I felt like I experienced a lot of new stuff this weekend. Some of it was funny, some sad, some weird, but all worth mentioning. I shall do that now.

• I saw a Corvette ZR1 on the freeway going under the speed limit and being passed by everyone. What’s the point of a super fast car like that if you go slow?
• Fast food is disgusting. I rarely, rarely ever eat it these days, but it’s pretty much all you can eat on the road. We stopped occasionally at sit down places, but Denny’s is not much better. My stomach and body hates me after this weekend. So god damned gross.
• Big trucks take up a lot of room. Trucks that swerve constantly take up even more room. Seeing a drunk driver on the road in a massive truck is something quite scary to behold. Tried calling it in to the Washington state patrol but got a voicemail message. Hopefully he gets enough complaints that someone takes his license away.
• Small towns have people that look the same regardless of how far apart said towns are. It’s kind of creepy.
• We pulled off on a random stop to go to the bathroom, saw the creepiest motel I’ve ever seen as the only thing on the stop, and kept driving. Both cars did this without having to say anything to each other.
• Creating a whirlpool in a full sized pull with 17 people is pretty damn fun. Going against the current is near impossible.
• Hangovers and a tweaked neck do not go together. It makes you pretty much worthless to pack your stuff up the next day.
• Hypoglycemia is not something you fuck with. It will leave you on the bathroom floor crawled up into a ball if you aren’t careful.
• Mormons have some crazy rules. No Sesame Street, Pokemon, Harry Potter, or anything like that. That list also includes caffeinated beverages. That doesn’t stop them from deviating from those rules and being fun though.
• My roommate has a neck piercing. I’ve still never seen it, but apparently it happened a month ago? The things you learn from Facebook.
• Salt Lake City has no style. All of the buildings look different and it’s a bit strange.
• There is no place called Glow Putt in Salt Lake City. Despite what Google might tell you or give you directions to.
• Sometimes people roll over and cuddle with you even though you’re not their significant other.
• Sweet tea vodka is delicious. I knew this before, but got to experience it again.
• My alone time is absolutely necessary even on a 3 day trip with people I love spending time with.

Overall it was a ton of fun. I hopefully won’t make another trip that long anytime soon though. I drove all yesterday since I can’t sleep in cars very well and am still slightly tired today.

36oz Mr. and Mrs. T’s sweet and sour mix (DO NOT GET THE MARGARITA MIX)
9oz tequila (I use some random gold handle I found at the liquor store, doesn’t need to be expensive)
6oz Citronge
6 limes worth of juice (must be freshly squeezed)

Mix all together, then pour into a glass over ice. Deliciousness ensues. I must credit my dad with this recipe as he tried many, many different recipes before perfecting this one. It’s easily my all time favorite recipe for drinks.

I’ll also be bringing two books: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel and Coders at Work, both of which I’m excited to read. I finally finished The People’s History of the United States of America, which was fucking amazing. I highly, highly recommend it to everyone that wishes to learn about the United States and how it treated the everyday people throughout the years (hint: not very well).

For my year of something I picked to meditate and stretch every day (at least when it’s possible). It’s been pretty nice so far and I really like taking the time out to do it. I should make a longer post about it, but this will do for now.

I’ve started programming at home again on a side project with a couple of friends. It’s pretty damn fun and has gotten me into some aspects of programming I don’t get to do at my job. Learning about mercurial, boost, SDL, configuration libraries, openGL/AL, EASTL, Lua vs Javascript vs Python, and tons of other stuff is quite fun. It’s expanded my knowledge a lot already and I expect it to continue to do so.

It’s fucking hot in Seattle these days (in the mid 90s), which is very welcome compared to how it’s been in the past month or so. Summer is finally here! I went rope climbing out at Exit 38 yesterday and had a blast. I haven’t done that in a couple of years and it scared the shit out of me even though I was climbing a 5.9/10a. Easy, easy routes and yet I was shaking because I was so nervous. Kind of a funny feeling, but I’m sure I’ll get over it once I do it more and/or fall a couple of times. Also, apparently chalk helps, but I also forgot to bring that. Next time for sure.

I bought a new computer a month or so ago. I’m loving it more than the 6 year old one I had previously that didn’t work and even more than the several month old hand me down I got from Shea that smelled of cat piss every time I turned it on which didn’t work either. I’ve been playing a bit of Heroes of Newerth lately, which is a DOTA clone. I’m not addicted to it (like I was before), but it’s kind of nice to be playing something like this again. I missed it!

I finished playing Heavy Rain a couple of weeks ago and was supremely impressed with it. Talking with Dan Miya and Dalin about it last week cemented the fact that I think it’s an incredibly well made game. I’ll probably never go back to play it to see all the alternate endings and stories I could see, but I appreciate the fact that they’re there.

The world cup has been pretty awesome to watch and although I haven’t watched every single game, I’ve probably watched about 75% of them. I’ve really enjoyed all of the recent games as well. Some of them were some serious nail biters that were incredibly awesome to watch. I can’t wait to see Spain play the Netherlands for the final as neither country has ever won a world cup before. Should be good!

That’s it for now. As always seems to happen when I need to pack, I’m procrastinating. I’ll probably do it last minute, as always, and just go to sleep now after meditating/stretching. Good old hatred of packing.

So far I’ve:

• Given up alcohol for a year
• Become a vegetarian for a year
• Given up my car and taken public transportation/walked for a year
• Not used my computer at home for entertainment purposes for a year

I’ve really enjoyed (for the most part) doing these year of nothings because I feel like they’ve directly caused me to grow and expand my horizons. I’ve been trying to think of what I’m going to be doing next and I haven’t fully decided yet. June 11th is coming up soon, and so far, I have this list to pick from:

• Meditate for 15-30 minutes every day
• Force myself to stop procrastinating/skipping things I know I need to do (floss, shave every day, doing dishes, cleaning room, etc)
• Stretch for 15 minutes every day (with the intention of being able to do the splits after a year)
• Volunteer at least once a month
• Program something meaningful in a year

From this list, it looks like I’ll be giving up on the idea of the year of nothing (essentially giving something up), because I can’t think of anything that I’d really want to give up anymore. I’m kind of hitting the bottom of the barrel with it and if I were to choose something, I don’t think it’d be as beneficial as something else. Unfortunately, I’m not sure which I like best. Some seem easy (the volunteering one), some are vague (program something meaningful), some seem solely dedicated to a singular goal (meditate/stretch), and the last is a bit silly. I do believe these would all help me, but how difficult would they be and what is the overall benefit of doing it? I guess what I’m looking for is the max benefit/difficulty ratio, although I don’t think I’d shy away from something difficult if it also had a huge benefit.

Does anyone have any ideas that I’d be able to use? Remember, I work better with hard-ish goals/rules rather than soft ones. Perhaps it’s time to try to change that, but I’d also really rather not fail because I’m trying to do something against my personality type.

I took the water taxi to west Seattle yesterday and rollerskated along the water. It was gorgeous but windy. I hadn’t ever seen Seattle from this vantage point before except in pictures so figured I’d capture one of my own.

All the same, this fascinates me. I’m really curious now how many people have died doing free solos. I might have to look it up.

Listened to them a lot on my trip home this past weekend and it was a perfect fit.

A picture I took at work.

It was quite painful, but it was more just surprising than that. I’ve fallen a lot in climbing and never really hurt myself more than landing on my ankle strange. Shit, I’ve hurt myself worse in soccer and baseball up until now. I lay there on the ground (having screamed twice, once when it happened and once when I realized what had happened), but I was generally ok. I had thought at first that I had a compound fracture as I felt and saw it pop out, but didn’t know if it had broken the skin or not. Luckily, when I felt it, it hadn’t.

The paramedics were called and showed up in under five minutes since they were so close to the gym. Everyone watched on as I got bandaged up and then I walked myself to the stretcher. It was kind of amusing almost; I was bullshitting with all the people I climb with about how I had been so close and I just shouldn’t have fallen and then I would have finished the route. After I had elevated my head with my rope bag I wasn’t even really in that much pain (no pain killers either). The paramedics took me to the ER where I met a bunch of cool and friendly people that helped me get all settled. I think they were surprised I was in such good shape and a happy mood. I wasn’t even really bummed as I knew it could have been much worse. At one point I was asked by a doctor for the third or fourth time if I was allergic to anything and I replied with “only doctors” to which I got a good grin. They gave me an IV, some slight pain meds (I wasn’t in that much pain) and then gave me something else to knock me out completely as they reset my elbow. I took a bunch of x-rays and luckily I didn’t break any bones at all. I also had feeling and movement in my fingers still (something they were also surprised with).

I got discharged shortly after that and went to get some beer and vicoden. I had asked the doctor if I could have a beer and he looked at me and said “You can either have beer or vicoden, but not both.” That night I had a nice beer at 12:30am after Luis (my climbing friend) dropped me off back home.

I was out of commission for quite a while only working 4 days the next week and barely being able to type with one hand. You wouldn’t believe what doing everyday things with your non-dominant hand is like when you’re forced to do it. Wiping your ass with your left hand is really, really weird.

Anyway, shoot three weeks forward and I’ve been to see an orthopedic surgeon once, been to physical therapy four times, and I’m almost back to normal. I can bend my right elbow within 10 degrees of straight and tighten it up 135 degrees (I’m not sure what normal is for that one). I can also pick up most things with it, the only thing I really can’t do is quick motions with my right arm or hitting things with my elbow. I’m expected to make a full recovery I believe, and be climbing again in 2-3 more weeks (I’ll know more this Thursday when I go back to see the orthopedic surgeon).

What’s interesting to me, in all of this, is how much this is going to cost me. From looking at the website for United Health Care (that I get through Warner Brothers), I’m going to have to pay for $241 of the $2970 the whole thing cost. I’m sure there will be more costs as I’m not completely done yet, but 10% isn’t too bad I guess. I’d rather have it be 100% covered (since I’ve probably paid them more money since I’ve been working than this cost), but at least I didn’t have to pay for the whole thing.

If I were to dislocate my elbow every 5 years (roughly how long I’ve been climbing), I’d still do it in an instant. I love doing it so much that even this much pain and annoyance is worth it. Here’s to five more years before I really fuck myself up again :).

I got a new nexus one phone the other day. I have to say it’s pretty nice so far even though it takes a bit getting used to. I’m making this post from my phone, so hopefully if this isn’t too hard I’ll do it every once in awhile. Here’s the first picture off of the phone. My nice, clean room.

Please read Napoleon Beazley‘s last words. They touched me deeply.

The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. But the person that committed that act is no longer here – I am.

I’m not going to struggle physically against any restraints. I’m not going to shout, use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I’m not only upset, but I’m saddened by what is happening here tonight. I’m not only saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same shameful mistake.

Read the rest

YES. Love their videos. So fantastic.

Awesome, truly awesome.

Aside from Book 11, none of the recent books had been much good. They were still in the world that Jordan created, and stuff still occasionally happened, but they didn’t have the pizazz that the first seven or so books had. In fact, one of the books started before the other book ended and didn’t catch up until 250 pages later. It always seemed like the story was heading towards the end, but at such a leisurely pace that it was almost painful.

Brandon Sanderson’s writing for The Wheel of Time is not 100% like Jordan’s, but he said that was going to be the case. It is, however, amazing. I haven’t been enthralled with a book like this since forever. Jordan built up the world and the story, and now Sanderson is going to finish it. He got a long way there, tying up many, many storylines and even creating some more of his own.

I don’t want to put any spoilers in this review, but suffice it to say the book is fantastic. There are, of course, several things I didn’t care for, but that’s going to be true of every series that is taken over by anyone else other than the principal author. At least he didn’t fuck up the series like the Dune son did (man were those terrible books even if they were prequels).

If you’re a fan of the series at all, I highly, highly suggest getting back into it and picking this book up. Good stuff. I can’t wait for the next two books, which look to be slated for November of this year and November of next year. That’s an outrageous pace, but it looks like he’s going to be able to stick to it.

Then there comes a video done by RJD2 (my second favorite musical artist behind BT).

Coincidence? I think not. Also, both RJD2 and BT are coming out with a new album in the next month. YAY!

Also, the song by Kid Cudi at the end is really awesome. Gave me the chills.

After that, I also suggest you read this article on how the IGF games get judged. I like that their process is fairly open even if I don’t necessarily agree with the choices they make. Can’t wait for GDC to see who actually wins all of the prizes!

Fallout 3
Such a fantastic game. The depth of this game and the storyline possibilities astounded me. There was such a massive amount of content and stuff to do that the world never seemed to get old. The weapons were fun, the bad guys were awesome, and I just wanted to do more. So much so that I put 50 hours into it and then got into the “I don’t want to beat it because it’ll be over mode”. I finally had to force myself to finish it because I knew that if I didn’t I’d probably put the game down and never end up beating it. If you love RPGs and good character interactions, this is the game you really, really need to play. Also, the music was fantastic. I love, love, love that era’s music and so kept the radio running all the time even though it just played the same 30-40 songs over and over and over again.

Mirror’s Edge
I loved this game more than I probably should have. The art style is nothing short of beautiful, the movement of the character is fantastic, and the music and atmosphere really made this game fun to play sometimes. Note the sometimes part. Any part in which you had to run from people shooting guns at you made me want to blow my brains out. I really think that people should pick up this game to experience it though, you can probably find it for pretty cheap now. I loved the time trial DLC stuff as well, but then again, I’m a whore for time trials. I borrowed this from work, but I’ll probably end up buying it some time just because I had such fun with it.

Shadow Complex
Modern day Super Metroid. If that doesn’t sell you, you never played one of the best games ever and need to first go play Super Metroid. Absolutely loved everything about this game except for the story, which is atrociously bad (to the point where it’s more funny than bad). Best $20 game I’ve spent money on since Katamari Damacy.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
One of the most complete and well executed games I’ve ever played. Everything fit well together from the voice acting (god I love the guy who does the Joker’s voice, it’s so fucking creepy), to the ambiance, to the gameplay, to the outstanding combat mechanic, to the challenges at the end. Please, please go play this game. Just be warned ahead of time that it may corrupt your save game file causing you to lose everything you’ve ever done in the game. Yep, it happened to me. Yes, it’s common. If that hadn’t happened, I’d probably still be playing it. I’d say this game is even more complete than Fallout 3 and reminds me a lot of the feeling the Ratchet and Clank series gives me. Just pure awesome.

Trials HD
This is nothing other than a time trials game in which you’re a person on a motorcycle traversing insane courses using nothing but the bike and some awesome physics. I’ve played this game an absolute ton and love it. Most people will probably like it for a bit and tire, but my god do I love this stuff. I played it so much sometimes that my shoulder muscle would hurt from holding the right trigger (the gas button) constantly.

If you’re curious, here’s my list of games I’ve beaten. It doesn’t include games like Trials HD since you can’t really beat it, but I think I’ll probably remedy that this year and include all games I’ve played. Hopefully that’ll be a more accurate representation of everything I’ve played since I certainly have at least 5 more games to add to that list that just really don’t have endings.

Can’t wait for this to come out. I absolutely love that game. I’ve gotten gold on every single track except two of the tournaments (which take fucking forever and are soooooo unforgiving). Love it to death. Just wish people would play it against me so I could have some competition. SAM I AM LOOKING AT YOU.

Pretty cool little short. Dan will absolutely love it. Apparently the guy who did it got a movie contract deal similar to what happened with the District 9 guy (which also started out as a short on youtube).

Good stuff.

That being said, I think Kevin Smith’s analysis on the series is spot on. I highly suggest you watch this as the man has a way with words and explanations.

Too bad he’s not alive anymore. The man had a way with words.

I’ve been loving Karsh Kale recently. The combination of Indian (dot, not feather) music with electronic is a pretty awesome sound. Another of my favorites is this:

Both are great and very different from stuff I’ve been listening to lately. It gives me a great adventure type of feeling, like I want to go to far off lands and explore.

I’ve been thinking of picking up making posts again on this blog after a large hiatus. Hopefully I’ll have the time again now that I’m not crunching ridiculous hours and can relax again.

-Yoda

Well, it’s that time of year when they are touring with their newest films on show. I went to one of these a couple of years ago and it’s fantastic. Watching these films on the big screen is pretty amazing. So, I invite all of you to come see it with me on September 17th and the Neptune Theature. It’s $12, but man is it worth it.

If you doubt me, watch the trailer and then come crawling back begging to go.

Anyway, the latest one I found out about is the Corset Piercing. I’d suggest you not go look on google if you’re squeamish, but this picture does a pretty good job of explaining what it is without grossing people out.

You can get it on your legs, side of the rib cage, I’ve even seen it on people’s necks (ouch!). It’s just a bunch of captured rings (like what I have for earrings) that are done in a row and then ribbon threaded through the rings. Probably doesn’t even hurt as bad as you think either.

So I guess my question is, is there any benefit to separate bathrooms? I’ve been searching the internet trying to find out if there are studies, rules, or anything like that, but the only thing I can find is that if you have a male only bathroom you need a female only bathroom as well nearby.

I can understand locker rooms because people feel uncomfortable changing in front of the opposite sex, but again, what if someone is gay or lesbian? I’d almost much rather have coed everything, because maybe then our culture wouldn’t be so freaked out about the naked body. I read that some colleges have coed bathrooms and that they seem to work out fine, it’s just odd to me that they don’t really exist outside of that. I do have to say I find it funny when I see two separate bathrooms that are just only a single room. Many guys will use the girl’s bathroom and vice versa. I also find it strange that at baseball games or other places where there are large groups of people the girl’s bathroom seems to always have a line while the guy’s doesn’t. Why not help them out by allowing them to use whatever bathroom?

People are so weird about nakedness and bodily functions. As the book says, everyone poops and everyone’s shit stinks. We should really stop complicating things.

I’d really like to get some more widgets/plugins working correctly (the book reading one stopped working with an update to the latest wordpress backend), but that’ll have to be sometime later. The only reason I ended up doing this huge change was because I had to come into work today. I was supposed to only be here 30 minutes or so, but something went horribly wrong last night and suffice it to say I’m having to play the waiting game for the data to cook again before I can test and check in what I was supposed to check in 3+ hours ago.

Either way the blog looks much more profession (in my opinion) and cleaner, which I’m always a fan of. Now only if I could get my Portfolio updated to not be from 2007 when I graduated college. That’s going to take quite a bit more work though.

How can you not think that car looks nothing short of amazing? I can’t help but think that the car is a huge, giant, waste of money, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to drive one. If the picture doesn’t do anything for you, how about the tech in the car itself?

The trickest bits on the 458 are in the aero department. For starters, the car generates 140 kilograms of downforce at 200 clicks, which is both impressive and necessary for a car with capabilities like this. The nose features small aeroelastic winglets that generate downforce and, as speed rises, deform to reduce the section of the radiator inlets and cut drag. In other words, Ferrari’s latest features a skin that will bend and twist like the wing of a bird. Note that this is not some crude wing that deploys at a given speed, this a body panel that literally changes its shape as the speed of the car increases.

Sex. In vehicle form. I want one and I feel dirty about it, but I just don’t care.

This kind of prize really fascinates me. Netflix got this on the stupid cheap, even considering they are going to pay out $1,000,000 to the winning team. If you think that a good programmer is going to make $100,000+ a year and it took several years to actually accomplish, that’s going to be at least 1/3rd of the cost for a single programmer. They had teams of people doing this and would never have made it to the end without many, many smart people. Like I said, they got this on the cheap.

It benefits both the community that uses Netflix and the company’s image. Plus, the math behind this is just fucking cool. I read a bit about it and it blows my mind.

However, it seems that I’ve only touched the tip of the beer iceberg. I found a best beer list of 2009 that looks fantastic. I’ve only had a couple of beers on that list, but I’ll have to try them out I think.

On a somewhat related note, I’ve wanted to get a six pack for pretty much ever since I knew what one was. I always thought I’d try to get it, but it was always a half ass attempt whenever I did it. I’ve decided now to go full bore for it. No drinking at all until I get one (or get close enough to the point where I think my body type won’t be capable of getting one). I’ve lost a bunch of weight so far and have really toned up. However, it’s going to take quite a while (a couple more months at the very least), so I think I’m going to want to celebrate after I finish.

Anyone up for amassing a bunch of the beers off this list and trying them out with me after I’m done? Should be fun :).

Update: It looks like Twitpic is down and so the feed is coming from YFrog instead. I’m guessing the site was being hammered by this feed and blocked it. That’s kind of lame, but I guess I understand.

Poker books are interesting to me because a lot of what you learn is that logic and steady play, more often than not, will make you end up positive at the end of the night. What’s just so hard to convey, however, is how exactly to do that. There’s essentially two sides: the theory and the practice of playing poker. Theory is all well and fine until you start holding the cards, fiddling with the chips, watching and conversing with the other players, and playing the game of poker. One of the hardest things I have problems with when I play poker is staying alert at all times. Make sure that every single thing you do makes logical sense and that it isn’t an Orange Belt move (something we coined at our games). It’s very, very mentally taxing and I’ll notice myself slipping away from that logic if I’m not feeling well, am tired, hungry, pissed, etc.

So taking that aside, the reason I liked this book so much was that you could see how Hansen’s logic worked. It was cold, calculated logic that won him the tournament. That, and a bit of luck. Doing the math on the amount of all-ins that he did to win the tournament is a bit frightening. I don’t have the book in front of me, but if I remember correctly, he had something like 12 all ins or so that were for his entire stack. If someone had sucked out on him (a very real statistical possibility), that would have ended his tournament play regardless of whether it was the right play in the grand scheme of things or not. In almost all of his plays, I readily agreed with his assessment of what he did in the tournament. He, of course, had some crazy hands (going all in with A high on the turn or river), but overall it was played incredibly well.

It’s made me think a lot about how I approach poker and play it. There are essentially two modes that I can play it: socially for fun ($5 buyin or something I really don’t care about) and more strategically for the game and for real money (anything else). For fun is whatever, but if I really want to get good at my game, I have to think logically about every single hand, pay attention to what everyone is doing even when I’m not in the hand, and flex those poker mental muscles. It takes a lot of practice, but I really do believe that this book has helped me push myself towards the end goal of being a better poker player.

Unfortunately, I really dislike their take on the <Audio> and <Video> tags that are being proposed for HTML 5. Here is a good writeup by the webmonkey guys (which always get linked by the Wired guys) talking about why it’s a bad idea. The Ian Hickson of the W3C says:

I considered requiring Ogg Theora support in the spec, since we do have three implementations that are willing to implement it, but it wouldn’t help get us true interoperability, since the people who are willing to implement it are willing to do so regardless of the spec, and the people who aren’t are not going to be swayed by what the spec says.

There is no browser right now that’s 100% compliant with HTML 4 and CSS 2. Why would you expect support to be there for 100% of the browsers before you put it into a new spec? There is a serious problem with the way that audio and video is played on the internet right now. There’s no unified way and so you get things like stupid flash, quicktime, real player, wmv and other types of players that are just annoying, broken, or poorly written. I trust browsers (or at least chrome, firefox, opera, and safari) to do it better than the web designers of the world. If you’ve updated to Firefox 3.5 (and you really should), then you can check out Ogg Theora built into the browser. Not only does it not steal your cursor/keyboard presses like flash does, but it’s a free, open codec. Anyone can compress or decompress it without having to buy software from Adobe, Apple, or anyone else. Open Formats are so much better. They may not be the best, but the portability and accessibility of them (for me) make them infinitely better.

I really hope the W3C changes its mind and includes official support for <Audio> and <Video> in the HTML 5 spec, but I’m not holding my breath.

I love what Valve has started here with collecting and organizing all of this data. They supply the hooks to the servers and collect much of the data themselves too. This has allowed them to design better maps that are more fun, more balanced, and less frustrating to both sides. I fully approve of this type of data collection for awesome purposes.

Anyway, aside from that pie in the sky stuff, they really are interesting reads. The first is about how carriers have started saying that the internet is posing a threat to them because of how large videos are and how much it costs them to constantly stream them. That’s why they want to start putting caps on people so they can only download certain amounts instead of this fake “unlimited” that they have now (which is really bullshit because if you download a ton they’ll turn off your service and make you call them only to tell you to stop doing it even though it’s unlimited). What’s really stupid is that their profits have been growing, their costs have been getting cheaper, and their claims don’t match up. So a freshman legislator is looking to ban this stupid practice (go Eric Massa!).

The second is about how the FCC is going to examine phone lock in (you buy a phone from Cingular and can’t use it at Verizon). Honestly, I hate how we subsidize the phones through the service. It’s a retarded way to do it unless you A) Can’t afford a phone (or the phone you want) or B) Are a phone company. I remember reading a story about how way back in the day when phones in homes became more commonplace, you’d rent them or subsidize them through ma bell and one lady kept her phone for so long it actually ended up costing her something ridiculous like $10,000. Once you decouple the phone from the plan, both should get cheaper as market forces will bring them down. I’ve heard that Europe is that way and I really wish we were too.

The third is how AT&T and Verizon deny they price fix the text messages cost. This is probably the most ridiculous out of all of them. Text messages cost the company 160 bytes of traffic and yet most of them charge $0.20 for a single one off your plan. According to this article that amounts to $1,310 per MB of data. Fucking ridiculous. I don’t know how they could possibly claim with a straight face that they’re not price fixing for that.

Anyway, they’re all good articles and I hope that the companies all have to change their lying, thieving ways. I wish a telecom or utility company would come along that didn’t suck big, giant, huge donkey balls.

Seriously though, next time you go walking in Seattle start counting how many cigarette butts you see on the ground. I thought about starting to clean them up, but if I did that, I’d never have time to do anything else. I wonder if cleaning up all of the trash would make a significant difference or if people wouldn’t even notice.

I really wish that people who smoked wouldn’t use the city as their trash can. The stupid part is half of the time I see a literal trash can a few feet away. People are just so ingrained that they can smoke and then toss it that they don’t even think twice about it anymore.

Ah well, luckily I don’t tend to get sick more than once or twice a year (and oddly enough almost always on the weekends). I can’t even imagine how my life would be if I were to be hospitalized or something with my goals this year. That would truly be interesting.

I have been playing a bunch of Mirror Edge’s speed runs and time trials though. I think I like them better than the actual game itself. Kind of sad really. I’ve gotten pretty damn good, but I’m not nearly as good as the guys on top (they do some insane shit).

I’ve had this book review sitting in the hopper for a while now to the point where I don’t have the book fresh in my mind anymore unfortunately :(. Suffice it to say I did enjoy it. The book was written in a friendly manner so it was easy to digest, even when talking about somewhat complicated medical ideas. Some small things I remembered from the book:

• Robert White is crazy. Transplanting heads of monkeys and having it work crazy.
• If you fall out of an airplane and hit water, your clothes are likely to be ripped off of your body by the impact and you’ll be close to naked. You’ll also likely die because at that speed water is nearly as hard as the ground.
• People have serious issues with using whole cadavers for projects (especially things like bullet testing), but for some reason getting parts of cadavers like the torso makes it easier (for both the people testing and for the higher ups stomaching the tests the scientists do).
• A lot of people have problems with cadaver’s hands. For some reason it seems to personify the cadaver.
• There are places where people decompose bodies in different ways to see what happens. They’re called body farms and are crazy. I’d like to go see one sometime.
• The transitional point from being alive to being dead is incredibly hard to pinpoint down. Until 1968 it was thought that if your heart was still beating you were alive. After that date, Harvard scientists said that if you were brain dead, that was the point of death. It didn’t become part of the government’s way of thinking until 1981.
• They’ve used cadavers to see if the Shroud of Turin is actually possible to get by crucifying someone with a cloth over their head

As for me, this book solidified my beliefs on death even more. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. There’s no way to come back and so what you do with my body (which is mine no longer), really doesn’t matter to me. I’d prefer that it goes to save people’s lives (if possible) and then go to science of some sort. If people can better the human race because of my dead body, I’m all for it.

Overall, I really like the parkour aspect of the game. The controls were quite hard to get used to at first (probably because of the retarded control layout scheme), but once I learned what did what, I was able to run and jump all around the world with ease. It was nice to be able to see where I wanted to go and get there with minimal effort and a bunch of bad-assery. There were certainly parts that had me frustrated though, especially earlier on. I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do next, I would fail at doing a jump or climb multiple, multiple times, or I would get shot not knowing where I should go.

Oh the shooting and AI. Let me complain about this for a while. I never actually used any of the weapons (went for the achievement to not shoot anyone and got it fairly easily), but god damn were the guns annoying. The AI in Mirror’s Edge is one of the worst AI’s I’ve played against since way back in the day when people didn’t know how to program AI. They all know exactly where you are 99% of the time even when you’re running away or dodging behind obstacles. Depending on what type of guy they are, they either miss you a lot or hit you damn near every time. The snipers are straight out of MOHAA annoying (by shooting you very far away with no recourse). Overall the AI seemed dumb. It was honestly the worst part of the game. I felt like I was playing against robots and not people trying to capture me. It threw me out of the experience of the game, which really sucked. What’s even worse is when they’re shooting at me I have no time to admire the level or try to do cool shit. I feel like I either have to take them down (which is annoying) or run away (which is what I end up doing).

The story was honestly a turd. It jumped all over the place and didn’t really explain much by the end of it. It’s obviously setting up for the sequel. It’s just a shame that it was pretty lame.

After you beat a section of the game, you’re able to try to time trial or speed run the section. I love speed runs, so this really seemed cool to me. I haven’t spent a lot of time on it so far, but what I have I’ve really enjoyed. They’ve allowed for a TON of different ways through the areas so that I’ll probably be spending a lot of time doing this. They also have a leaderboard which allows you to have a ghost running with you that has the best time. Those fuckers are fast. It’s kind of shitty because they do a lot of stuff that’s really, really hard and if they get ahead of you, it’s really hard to see what they do later on to speed up. It also seems like it’s faster to jump while running instead of just straight running (which is kind of lame).

All in all I enjoyed the game. I borrowed it from my work, but I think if I can pick it up for $15 or so like I’ve seen it at recently that it’ll probably be my perfect price point for it. Roushi has really ruined me with the pricing on games, so I don’t think I could ever purchase a full price game anymore (which is why I’m borrowing so many games from work these days), but I certainly think it’s worth $15. I’m hoping the sequel expands upon the parts I like (the parkour in really open areas without people shooting at me making me have to go fast) and less of the parts I disliked (having to take down tons of people or run through areas with 10 guards at once).

I’m not going to use my computer at home for any entertainment purposes. Right now when I get home, I usually jump onto the computer right away after having been on the computer at work already for 8+ hours. It bothers me because I normally don’t even have anything to do. I browse the web, watch videos, etc. I feel like it’s a complete waste of my time and I’d really rather not do it. I’d rather read, play video games, go out, work out, go to sleep, or pretty much anything else. It’s a huge time sink that doesn’t really do anything for me.

I used to have the same problem with tv, but I stopped watching it and enjoy not watching it so much more than I actually liked sitting in front of the tv. It’s the large reason why I don’t even own a tv or cable.

So anyway, this means that I can’t just sit in front of my computer and dick around. I can still use it for tool like purposes: google maps. looking up directions, checking e-mail, writing posts (such as this), getting recipes, programming, etc. I just can’t dick around on it. I have a feeling it’ll be hard at first, but it’ll get me to do stuff I wouldn’t normally do because I’m lazy. Since I don’t have much else to do in my apartment that is lazy-like, I’m hoping that I’ll stop being lazy and do more :). Not sure if it’ll happen, but here’s hoping!

That is why, when I see this video, it makes me smile. It brings back the child in me. I wish more places had stuff like this. It’s too bad it’s in Japan as I doubt something like this would exist in the US. Too lawyer prone.

These people include Suzanne Summers and Jenny McCarthy. The former talks about how she tries to stay youthful by doing all of these horrendous things to her body that scientists say probably hurt her more than help her. McCarthy talks about how her son’s autism was caused by injections, which is so patently false according to studies done that it’s ridiculous. Their reasoning in believing these things is because “It works for me” and “A mother’s intuition”. Seriously, please don’t take your advice from these people. They’re quack jobs and have no scientific background at all.

Please trust scientists and people who actually know what they’re talking about. It’s really sad when people trust famous people more than scientists for information just because they see them on a seemingly reputable show like Oprah’s, but thems the sticks I guess.

I then proceeded to tell the lady on the other side of the phone that I don’t even own a tv and that I have no use for cable television. She didn’t quite seem to understand what she was supposed to do next. She reiterated the fact that I’m still paying too much and it’d be cheaper if I got the bundle. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I really should have asked her what I was going to do with that bundle that would cost me more in the end if I don’t have anything to hook it up to. Instead I tried to politely get off the phone by saying no thank you.

What a pain in the ass. I’ve had to deal with this kind of crap from every utility company I’ve ever had. Phone, internet, cable, dsl, etc, etc, etc. They don’t want to do me a favor, if they did, they’d tell me when they had deals that would lower my already ridiculously priced internet. Bastards.

I’ve long espoused the benefits of mods that release somewhat regular updates. It’s why I’ve loved DOTA, counter strike, tfc, natural selection, science and industry, and all of the other mods I’ve played over the years. I get bored of games that don’t ever change and love that Valve is continually changing TF2. I don’t always agree with their decisions, but overall I’d say they’ve been pretty good. Up until now, that is.

This latest update they’ve done has been the biggest disappointment to me since finding out the only way to counter an uber is with another uber (that has since been rectified with the invention of the pyro’s bounce blast thank god). They’ve changed the unlocking of new weapons to something that I absolutely despise. The way it used to work was you had to do a certain number of achievements with a class to unlock weapons for that class. The more you play that particular class, the more you’re likely to unlock the new weapons. It’s not a perfect method as it spawned achievement servers for people who really wanted the weapons, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I at least understood what Valve was trying to do with it even if it frustrated me a bit that I couldn’t have the new weapons without getting achievements.

The new system gives weapons (and now hats too!) based completely on time in a server. It is utterly random and will even give you duplicates of items you already have. Whereas before, you at least knew how to get items and weapons, you now can’t get them without luck. I could understand that for things like the hats which don’t do anything except look cool, but for the weapons, it generates some serious weapon envy. It’s also incredibly frustrating when you find out you got something new only to realize that you already have three of it. Valve has stated that they wanted to make everyone get the weapons eventually, but their algorithm is absolutely terrible. It’s spawned idle servers where people just sit in servers doing nothing and getting items. It’s even more dumb than the old achievement servers where the people were just trying to get the achievements.

There’s no sense of accomplishment when you get one, there’s envy when someone else gets something you don’t have (especially when they say it’s their third), and there’s no way to change it. It feels like there’s a black box that randomly gives out gifts even if you don’t want them.

Please fix this Valve. An idea I had, which I still really like is that if someone has the new item/weapon and you kill them and pick it up, you now have it as well. Yes, people will abuse this, but they’ll try to abuse any system. Also, why is it that they have to be unlockable at all? What purpose does this serve? Coming from a background of being a serious competitor in TFC, I can tell you that if I were in leagues and someone had an unfair advantage over me by have unlocks that I literally couldn’t get, that would piss me off.

Another thing you can do is have the random drops only drop things you don’t have. Valve has said that they’re going to implement trading later on, but really, what’s the point? Is this some test bed for a game they’re working on and they want to get the system all worked out before implementing it there? It’s really fucking annoying and has zero place in TF2 land. It’s putting a system in place to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Long and short, this new system is terrible. It’s frustrating for people who can’t get the weapons, it’s frustrating for the people who have multiple items, it’s stupid for having people idle in servers to get the weapons, and overall it doesn’t give any sense of achievement or purpose to the game. Even when people get the items and weapons, they didn’t do anything to deserve them, they were just playing the game. I guess maybe that’s what Valve wanted, but if that’s the case, they went a really backwards way of getting people to play.

We’ll see how that goes in the future. I still use this blog as something of a history of all the cool things I find, I’d just like to find a bunch of more cool stuff that isn’t all over the web already :).

Also, for those of you curious, Aperti Gnosco is Latin for “Truths I know”. I don’t think I ever explained that and I’m sure it has to have bugged at least one of you.

I haven’t figured out what I’d like to champion, but once I do, maybe I’ll be able to change the world :). I feel like there’s almost too many things that I’m interested in at the moment in order to choose just one. Also, I have a problem with the fact that I try to rate them all. Is saving a life more important than improving the quality of life for several people? Do computers make as much of a difference in the developing world as perhaps some more food or antibiotics would? It’s hard for me to answer those questions especially because I have no idea where to even start once I get past what I think I’d like to do. Maybe I need to just jump in and do it and flail around for a while before I figure out what I actually need/want to do.

Fascinating. Seriously. I’ve tried a bunch of different stuff and while it may not sound fantastic, it certainly still sounds good. I’d love to see how all of the waveforms work together with these specific youtube videos.

It’s gorgeous and I love the fact that people are having an incredibly hard time cracking the code. It makes me very happy that the creator of the sculpture hasn’t told anyone the answer either. He thought it would take people seven years in order to crack it, but it’s been over 18 and only three out of the four parts of it have been broken. Really cool and interesting read.

Well, it looks like they had a pretty shitty year in 2008. Nothing seemed to go right. They lost a ton of money. Almost had to close out the studio. I’d suggest reading parts One, Two, and Three about why it happened.

I know it’s hard to be an indie team, but I think that’s primarily because a lot of the teams don’t have any business sense in the slightest. Introversion seems to have spurts where they make amazing decisions and then spurts where they’re incredibly dumb about how to manage their business (which game development certainly is). I hope they pick back up and manage to make some progress this year towards awesomeness++ again. Interesting read about how not to spread yourselves thin, work on games you don’t like, and do some market research before committing yourself to a game. Also, and I wish programmers and game developers would get better at this: LEARN HOW TO FUCKING APPROXIMATE HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE YOU TO DO SOMETHING BETTER. This is easily the biggest problem I see with our industry.

I really, really, really want to try out Fogbugz’ Evidence Based Scheduling. It looks… well, right. I’m so tired of schedules that seem to morph daily. I’m also tired of people not being able to look out into the future and know everything that needs to be done. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to do much better, but it seems like someone should be able to. Hopefully if we can somehow program the computers to figure shit out for us then we won’t have to worry about it as much :).

Longer story about how I told Lauren we were going after the jump. I’ll probably have to make another post about what we did there later (since we were there for five days, we managed to do quite a bit).

She didn’t have any idea at all. Last year I had done something fairly big for her when she came to visit me on spring break and this year I wanted to do something bigger. It took a couple of months of planning, but I figured out where I wanted to take her, for how long, and what, approximately, we were going to do there. I booked the flights, then talked to her before I booked the rest of it since I had to go to work. I mentioned her coming on the 21st, to which she replied, “I’m coming a week earlier than that”. Shit. I had managed to book the flights for the week after she was coming. I had to scramble to get them a week earlier and had to eat $110 in flight change costs (fuck you small Hawaiian inter-island flights). Continental is surprisingly cool in that if you cancel within 24 hours, you can get a full refund. I don’t know of any other airline that does that. So when I canceled I chose that option. Unfortunately, it looks like their computers messed up since I canceled 26 hours after (and they were probably just counting the days), so while it says I could get a full refund, the e-mail they sent and what they actually did was give me a credit to fly which really sucked because I rebooked it with Hawaiian since Continental’s flights for the week earlier had doubled in price.

So after that snafu I started getting ready to tell her what we were going to do (she probably had an idea we were doing something, but certainly not going to Hawaii of all places). I searched around and picked up a photo album that was made in Hawaii and was pretty cool looking as the first step. Then I bought one of those $3 puzzles from a drug store meant for kids that was 24 pieces. I made opened the box and made the puzzle. Then I flipped it over onto the table and wrote one letter on the back of each piece to say “I’m taking you to Hawaii”. Took apart the puzzle and stuffed the pieces in the photo album all jumbled up.

Now to understand the next part you have to realize we’re both kind of silly and dumb sometimes. We have a running joke that one of the stuffed animals she gave me (who I named Hawk because he has a mohawk) has a crush on her and always wants her to leave me for him. He bakes her cookies, writes her nice letters, that kind of thing. I had Hawk write her a letter and mail himself to her saying he “stole” this album for her since I was being dumb and teasing her that I had bought her something but wouldn’t show her what it was. On the day I mailed her the box I told Lauren that I couldn’t find Hawk (which is kind of believable as I had somehow not been able to find my glasses a week or so earlier).

She got the box a couple of days later and knew it was from Hawk, so she opened it and read the card, but then waited to open the rest of the box until I got home from work and could see her do it on webcam. When she finally did the puzzle and read it, she was incredulous and didn’t believe me at first. I was originally going to just give her the album and what not when she came to visit me, but since Hawaii and Seattle have such vastly different climates, I kind of had to tell her early so that she could pack appropriately. It was pretty funny watching her realize she was going to Hawaii for five days considering she’d been saying how she’s been wanting to go again recently. She’d also never been to Molokai although she’d been to the other major islands several times each.

Pretty good times overall :).

As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a “dirty bomb” inside the country. This information led to Padilla’s arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.

But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques.

I have a hard time with the idea of torture because it goes against everything that I believe in as a human being. How can you possibly justify treating someone inhumanely to stop other people from treating your “people” inhumanely? That logic makes no sense. Terrorists exist. People die in terrorist plots. A lot of the time there is nothing you can do to stop it. Don’t let that change you to the point where you somehow think torture is ok or that it prevents unpreventable terrorist acts. It isn’t ok, and it doesn’t stop them.

What’s weird is these little things tend to affect my whole outlook on life a lot more than I initially think they will. I’ve become a huge proponent of public transportation and open spaces. John Jensen has helped inform me tremendously about these things, and I really love to see how Seattle is becoming a better place for it. It’s interesting to look at how cities evolve over time and how buses, light rail, BART (and other types of subway/elevated rail) affect the city as a whole. I remember being nervous when first doing it because the only time I had really taken the bus or other public transit was going to the mall back home or the rare occasion when I’d take BART to an A’s game or something. Now I feel much more comfortable about it.

When I chose to be a vegetarian I didn’t do it out of altruistic means. I had wanted to do it as a kid, but didn’t ever feel it was possible because my parents were both such big meat eaters (and they made my food, so it would have been very difficult to deviate from that). Now, however, I’ve been learning more and more about local growers and how they help the environment because they have less distance to travel to bring the food to market. I’ve also been looking into how much land and resources animals take up in order to turn them into food. 16 pounds of wheat and up to 2,500 gallons of water are necessary to produce one pound of grain-fed beef. It’s making me think more and more about what foods I eat and how they get there.

I think these things have affected me in a positive manner. I’m more aware of what I do and how it affects the world. I’m coming up on my year for no transportation and I’d like to start something new, but I haven’t been able to decide what it should be. It starts June 11th, and so far I’ve come up with these options:

• Eat only non-prepackaged food. If I want spaghetti sauce, I can’t just buy the jar, I have to create my own. I can’t buy yogurt, I have to make my own. This seems like it would be incredibly difficult, but very rewarding at the same time. I might make an exception for restaurants (since I’d never be able to eat anything there), but I’m not a huge fan of exceptions.
• Don’t play any video games. I’m a huge fan of them, but they also take up a ton of my time. Would I use that time to do other projects? Are video games good for my life in general?
• Don’t watch any TV or movies. I don’t really do much of this right now, so I’m not sure how much of a change it would really be. Is it worth it to try and find out? I kind of doubt it, but it’s an option
• Don’t use my computer at home. I obviously need to use it for work, but I’m honestly tired of how I get home and jump right on it again. Then again, I do a TON of stuff with it at home that I’d probably be unable to accomplish without (digital photography being the major one). Perhaps rules to allow for things like that but no surfing the web?
• Don’t use electricity at home. This one is definitely way out there but it appeals to me as so many people go without it in the developing world. Would I be able to do it at home? Would I include the refrigerator? This goes obviously way further than any of the other previously mentioned options, but it has a certain mystique to it.
• Don’t buy anything for a year. No consumerism of any kind. The only exception being food, of course. Could I go for a year without buying anything? If something breaks, I either have to fix it or have to find some kind of free replacement. Too often my mindset is to just toss something and buy it anew. I don’t like that ethos. This would be especially crazy if I were to lose all of my belongings to a fire or something.

Now, you’ll notice all of those things I listed are things I would stop myself from doing. I’m absolutely terrible at things like “I’m going to work out three times a week”. I find easy ways around this (vacations, busy with work, etc), but the not doing of something is relatively doable for me if I so choose. The main problem is I have no idea what I don’t want to do for my upcoming year. Those all seem to be interesting ideas, but none of them jump out to me like the previous two years have. Any of you have any ideas or modifications to the ones I posted to give me something to not do this upcoming June 11th?