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7/27/11

Many of you probably know that I am a big ska fan.   But not many people have seen me at ska shows.  I love love love it.  Most of the time, I go to these concerts with my little sister, Bonnie.  I’ve been taking her to ska shows since she was about 13.  We go nuts, moshing and shoving and skanking and dancing away.  In the past couple years, I’ve done less skanking and  dancing and more shoving and moshing.   This is mostly because of my bum knees, and has resulted in some pretty nasty bruises. That’s not to say that I don’t skank it up.  In case you are not familiar, here’s a Youtube video of someone skanking who is not me.

This is, in fact, a video of “the old guy,” who we see at lots of ska shows around here, including the one last night.  This video is from a Big D and the Kids Table show in Harvard Square.

After the show yesterday, I was musing to Bonnie that I’m not sure why we have so much fun at these shows.  They’re hot and sweaty and smelly and I get exhausted and sore and bruised.  But it’s still SO MUCH FUN!

So, the show last night.  It was Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto co-headlining, with New Riot and some other band that we missed, opening for them.   We drove up to Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom for the show because it’s better than the House of Blues.  Some of Bonnie’s friends were also going to the show, we met up with them and said hi, but once Streetlight started playing, we ended up skanking away.

New Riot was actually pretty good- they’re from the UK, and they were pretty standard ska-punk with a lot of energy.  I liked them, but not enough to pay for a CD.

Then came Streetlight Manifesto.  Ah, Streetlight.  One of the whiniest non-emo bands ever.  I bought their latest (cover) album, and the liner read like a Livejournal post, seriously.  And they’re not even that good!  But the kids love em.  We danced, but tried to save our energy for one of Bonnie’s favorites, Reel Big Fish!

Reel Big Fish are probably one of the most “commercial” ska bands- they were featured in the movie Baseketball, and their song Sell Out was even on MTV in the 90′s.  I was totally surprised, though, when they told people to raise their hands if they had never seen Reel Big Fish live before and at least half of the audience did!  I guess there are new ska fans everyday. Wow.

We skanked like crazy, but this was probably the hottest show I’ve ever been to.  Therefore, it was one of the smelliest, too.  Way too many guys took their shirts off and it was a sweaty, slimy mess in there.  My clothes were so gross after, that I had to bury them in the very bottom of my hamper.  I cringe just thinking about it.

One funny thing that happened is that I wore my NASA meatball logo shirt, and there was a guy there wearing the same exact shirt, just in gray!  There we were, two space fans among the throng of pre-teens wearing Streetlight Manifesto t-shirts.  What are the odds, right??

It was a good night, and I limped to the car and drove home.  Of course, now the bruises are appearing up and down my arms and my calf muscles are killlllling me.  It’s all worth it, I suppose, because I love it so much.  I wonder if I’ll ever get too old for this??

 

First off, I’m sorry to be updating this all at once, and I apologize if I’m clogging up your news feed or email or whatever!

7/7/2011

My first road trip (without my parents,) was during Spring Break, my freshman year of college.  I was at the library at school writing a paper, and I noticed that there was a couple at the computer next to me, planning a trip for spring break.  I was super jealous, so my boyfriend at the time and I decided to spend our life savings and whatever financial ai

d refunds we had to drive to Florida.  It was one of the best times of my life, and we ended up doing that every year (until we broke up a few years later.)

One of my favorite parts of the road trip experience is going to fast food chains that we don’t have up here.  Namely, Hardee’s.  A Hardee’s Thickburger is thick and meaty and smothered in so much ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise that they wrap it in paper and your hands are still covered at the end.  They weigh in at 860 calories and 58 grams of fat.  That’s not including the natural-cut fries.  So, it’s probably a good thing that I only eat those monsters once a year.

When Joe and I decided to trek to Florida to attempt to catch the last shuttle launch, we originally talked about driving.  I had no problem with that, but he can’t handle long car rides too well, and truth be told, he’s a terrible passenger. When we drove home from DC, he read about Magic cards on his iPhone the whole way.

So, we opted to fly into Jacksonville, FL and then drive the rental car the three hours to Titusville, stopping at Hardee’s along the way, so that we would get some of that “road trip” experience.

I enjoyed the drive; we got to drive through the infamous Florida downpours, eat at Hardee’s, and see some of the Floridian landscape. While it may not have been an entire road trip, the Thickburger was what counts, and I’m crossing it off my list.

7/3/2011

While I didn’t actually do anything on the Fourth of July (besides work at the MoS,) Joe, Becki, Paul and a couple of Becki’s friends went to see fireworks in Acton, which was very cool.  I dressed up in my patriotic gear (those flag shoes have gotten a lot more use than I predicted,) and we walked to Nagog Park, where we set up blankets and lawn chairs.

Apparently, there was live music earlier, but we didn’t hear anything during the fireworks, so I hastily downloaded the 1812 Overture on my iPhone.  Turns out, I only got the last 2 minutes of what is an approximately 15 minute overture.  I was pleased, however, because we got to hear the famous finale. Over and over and over.

After the fireworks, we played Bull in the park to wait for the crowd to die down, until the cops kicked us out.  Such troublemakers.

But ANYWAYS, fried dough.  Before the fireworks started, we ventured over to the food trucks that were congregated at the top of a hill.  Not only was there a fried dough stand, there were also FREE HOT DOGS from Kayem.  A little too crunchy for my taste (I am SUPER picky about meat,) but you can’t beat free.

And then I ate fried dough.  It was messy and delicious.

This is part of a series on how to play games well: Stoicly and enjoyably. Not to triumph, but to have fun.

This one is simple. Merely putting yourself in the other players’ shoes is the key to winning or losing well. Sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget in the heat of the moment.

This is a very subjective rule and audience-dependent, but it’s flexibility is a feature. I’ll just give some examples of things that I find can often be off-putting and worth avoiding.

• Taking overt pleasure in the conquest instead of the play.
• Conversely, being angry, depressed, or obsessed about the fact that you’re losing.
• Blaming luck.
• Noting the cleverness of your own moves.
• Suggesting that if a certain thing had happened differently, you would have totally won (obviously all players can construct fictional pasts where they won, but it’s not terribly interesting or helpful).
• Similarly, the “I would have won in X more turns” argument.
• Taking too long.

Now, these can all be done in good ways. It’s just that they can easily be unwanted.

Just think about the ideal behavior of someone you’ve just beaten. Now do that when you are beaten. Same for the ideal behavior of someone who’s just beaten you.

One interesting corollary here is that when you are doing well, it’s encouraged to note the bad luck of your losing opponent. Or if you’re doing poorly, how awesome a certain move of theirs was. It gives people the chance to talk about it without having brought it up (assuming you actually do want to talk about it ).

Déjà Dup in Ubuntu 11.10 now supports Ubuntu One backups. Go test it and report bugs!

Of course, this means that Duplicity also supports Ubuntu One, starting with the as-yet unreleased 0.6.14. Though I’ve backported support into Ubuntu 11.10, so you can start using it today.

I recently finished up a branch adding support to the backup program duplicity for Ubuntu One. I thought I’d write up how I did it, because some things weren’t obvious.

My needs were simple: Python versions of get, put, delete, and list operations.

Code snippets under GPL-2+ license. These don’t have any error handling, but that’s simple enough to add. Note that for the list and put snippets you will need to either use trunk or a release greater than 0.2.0 of the ubuntuone-couch Python module.

If parts of the snippets are confusing, it may help to consult the official documentation.

Log In

First, you have to log the user into Ubuntu One. There’s a utility class in ubuntuone.platform.credentials to help with this. It’s designed to be asynchronous, but for our simple purposes, we’ll fake synchronicity with a main loop.

_login_success = False
def login(self):
    from gobject import MainLoop
    from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
    from ubuntuone.platform.credentials import CredentialsManagementTool

    global _login_success
    _login_success = False

    DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default=True)
    loop = MainLoop()

    def quit(result):
            global _login_success
	    loop.quit()
	    if result:
		    _login_success = True

    cd = CredentialsManagementTool()
    d = cd.login()
    d.addCallbacks(quit)
    loop.run()
    return _login_success

Create Volume

Another piece of set up before we can get to the good stuff is to create a volume if needed. A volume is just a directory in Ubuntu One that can be synchronized (but isn’t by default). It’s OK to attempt to create a volume multiple times, but Ubuntu One will report back an error if you try to create a nested volume.

Note the auth.request call. This adds the required OAuth header to our request so that we can successfully authorize with the server. This is why we must be logged in first, to have access to the credentials that auth.request uses.

def create_volume(path):
    import ubuntuone.couch.auth as auth
    import urllib
    base = "https://one.ubuntu.com/api/file_storage/v1/volumes/~/"
    return auth.request(base + urllib.quote(path), http_method="PUT")

Delete

Alright, we can get down to brass tacks now that we are logged in and have a volume in which to work. Let’s start simple with a file delete request.

def delete(path):
    import ubuntuone.couch.auth as auth
    import urllib
    base = "https://one.ubuntu.com/api/file_storage/v1/~/"
    return auth.request(base + urllib.quote(path), http_method="DELETE")

That was easy!

List

Listing involves requesting the metadata for the parent directory / volume and explicitly asking for information about its children.

def list(path):
    import json
    import ubuntuone.couch.auth as auth
    import urllib
    base = "https://one.ubuntu.com/api/file_storage/v1/~/"
    url = base + urllib.quote(path) + "?include_children=true"
    answer = auth.request(url)
    filelist = []
    node = json.loads(answer[1])
    if node.get('has_children') == True:
        for child in node.get('children'):
            child_path = urllib.unquote(child.get('path')).lstrip('/')
            filelist += [child_path]
    return filelist

Get

This is a little tricky. You have to first ask for metadata about the file to get the actual content path. Then you have to hit files.one.ubuntu.com to get the data itself.

Note we don’t quote the twiddle in the content_path field. It needs to be unquoted.

def get(remote, local):
    import json
    import ubuntuone.couch.auth as auth
    import urllib
    base = "https://one.ubuntu.com/api/file_storage/v1/~/"
    answer = auth.request(base + urllib.quote(remote))
    node = json.loads(answer[1])
    base = "https://files.one.ubuntu.com"
    url = base + urllib.quote(node.get('content_path'), safe="~")
    answer = auth.request(url)
    f = open(local, 'wb')
    f.write(answer[1])

Put

Last, but not least, putting a file on the server. Note that you must specify a content type and length.

def put(local, remote):
    import json
    import ubuntuone.couch.auth as auth
    import mimetypes
    import urllib
    base = "https://one.ubuntu.com/api/file_storage/v1/~/"
    answer = auth.request(base + urllib.quote(remote),
                          http_method="PUT",
                          request_body='{"kind":"file"}')
    node = json.loads(answer[1])
    data = bytearray(open(local, 'rb').read())
    size = len(data)
    content_type = mimetypes.guess_type(local)[0]
    content_type = content_type or 'application/octet-stream'
    headers = {"Content-Length": str(size),
	       "Content-Type": content_type}
    base = "https://files.one.ubuntu.com"
    url = base + urllib.quote(node.get('content_path'), safe="~")
    return auth.request(url, http_method="PUT",
                        headers=headers, request_body=data)

Odds and Ends

Hope that was helpful!

You should be able to figure out how to do other things you’ll need from these snippets and the official documentation. Note that as of this writing, parts of that documentation are out of date. For the moment, trust my snippets over the documentation! I’m told the documentation is being updated.

Note that in terms of HTTP error codes, Ubuntu One seems to return 500 for out-of-space. And if you request a malformed path (like, with two slashes in it), it likes to give back an error code with a login page as an HTML payload.

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Or, “Why 24-bit audio is a load of shit”

I read yesterday that Apple is planning to start selling 24-bit songs on iTunes, and this made me angry. iTunes currently sells 16-bit 256 kb/s AAC files, and will start selling 24-bit 256 kb/s AAC files.

Nobody will be able to tell the difference. Not a single person.

I say this as an audiophile whose entire music collection is stored in lossless FLAC files, because I claim to be able to tell the difference between FLACs and 320 kb/s MP3s. 24-bit is not going to make any difference.

So, let me back up my pessimism with some theory first.

Let’s say you have a 24-bit audio signal. Every sample in the signal is a value between 0 and 2^24 which represents the amplitude of the signal at that point in time. If you were to convert the entire signal to 16-bit, the lowest 8 bits of every sample would be lost — rounded, truncated, whatever. Whatever the true value in the original 24-bit signal was, the 16-bit converted sample will be no more than 2^8 off from the true sample — the difference between the true value and the downsampled value can be no greater than 2^8. This difference of 2^8 represents, at most, 1/65536th of the value of the original sample (2^24 / 2^8 = 2^16, or 65536). This is a difference of about 48 decibels. To put that into perspective, if you played a 16-bit signal at an equivalent volume to rainfall, the lost information in that signal would have the volume of the softest sound your ears could hear if there were complete silence otherwise.

So, that was the theory. Let me also back up my claim with an experiment.

Here is a 5-second clip from a 24-bit FLAC song that I happen to have in my collection. (The song is Progenies of the Great Apocalypse by Dimmu Borgir.)

24-bit Original

Here is the same 5-second clip, but downsampled to 16-bit using Audacity. (Spoiler, it sounds the same).

16-bit downsampled version

I loaded both of them up in Audacity, and subtracted the 16-bit clip from the 24-bit clip to get the difference. This represents the actual loss.

Lost signal

You aren’t supposed to hear anything.

Here is that same clip, except amplified by 48 decibels — that same rainfall-to-practically-silent conversion I mentioned earlier. As another way to look at it, if you play the 16-bit song as loud as a rock concert (~115 decibels according to my earlier link), then this is what you’d be missing.

Lost signal (amplified by 48 decibels)

Aside from the fact that it’s still pretty quiet, I also make the observation that it isn’t particularly interesting — it doesn’t match up to the song.

In conclusion, I think this is a crappy marketing stunt by Apple and nothing more. In the best case, people will end up with 50% larger files that sound no different, and in the worst case people might pay to replace their old 16-bit songs, essentially paying twice for what amounts to the same thing. On top of all that, 24-bit files aren’t supported by many devices. Apple would do far better to start selling higher bitrate (or lossless!) files, rather than 24-bit files.

Name: Nerd RSS Feed
Cost: 3UU
Type: Enchantment – Curse
Rules Text: Nerd RSS Feed enchants any nerds in play, causing them to share too many MTG posts in Google Reader. Add an Ignore counter to any non-nerd creature each round.
Illus. Eric Deschamps
Rarity: Common
Set Number: #112/155

Well, it’s been a few months since we posted last, and for that I am sorry.  Ben and I are in the middle of a house hunt, and put an offer on a house this week, only to find out today that they rejected our offers.  From now on I’ll be chronicling our house hunt here so those of you who will go through this at some point can see the roller coaster this process takes you on.

We started looking about a year ago, but when we got engaged and started planning for the wedding, our priorities changed.  We took several months off, but always kept an eye on the listings to see if something would strike our fancy.  The first few months were rough.  We went to see houses, and always found problems with them that made us shy away from them.  Things like crooked floors, leaky basements, or an acre of land that was mostly swamp.  The good thing about this process is that now we know what we want.  It’s just a matter of finding the house that is for us.

We’re pretty much settled on the fact that we want at least an acre of land, so we can raise goats/chickens/bees and have a garden, as well as fun space for any human children that may come into the picture in the future.  We know we hate ranches, split entry houses, and we need some privacy from our neighbors so the goats/chickens/bees/children don’t bother anybody.  We don’t like cookie cutter houses, and want something that has its quirks, just like Ben and I have our own quirks.  Most importantly, is the price of the house.  We’re looking at homes slightly above our budget with the hopes that we can make a lower offer and have nice, motivated sellers that would accept it.  After several months we found a few houses we’ve liked, but with unmotivated sellers or properties that don’t pique our curiosity, we hadn’t put down an offer.  Until this week.

About a month ago we came across this property in Littleton, MA (where 495 and rte 2 cross one another).  It’s a really cute little town, but this property is on the outskirts, not too close to the town common.  It was an old schoolhouse, with just the kinds of quirks we liked, lots of land, and just the right amount of bedrooms and living space.  We even had my father come by to do a pre-inspection of the property to see what his instinct could tell us.  This week we decided to put an offer on it, with lots of careful conversations and lots of planning.  We knew the seller’s asking price was too high, it was just a matter of figuring out how high we thought it was so that we could make the best educated guess of an offer we could.

The first step was to make sure we had a solid picture in our head of the property.  We made a list of all pros and cons about the property, and ended up with a really big list of pros, but also a list of cons, many of which would require putting money into the house.  Things like the house needing new insulation, or a vapor barrier in the basement were at the top of the list.  We also looked at listings of neighboring houses to see what they recently sold for.  We looked at the pictures of these houses and found that they had other things that our Littleton house was lacking.  By this point we were convinced that we had to offer significantly lower than the current asking price of the home.  The house has been on the market for nearly 8 months and they hadn’t had a single offer yet.  We thought we had a good shot at getting a house we really liked.

Well, apparently the sellers don’t have the same idea, and our counter offer to their counter offer has been rejected.  The owners aren’t very motivated (they don’t live there and have tenants paying them each month), and in the 8 months they’ve only lowered the price of the house $10,000.  Their counter offer was only $10,000 less than what the current listing price is.

I guess this was a good learning experience for us.  We know that there’s no shot in HELL that they’ll sell the house to us now, but at least we learned a lot of valuable analytic skills when it comes to buying houses.  We’re also aware that house owners like their houses a lot and always think they’re worth more, but that isn’t going to stop me!  We want to find a house that fits all of our needs, but also doesn’t break the bank. At this rate we won’t even find another house that fits our criteria for 2-3 more weeks.  Wish us luck for next time!

 

 

 

 

 

Aside: I haven't written in here for almost 9 months! My bad. This post is for katze, seeing as he is the only one who ever comments on my posts.

March

Milo went to the vet due to a large sore/scab we found below his chin. They think it was mainly due to excessive scratching. While there, they recommended we remove a few of his absessed teeth.

April

Mike and I went to Japan. It was awesome. Ohayo-zaimase and all that. Coke Zero in Japan is way better than Coke Zero in the US. We left Milo with Mike's dad and Milo was very sad to come back to our boring dark apartment with no mice to chase. I also went to Montreal a few times for work. Sadly, I didn't get very far from the airport.

June

I went to Toronto for work. Never even left the airport.

July/August

Boccefest was surprisingly early this year. Mike and I made it to the finals but due to improper planning we had to forfeit. Next year Cory, next year. We also moved to a bright apartment on the fourth floor of our building. And as if I didn't get enough of the #ic crew during Boccefest, I went there again during the worst heatwave ever. Oh yes, we also went camping.

September

King Richard's Faire. Overpriced food and mead. Saw giant cats and horses. Not together, obvi.

October

Mike and I went to Chicago. We stayed at the Palmer House Hilton downtown, ate deep dish pizza, Chicago mix popcorn, and spent 6+ hours at the Art Institute. We missed the Dr. Oz Health Expo for dim sum and the Field Museum. Later on that month, Mike and the gang played diplomacy. Costumes and all.

November

I got a promotion and a raise. Yay.

And that my friends, was 2010. Happy 2011!!!

 

1.  Jen’s pinky finger fits perfectly in Ben’s ear.

2. It’s possible for a man under 5 feet to carry someone almost 6 feet tall down a mountain.

3. Don’t drink the dirty water.

4. Drivers in Peru, but mostly Lima, are clinically insane.

5. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people and they stay out ALL night and day.

6. We, in the USA, are very wealthy.

7. Need a prescription?  No problem!  (doctors not needed).

8. Bring toilet paper EVERYWHERE.

9. It’s possible for dogs to not care when new people are around.

10. Llamas have sexy legs.

2010-03-30 update: HD footage of the event
http://vimeo.com/10558068
2010-04-02 update: Gameplay-only footage (both screens)
http://www.youtube.com/user/InstantAwesome

There are too many people to thank to fit in one tweet, so here we go.

Thank you Nick Garner and Stephen Swift for providing color commentary, and extra thanks to Nick for reserving the spot in advance and making sure that the PAX dudes were cool with it. Thank you Joseph Canadas for doing player interviews throughout the match and for bringing in a second copy of Mega Man 2 from home so that we actually had two to use. Thank you Daniel Danger, whom I didn’t even ask for help, but showed up anyway with an HD camcorder and took some amazing footage of the event, and thank you Rob DeVita for also taking video on your camera, not knowing that some dude was wandering around with an HD camcorder. Thank you Casey Malone (whom you might have seen on the Harmonix panel at 10am on Sunday) for both live-tweeting the event and doing pre-game player interviews, which are available here — with me and with John.

A very special thank you to the PAX East Enforcers, particularly the dude with the shaved head and skirt whose name I’m sorry I didn’t get, who not only gave us the go ahead to have the event and bring in our own PA equipment, but also helped us set up the games and surrounding area. You guys embodied the DIY spirit of the gaming community and helped us do something that was both unsanctioned and awesome, and probably bent the rules a little for us.

Thank you, all my friends and coworkers, who showed up to cheer at my victories and gasp at my mistakes.

Thank you John Emhoff for getting wrecked by me at Mega Man 2, and for coming up with the idea to do this in the first place.

And, as always, Thank you for playing!

Today I was on Facebook reading some of the various discussions between a few old high school contacts on the recent healthcare reform bill. I read this comment that really outraged me, but I don't really want to start arguing with these people on their walls, so I will just rant here:

Comment: The FDA needs to have the same quality standards, but with two new labels - "FDA Approved" and "Non-FDA Approved." Under my plan, the FDA would not have the authority to withhold drugs they haven't approved yet from the market.

My response: ARE YOU BAT SHIT FUCKING CRAZY? This is clearly a remark from someone who is not educated about the drug approval system in the USA. Less than 1% of drugs which reach human trial receive regulatory approval by the FDA. To put this into perspective, my company since 1997 has worked on over 2500 studies, and only 7 have received regulatory approval.  And we're just talking the imaging side. Who knows what the hit rate is for my parent CRO. And what do you think clinical trials are. THE STUDIES OF DRUGS WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN APPROVED BY THE FDA ON HUMANS. And holy shit! THE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY WHO SPONSORS THE TRIAL PAYS FOR EVERYTHING.

Comment: Right now, there are cancer patients suffering with potential medications clogged in the bureaucracy called the FDA. If they don't approve (allow) a drug, you can't have it, even if it might be a wonder drug.

My response: OK, I get really aggravated at people who shit on the FDA and blame its bearacracy for keeping drugs off the shelves. Do you know how easy it is to lie about your efficacy results? You get a couple of crooked doctors together and BAM you have yourself a miracle compound. I for one am 100% glad the FDA makes it so difficult to get regulatory approval. These are still DRUGS that you are putting into your body. I don't care how many rules and restrictions regarding lawsuits you put up. No self respecting oncologist is going to recommend a drug which he did not already have faith in (ie gone through the requirements for clinical trial set forth by the FDA). Hello? Hippocratic Oath? WATCH HOUSE MUCH???

Ok rant over.

Boloboh Style Pad Thai

Pad thai is so delicious. I have such fond memories of getting crispy chicken pad thai from Rod Dee in the Fenway (RIP). Unfortunately, Mike does not like Thai food, so it is fairly infrequent I get to go to one of the tasty Thai places in Arlington Center. I came up with this recipe one night when I was too cheap to get take-out but really wanted peanuty noodle goodness. Shockingly, Mike actually likes my version.

Ingredients and Where to Buy
Wide Rice Vermicelli: You can find the skinny version in almost any supermarket with an Asian foods section, but I have found the wide versions a harder find. Whole Foods in Fresh Pond, but sells out frequently. H-mart and Hong Kong Supermarket carry this in abundance.
Soy Vay Island Teriyaki: I have only found at Whole Foods. Trader Joe's has their own label (and $1 cheaper than WF), but the quality has not yet been tested.
Crunchy Peanut Butter (or Creamy with fresh chopped peanuts): Any grocery store, also convenience stores and gas stations.
Sugar Snap Peas fresh provides a nice crunch to this dish, but frozen is cheaper and just as tasty
Bean Sprouts (optional): fresh only
Chicken (optional): white meat, cut into bite size cubes
Chopped peanuts (optional)

Prepare the Noodles. The rice noodles will need 10-15 minutes to soak in boiling hot water. I start this first while preparing the rest of the dish. I'll also heat up the sugar snap peas in the same boil and refresh the hot water as it cools down.
Heat up the sauce. Heat 1/2 cup of Soy Vay Island Teriaki with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter in a medium sautee pan. This should cover 2 servings of noodle. I have found the sauce varies from batch to batch - add peanut butter to taste if too sour. If adding chicken, stir fry the chicken in the sauce.
Stir Fry it up. Add the noodles and sauce to a sautee pan. Be sure to really drain the noodles, too much water will water down your sauce. Combine until sauce coats all the noodles. If not enough to coat, add Soy Vay as needed. Cook until heated through.
Garnish and eat. Garnish with optional bean sprout and chopped peanuts. Yum yum!!

Excellent appetizer dish are pot stickers, but that's another post!

I admit, I've only tried this with Merrin Robotics Model WVG-3, but I think it would be good with just about any authentic Merrin maintenance bot.

Many years ago, I started using Pandora, the internet radio station.  It was cool and introduced me to lots of new music while gradually getting a better handle on my musical taste for future recommendations.  Then it started sucking more... introducing ads, then instituting a monthly limit to the hours you could use it.  I continued using it reluctantly... I could give in and buy a subscription to make the annoying stuff go away, but that seemed like caving to terrorist tactics.  Today, though, after exhausting my monthly limit, I gave in and bought the subscription.  They do provide me with a valuable service that I would be happy to pay for... but god damn do I hate feeling like I was coerced by their successful attempts to irritate me :-(.

So why is The Office such an effective comedy?  For the first several seasons, they were constantly struggling with the threat of cancellation, but now the pseudo-documentary style has proven popular enough to not only make that show thrive, but spawn numerous imitation shows like Parks & Recreation, Modern Family, Community, etc.  Has drama somehow evolved (or perhaps reverted) in some fundamental way that leaves actors free to acknowledge the camera, offer soliloquies, and otherwise mess with the fourth wall indiscriminately?  I don't have any good insights, but this seems like an important shift in modern entertainment, and I harbor the drunken hope that this attempt at Socratic inquiry would spark discussion amongst my smarter friends.

Over four years ago, I noticed a very striking similarity between The Incredibles and The Fantastic Four.

Looks like collegehumor.com just picked up on it.

Four years too late, guys.

jlak posted a photo:

Posted via web from ihatelettuce's posterous

jlak posted a photo:

Posted via web from ihatelettuce's posterous

jlak posted a photo:

Posted via web from ihatelettuce's posterous

The Apple® MacBook® Pro® I use for work probably takes about the same amount of time to start as my Windows 7 machine, but it feels like my hair is going grey as I wait. Why? Because it just shows me that stupid Apple logo and a little spinning indicator that actually only indicates that I need to be patient. For a company so obsessed with how they are perceived, you’d think they’d get that the lack of a proper POST screen makes perceived startup time stretch on forever. All that POST info on a Windows or Linux machine serves to distract, even if you aren’t really looking at it carefully. It’s the difference between skimming through a magazine while in the doctor’s office lobby and just staring at the wall.

Maybe they want us to feel like the computer is going through painful labor to give birth to it’s deformed baby, OS X.

I’ve posted at length about why Uyghur people may be unhappy, but you may have noticed that I’ll always end these posts with something along the lines of “they aren’t so innocent” or “that doesn’t excuse the killing of innocents”. Well, I was just reading a post on Global Voices which I think really hammers home the cruelty and viciousness of the recent riots. It features some translated stories of Han Chinese finding themselves in the middle of what seems like a one-sided war against them. Pretty terrifying stuff.

Following these enlightening stories, we get the Chinese reaction to Western reports of the incident, which many once again feel are unfair to China. I expressed in a recent post how I felt the reporting of the Urumqi riots was much more balanced than  the ‘08 Lhasa riots reporting was, so I was a little surprised to see basically the same sort of anger. Why this response again despite improvement? I have some theories:

First, as always, a lot of Chinese are very xenophobic which makes them suspicious of the West in particular and also very receptive to attacks on the West, factual or not. Second, I think a small number of people are pulling the strings. I suspect that while many Chinese can read and speak English, most cannot read well enough to read and fully understand a newspaper. This means that a smaller number of internet users are finding examples of Western media bias and posting them. For that small number of people, there’s probably some confirmation bias at play, and this would result in a very biased look at Western media for everyone else, so the kneejerk reaction kicks in. Oddly, the New York Times is cited as an offender, but if you’ll look back a posts or two at Sympathy for Han, you’ll see that I posted an article from that publication that highlighted the horrors that Han Chinese experienced in Urumqi during the riots. Currently, the top Google News article for “Urumqi Riots” is titled “Han Chinese emerge as the main victims as Urumqi riots death toll rises‎”.   There may also be some ignorance among Chinese about how more than one viewpoint may be printed in Western media. Perhaps they know this but see one viewpoint as mainstream and any others as fringe. Or maybe they’ve been coddled by only having to hear the Party’s opinion important issues on CCTV. No matter what the cause of this (IMO misguided this time around) anger with the Western media, I don’t think it will go away any time soon. Chinese xenophobia, inferiority complex due to much 20th century humiliation, unwillingness to accept opposing viewpoints, and thin skin will almost certainly lead to many years of hating on foreign media, especially Western. Unfortunately for everyone, this plays right into the CCPs hands because they clearly desire control over the flow of information they don’t like.

One more thing, one comment on the first link compare the riots to 9/11, “To kill civilians on the street for no reason is 100% equal to 911 Twin-tower attack”. Obviously a bit of hyperbole here as casualties were less than 1/10th those in the 9/11 attacks, but whatever; ultraviolent L.A. Riots is probably more appropriate. Really I wonder what that Chinese would think if he knew that there existed Western media outlets at the time which explored the reasons behind the attack and the motivations of fundamentalist Muslims. Sure, it may not have been a mainstream thing to discuss at the time (some people complained such exploration was “blaming America”), but it was very much in the media. Would that Chinese think that such reporting was biased or irresponsible? Probably not, but just the same, the media is not allowed to look at Uyghur motivation beyond “someone foreigner masterminded it” (that may well be true about the protests, BTW, but whether the actual violence was planned, well, who knows).

Hopefully this is my last post on this. I will make my thoughts clear: The Uyghur violence was cruel and unnecessary, and I suspect that the police response was just as the violence had clearly gotten out of control. By turning violent during the protests, the Uyghur probably hurt their own cause because now the Chinese will definitely never listen to them (they already kind of weren’t, but it’s probably worse now). It seems likely that a foreign entity had a part in planning the protests (and maybe the violence). So what we’re left with is nearly 200 dead (mostly Han), over 1000 injured, lots of renewed hate for the Uyghur people, and zero understanding of why they are protesting because any meaning was lost in the cruel violence. Lose-lose.

With a single post my dear friend Jordan is about to surpass my contributions to this blog for the year by about 100 words.

That's on the heels of having a pretty busy month already; she drove across a continent, saw Ben Folds perform live, visited Ikea, swam in 76 different US states, patted the dog you see to the right, and cooked this delicious sounding meal:

I made a great shrimp dish last night. A scampi of sorts, I suppose. Here's what I did:

First cut up one green and one red pepper and a half a pound of mushrooms. Sautee until about 2/3 of the way done. Remove from heat. In the same skillet as more olive oil and about 4-5 cloves of garlic (depending on size). When the garlic is 1/2 way done, throw in a pound of peeled, raw shrimp. Once the shrimp starts turning pink, add the vegetables, the juice of 1 and 1/2 lemons, a bunch of fresh chopped basil, about 1/2 cup of white wine, and some salt and pepper. Cook this until the shrimp is done. While you are doing all of this, cook some linguine. I like to serve this on a platter like this: bed of mixed greens (spinach and arugula preferable), then pasta, then shrimp mix. The greens wilt but add a fantastic bite! I also top the dish with some parmesean and leave it out for people to add their own. Enjoy!

The bottom line is, she's been busy.

First, I’m probably wrong about much of this and certainly am missing a lot of facts. I welcome any additions, edits, corrections to be posted in the comments if anyone actually reads this.

You’ve probably heard something about the rioting of Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China over the weekend in which at least 156 (supposedly mostly Han Chinese) were killed.

Internal strife in China often gets blamed on the outside (foreign influence). The US is sure to be a target of many conspiracy theories. One already ties the CIA to Xinjiang separatists. What do I think? People believe such speculation because the CIA has such an unfortunate history of secretly meddling in foreign affairs (you probably already know some examples like Afghanistan in the ‘80s, Tibet in the ‘50s). It seems premature to say whether or not the CIA is involved because there’s not any hard evidence, but I think it is fair to say that the history of strife in Western China offers enough explanation without necessarily bringing US conspiracy into the picture. Many Chinese will NEVER admit that this is a possibility, and will always blame it on foreign influence. I’d rather not sound high and mighty, but I can’t avoid it here: Chinese are conditioned from a young age to be xenophobic. There are a lot of intelligent Chinese who see through this conditioning and will tell you quite directly that it is a part of the education in the mainland. Having said that, it doesn’t mean it’s out of the question that some foreign power might be helping to nudge the separatists.

Why are Uyghur and majority Chinese so furious?

Uyghur anger? Aside from the immediate trigger (Han/Uyghur fight in Shaogun resulting in a few dead Uyghur) Poverty is one obvious reason. The Uyghur do not have as much money as the Han people and they presumably see that every day in the city. Han Chinese have flooded into Xinjiang over the decades in a way that the minority may feel is threatening to their culture or way of life (this should not be a strange concept to the Chinese as they are notoriously militant about maintaining their own culture after all that’s happened in the past century). Despite all the development and money the Han bring, it’s hard for an non-mandarin-speaking ethnic minority to get a piece of that pie (this is also likely a reason for the unrest in Tibet). It’s not hard to imagine how resentment, justified or not, might build in such a situation.

The Chinese anger? Aside from the obvious (the murders), many seem to feel that the Uyghur minority are ungrateful for the development they have brought to Xinjiang. This mirrors feelings that were expressed by majority Chinese about the Tibetan riots last year. Many Han have trouble grasping why minority people would not appreciate the money that flows into their regions thanks to Han-spearheaded development. They feel they are doing good, so it is no doubt shocking to them that the favor is met with violence and protest. Also, I can say from personal experience that many Chinese see Xinjiang people as thieves and cheaters. It’s probably true that there are a lot of Xinjiang thieves in the big cities, but I can’t say for sure as I’ve never seen the stats or had any such experience.

One more thing can’t be ignored: Chinese nationalism. As I said before, propaganda in China tends to be very xenophobic. One of the key fears tapped into is the fear of China being broken up. The threat of Taiwanese independence feeds into this fear, as do both Tibet and Xinjiang. I’ve been told by a Chinese that when she looked at a map of China, she felt ashamed because “borders incomplete”. Those places are the rightful territory of China, and no one better touch them, whether they were there first or not! Of course, that reason is just for the people. The government is most definitely more interested in Xinjiang as a strategic military position and the large amounts of oil it potentially holds.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m in support of the Uyghur violence or Xinjiang independence; I’m not. I sincerely doubt they are the innocent victims some are bound to make them out to be. It’s probably in the best interest of everyone for the Uyghurs to just grin, bear it, and try to adapt.

To my Western friends, be wary of trying to talk about this with Chinese people. Only the most intelligent and open of Chinese will be capable of discussing this without getting incredibly defensive and attacking Europe for formerly occupying foreign countries and the US for it’s treatment of Native Americans and blacks, and saying how it’s a double standard and just not fair that all those countries got away with it. A decent analogy would be trying to discuss criticism of the US with a redneck nationalist: the result is a very shallow conversation and an avoided topic.

I made a loaf of bread in my breadmaker, but it refused to dislodge itself from the pan. After much violent shaking, the loaf finally thunked onto the table. The breadmaker crankle that kneads the dough was missing; it was inside the loaf.

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BTW, post title should be read a la Mel Gibson in Ransom "Give me back my son"

What up with women and babies?  Babies stink and are stupid, yet women are still proud of themselves for making them.  I mean, you can't even have a discussion with a baby.  You have to teach them to speak and walk and go to the toilet.  If you're thinking of having a baby consider this: once that baby pops out, you are responsible for it and if you don't take care of it you will be in deep shit.  If you do take care of it, chances are it will never appreciate it;  It probably won't even like being alive. Lose-lose.

And who even cares if the human race of dies off?  Does that really change anything for you?  Once you're dead, you're dead, and you don't get to experience this spoils of human advancement, so why not be bitter about it and refuse to make any babies?

mterry posted a photo:

mterry posted a photo:

mterry posted a photo:

I took a walk to the library today, and noticed an ice cream truck ambling through the neighborhood blaring its jingle.  I've never really thought before about how nefarious a business model they represent:  creeping past your home broadcasting an inducement to panicked demand for the ice cream RIGHT NOW MOMMY HURRY!!  I imagine a roomful of fat, cigar smoking men trying to determine the exact volume level and truck speed that would allow for practical purchasing but optimize the instilled sense of urgency.  Ok, that might be a paranoid fantasy, but I like the image.

At the library I got a collection of John Irving short stories.  Supposedly these are all the short stories he's ever considered "finished," and given his reputation as a methodical stickler for story structure I'm eagerly anticipating some highly polished nuggets of literary bliss.

While sifting around in the old documents on my PC I recently found the beginnings of one of a series of Craft fictions that we wrote in 2003 and 2004. This was unfinished at the time, and will most likely remain so for all eternity, but that's no reason not to flesh out the Craft universe as fully as possible. So without further ado, presented in its original form:

Things That Mean Nothing to Me:
Corduroy Craft IV:
Arduous Holiness:
Twinkle Tinkle, Little Dog
By: Ben Wilson IV:
The guy that needs to read III

    Craft lay in the snow, weeping. The full moon shone down through the trees, reflecting off of the forest floor and illuminating the morbid scene around him. Everything was blue. Especially Craft.
    “Are you sure?” asked the pencil-thin man standing amongst the trees behind him.
    “Don’t,” Craft pleaded.
    “Are you sure?” persisted the man.
    “Yes I’m sure, damn it!” shouted Craft. “Now leave me be!”
    “Then it is done,” replied the man, fading back into the forest. In seconds Craft was alone.
    Pushing himself up off of the ground, Craft wiped the tears from his cheeks, leaving a smear of blood. Glancing at his hands Craft realized (not for the first time) how much congealed flesh resembles marmalade. He shuddered.
    “You may look like Craft, but you don’t have his heart!” he scolded himself. He looked down at the frozen body at his feet. Anger quickly replacing the sorrow he had felt moments before, Craft clenched his fist and shouted to the sky, “You have no power over me now. I’m coming for you!”
    An earthquake shook the forest, its single deafening roar stopping almost as abruptly as it began. A challenge, thought Craft. Good.

That's all there is. Maybe I'll send this to Matt's agent and see if it reignites the passion.

For a while Jen, myself, and several people at work were playing the web-based strategy game Ikariam. Our original goal was to build up an alliance of cities ("NVTS") large enough to launch a successful surprise attack on the Harmonix alliance; raping, pillaging, and otherwise griefing as much as possible. This kept us going for a month or two before we eventually ran out of gas and gave up. For the most part this was due to some missing features and poor game design linking the economic and military mechanics.

But that discussion is for another post. For now I'd like to highlight the similarity between Ikariam's Diplomatic Advisor icon and the profile picture of our friend Dav that his job keeps on their website:

Truly uncany.

FreakinYeahDude posted a photo:

FreakinYeahDude posted a photo:

FreakinYeahDude posted a photo:

So here’s what’s sweet:
Harmonix (by way of one Casey Malone) has offered to donate a copy of Rock Band to my school. A friend from home (thanks Chris) is offering to donate a PS2 so that we can have something to play it on.
Video games are awesome at our school because they help with a lot of things- they’re great for hand-eye coordination, fine motor development, age-appropriate cooperative play, and as a reinforcer for hard work. A lot of the teachers already play Rock Band and are psyched to be able to teach our kids.
Thanks, Casey and Chris! This is going to be so sweet.

DavTheGook posted a photo:

DavTheGook posted a photo:

DavTheGook posted a photo:

Hi guys.
So like a month ago it was my birthday and dave made me a fucking incredible website. You should probably go look at it.

Check that shit out.

word.

bwilson posted a photo:

A large portion of our north andover group of friends.

I live in a house with two 50 year old ladies. I have my very own room and my very own bathroom. About once a week or so, I find my bathroom trash can stuffed to the brim with things that I have not put there.

For your consideration:

Things I Have Found in my Trashcan

bubblewrap

some fancy crackers

an empty box from nitrous cartridges

shards of a broken mirror

uno cards

fin

bwilson posted a photo:

Ciernia family (cousins) + me + jen