major car companies were there, there were lots of cool concept cars, and lots of cars we could sit in.

Where'd you get that? The Internet.

2012-01-19T01:37:00.002-05:00

Over the weekend the Internet in our apartment went out. It was pretty bad to start off with (it is crummy DSL), but it was always usable, but over the past couple of weeks it had been slowly deteriorating. Finally over the weekend it looks like the router finally died and we couldn't call the repair guys to make an appointment to send someone over until Tuesday.

So over the past few days I've been twiddling my thumbs trying to come up with things to do without the Internet at my apartment. As a result of this, I've been spending more and more hours at the office. Not necessarily doing work, but just surfing the web and chatting. Ever since I cut out most TV shows from my life, I mostly use the Internet now for web surfing and chatting. Chatting, that's the biggest thing I miss about having the Internet. I have this incessant need to be online all waking hours -- not that I'm chatting for all waking hours.

To tell you the truth, there is a sort of Walden-esque simpleness to living without the distractions of the Internet. I've done a variety of things instead of wasting time on the Internet: reading on my Kindle, writing, reading papers, and eating.

A passing thought that crossed my mind as a result of this. When I move to a different apartment where the Internet is not included in the cost, I could consider not getting an Internet landline and simply getting a smartphone and a data plan. That would at least let me check my email and browse some of the Internet. It's just a passing thought.

Anyways, the Internet guy came this morning and replaced our DSL modem so now we're back to having the Internet and greener pastures.

New Year's Resolutions 2012 Edition

2011-12-31T02:06:00.000-05:00

I looked over my new year's resolutions for 2011 and I could easily make the first 4 from last year the first 4 for this year.

Blog more - Let's set a less ambitious goal this year, and try to post one entry a week.
Hit 10,000 pictures taken on my camera - I'll try doing a semi-regular post a photo a day of my life. I don't want to fully commit to http://365project.org/, but I'll try posting some more pictures.
Start going to the gym regularly
Have a regular sleep schedule - Since I'm done with classes, I should try to get up and go to sleep at a set time every night. That way I could at least pretend like I'm a working person.

The last one should be easier to keep track of now that I'm keeping a sleep journal of when I'm going to sleep and when I'm waking up.

I've been trying to come up with more interesting hobbies. So far I've come up with photography and card-making. Photography would require me to get a DSLR -- so I might put that one on hold for now. I can do card-making though. I also want to read more. I recently got a Kindle and loaded it up with books from Project Gutenberg.

Card-making
Read more books (leisure fiction and non-fiction)
Play Xbox more - I did get an Xbox last year, but I've played it about 10 times.
Writing - I should probably write a few more plays. And draw a few comics if I get inspired by anything.

That seems like a good list.

Something that I want to learn how to do

2011-12-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

I like to catch up on my reading during my breaks as I often find it hard to concentrate on reading when I have so much other work to do and I just want to rest my mind when I have free time and watch TV.

Anyways, I'm currently reading Bounce, which seems like a nice complement to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which I read a couple of years ago. I haven't finished it yet, but one thing that was mentioned in the book was circular breathing.

From Wikipedia:

Circular breathing is a technique used by players of some wind instruments to produce a continuous tone without interruption. This is accomplished by breathing in through the nose while simultaneously pushing air out through the mouth using air stored in the cheeks.

Circular breathing seems like the coolest thing ever and I want to learn how to do it just so that I can breath normally like that every day.

Would you pay money for an ad-free app?

2011-11-03T08:20:00.001-04:00

So I bought an iPod Touch a couple of weeks ago and I'm still figuring out how things work (I'll post a review eventually).

One of the first apps that I installed was the free, ad-supported version of Words with Friends. I started playing and one thing that got annoying very fast was how frequently the ads were showing up. Every time that I would play a word, it would redirect me to an ad afterwards. At this point I'm thinking two things: 1) The ads are really annoying and 2) Having to retrieve and display these ads are probably draining my battery (at least just a little since the app with have to fetch the ad and display it).

So I decided to bite the bullet and buy the ad-free version of Words with Friends for $0.99. Totally worth it considering I buy candy bars and soda for more than that.

Now the question is when do you buy the app and when do you use the ad-supported version?

If it's an app that I use a lot and it's only a dollar or two, I think I'd buy it.

Reviewing Movies I saw on the Plane

2011-11-02T23:20:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I watched a total of 5 movies on the plane. Here are my brief reviews.

X-men: First Class
Very Good
This one was the movie that I wanted to see most. I'm not really a diehard X-men fan, actually I'm not really an X-men fan; my favorite X-men is Cyclops. It's a cool superhero movie set to the backdrop of history. It also features Professor X before he was in a wheelchair.

Source Code
Good
I know way too many movies that Jake Gyllenhaal is in. Source Code was a decent movie, a nice plane movie. I don't have much more to say about it other than it doesn't really make much sense but it's a nice movie.

Super 8
Good
Personally I think JJ Abrams is overrated but then again he is the guy who brought us the new Star Trek, which was awesome. I'm not sure I really understand these alien-esque movies like this one and Cloverfield (which I didn't like at all and thought was dumb). Super 8 felt like a cross between E.T. and Cloverfield.

Green Lantern
Good
I guess I'll give it a "Good." It was really borderline "Good" and "Average." I guess it got bumped up because DC Comics is better than Marvel. I don't buy the whole quick transition from Ryan Reynolds regular dude to Green Lantern but they only had like an hour and a half to do it so I'll give it to them. I really hope they make a Justice League movie with Christian Bale as Batman.

Cars 2
Very Good
Truthfully, I feel asleep during Cars 2 since it was the third movie in a row that I watched on my return flight. But I will say that it was entertaining and well-made. I do think that the original Cars didn't receive enough credit as to how awesome it was, but I think the stupid tow truck received way too much screen time in Cars 2. The tow truck is so lame.

Portugal, mates

2011-10-29T11:45:00.000-04:00

I was just in Portugal for the past few days, I got back Thursday night. It was the first time I had ever been to Europe.

We flew with Air France and had a layover in Paris. The flights across the Atlantic were quite pleasant, well as pleasant as an 8 hour flight could be. They fed us actual meals (with a menu!) and offered a ton of movies to watch. On the way there, I watched 2 movies (X-men and Source Code) and on the way back I watched 3 movies (Super 8, Green Lantern, and Cars 2). The realization that I could watch a ton of movies pretty much killed any chance I had of sleeping on the plane.

It ended up being a decent trip. The weather wasn't nice; it was rainy and windy for most of the time there. The conference we went to was located near the coast and beach, but it was entirely out of beach season, so shrug.

Jetlag is fun. I woke up yesterday at 7:30am and felt great. I'm going to try to keep on this schedule but I suspect that I will fail.

Some lessons learned from traveling to Europe:

Buy a suitcase (I brought a duffel bag) and check it in so that you can buy some Portuguese Port and ship it back.
Make sure you have the correct power adapter. I completely forgot that Europeans had different power outlets so I couldn't charge any of my devices. But luckily my colleague I was traveling with had a USB charger with different power adapter heads so I was able to at least charge my iPod (more on that in my upcoming iPod Touch review).
Don't travel through the Charles de Gaulle airport. It's horrible, horrible. We barely made our connecting flight despite a 2 hour layover. Also I think French people don't understand the concept of a line, or a queue, whatever they call it.
Most people speak English because it's awesome

Here are some pictures:

Dreams

2011-10-17T01:16:00.001-04:00

I like to think that I have fun dreams, or interesting dreams. Something about dreaming and sleeping has always interested me. I like the Inception-like dreams where you wake up in your dream and go about your business until you realize something is abnormal, and then you wake up again, this time for real.

Last week I had a dream where the entire dream was me preparing to go to bed. I was on my laptop, watching baseball, etc. That was the entire dream. When I eventually got into bed and tried to sleep I woke up from my dream. I felt terrible because it felt like I had gotten no sleep. I've never had a dream like that before.

Over the summer I had a more terrifying dream. I had a dream where someone was trying to strangle me. At that point, I realized I was in a dream and I was like "Someone's trying to strangle me? No big deal I'll just wake up". So I tried to wake myself up but I couldn't. I couldn't open my eyes -- all I could see was darkness. I tried lifting my arms, but I couldn't. I tried moving, but I couldn't. At that I had to make sure I was still breathing. It felt like I was being strangled but I could still breathe. After I realized the fact that I could still breathe, I started to calm down. Eventually it subsided but now it was like 4AM and I was terrified at the prospect of falling asleep. So I sort of just lied in bed for an hour trying not to fall back asleep.

The next I came into the office and started telling people about it, and it turns out what I experienced was sleep paralysis. (The picture that accompanies the Wikipedia article always terrifies me). I haven't had any more instances of sleep paralysis nor do I want to.

Moneyball

2011-10-12T00:50:00.005-04:00

I went to see Moneyball last Thursday and I have a few thoughts:

1) Watching movies on weekday nights is awesome. There were 9 people in the theater and I got the student ticket price of $7.50. Also while we were getting our tickets in line, some old guy came up to us and told us he hid a bucket of popcorn behind some plant and that we could pick it up and get free refills of popcorn. We ignored this -- he could have poisoned it with AIDS or something of that ilk.

2) Moneyball was good. Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe was great. And the fact that they turned Paul DePodesta from a Harvard graduate who played baseball and football to a Yale graduate nerd played by Jonah Hill was also awesome.

3) It's ridiculous that Shane Spencer even appears in the movie. Awful, absolutely awful. Ricky Ledee was way better in For Love of The Game and he was way better at baseball as well.

4) Good music score. I really like movie soundtracks (see: Gladiator, Inception, The Social Network)

5) The guy from Parks and Rec is Scott Hatteberg.

6) SPOILER ALERT: After you see the movie, look up this game.

7) Not actually in the movie, but, heh, Jeremy Giambi.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=3134880

8) It's sad that all of the historical footage of the baseball playoffs from our era will have Joe Buck commentary. Sigh.

Adding to the repertoire

2011-10-10T23:34:00.000-04:00

So over the summer I learned how to make tacos. They're easy the make and taste really really good. I think it's one of the foods with the highest easy-to-make to taste ratio. (Seriously I don't know how we didn't make these like every week when we were undergrads.)

So after I learned that you can buy taco shells at the grocery store with taco mix, I started experimenting with different mixes of ingredients for tacos. I tried to make a fajita by putting chicken in a soft taco shell, but the taco shell was too small so it ended up more or less being a chicken taco with a lot of cheese.

Fast forward to today where I decided to put some refried beans in my chicken tacos. I ended up burning my thumb warming up the refried beans in the microwave. Long story short, I put the beans in a bowl and covered it with cling wrap. After I heated it up and took it out, the steam that accumulated under the cling wrap burnt me as I tried to remove it.

But my chicken tacos came out good so ftw.

I don't use Word anymore

2011-10-10T07:13:00.000-04:00

Well that's not necessarily true, but I have practically stopped using it by using a three-pronged approach of:

1) Google Docs - for simple documents that just need to look neat.
2) Vim (or any text editor) - .txt files for keeping stupid simple notes
3) Latex - the hammer that I use for any other sort of written documents

New TV season

2011-10-09T22:53:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, I was unable to watch multiple TV series over the summer - just Suits.

Here's what I'm watching for the Fall:

Community - I still watch it even though they took my idea for a fake morning show. This is definitely the best show on television and way better than stupid Big Bang Theory. Also, I hate Glee.

Chuck - Chuck had me at Batman. Final season of Chuck :(

Person of Interest - A new procedural show brought to you by JJ Abrams and Jonathan Nolan (aka the brother of Christopher). So far through the first few episodes it seems good so I will keep watching. Also the main character seems like he's trying to do his best Christian Bale Batman the entire time.

Shows that I'll watch when I have time:

Castle - If only they would bring back Firefly...
Modern Family - Not sure why I don't watch it more...maybe because I like Community way better
NCIS - After 8 seasons of pretty much the same thing rehashed, I don't think I need to watch every episode anymore.
HIMYM - It's only funny sometimes
Psych - I never know when it is on

On Jehovah's witnesses

2011-09-03T13:37:00.000-04:00

Knock on the door, I go to answer it
Jehovah witness: Are you Korean?
Me: No...
Jehovah witness: Are you Chinese?
Me: Yeah...
Jehovah witness: something in Chinese
Me: I don't speak Chinese...
Jehovah witness: Oh. Here are some pamphlets.

Root Bear Float

2011-08-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

"Let's say I were going to give you a root beer float, what kind of ice cream would you put in it?"
"Chocolate."

A couple of days back I wanted a root beer float, but I didn't have root beer so I just used Dr. Pepper and the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream I had.

It didn't taste as good as I had hoped. The cookie dough chunks didn't taste very good after being submerged in Dr. Pepper.

New Monitor

2011-08-14T13:59:00.000-04:00

I finally bought a monitor a couple of weeks ago. It's 23", 1920x1080. Dual monitors is definitely clutch, now I can have an entire Desktop with just Andy staring me down. I also got a keyboard and mouse. The laptop stand I got a while ago from Ikea for like $2.

How have I just found this YouTube channel?

2011-08-11T19:43:00.000-04:00

If you watch some of the other videos, they're all in different languages.

Outfield Assists

2011-08-09T01:11:00.000-04:00

I came across this Yahoo! article about a Jeff Francoeur throw. The author linked a whole bunch of throws from right field to throw out a runner at third, which I copied below:

http://mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=17766675
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=13114361&topic_id=7417714
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=13114361&topic_id=7417714

I could watch a highlight reel of just outfield assists. It's too bad MLB doesn't allow people to post footage from games on YouTube or else someone would have already posted a 15 min video of outfield throws.

Instead we have crappy footage from the Japanese League:

Also I would pay to see Ichiro pitch.

Pumped up Kicks

2011-08-06T14:20:00.000-04:00

Old sneakers. New Sneakers. Orange Sneakers.

A German Experiment

2011-08-05T08:22:00.000-04:00

"Edify? We're building buildings?" -Will from a few years ago

Every so often I try to edify myself and try different (intellectual) experiments. Though often times they don't end up being intellectual nor experiments, like how I wanted to take 10,000 pictures with my camera.

This is my new experiment. I'm going to set my homepage to a German newspaper and try to read one article from it every day. I haven't really done any sort of German-ing in 5 years so it's going to be challenging.

I'll just leave this here:

and this

Planet of the Apes is a scary movie.

2011-08-04T18:11:00.000-04:00

When I watched the Marky Mark remake of Planet of the Apes, I thought the scariest moment of the film was when Mark Wahlberg landed back on what he thought was Earth but then he saw the Lincoln Memorial and it was a monkey instead! (spoiler alert). Complete surprise ending to me. I hadn't seen the original before then so I was scared out of my mind.

So, fast forward to today and I'm watching the Daily Show at the office and Hulu is advertising the new Planet of the Apes movie. Wait, what? There's a new Planet of the Apes movie? Yes.

And it looks absolutely frightening, because it's even more monkeys taking over the world.
(Though I guess you'll have to suspend your disbelief because I'm pretty sure the combined human world's military could beat the monkeys in a battle. I mean, China has a billion person army)

The International

2011-08-02T10:01:00.001-04:00

"Why would you want to go to Europe when you live in America?" -Will from a few years ago

The cool thing about international students is that for the most part they're good at soccer or at least knowledgeable about soccer (since soccer is the international sport) and they play chess. I recently lost to an international student from Iran in chess. He was playing me without looking at the board - he had his back to the board and was writing down the moves on a white board. I was very impressed.

I'm pretty sure my chess skills peaked when I was in grade 3. My grade 3 self could definitely beat me in chess right now. Recently, whenever I get bored at the office, I've been playing 1 minute speed chess matches online (either at chesscube.com or chess.com). I'm really bad at speed chess but the matches are quick.

Also I think I get international street cred for knowing stuff about soccer and the soccer clubs.

Self Checkouts

2011-07-30T15:09:00.000-04:00

I really don't like self checkout lines at grocery stores. If I'm buying something I don't want to do work. I'm doing the store a favor by shopping there, the least they could do is hire some more cashiers (also would be good for the economy).

It also takes me significantly longer to self checkout. How do I know what code to put in for my apples? Or even my cherries (the thing about cherries, even if they're on sale for $2/lb, they sell them in deceivingly huge bags, so you end up buying a 3 pound bag of cherries for $6).

Funny thing about grocery stores too - prices are so much lower when you have their shopper's card.

Baseball Tonight

2011-06-30T01:15:00.002-04:00

A few comments about Baseball Tonight

Baseball Tonight was at its all-time high when they had Harold Reynolds and pre-aneurism Peter Gammons
They've completely butchered the Going, going, gone segment. It was way better when they just listed the home runs.
Baseball Tonight is awful when Karl Ravech is not hosting
I'll admit that Web Gems has gotten significantly better. I liked the Buerhle-meter last year and this year I like how they're keeping track of how many Web Gems players have accumulated so far.

I've been wondering this for years, but why isn't midnight Baseball Tonight an hour long? Do they really need to show NFL Live?

I don't like it when 10pm Baseball Tonight starts late because some awful sporting event like a WNBA game goes long.

"People are mean, monkey"

2011-06-24T07:24:00.002-04:00

New favorite commercial:

Kurt's dad needs to quit Glee and do Time Warner Cable commercials for life.

New Headphones

2011-06-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

I recently ordered a new pair of headphones. There was nothing wrong with my $10 ear buds from Target, I just wanted to have another pair of headphones for the office and I didn't want to buy the same cheap ear buds. A lot of people around the office have expensive headphones. I guess expensive is relative, I'm not talking about $300 headphones, but like in the $70-90 range, which is expensive to me. I didn't want to get anything too pricey so these new headphones were in the right range in terms of price.

I remember having an argument with Song, about a year ago maybe, about whether or not expensive headphones were worth it. At the time I didn't think that more expensive headphones meant a better listening experience, after all, sound is sound right? Well, even though my new headphones are only about a $10 upgrade over my ear buds, it was well worth it in terms of sound quality. I can't imagine what expensive headphones sound like.

The most noticeable improvement is the bass. The ear buds provided no bass. With my new headphones some songs sound way better (example: Sprawl II, but I guess that has always sounded good). In summary, I'm incredibly satisfied with my headphones.

Dr. Pepper

2011-06-11T16:19:00.000-04:00

One of my office mates described Dr. Pepper as:

Cherry + Cola - Cherry-Cola = Dr. Pepper

(based on the Inclusion-Exclusion Principle)

Things that have prevented me from blogging in the past few weeks

2011-06-02T01:47:00.000-04:00

So I haven't blogged in a while so I thought I'd compile a list of reasons for why I haven't been able to blog.

I have discovered Warcraft III. I was going to say rediscovered but I wasn't really a fan of it when I got it. I still don't really know how to play. I just make a lot of units, some flying ones and some not flying ones. It seems to work sometimes
I saw Jason Segel. I was driving my car and I was stopped at a stoplight and out of nowhere Jason Segel is crossing the street in front of me. That was probably my first celebrity sighting, and it wasn't really that exciting.
TV shows. This is kind of misleading, I'm always watching TV and recently I've pared down on the number of TV shows that I've watched. E.g. I've stopped watching House because it isn't a good TV show. And I only watch NCIS on USA if it's on when I'm eating breakfast or dinner.
Food. True story, but not that true. I have lost a considerable amount of weight so I do need to start eating more (again).
Continually mourning the retirement of Andy Pettitte

Slope Day 2011

2011-05-04T23:06:00.003-04:00

The 5th Slope Day I will be attending and Raj has a mustache dedicated to it.

I am really excited - I hope it doesn't rain though. Or Mark won't be able to drink under the sun and tan.

Cars 2

2011-04-10T13:30:00.000-04:00

Awesome Cars 2 poster: http://www.2719hyperion.com/2011/04/cars-2-retro.html

I'm excited to see Cars 2. As I've said before:

Woah, woah, woah. I really liked Cars.

Cars was probably the most underrated Pixar movie. It's a nice combo of action plus adventure plus heart without getting into cheesy Nascar territory. The trailer for Cars 2 looks awesome, it looks like a mix between The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Pink Panther, and James Bond. Cars 2 trailer embedded below for easy access:

2011-04-08T19:02:00.001-04:00

"Yankee fans don't consider Philadelphia to be a legitimate sports town."

This would be even better if Andy Pettitte were still playing. I'm just saying...

Today's Foxtrot

2011-03-21T01:06:00.000-04:00

I loved today's Foxtrot and its ode to Psych. Foxtrot was my favorite comic growing up, whenever my family went to the bookstore I would sit there and read the Foxtrot books and giggle (I also tried to get into Peanuts but I could never get into those, though the Charlie Brown cartoons are great).

Why are Baby Carrots better than regular carrots?

2011-03-19T16:42:00.001-04:00

Fact: Baby Carrots are better than regular carrots. I'm not sure that there is another food in which the baby version is better than the regular version (I don't think baby cow (veal) is better than regular cow).

What makes baby carrots better?

They're bite-sized versions of regular carrots. They come in ready to serve bags and most of the time they're advertised as "washed & ready to eat." So unlike regular carrots you don't have to peel or even wash them. And even when you cut up regular carrots into carrot sticks (aka imitation baby carrots), they don't have the same crunch to them.

One of the few things that Bugs Bunny got wrong was not eating baby carrots. I also feel like Elmer Fudd should have gotten the chance to shoot him at least once.

Daylight Savings Again

2011-03-13T12:55:00.000-04:00

Daylight Savings ate an hour this morning and I was up to observe it. Luckily I just had to flip a switch on my alarm clock to set it forward an hour. My phone on the other hand needed to be turned off and on again in order to get a time update. Lame.

Is it weird to eat at a restaurant by yourself?

2011-02-28T01:09:00.000-05:00

I feel like it is. I'm not talking about a McDonald's (or a Wendy's, because apparently McDonald's is only for poor people now, what?). I'm talking about an actual sit-down restaurant.

I think it's weird mostly for me because whenever I'm sitting by myself I get really self-conscious and feel as though people are staring at me and judging me in their minds. That's pretty much what I do to other people. When I start becoming self-conscious I start talking out loud to myself, which just attracts more attention to myself.

I also think it's weird when after I'm done ordering my food, I'm kind just sitting around waiting for the food to come. So then I just sit there twiddling my thumbs or fiddling my violin or if I'm at Olive Garden enjoying unlimited breadsticks. I guess the last one isn't too bad.

I've been told to bring a newspaper or a book. That wouldn't be too bad. If I wanted to seem like an avid reader I could bring a Kindle. Sidebar: I wonder if part of the appeal of having a Kindle is so that other people will think that you read more than you actually do. The idea being that people who have Kindles read a lot. I also feel like reading books has become part of this indie counter-culture where indie kids try to be too cool for TV. You know like those people who are like "Oh, I don't watch TV" or "I don't even own a TV" or "TV is so bad, blah blah blah." But I digress. Actually, double sidebar: I just realized this indie counter-culture that I've been waging an on-again-off-again quasi-war with for the past few years is aptly represented by Brita from Community. But I digress, again.

I haven't paid attention to the number of single people I see at restaurants. I don't go out to eat at sit-in restaurants too often anyways, but the next time I do I'll have to pay attention. I don't think single people go out to eat at sit-in places very much. Or maybe they just sit at the bar. Or go to Starbucks.

Watching baseball will never be the same

2011-02-06T23:41:00.000-05:00

Image from here

I wanted to write something about Andy's retirement earlier but I couldn't find the right words. And after sitting on it for a while, I still don't have much to write about it. I just feel like I need to put up an obligatory Andy Pettitte retirement post. Watching baseball is going to be weird without him, even more weird than watching him pitch for the Astros for three years (and to think that he wasted 3 years in an Astros costume). Not much more to say. It's been dandy, Andy.

Some extra links that I starred in my Google Reader of articles/pictures of the great Andy Pettitte:

Why is Justin a Level 30 Astronaut?

2011-01-31T07:02:00.000-05:00

I get that question a lot so I decided to come up with a list of reasons for why Justin is a Level 30 Astronaut:

He knows 30 programming languages
His buddy icon is an astronaut
He can play the keyboard but does not know how to read music
He sometimes wears sweatpants
He is an Indie Kid
He plays Starcraft with Sam Johnson
He helped Sam Johnson make his Halo Suit (he contributed the cloaking ability)
He has a Gateway laptop
He pretends to take pictures with his camera-less cellphone
He walks like a Level 30 Astronaut
Sometimes he jumps around like Super Mario
He never orders a drink with a meal because he can get a free drink from the water fountain
Jewish
He wrote an edge detection algorithm in Matlab because he had free time
He invented Graphene (which was subsequently made into an episode of Big Bang Theory)
Whenever you're on the phone with him, there are long pauses just as if you were talking to him from space.
He's in a band
Hourly Midnite Lunch
He discovered Death Cab for Cutie
He's chatted with the inventor of the emoticon
He wears his backpack like a fireman
He wears a leather jacket like a gangsta
He has stepped on Mark's tail
He coined the nickname "Logic Boy"
He one time stole the guy in a Gorilla suit's Gorilla suit
He wears a helmet when he bikes
His screen name was based on some random person's name who someone else reminded him of
He makes weird faces when eating food
He can grow a beard
He has old man shoes

Reasons for why he is not a Level 32 Astronaut:

He watches Big Bang Theory
He got a computer virus after claiming that no one got computer viruses anymore

Famous people and Arcade Fire

2011-01-28T01:10:00.000-05:00

My favorite blog post/article of all time has got to be this piece, How to meet famous people written by Joe Posnanski*. It's from a couple of years ago but it's one of those things where you want to read it every once in a while, like watching a good episode of Community again.

Joe Posnanski is an SI writer and he does this with asterisks and italics to discuss sidenotes/tangents. Truthfully I don't read any of his articles in Sports Illustrated, I just read his blog, Joe Blogs. I'm not even sure how I came across his blog, I remember seeing some other blogs emulate his style for sidebars and them mentioning him.

The article is roughly about Joe Posnanski meeting Dave Eggers, who is famous for writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for writing the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are, which is famous for featuring an Arcade Fire* song in its trailer. Though I'm not really sure how famous Dave Eggers is. I often confused about the actuality of how "famous" people are and thinking about it there's a lot of famous people out there. Think of all of the television actors on TV, all of the actors in movies, all of the authors who write books, all of the authors who write newspaper articles. Heck, would you consider Jay Mariotti a famous person? I would consider Joe Posnanski to be a famous person.

Have I told you how much I like the new Arcade Fire? The Suburbs is my favorite Arcade Fire album and Sprawl II is their best song, instant classic.

I wonder what the ratio of famous people to normal people is. Roughly, the United States has 300 million people, I'd put the number of famous people on the order of hundreds of thousands. So that's about 1000 to 1, which isn't as rare as I initially thought. So for every 1000 people you meet, 1 of them will be famous. I'm not sure I've met anyone famous in my life. Oh well I'll just have to keep meeting more people.

New Water Bottle

2011-01-22T15:59:00.000-05:00

I'm using a new water bottle now. It's metal so it's not supposed to cause cancer or something like that. I'm still trying to figure out if it holds more or less water than my Nalgene-esque water bottle. It seems like it holds less water because I'm always filling it up, but I don't actually know. One of these days I'll have to figure it out by pouring the metal one into the plastic one and seeing if it overflows.

Advantages of the metal water bottle

Doesn't cause cancer
Small hole for drinking means less water spilled on myself when I drink
Taller, less wide

Disadvantages of metal water bottle

It gets cold when it is cold outside
Dents when dropped (I haven't dropped mine yet)
The cap is detachable so there's the possibility I may lose it
The cap is harder to open
Smaller? Or at least the perception of being smaller
Hard to fill up since you can't see how much water is in it
Small hole for pouring water in from a Brita water pitcher

Here's a side-by-side picture comparison:

New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-14T20:22:00.000-05:00

I guess I'm a bit late in making my New Year's Resolutions, and I wouldn't really call these New Year's Resolutions, they're more like my goals for the year. Here they are anyways:

Blog more - I want to have 200 entries by the end of the year. I'm currently behind that pace so I'm going to have to step it up.
Hit 10,000 pictures taken on my camera - I've currently taken around 7,500 pictures with my camera. However, I will not take a photo a day
Start going to the gym regularly - A healthy body is a healthy mind
Have a regular sleep schedule - So that I don't feel tired all of the time
Cook different foods - I wouldn't call what I do right now cooking.
Learn to use vim and Linux better - Learn more keystrokes, commands, etc. etc. &c &c
Watch more movies and read more - I decided not to add watch more TV shows since I already do enough of that. One of these days I'll add a page to the blog of books that I want to read.
Play some of the video games that I have backlogged in my Steam account - the Christmas Steam sale has really caused my Steam collection to burgeon. I should finish Borderlands and both S.T.A.L.K.E.Rs and maybe Half-Life and Half-Life 2.
Get an Xbox
Draw more comics
Spend less time reading the news - I think I just read the news when I'm bored and surfing the Internet.

It seems like a lot, but I have an entire year to do them.

The do stuff everyday thing

2011-01-10T13:31:00.000-05:00

There's all of these "challenges" to do things every day. They usually pop up at the beginning of the year, which is why I'm mentioning it now. I've only come across a few so far and I'm always tempted to try them but I know that within a few days I would have already given up on it.

Let's see what we have:

365 Project - Take a photo every day
Wordpress 2011 Challenge to blog every day
National Novel Writing Month (November) - Write a 50,000 word novel in a month

There are those challenges and then there's this guy who used emacs for his everyday computing task for 30 days.

Here's the list of things he did within emacs:

* Read my email (gnus and gmail)
* Use twitter (via twittering-mode)
* Search in Google and basic browsing (within w3m)
* Search in MathSciNet (with a modified version of bibfind.el)
* View PDF's (through the emacs23 native doc-view)
* Open images (emacs 22.3 and up, I think)
* Chat through Jabber (in Google chat, with jabber.el)

Now here's a list of challenges that I came up with:

The TV Challenge - Watch an episode of a TV show every day
The Raj Challenge - Email Raj a new joke every day
The Rajoke Challenge - Get Raj to email you a new joke every day
The Pettitte Challenge - Watch a baseball game that Andy Pettitte pitched in every day
The Healthy Challenge - Eat and sleep every day
The Gym Challenge - Lift every day
Smoke Weed Every day

Homepages

2011-01-09T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm perennially looking for a new homepage. I don't have one right now. Well, actually, my current homepage is the default Camino start page. I used to have it be my Google Calendar because I often lose track of what day it is. I've also considered setting it to be my Gmail, but Gmail loads too slowly for me now. Before that, I used to have it be Yahoo! and then the New York Times. I recently found this Yahoo! News site, called the Starting Point. It compiles a list of news that happened overnight and developing stories. Oddly it doesn't have an RSS feed.

I've also tried using a set of tabs as my homepage but that never really felt right. I could try using Google Reader as my homepage. It'd be like getting the newspaper every morning. Though my Google Reader currently has 150 subscriptions and 1000+ unread items. Oops. oops.

I almost bought a brown blazer so that I could be an Indie kid too

2010-12-27T12:03:00.000-05:00

A while back, I had a conversation before with Justin (the level 30 astronaut) about what type of music I like. I would classify the music that I like to be the mainstream Indie stuff, basically the bands that you typically associate with "indie" (e.g. Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, Vampire Weekend, etc.). I'm not one of those people who deliberately go out and try to find obscure bands just because I like to listen to music that no one else does. And I don't regularly visit Pitchfork (I don't even frequent Pitchfork often, maybe like once every 6 months).

Anyways I wanted to come up with a list of my favorite Indie songs. So here is my completely arbitrary (and partially based on my play counts in my iTunes library) top 10 favorite Indie songs:

1) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - by Neutral Milk Hotel
The number 1 played song in my iTunes library and this YouTube video is some weird Anne Frank tribute.

2) Calendar girl - by Stars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUN826BdvV4

3) Adventures in Solitude - by The New Pornographers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj4b5rRDy00

4) West Coast - by Coconut Records
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTzEp4CeWT8

5) Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - by Arcade Fire
Did I tell you how much I love the new Arcade Fire? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH_7_XRfTMs

6) The Funeral - by Band of Horses
Awesome song in an episode of Numb3rs and the 127 Hours trailer.

7) A Comet Appears - by The Shins
This was in the Chuck pilot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3IIesKd3_o

8) Challengers - by The New Pornographers
Another Chuck song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ10ECsF_Ns

9) M79 - by Vampire Weekend
I like the entire Vampire Weekend album, but this song has by far the most number of plays in my library. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IgT9UruWe8

10) Anecdote - Ambulance LTD
Like Vampire Weekend above, this whole album is great but this song has the most number of plays. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAZTMDZkPz8

Honorable Mentions

Peaceful The World Lays Me Down by Noah and the Whale (the entire album)
The High Road by The Broken Bells
Crane Wife 3 by The Decemberists
Harold T. Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time by Fanfarlo
Kids by MGMT
Sans Soleil by Miike Snow
Take Me to the Riot by Stars
Scythian Empire by Andrew Bird
Sweet Adeline by Elliott Smith

Just some monkey business

2010-12-17T12:37:00.000-05:00

Last night when I was making dinner, I spent about 5 minutes trying to open a jar of tomato sauce earlier. It was a particularly tight lid and I couldn't get any traction with my hands. It was kind of embarrassing. I almost gave up at one point, but I had already made the spaghetti and I wasn't going to eat plain spaghetti (though when I was a kid I would only eat plain spaghetti with no sauce).

I'm listening to a playlist of just "O Come O Come Emmanuel" in iTunes. I'd say it's my favorite Christmas carol. That and Carol of the Bells. (I have 6 different variants of both in my iTunes library). I don't normally use playlists on iTunes, I don't know if most people do. I usually just listen to albums or just picks songs I want to listen to, which inevitably leads to a lot of time wasted. Or use shuffle and skip over songs I don't want to listen to.

Chrome has become my default browser for the next few days because I installed the Chrome for a Cause extension. If I can browse the Internet for a cause why not?

Cherry Coke vs Wild Cherry Pepsi vs Dr. Pepper

2010-11-11T19:52:00.000-05:00

First off, I've never really understood the classification of Dr. Pepper. Is it a cherry cola? The first time I tasted it, the cherry flavor was what dominated the taste so I've always sort of classified it with the cherry colas. A quick lookup on Wikipedia, however, and I find out there are versions of Dr. Pepper that have even more cherry flavor.

This brings me to the Cherry Coke vs Wild Cherry Pepsi debate. In terms of normal cola, I prefer Coke to Pepsi, but I don't really like cola anyways. But there's something about Cherry Coke that I don't particularly like. I think there's not enough cherry flavor. I also think the cherry flavor doesn't go well with Coke. The cherry flavor does go well with Pepsi though. Also, I'm finding that Wild Cherry Pepsi doesn't leave me with that weird teeth feeling that I have after I drink Pepsi.

I don't drink too much soda though, definitely less than I used to. I only drink it now if I need caffeine. Speaking of which...that brings us to the famous Soda vs Coffee debate. Both have caffeine and both are bad for your teeth. Coffee turns your teeth yellow, but the carbonation of soda is bad for your teeth apparently. I prefer the taste of soda to coffee though. Whenever I drink coffee I have to put a ton of sugar and cream and/or milk.

Installing Virtualbox guest additions on a Fedora guest

2010-10-12T19:54:00.000-04:00

http://fedorasolved.org/Members/realz/VB_Guest_Addition

I've confirmed that this also works on a Fedora 7 guest.

sudo yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel gcc

Then mount the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD.


cd /media/VB
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Summary of my Sunday news

2010-10-10T22:10:00.000-04:00

Out of Order

2010-10-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday and I'm wearing my Chelsea football jersey while watching (American) football as a pun to the world. (Is it me or does it seem like the NFL has reached a bit more parity this year? It's week 5 and The Chiefs are the only undefeated team.)

I was about to go to bed last night but I decided to watch Up in the Air instead. Apparently the ripping process of the DVD went bad and I didn't realize until about halfway through the movie. It kept jumping to different scenes in the movie, but did it in a way that made it seem somewhat natural, but disjointed. The DVD ripper program probably reordered the chapters. So I ended up watching a 2-hour version of Up in the Air that jumped all over the place. I don't think I'll take the time to watch the correct version though.

Andy Pettitte is so dominant

2010-10-07T23:13:00.000-04:00

His line from today:
7 IP, 5H, 2ER, 1BB, 4K

“I just think the biggest part of it is being able to control your emotions,” Pettitte said, pointing to his “tunnel vision” in critical situations. “Nothing’s going to faze you. Nothing’s going to make you nervous.”

This quote reminds me of For Love of the Game when Kevin Costner says "Block the mechanism." Classic Andy.

I love pocket vetos

2010-10-07T21:27:00.000-04:00

Obama pocket vetoes something

Obama used a rare "pocket veto" — a tactic for killing a bill that can be used only when Congress is not in session. It essentially takes effect when the president fails to sign a bill within 10 days. Obama has yet to issue a traditional veto during his presidency; he has used a pocket veto once before, in December 2009, to address what amounted to a technicality on a defense spending bill.

I first learned about the pocket veto in US History class when learning about Abe Lincoln's pocket veto of the Wade-Davis bill. Abraham Lincoln was a gutsy president: pocket vetoing and suspending habeas corpus. Also, being tall. That was a bold thing to be back then. Oh, and freeing the slaves and reuniting the country. And being assassinated, he was the first President to be assassinated.

My playoff predictions

2010-10-06T15:15:00.000-04:00

ALDS
Yankees over Twins in 4
Rays over Rangers in 5

NLDS
Phillies over Reds in 4
Giants over Braves in 4

ALCS
Yankees over Rays in 7
(Series MVP Andy Pettitte)

NLCS
Phillies over Giants in 6

World Series
Yankees over Phillies in 6

The Social Network

2010-10-02T00:59:00.000-04:00

According to The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg uses emacs.

I hate Glee

2010-09-30T17:27:00.001-04:00

Community ftw

Getting Guest Additions to work in Debian

2010-09-30T16:51:00.001-04:00

http://virtualboxes.org/doc/installing-guest-additions-on-debian/

Follow these steps to install the Guest Additions on your Debian virtual machine:
1. Login as root;
2. Update your APT database with apt-get update;
3. Install the latest security updates with apt-get upgrade;
4. Install required packages with apt-get install build-essential module-assistant;
5. Configure your system for building kernel modules by running m-a prepare;
6. Click on Install Guest Additions… from the Devices menu, then run mount /media/cdrom.
7. Run sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, and follow the instructions on screen.

Before doing this my virtual machine was too big for my screen.

Internet Worms going Rogue?

2010-09-23T19:54:00.000-04:00

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/09/stuxnet-worm-attacks-industrial-targets-could-be-aimed-at-iran.ars

Researchers have found that the highest concentration of Stuxnet infections is located in Iran. That discovery, coupled with the very high level of sophistication exhibited by the malware, has led some researchers to speculate that it was crafted by a major government body with the aim of disabling Iran's nuclear power plant.

This sounds like something from a Tom Clancy novel. Governments coding up malware and sending it off into the wild, only to discover something has gone horribly wrong, causing nuclear war. And then Jack Ryan has to save the day. Or a better story line being a right-wing vigilante group coming up with a virus to take out rogue states' computer systems and causing a mess of a situation causing terrorists to retaliate with WMD and then Jack Bauer has to come and save the day.

The best Gatorade flavor is Grape.

2010-09-22T18:03:00.001-04:00

It's like grape soda but without the soda.
It's like grape medicine but without the medicine.
It's like grapes but without the grape.

The AL East is stacked

2010-09-20T17:57:00.000-04:00

No team in the AL Central or West has a winning record against the East.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/standings

Btw, Yankees/Rays tonight.

Joe Torre leaves managing for an acting career

2010-09-17T19:57:00.001-04:00

With Joe Torre leaving the Dodgers now is good time to post this clip of Joe Torre on Castle.

Let's also not forget the season premieres of Chuck and Castle are on Monday.

Chuck meets 24

2010-09-16T15:05:00.000-04:00

Not a submission but I found it on YouTube. I think Chuck could take Jack Bauer.

Fiddling with Pennies, much like Fiddling Marcus

2010-09-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

I really have no idea what this is...

Sent in by Rob

(Our first submission! ftw)

In light of the Texans beating the Colts today...

2010-09-12T23:58:00.000-04:00

This makes me laugh every time

Psych is bananas

2010-09-11T14:06:00.000-04:00

“He has a Masters in Psychology and Criminology from Harvard? And an MBA?” – Gus
“Get outta here — he’s got a monkey basketball league?” – Shawn

The new iTunes Dock Icon is Ugly

2010-09-03T11:18:00.002-04:00

Reviews of TV Shows I watched this summer

2010-08-28T22:57:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be listing all of the TV shows that I watched in their entirety this summer and rate them. The values of my ratings are Loved, Liked, Disliked, Hated (each of decrementing value of likeness).

Modern Family
Loved
I don't think I've laughed so hard at a TV show since the second season of The Office.

Firefly
Liked
I had been meaning to watch this series for a while, but I never got around to it until this summer. It's a surprising mix of a western and a space adventure. Firefly was just a really fun series to watch. The movie, Serenity was also good. I got crazy deja vu during that scene where the crew lands on Miranda. I must have seen it that clip on TV some time before in passing, but that plus the overall creepiness of the scene gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Castle
Liked
Speaking of fun series, Castle is definitely one of the funnest series. I only started watching it after I saw the Halloween Firefly costume clip and because Nathan Fillion from Firefly is in it. It is a really fun series, even though it is heavy on the procedural element.

Pushing Daisies
Liked
Deciding to watch this series was based on a recommendation from Netflix. It's a quirky show with a very distinctive look and feel. I wish it weren't canceled part-way through the second season, as it didn't provide any closure with respect to story arcs. I hear they're releasing comic books to wrap up the story lines though. Note: The dead girl is from Goal and Goal 2, and the black private investigator is on Human Target. (Second Note: I watched all 22 episodes of Pushing Daisies in 24 hours).

Vim Tips wiki

2010-08-27T23:37:00.000-04:00

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki

This site is awesome. I might need to start visiting daily.

My eee pc impressions

2010-08-22T06:48:00.000-04:00

I just started playing with my new eee pc and these were a few of my first impressions:

The keyboard feels cheap. The keys are nicely sized and it's taken some getting used to. I'm used to having the left control and function keys swapped. So I'm constantly hitting the Ctrl key when I mean to hit the function key (though I'm more used to hitting Cmd on my mac, and I personally like that way better).
The trackpad button is awful. It appears as one button but hitting the button on the left side is a left click and hitting the button on the right side is a right click. It wouldn't be that bad if the button weren't so hard to click. I've resorted to tapping the trackpad to click (I've turned off that behaviour on my Mac, which leads to people repeatedly tapping my trackpad and nothing happening when they use my computer). Though I may have to turn off the tap-to-click functionality because I've found out that when I type it leads to a lot of errant clicks.
Despite the keyboard and trackpad button feeling cheap, the rest of the case seems to be of good quality.
Asus pre-partitioned the internal 160GB harddrive into 2 partitions, one with Windows XP and the other with nothing, pre-formatted to NTFS. It makes it nice and easy to install Ubuntu without having the re-partition the drive.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs real well with it. It seems to have picked up all of the drivers. The webcam works in my brief experience with it. I haven't tried out Skype yet though.
The fan seems to always be on.
I was able to watch a full episode of Friday Night Lights on Hulu in Ubuntu. It seemed to play smoothly
Battery life seems good. I still haven't had to recharge it since it's initial full charge and that's after a couple hours of internet browsing and instant messaging and two episodes of Castle played back from the hard drive.

Posted from my eee pc

Why did I buy this?

2010-08-21T13:30:00.002-04:00

Frosted Vanilla Milkshake is one of the 27 flavors of Pop-Tarts. They looked good from the picture on the box...

From Firefly to Castle

2010-08-17T01:42:00.001-04:00

After watching Firefly, I picked up on Castle. I watched the final 2 episodes of season 1 and all of season 2 (26 episodes total) in 33 hours this past weekend.

Quick vim note

2010-08-14T16:14:00.000-04:00

http://www.mymacosx.com/terminal/vim-vi-colors-settings-snow-leopard.html

I wanted to add syntax coloring to vim, but I couldn't find the vimrc file. For future reference it's /usr/share/vim/vimrc (not ~/.vimrc).

Chuck on an Xfinity commercial

2010-08-13T01:04:00.002-04:00

vi or emacs

2010-08-10T23:32:00.000-04:00

Me: Hey Justin, vi or emacs?
Justin: Neither, eclipse.

Pat Hentgen robbed Andy Pettitte

2010-08-08T01:07:00.000-04:00

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/cliff-lee-is-still-ridiculous.php

While that's pretty impressive on its own, consider that Lee has now worked eight innings or more in 10 consecutive starts. Nobody has done that since Pat Hentgen of the Blue Jays went 12 straight in 1996.

Any mention of Pat Hentgen sets off a visceral reaction in me. By the way, whose name is Hentgen? It's like a mix between pentagon and hexagon.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1996.shtml#AL_Cy_Young_voting

Firefly

2010-08-06T23:37:00.000-04:00

I wish I had never seen Firefly so that I could watch all over again.
There were only 14 episodes...

The Original Shrek

2010-07-31T22:53:00.002-04:00

Pop-Tarts

2010-07-28T02:53:00.000-04:00

Brown Cinnamon Pop-Tarts are now my favorite Pop-Tarts (over the Smores Pop-Tarts).

Chuck vs the iPhone 4

2010-07-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/finally-we-know-what-chuck-schumer-thinks-about-the-iphone-4-2010-7

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I'm Chuck Schumer. Hear me roar.

-Charles

In other news, here's a screenshot of an iPhone on Chuck.

(They're spies, they need hard cases on their iPhones)

Also, don't forget that Chuck has a racing wheel for his Xbox.

Psych

2010-07-17T00:25:00.000-04:00

Two of the funniest Psych clips ever (after the Raj one)

Clip 1:

Clip 2:

The Ford Fiesta Commercial

2010-07-13T19:03:00.004-04:00

I like this song (Janglin by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros). Also note that Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros other songs have been on Chuck and Community.

The Expatriate Act

2010-07-13T02:12:00.000-04:00

The word "expatriate" confuses me. From Wikipedia:

An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin term expatriātus from ex ("out of") and patriā the ablative case of patria ("country, fatherland").

First of all, expatriate sounds like ex-patriot or a former patriot (like Drew Bledsoe). But at the same time it also sounds like a military term, but maybe that's because I'm thinking of Patriot missiles. Irregardless, the word expatriate conjures up images of Iran contra and the Cold War for me, which I attribute to expatriate sounding like ex-patriot, or someone who is a former patriot, i.e. someone who was a patriot but turned on his country, most likely a military someone.

In reality, the first thing that should come to mind when thinking of expatriate should be Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. But they don't, I just think of John Casey and those military type.

Things I like about the Pacific Time Zone

2010-07-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

10pm ET Baseball Tonight is on at 7pm, and as a result, most of the important baseball games are over by then
2am ET is only 11pm
The sun sets later
The Stock Market closes at 1pm
The East Coast is 3 hours ahead.

7/11

2010-07-11T05:47:00.002-04:00

http://www.slurpee.com/Events/

7-Eleven Day 2010
Join us at any participating 7-Eleven Store in the US and get a free 7.11oz Slurpee drink. Who says you can't throw your own birthday party?

Type: Party
When: Sunday, July 11 08:00 AM until 11:00 PM

No 7-Elevens near me though.

Ranking the Pixar Movies

2010-07-05T19:27:00.000-04:00

After watching Toy Story 3 this weekend (in 3D, which was a total gimmick), I decided to rank the list of Pixar movies.

Finding Nemo
Toy Story
Toy Story 3
Ratatouille
Toy Story 2
Cars
The Incredibles
Wall-E
Up
Monsters Inc
A Bug's Life

In other news...

2010-07-05T12:42:00.004-04:00

YouTube reset my video views. I only have 1,029 now.
I never finished those freeze-pops.
I still haven't reached 10,000 photos taken on my camera. Only 7,117 so far.
I've got to stop watching so much TV.

The (MLB) All-Star game is now more of a joke than it used to be.

2010-07-04T17:33:00.002-04:00

First off, I hate how they tried to make the All-Star game matter by "making it count" by giving the winning league home-field advantage for the World Series. If it truly mattered we'd see truly the best players of each league and not have restrictions like requiring one player from each team. (A full roster can be found here: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/top-posts/yay-its-the-all-star-selection-show.php)

But instead we get an AL pitching staff of this:

SP CC Sabathia
SP Clay Buchholz
SP Fausto Carmona
SP David Price
SP Phil Hughes
SP Jon Lester
SP Cliff Lee
SP Trevor Cahill
RP Neftali Feliz
RP Mariano Rivera
RP Matt Thornton
RP Jose Valverde
RP Joakim Soria

But not Andy Pettitte?! This is a joke. I don't know how Girardi picked Sabathia over Pettitte (though I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that Sabathia won't actually pitch since he's slated to start on the Sunday before the All-Star game and thus won't be eligible to pitch in the ASG. So then Girardi will pick Pettitte to replace Sabathia. And if that's what Girardi is planning then hats off to him for gaming the system and getting Sabathia and Pettitte both there, but Pettitte deserves to be in the ASG in the first place).

As a side note, I think they should have made the All-Star Game more interesting this year and just made it the AL East vs the rest of the MLB (or the world).

EDIT: I knew Girardi wouldn't let me down. http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/no-all-star-game-for-pettitte-at-least-for-now/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Installing Left 4 Dead 2

2010-06-27T12:09:00.001-04:00

Because you watched Raj eating Soup

2010-06-24T23:10:00.001-04:00

A Random Dose of World Cup Thoughts

2010-06-12T16:22:00.003-04:00

1. The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium at Port Elizabeth is beautiful.

2. Derek Rae's commentary puts fans in their comfort zone.

3. ESPN has a stat for 'series record'.(i.e.the South Korean series with Greece was at 1-0-1 before today's game)

4. I remember Maradona's goal and celebration against Greece in 1994 with his bulging eyes. It was football at its most beautiful form.

5. The Koreans are playing a sexy brand of football, unfortunately for both Mark and me.

6. It's very weird having the English commentators tayloring their commentary towards American fans. (i.e. "Qualifying from a 4-team group is very hard." "The U.S. - England game is the 'big one' for most of the people in America.") It's almost like a baseball commentator saying 'hitting a home run is a hard thing' because I am watching TV.

7. Some news said FIFA is requiring players to use their last names instead of nicknames at the back of their jerseys - so Kaka has to put Ricardo (or dos Santos Leite?). But in the case of South Korea, it's first names because they didn't want to have 5 Park's in the park.

8. The 2010 FIFA World Cup is on Tv, online, and on your phone. One game changes everything.

9. At half time of all of the first four matches, instead of analyzing the matches being played with details, ESPN has been interviewing Landon Donovan. Imagine BBC interviewing Justin Bieber during the World Series or Superbowl.

10. Korean players like to wear yellow or pink boots, just like Song.

11. The Greece team plays a really flat back four that are big, strong but slow. So it was easy for the Koreans to play through balls and turn away quickly.

12. Clinical finish from Park Ji-Sung.

13. I am wondering how Maradona are going to belly-flop in that suit.

14. Higuain may lose his place to Milito if he doesn't start converting.

15. Argentina and Nigeria need to stop being put into the same group.

16. "It's the rematch England has waited 60 years for." NOT. Ask Italy if they are eager to play North Korea again.

17. Why do all American coaches have this look of people owing them money on their faces?

18. It's great to see Becks there, but sad.

19. When England got rid of the overrated captain, they still have a goalie who maintains their

mediocrity.

20. Just having an Italian coach is not enough, England needs to get better players.

Larry David taking you into the World Cup

2010-06-11T01:52:00.001-04:00

Cookies

2010-06-10T10:02:00.000-04:00

Weird stuff happens when you wake up at 7am, like eating cookies at 10am.

On Tumblr

2010-06-10T04:30:00.004-04:00

I wish Tumblr were around when I started my blog back in 2007. It fits my style of blogging perfectly. Only have one YouTube video to post? No problem. Only have one link to post? No problem. Only have one short conversation to post? No problem.

Example: http://fiddlingmarcus.tumblr.com

Sigh. (I'm not switching over to Tumblr, that was just an example).

Update: OMG they have a "Chat" type of post. Freakin' Tumblr is awesome.

Star Wars + David Beckham = Awesome

2010-06-08T00:52:00.001-04:00

Flying Southwest

2010-06-07T01:31:00.000-04:00

I took a 6 hour flight from Baltimore to Seattle today. Southwest does not have in-flight movies. They do offer lots of in-flight snacks though.

Sidenote: From what I saw of the Baltimore airport, it's really nice.

Ayn Rand

2010-06-06T01:20:00.002-04:00

Ron Paul is Rand Paul's father? How did I miss that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/politics/06paul.html

New Pages feature on Blogger

2010-06-03T00:48:00.004-04:00

Looks like Blogger added a new Pages feature. So I made a page of movies that I would like to watch and I will update it when I either watch one of the movies on the list or think of new movies.

Link.

A link to the page also shows up on the side.

Jackie Chan

2010-06-02T19:30:00.003-04:00

When I was in 8th grade, I would always come from home from school and watch Jackie Chan Adventures.

Are you serious? Chien-Ming Wang?

2010-05-22T21:58:00.003-04:00

From the Syracuse Chiefs webpage: