Podcast Episode 2

Episode 2 of the podcast is now available. This episode has an Atari theme.

Ballet

I just got back from seeing Oregon Ballet Theatre's Winter Program. I give OBT an A- for this show, but I give the audience a D+. Advice to audience members:

1. You may think you are whispering your opinions about the dance to your neighbor. However, it only seems like whispering to you because you are 100 years old and hard of hearing. ACTUALLY YOU ARE YELLING. I can hear every word of your inane commentary even though I'm sitting two rows ahead of you.
2. The ballet performance is not a type of karaoke lounge. It is not acceptable to sing along with the music, even if you like the songs a lot. At least you were in tune, which is more than I can say for some of the American Idol contestants, but please, shut up.

The only reason the audience didn't get an F was because of the interesting people-watching during intermissions. One young woman in the crowd looked like a prettier version of Ashlee Simpson, and wore an outfit that combined fishnet stockings with furry boots, and made it work. (Who knows, maybe that was Ashlee Simpson and she looks better in person.) Another audience member wore a black and red long-sleeved dress with bold yellow stripes down the arms. It was like a cross between a Mondrian painting and Bruce Lee's tracksuit from Game of Death, and I mean that in the best possible way. It was one of the most stunning dresses I have ever seen.

Anyway, the ballet itself was very good, especially the new piece choreographed by Trey McIntyre to music by Henry Cowell.

I am on a podcast

I am one of the three hosts of the new podcast: Twitch Asylum Video Game Radio. We discuss both modern games like Kameo (shown above) and classic video gaming. We also laugh at each other a lot and don't take ourselves too seriously. Enjoy.

And in other news, I've decided that I like to watch Olympic curling.

Lost's Final Secret

I have a new theory about Lost. Read about it here.

Iron Monkey's Rule of the Broken Bell Curve

Normally you aren't dealing with "the average person" or a "cross-section of people," you are dealing with the type of person who would get into the type of situation you're both in.

The percentage of soccer fans at a soccer game is much higher than the percentage of soccer fans in the general population. This example is easy to understand, but what is harder to remember is that almost every real-life situation works the same way, and involves a nonrandom and to some degree self-selected group. We do not live inside carefully controlled studies.

San Cristobal

Part of the San Cristobal fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico

The power of four

From this:

Four jobs I've had: in essence I've only had variations on one job -- computer programmer -- so I can't really answer this with four.

Four movies I can watch over and over: Groundhog Day (or maybe it just feels like I keep watching it over and over), Blade Runner, Casablanca, The Fifth Element (more light, Azeez!)

Four places I've lived: Lake Oswego, OR; Portland, OR; Northfield, MN; Tokyo, Japan.

Four TV shows I love: Veronica Mars, Firefly, Black Adder, Battlestar Galactica (the new one)

Four places I’ve vacationed: Puerto Rico, London, Paris, Costa Rica

Four of my favorite dishes: Okonomiyaki, pad Thai, kung pao shrimp, spaghetti putanesca.

Four sites I visit daily: I don't think there are any I visit daily, but I often visit Clara, Michelle, Clive, and Snarkfest.

Four places I would rather be right now: At a party consisting of all the bloggers I read, at a warm sunny beach, Las Vegas, London.

Four bloggers I am tagging: Gretchen, Michelle, Clara, Starbuck

It's Just A Virus

to catch the Virus
That seems to be
The undercurrent of my insanity

-- Sarah Fimm

Now they're saying that a virus may cause obesity. You know what? I think that eventually we'll find out that everything is caused by a virus. Impoliteness? Virus. Using the word "like" in every sentence? That's a virus too. I imagine the following future conversation:

Doctor: I'm sorry, but you've tested positive for HLV, the Human Laziness Virus.

Me: Oh . . . man . . . that's, well, it's awful, but it explains so much lately . . . is there a cure?

Doctor: No. Well, actually, yes, there is a cure, but you'd be too lazy to take it, so for all practical purposes there is no cure.

Me: I understand, doctor. Thank you for your honesty.

Doctor: You'll have to take precautions to not infect others. HLV is primarily transmitted through saliva, but boring anecdotes can also be a carrier.

Me: OK. I'll try to be responsible.

Peeling Bananas Monkey Style

As a follow-up to this post, I tried peeling a banana the opposite way that I normally do. That is, peeling from the non-stem end. Memer said in a comment, "how could that possibly be easier? it's not simple societal convention that we use the stem end -- it's easier to get a good rip on the thing, innit?" That is pretty much what I thought before I tried it.

To peel from the non-stem end, you have to squeeze the tip of the banana until it splits, then peel. So it feels more like two steps compared to grabbing the stem and peeling all in one motion. However, it does seem to peel more "cleanly" this way. Then when you eat the banana, the stem makes a good handle to hold it with, which makes it feel kind of like eating a popsicle.

Is it easier? I don't know -- "easier" is probably the wrong choice of words, because both ways are very easy.

Is it better? Maybe. Holding the stem end while you eat the banana does seem a little bit better. But it is not a huge difference.

What interests me the most is that many of us have never even tried it, just like the coffee thing. We are creatures of habit.

San Sebastian Street Festival

I happened to be in San Juan, Puerto Rico during the San Sebastian Street Festival in Old San Juan. This is a huge party, like Mardi Gras, and people come from all over the world to see it. During the day, some of the streets were packed with crowds like this. At night, it was even more crowded. There was music day and night, with both staged events and impromptu concerts on the street by groups of drummers. And of course there was plenty of rum and beer to drink.

Only one road leads from the mainland to Old San Juan. This helped make it easier to defend the city hundreds of years ago, but now it creates horrible traffic jams when everyone arrives for the festival. At first the taxi driver refused to take me there. "We'll never get there, and I'll get stuck and won't be able to get back." He only changed his mind when I told him I would settle for being dropped off somewhere near there, as close as he could reasonably get.

The festival was a lot of fun. It is one of those things you have to see to believe.

Travel with Tevas

One travel trick I've learned is that in tropical climates, Teva "Cross Terra" sandals are indispensable. They are comfortable enough that I can walk in them all day long for miles and miles. They have enough stability and traction for hiking on a muddy trail. They can be worn while wading or even swimming and they won't come off -- so they can protect your feet from sharp rocks and other hazards.

I've only had one of these sandals come off my feet once, and that was during a big wipeout while kayak-surfing. But because they float, I was able to retrieve the sandal. They keep your feet cool in hot weather. They can be washed when they get dirty, and they dry quickly. I took them on my trip to Puerto Rico and wore them every day.

Of course, I'm not suggesting being the "ugly American" and wearing the sandals to dinner at a posh restaurant. I do take dress shoes along, too. But for outdoor activities they are great.

San Juan, Puerto Rico

This was the view from my hotel room balcony in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I spent the last week. The structure is part of an old fort that was used to defend the city hundreds of years ago. Though it was about 80 degrees there, it was very windy a lot of the week, and alternated between sun and rain. Still, it was great to get away from Portland for a little while.

This was actually the view from my third hotel room in the same hotel. My first one was flooded from a burst pipe in the floor above, the second was too small, but this third one was jussssst right! Once I got to this room, it made up for the first two, and the hotel was very good about letting me switch.

And Bananas

It turns out that not only have I been pouring coffee the wrong way all this time, I've been peeling bananas wrong, too! Monkeys -- who should be the experts in this -- peel bananas from the end opposite the stem, not from the stem end, and supposedly this way is easier. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, though.

Fake

Stacy at I Am A Fish has posted some cool stuff about Las Vegas lately. This reminds me, when I mention Las Vegas, about 50% of the time someone will reply with a comment like, "Oh, but Las Vegas is so fake."

Well, this may be shocking, but all art is fake. Michelangelo's David is fake -- that is not a naturally occurring rock formation. Through completely artificial means, it was modified to resemble something (a man) that it clearly is not. Ah, the deception, ah, the lack of authenticity!

But it gets worse. Evidently, many people will pay money to travel thousands of miles to look at this fake, artificial man, even though the same people would not be willing to go to the same trouble or expense to look at an actual man. It's as if these people actually prefer the fake to the real!

But the worship of fakery does not end there. For example, a painting of sunflowers by Van Gogh sold for $49 million. But who would pay that much for fake, 2-dimensional sunflowers, when you can buy a nice arrangement of the real thing for $34.95? And I think that even includes delivery!

Say what you want about the abstract expressionists, but their paint wasn't pretending to be a horse or a bowl of fruit or a hooker.

So yes, Las Vegas is fake, totally fake, just like some of the most valuable things in the world. And in a delightful twist, one of the casinos actually contains a fine art museum. Some visitors must think that the casino is fake but the museum is real. Is there really such a difference between paint arranged to resemble a Russian Tsar and a building interior arranged to resemble St. Mark's Square?

The First Letter

You've probably had an experience like this: you're trying to remember someone's last name, and you think to yourself, "I don't remember what it is, but I know it starts with a K."

This seemed weird to me the first time I really thought about it. If you don't know the name, how do you know what letter it starts with? But our memory may be more like a network of associations than a computer memory that stores exact data. So this no longer puzzles me. Instead, I've been thinking about the following variations . . .

How many times have you had this experience? You're trying to remember someone's name, and you think, "I don't remember what it is, but I know the second to the last letter is a T." Probably never, right? What about, "I don't remember what it is, but I know it had three vowels and six consonants." Never, right? Why is that? What is so special about the first letter, that we are more likely to associate a word with its first letter than with some other fact about the word? Is this a learned behavior, based on all those "Z is for Zebra" type of phrases we saw when we were learning to read?

When we try to remember a complex phrase, we might make up an acronym out of the first letters of the words, but we wouldn't try to remember the pattern of the last letters of the words. Why not?

When Japanese people forget words, do they often remember the first kanji but not the second or third? I don't know the answer to this, but somehow I doubt that it works that way. It seems like something to do with alphabetic writing.

Pouring Coffee

I recently discovered a new and improved way to pour a cup of coffee. If you put the cream in the mug first, then pour the coffee in, you don't have to stir it because the act of pouring the coffee in on top of the cream blends the mixture. So this saves a step, and saves dirtying a spoon or using one of those plastic stirring rods.

When I discovered this, I was shocked that in all the years I have been drinking coffee, this had never occurred to me before, and I'd never seen anyone do it. Most people pour the coffee, then the cream, then stir it.

I guess we learn how coffee should be served by watching what happens in restaurants. But in restaurants they can't do it the best way because they don't know how much cream you want. So restaurants have to use the less optimal method, and we all imitate it. Then it never occurs to us to try any other way, which is kind of funny.

I told a friend about this, and she said her father had taught her this before he died, and she had been just as surprised as I was. I thought it was very funny that this coffee-pouring thing was like a family secret handed down from generation to generation. No wonder I had not heard of it before. But now the secret is out.

Gadget Showdown: iPod vs. Sony PSP

If I had to have only one of these, I would definitely choose the iPod, since I use it every day. I have a car adapter for it, so I can listen as I drive to and from work. The PSP is a cool gadget, and great for watching movies on airplanes, but I don't travel often enough for that to be a big factor. The games are fairly good, but most of the time when I have free time to play games, I am at home anyway and may as well play something on Playstation 2.

Bringing Freedom And Democracy

My friend told me that one time in Japan he was approached by an older Japanese man who asked him if he could speak Japanese. My friend said yes, and then the man asked if he was an American. He answered yes again. The man then said, "Thank you for occupying my country and bringing freedom and democracy."

At this point in the story, I asked my friend whether he thought the guy was serious, or was just messing with him. He said that he seemed quite sincere. I told him he should have replied, "hey, no problem, come and occupy ours any time."

The Tale of the Haunted Editor

In the last few weeks, while using the Emacs editor, I noticed that every so often, weird random errors would creep into my documents. It didn't make sense that they were just typing errors, because I would have noticed them right away, instead of much later. I began to try out different theories. Were my coworkers playing a joke, and inserting strange stuff into my files while I was away from my desk? This seemed very unlikely. Besides, it happened even when I hadn't left my desk. Was there some bug in the software? I couldn't believe that there would be such a serious bug that corrupted documents like this, that only happened to me. And I had used this software for years without a problem. Could it be trouble with my keyboard? Maybe my computer was haunted?

Today, finally, I figured out the problem. I had been using the mouse wheel to scroll around in the document, and occasionally while turning the mouse wheel I would press it a little too hard. This would result in a "middle button click" which was defined to paste whatever was in the buffer into the current point in the document. But since I was in the middle of scrolling, I would not notice the paste since it would quickly scroll off the screen. Later, when I came back to that section of the document, I would notice the problem. I redefined "middle button click" to do nothing, and the ghost in the editor was banished.

Rock el Casbah

Rachid Taha does a great cover of Rock The Casbah by The Clash.