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Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
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1:19 am - Cheap tickets to the Middle East!
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Got tickets from Air France (via the $5-cheaper Expedia) for January: SFO to Paris to Cairo, Amman to Paris to SFO for $1080. 7 cents a mile...cheaper than driving!
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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12:41 am - Football stats 2: Go for it on 4th and 2 when Tom Brady is your QB and your defense is collapsing
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In tonight's Patriots/Colts NFL game, why did the Patriots go for it on 4th and 2, from their own 28, with 2:08 left in the game? Can it be justified with some reasonable probabilities?
For Tom Brady's career, he's 14/17 in 4th and short (< 3 yd) situations, with one sack. Let's call that 77%. If they make the first down, they would leave roughly 10 seconds on the clock, counting the 2 min warning, one Indy timeout, and assuming Indy stops them...giving the patriots ~100% chance of winning.
If they don't make the first down (23%), they leave the Colts with 30 yards to drive to win. In their last three drives (excluding the interception and excluding the end when they were running out the clock purposely), the Colts went 79, 79, and 29 yards in 5, 6, and 4 plays, elapsing 2:04, 1:49, and ~1:00. That's roughly 12.5 yards per play, and 19 seconds per play! The Pats defense was completely gone.
If they punt, they leave the Colts with ~65 yards to drive to win; assuming a punt net of 35 yards.
Now, The Math:
1. Go for it. P(winning) = P(firstdown) + (1-P(firstdown))*(1-P(indy going 30 yards in 2:00))
2. Punt. P(winning2) = 1-P(indy going 65 yards in 2:00)
Given the way Indy was crushing the Pats defense, I'm estimating P(indy going 30 yards in 2:00) = 90%, P(indy going 65 yards in 2:00) = 60%.
1. Go for it P(pats win) = .77 + (1-.23) * (1-.10) = 79%
2. Punt... P(pats win) = 1 - .6 = 40%
#1 is clearly the better choice!
#2 doesn't become a competitive choice until you can hold the Colts to a one in four chance of driving the 65 yards. It's the right call for average teams, but not when the Colts have been blowing away your defense.
Conclusion: Bill Belichick made the unconventional but correct decision choosing #1.
(P=1 Conclusion after the fact: Bill Belichick made the wrong decision because his team lost)
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, November 15th, 2009
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3:16 am - Football stat of the day
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In the past two Stanford vs. USC games in LA Memorial Coliseum, Stanford has beaten the spread by a total of 86 points.
2007: Stanford, 41 point underdog, wins by 1
2009: Stanford, 10 point underdog, wins by 34
I wonder if any team has ever come close to that 86-point spread-beating number over two games.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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11:15 pm - Review: The Who's Tommy, Ray of Light Theatre -- Awesome!
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Tommy is one of my favorite albums of all time, and the music translates perfectly to the stage. It's my favorite show of all time, and since I know the music so well, I hold it to a very high bar. The SF Ray of Light Theatre's performance of Tommy meets then jumps way over the bar! The musicians are good and the singers/actors are superb.
The stage and seating is small (think elementary school auditorium size) and every seat is great. There's no silly/embarassing security (insert "security theater" joke here) checks like at most SF venues. There's only fun. The prior time I watched Tommy was in Mem Aud at Stanford from the balcony--still a good performance, but the intimate theater really engrosses you in the show.
There's also a really tasty Mayan restaurant a block away.
Highly recommended. You can usually find discount tickets for the show on Goldstar Events. This is the final weekend, so hurry up!
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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7:19 pm - San Francisco
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| Saturday, October 10th, 2009
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4:49 pm - For the camera junkies
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The San Carlos Best Buy has about 4 Canon S90s in stock, and the SF Best Buy has about 25 in stock, as of yesterday. You can also print a 10%-off Best Buy coupon if you look around on the web.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
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6:12 pm - -1 degrees
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| Friday, September 25th, 2009
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12:30 am - Cameraquest 2009
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After over two years without a tiny point-and-shoot digital camera, I've finally decided to get one before our vacation this winter. My Canon SD200's screen cracked way back when and it's actually still functional but a bit difficult to use without being able to see anything. The big thing is that there are finally worthy successors to my SD200. The candidates:
Canon SD90 (the photographer's dream)
Pros: Best low light quality of any compact camera to date. ISO800 on it looks as good as or better than ISO1600 on my D40, rather amazing given that the sensor on it is 1/8 the size, plus it can do f/2.0 on the wide end! Interface probably targeted towards advanced photographers.
Cons: Ridiculously slow continuous shooting: 0.9 fps...wtf? My four-year-old SD200 does 2.4 fps, and every other high-end compact does at least 2 fps. Looks a month or two late from the original ship date so who knows what kind of quality issues it ran into. No reviews of it exist (!) except for a couple brief previews and sample photos. I read that Amazon might get shipped some at the end of the month, but it looks like the S90 might be in short supply for some time. Larger than i would like, barely pocketable. Non-wide video quality about as good as my four-year-old SD200.
Panasonic ZR1/ZX1 (the current leader)
Pros: Extra-wide AND long lens. Very thin. Decent 720p video. Good high ISO quality. Inexpensive. 10 fps (!) mode at 3MP.
Cons: Slow lens, small sensor (~60% size of the SD90's). By my count, on the wide end, that's 1.5 stops slower for the lens and 1 stop more noise on the ISO...so the SD90 can handle conditions about 6x less light than the ZR1!
Fuji F70exr (the underdog)
Pros: Extra-long lens. A tiny bit larger than the ZR1. Nifty pixel-binning offers theoretical awesomeness, though i'm not certain how much of it i see in samples. 5 fps mode at 3MP.
Cons: Slow lens, small sensor.
Also considered: Sony WX1 (too gimmicky, low-ISO images aren't great), Casio EX-H10 (mediocre reviews), Canon SD780 (worthy successor to my SD200 except for extremely slow continuous shooting), Canon sd980 (same), Panasonic TZ6/TZ7 (not much better than ZR1 at a much larger size), Panasonic LX3 (expensive, too large, out of stock everywhere), Panasonic GF1/Olympus Pen (too big, first gen)
Alternative strategy: Sack up and lug my SLR around the world. Actually, I'll probably bring both!
Alternative strategy 2: Get in line for the S90, hope i get it, see if i can tolerate the slowness/size, and if not, probably resell it for profit
Your prize for reading this far: Hmm...i offer the gift of knowledge! Bears, when in hibernation, neither pee nor poop.
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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1:51 pm - Developers developers developers
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| Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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1:57 am - short movie reviews including one awesome film that everyone must see
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American Splendor - One of the best movies I have ever seen, certainly the best biopic. It was so good that I immediately watched it again (!), because at first I had no idea what to expect and didn't know anything about Pekar. American Splendor is amazingly real and honest, funny, sweet, and quirky. You must see this--twice, at least. grade: 100/100, A+
(I paused the movie to eat some jelly bellies)
American Gangster - a decent use of three hours of my time. Entertaining, great characters, Denzel Washington is awesome as usual. In contrast to American Splendor, this story is almost entirely fictional even though it is loosely based on the life of a real drug kingpin.
Heist - Sure, it's formulaic and predictable by today's standards, but the characters and story are really well done, and it's fun to root for the bad guys.
Fracture - I have mixed feelings on this one. The ending was disappointing, perhaps too obvious and out of character for the story.
Confidence - I can't resist a con game movie. This one is kind of like watching Law and Order, but with more twists.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - watch this. prepared to be unsurprisingly disappointed in humanity, and wonder what is wrong with investment bankers.
Tropic Thunder - I was a bit disappointed by this perhaps because of inflated expectations. Entertaining schlock.
Prizzi's Honor - So much better than Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Paranoid Park - I simply didn't get this one. Maybe you'll do better.
Jersey Girl - I am a fan of Kevin Smith; Chasing Amy and Dogma were two of my favorite movies of all time, and of course have heard all sorts of negative criticism of Jersey Girl. Now I understand. It's just an average movie, with good parts and bad. George Carlin is great (as always...i still remember the time when i flipped to PBS and spotted him as the conductor in Thomas the Tank Engine. I couldn't believe it at the time, as i only knew him from his raunchy comedy). It's a "nice" movie. Pleasant. Mild. Meh.
World's Greatest Dad - dark comedy at its darkest? It played on HDNet before going to indie theaters (currently showing at the Aquarius). Despite its extreme darkness, I thought it was quite good in an odd way, until maybe the last fifteen minutes. Yeah, i knew it had to end somewhere...and i'm not sure how i would have ended it, so i suppose it was ok. Not my favorite, but certainly worth seeing if you like dark comedy. Oh, and you might think the title says "Family movie". noooo.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, August 21st, 2009
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11:14 pm - Recipe
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2 parts bourbon (i like Bulleit)
1 part dry vermouth
slightly mashed blueberries
a bit of honey
bitters
I like it a bit better than the usual sugary maraschino cherry.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
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12:59 am - good day, bad luck
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Bad luck:
- losing eyeglass screw in carpet...perhaps the most annoying thing in the entire world. Chain of neodymium magnets could not pull it out of the shag.
- jar of jelly bellies. withdraw three. two are bubble gum flavored.
- paid ticketmaster fees
Good day:
- now an oldywed.
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
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1:24 pm - Oops.
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Example of why every organization needs competent IT:
Sun Aug 2 13:27:05 PDT 2009
[Querying whois.educause.net]
[whois.educause.net]
This Registry database contains ONLY .EDU domains.
The data in the EDUCAUSE Whois database is provided
by EDUCAUSE for information purposes in order to
assist in the process of obtaining information about
or related to .edu domain registration records.
The EDUCAUSE Whois database is authoritative for the
.EDU domain.
A Web interface for the .EDU EDUCAUSE Whois Server is
available at: http://whois.educause.net
By submitting a Whois query, you agree that this information
will not be used to allow, enable, or otherwise support
the transmission of unsolicited commercial advertising or
solicitations via e-mail. The use of electronic processes to
harvest information from this server is generally prohibited
except as reasonably necessary to register or modify .edu
domain names.
You may use "%" as a wildcard in your search. For further
information regarding the use of this WHOIS server, please
type: help
--------------------------
Domain Name: BRYNMAWR.EDU
Registrant:
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Ave.
Guild Hall
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899
UNITED STATES
Administrative Contact:
Janet Scannell
Head of Computing
Bryn Mawr College
Guild Hall
101 N. Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899
UNITED STATES
(610) 526-7437
jscannell@brynmawr.edu
Technical Contact:
David Bertagni
Head of Networking & Telecommunications
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue
Guild Hall
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899
UNITED STATES
(610) 526-7438
dbertagni@brynmawr.edu
Name Servers:
COCHRAN.BRYNMAWR.EDU 165.106.1.5
AMELIA.BRYNMAWR.EDU 165.106.1.6
KRONOS.BRYNMAWR.EDU 165.106.148.5
Domain record activated: 15-Jun-1989
Domain record last updated: 11-Jan-2007
Domain expires: 31-Jul-2009
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, July 17th, 2009
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12:40 am - movie reviews
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Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day -- Imagine "24", written as a chick flick instead of an action series
Ray -- Amazing. I was really in to this movie. Jamie Foxx became Ray Charles--some of the best acting work I've ever seen. I could've watched three more hours of this.
Hellboy II -- I knew I would like it the moment i heard the music of Beethoven's Sonata 9, "Kreutzer", one of my favorite pieces to play. If you liked the first Hellboy, you'll like this.
300 -- eh. Entertaining, some great visuals, but i disliked the parts where the main actors broke character, and some of the effects seemed cliched.
Apocalypto -- Surprisingly awesome. For some reason I long had the mistaken notion that this was some crappy movie starring Mel Gibson, but instead, it's a movie with no well-known actors, and it was only directed by Gibson. Mayan history buffs will probably get annoyed, and it involves a good amount of blood/gore, but none that is gratuitous--otherwise it is spectacular. The second half of the movie (yes, the entire half) is the best movie chase scene ever.
Arachnophobia -- good mindless fun
Biloxi Blues -- excellent writing, acting, directing.
Full Metal Jacket -- very disappointing. I found it hard to believe that Kubrick directed this. The beginning was okay, though i couldn't stop thinking, "wow, law and order dude is nuts!" The war scenes were awful. They clearly looked like a simple hollywood set, almost stage-like in its simplicity and two-dimensionality, to the point where i was distracted and no longer engrossed in the movie.
Sophie's Choice -- warning: sad movie. but very well done
Hairspray -- entertaining
Running Man -- i miss the 80s. the movie features TWO future governors of muscle. and Mick Fleetwood! Richard Dawson! Jim Brown!
Glen Garry Glen Ross -- ALWAYS BE CLOSING! Brilliant acting.
House of Games -- I really enjoyed this one and I'm rapidly becoming a fan of David Mamet
Star Trek -- I like Star Trek, the TV shows, but don't obsess about it, so i guess i'm a casual fan. I was disappointed. There were too many moments where I was taken away from the movie thinking, "wait, that makes no sense, wtf?!" I easily get involved in movies and it takes a lot to get me out of that. In this sense i thought the movie was worse than a lot of the older star trek movies (though not as bad as 5...). The acting was excellent; the new Kirk is far better than Shatner ever was, so this holds great promise for future Star Trek movies. This one seemed more like an intro-to-trek rather than a "Star Trek Movie", since they didn't actually explore, which is pretty much what every ST episode involved. My favorite one sentence summary of the movie is from Curtis: J.J. Abrams' Awesome Trek Fanfic!
X-files:last year's : The worst thing that can happen with a movie version of a TV show is for the movie to be far worse than any episode of the TV show.
Ranking of movies where William H. Macy plays a "mild mannered man" who changes:
#1 Fargo -- one of my all time favorites
#2 The Cooler -- awesome. I loved every part of it. Stretches you through a huge range of emotions.
#3 Edmond -- A bit crazy and sad, but really engaging
#4 He was a quiet man -- Ha! Fooled you...Christian Slater played the "mild mannered man who changes" in this one, while Macy plays the exec. Kind of twisted and sad.
#5 State and Main -- ok, this doesn't really fit. This was a funny romp.
[and probably 10 more that i've forgotten...for some reason i've seen more than ten movies with WHM this year]
Macy is in just about every Mamet movie. Pretty sweet deal there!
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, June 26th, 2009
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2:00 am - Something pretty awesome in the digital camera world
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For the past three years or so, nothing interesting has been happening in the world of non-SLR digital cameras. "Improvements" were limited to cramming more smaller pixels on the same size sensor (often leading to lower picture quality and slower operation), and bigger LCDs. I've needed a replacement for my little SD200 which has a cracked LCD (oops), but haven't seen anything compelling.
Olympus recently announced the EP-1, a camera that uses the same size sensor as their DSLRs, but in a camera roughly the size as the Canon G10, Canon's best compact camera. The EP-1's sensor is 5x bigger than the G10's! Its lenses need to be heftier and autofocus becomes tougher as depth of field gets smaller, yet they fit it into a similar sized package. Plus, it takes interchangeable lenses of an open standard (micro four thirds). When I visited B&H in New York last month, i tried out Panasonic's micro four thirds camera. It was only slightly smaller than my D40 SLR, so it was not impressive, but the EP-1 is a different beast.
The EP-1 is a bit pricey , and i probably won't get one because it lacks a built-in flash, but i'm sure it's just the first of many cameras of this design. I would not be surprised if in a few years this type of camera outsells SLRs.
Cameras can still get a lot smaller with large sensors. In college i used an Olympus Stylus Epic, a film camera that was pocketable, still much smaller than the EP-1...and of course, the 35mm film is 4x the size of the EP-1's sensor! I've read that the reason today's larger digital sensors can't be put into cameras of this sort is that digital sensors can't handle light at sharp angles well, but that's bound to change in the future. After that, maybe we'll get some cool flexible or liquid lenses that are more eye-like. And the best would be a smart dude in the camera to give us photography lessons.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
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1:23 am - xkcd and girl
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| Friday, May 1st, 2009
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9:12 pm - Something that i thought only i cared about ...
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but i suppose class action lawyers care about more!
I like shopping at Costco...well, at least, at non-peak hours. The problem is that i certainly don't get my $50/year's worth out of it (especially now that i've found out that you can buy booze without a membership at costco with cash, per California alcohol law), but that isn't really a big deal. Since we only go 4-6 times a year, it really annoys me that they always renewed my membership based on the month i joined rather than the month when i paid for renewal.
For example, my membership started in aug 2000, then i would pay in dec 2000, and my membership would expire in aug 2001 rather than dec 2001. This annoyed me enough that one of these times i actually asked at the membership desk why their policies were so dumb, and told them that if i were a more patient person i would have just signed up as a new member.
Today i was emailed this pdf, a Costco Class Action Settlement Notice, Rhonda Dupler v. Costco Wholesale Corporation. The legal settlement basically says that Costco will give all people who renewed after expiration credit for the months they lost...and in addition, they'll pay the class action lawyers $5M in addition to whatever they owe their corporate counsel.
If Costco had listened to me, they'd be at least $5 million richer.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, April 25th, 2009
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8:46 pm - Why the web started out grey
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Ever wonder why old web pages all defaulted to a grey background (~1991-1997)? The simple answer is that most of the browsers of the era all defaulted to a grey background. Plus, if i recall correctly, web pages couldn't actually specify a background color until Netscape 2.0 (1996?). I never liked the grey, and always set my browser default background color to be some cold-blue shade of white.
Why did browsers default to the miserable grey background? I just made this connection today while reading a page on the history of GUIs. Tim Berners-Lee developed the web on a NeXT cube (aka "great mudding box" or "worst print spooler in the history of earth"), and Nextstep, the OS, was predominantly black text on a medium grey background in presentation.
Steve Jobs was the founder and CEO of NeXT. I can't say with absolute certainty that Steve Jobs was directly responsible for the grey Nextstep interface, but he certainly wouldn't have allowed it to be released if he didn't approve of it. In other words, Steve Jobs is why the web started out grey!
[Admittedly, grey on black looked great on NeXT boxes because of their high resolution displays and fancy font rendering. Most other systems of the day lacked anti-aliasing and decent fonts, so grey on black looked horrible on them.]
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 9th, 2009
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9:56 pm - fiber cuts today, and how to fix a seized spice grinder motor
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People who destroy base infrastructure are nearly the worst people in the world. Unlike some common thief, they don't gain anything through their actions, unless their goal is to cause extra work and annoyance for average people. Unlike someone with a revenge motive, they inconvenience many, many people, not just their target. Last night between 2-5 AM, someone(s?) cut fiber at two different locations in the bay area, two in San Jose and one in San Carlos.
What does "cutting fiber" mean exactly? Well, when telcos lay fiber optic cables, they typically put down big bundles of it even if they only need a few strands of fiber, because it's more cost efficient. These bundles can be up to the hundreds of strands of fiber. The rest can be used for future expansion or sold to people who need the bandwidth. You've probably heard of "dark fiber"; those are the strands that aren't used.
In last night's incident, at least 5 bundles were cut completely through, with over 500(!) strands of fiber being disconnected. That means around 1000 Gbps of communications may have been disrupted, or the equivalent bandwidth of around 700,000 home DSL lines (assuming zero oversubscription). These lines are used for internet, telephone, cell phone, private networks, and anything else people want to send over fiber. All of this communication was disrupted for the day, or maybe longer, by one bad apple. What a ridiculous waste. AT&T, the owner of these lines, but only one of many users of them, is offering a $100k $250k reward for information leading to the arrest of the troublemaker.
In more entertaining news, today I fixed Linnea's spice grinder . The motor had seized, meaning that when you plug it in and run it, the motor buzzes but doesn't rotate, so the grinding blade doesn't rotate. Many people on amazon seem to have had the same problem with the Krups grinders. Cleaning and lubrication of the motor fixes this in >95% of cases. I unplugged it, then pried open the plastic case to get to the motor. I tested it out by using a screwdriver to rotate the shaft; the shaft only rotated after applying a lot of force. I cleaned out the insides, then applied light oil to the bearing (where the rotating and nonrotating pieces meet), let it soak for a couple hours, then tested it out. The motor could now spin more freely. Getting the plastic cover back on was the hard part--the plastic had odd clips that were near impossible to get back on, so i ended up using lab tape to secure the case.
The motor on this grinder is rated at 200W, a large amount of power for such a small motor. That's nearly as much as some stand mixers . Be careful, and don't run it with the cover off.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
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12:06 am - Three Movies set in Manhattan [possible minor spoilers]
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1. Manhattan - Not much to say here; if you like Woody Allen, you'll like it. The only thing that puzzled me was why Mariel Hemingway's career seems to have been a string of mediocre movies and TV since...(Superman IV?)
2. Enchanted - Surprisingly entertaining in its disneyish mockery of disney princessness. Needed more music! I miss musicals. A bit slow towards the end.
3. I am Legend - Fun action flick, up until the end. The ending seemed shallow and empty. After watching i knew there must be more to it. I found out that there was an alternate, far more interesting ending, which followed the book more closely. In this alternate ending, we find out that the alpha-vamp was looking for his mate which Will Smith had captured (the one with the butterfly tattoo), and alpha was seeking to free her. Immediately following was the horror as Will Smith looks at his wall of experimental subjects he's killed and discovers that he's the real "Legend", a mass murderer of the planet's dominant sentient species. I can't believe this ending got cut; i would bet that the movie could have been a bigger repeat draw (like say, the sixth sense) with this ending.
Bonus review: Bridge to Terabithia - This was the frowniest book i ever read in my life, and I think i had it blocked out of my memory since elementary school because of that. When i saw the trailer for this movie a couple years ago, i was horrified. WTF did they do, turn this into a bad CGI action animated adventure of stupidity, and ignore the entire story? Luckily, the CGI stuff was only a very minor part of the movie. I feel really, really bad for any parents who brought their kids to the movie only knowing of the trailer (IT'S A TRAP!!!!). Movie--as sad as the book. It makes me sad just thinking about it. Geez.
Back to reading our lovely tax code...
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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shandrew's journal
