Inert Detritus The Internet's dust bunnies

Posted
9 March 2007 @ 6pm

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Pop-ups Must Die! Internet Annoyances

Very few pop-ups/pop-unders make it past Camino, my web brows­er on OS X. The New York Times, and The Wash­ing­ton Post, are two sites who reg­u­lar­ly get one pop-up through my filters.

And it’s pop-ups to sub­scribe to The Economist.

The irony is not lost on me: the only intru­sive adver­tis­ing I reg­u­lar­ly see on the inter­net is for a ser­vice I’m all ready sub­scribed to, and one I plan on renew­ing for years to come, no less.


Posted
5 March 2007 @ 6pm

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Status update…

Well, sor­ry about that. Life sud­den­ly finds a fifth gear, and all the things that were taped to the out­side of the car sud­den­ly come detached and are found lat­er on the side of the road. Like this blog.

I’ve tried, in fits and starts, to accom­plish two things with this blog:

  1. Write some­thing meaningful.
  2. Write some­thing often.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I find myself skip­ping num­ber 2, because I don’t think I can meet num­ber 1. I’m self-dep­re­cat­ing, think­ing that my thoughts, my com­men­tary, my per­spec­tive on life and events isn’t worth voic­ing, even to you, non-exis­tent reader.

This semes­ter has been busy. I’ve tried to write a short post every day, and for most of last fall, I per­formed admirably well. For the next three months, I’m aim­ing for twice a week; when I man­age once, I’ll feel more accom­plished than if I had­n’t writ­ten at all.


Posted
4 February 2007 @ 2pm

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rentzsch.com: Programmers Don’t Like to Code

From rentzsch.com: Pro­gram­mers Dont Like to Code:

Pro­gram­mers don’t like cod­ing, they like prob­lem solv­ing.

As a Com­put­er Sci­ence major, I deal with this all the time. Peo­ple ask about CS, about what we do, and it’s hard to answer. I think this gives me a good angle: “We solve prob­lems, and we use com­put­ers to do that.” It relates close­ly to “What is CS?” CS is using com­put­ers as a tool, and much like a car­pen­ter uses a claw ham­mer or crow­bar or nail gun depend­ing on the task at hand, we use Java or C++ or PHP as it’s best suit­ed to the prob­lem at hand.

We don’t like cod­ing. I don’t. What I enjoy is the prob­lem solv­ing, the decom­po­si­tion of some big, over­ar­ch­ing, dif­fi­cult to under­stand prob­lem set into tiny, man­age­able pack­ets of prob­lems and solu­tions. Under­stand­ing the whole pic­ture, see­ing how each part makes life eas­i­er or hard­er, it’s an expe­ri­ence that I love, that I’m good at.


Posted
22 December 2006 @ 1am

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Economics Meets the Street

Both the PS3 and the Wii have been exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to pur­chase this hol­i­day sea­son. Sales of both sea­sons have been, as far as I can tell, entire­ly sup­ply driven.

Sup­ply dri­ven sit­u­a­tions are inter­est­ing and typ­i­cal­ly rare for goods in the econ­o­my. Typ­i­cal­ly, these goods are new to the mar­ket, and the pro­duc­ing firms are unable to ramp pro­duc­tion up as quick­ly as mar­ket demand would dictate.

In the Unit­ed States, prices on sup­ply dri­ven goods are not float­ed like they should be. Firms stick to a strict pric­ing scheme, rely­ing instead on third par­ties as arbi­trageurs to equal­ize sup­ply and demand.

Sup­ply dri­ven sit­u­a­tions, such as a very lim­it­ed sup­ply of a high-val­ue good such as a gam­ing sys­tem, are per­fect arbi­trage oppor­tu­ni­ties. Peo­ple who val­ue their time cheap­ly, such as stu­dents, are will­ing to wait in line to buy a PS3 or Wii. They then post their sys­tem to an open mar­ket like eBay, where peo­ple who val­ued their time too much to wait in line can buy a unit with markup that the sell­er determines.

This “inter­me­di­ary” helps to rec­on­cile the sup­ply and demand dif­fer­ences that exist at an arti­fi­cial­ly low price, such as $250 per Wii. At $250 bucks, assume 100,000 peo­ple would go and buy a sys­tem. How­ev­er, there’s only 20,000 sys­tems avail­able. Some peo­ple are will­ing to “pay” in the form of wait­ing for a sys­tem. These peo­ple buy the 20,000 sys­tems, and resell them at a much high­er val­ue. Usu­al­ly, this “high­er val­ue” will sta­bi­lize near the price at which only 20,000 peo­ple would want to buy the system.

Why is arbi­trage “bad”? From an eco­nom­ic point of view, arbi­trage is actu­al­ly good, because it helps to equal­ize mar­kets in an effi­cient man­ner. Peo­ple can either spend their time, in the form of wait­ing in line, or their mon­ey, in the form of more expen­sive auc­tions on eBay, to acquire a rare good. Because the units are avail­able for sale in both “time pay­ments” (wait in line), or “mon­ey pay­ments” (buy on eBay), the mar­ket clears more often and more effi­cient­ly than if only the “time pay­ments” option was available.

Arbi­trage does redis­trib­ute prof­its, how­ev­er, and this is the oft-demo­nized aspect of it. The high­er mar­ket clear­ing price brings in huge prof­its, which go to the inte­me­di­aries, the “arbi­trageurs”, instead of the man­u­fac­tur­er. Ars Tech­ni­ca, a geek web­site, has an online forum for buy­ing and sell­ing goods. They explic­it­ly ban “prof­i­teer­ing”, which is con­sid­ered sell­ing a pub­licly avail­able good above fair retail price. Such bans do no good for the econ­o­my. They pre­vent will­ing par­ties (buy­ers and sell­ers exist on these forums) from engag­ing in a mutu­al­ly advan­ta­geous exchange.

Econ­o­mists every­where are like­ly relieved, how­ev­er, at the rel­a­tive lack of bad­mouthing of arbi­trage in the news. Often, the reselling of the sys­tems is an adden­dum to the main news arti­cle: “Many of the pur­chasers are turn­ing them around and sell­ing on eBay for hun­dreds more, in hopes of mak­ing some mon­ey for their hours spent wait­ing at the store. So Bob, how’s the weath­er look this week­end?” I’ll take no cov­er­age over bad cov­er­age of a good eco­nom­ic mech­a­nism any day of the week.

Despite the obvi­ous prof­it oppor­tu­ni­ties of sell­ing my sys­tem, how­ev­er, I intend to keep it. I con­sid­er the fun that I’ll get from own­ing it more valu­able than the mon­ey I’d get if I sold it. Sor­ry: you’ll have more posts about “Stu­pid Games I Bought”, and less posts about “Ways to Waste 500 Dol­lars in a Week”.


Posted
19 December 2006 @ 11am

Comments Off on The First Wii Update: The Weather Channel

The First Wii Update: The Weather Channel

My Wii was flash­ing when I woke up, like oth­er peo­ple’s. Nin­ten­do sent us an email about a sys­tem update to install the “Fore­cast Chan­nel”. After run­ning a short update over the wire­less net­work here, I was up and running.

I have one gripe, for their data provider: Your list of Vir­ginia cities is as fol­lows: Rich­mond (why is this first?), Alexan­dria, Arling­ton, Blacks­burg (excel­lent!), Char­lottesville (boo Hoos), Danville, Roanoke, and Vir­ginia Beach.

I’d like you to read that list again. Eight cities (and arguably, one is not a city, but a rather small town) com­pris­es their list for the great Com­mon­wealth. Eight. There’s more than eight notable cities between west­ern Loudoun Coun­ty and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and they have eight for the state!

Aside from the com­plete lack of cities in most of the Unit­ed States and around the world, it’s neat. I can view my weath­er fore­cast for what­ev­er city I like. Much like Google Earth or NASA’s World Wind, I can zoom out to a globe, which is grab­bable with the Remote. You can even spin it with damped rota­tion­al momen­tum (it spins after you let go, but even­tu­al­ly slows down).


Posted
16 December 2006 @ 1am

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All Ahead Full

Every year, the fall semes­ter does this. It drags on, and flies by. From August to Novem­ber, it nev­er ends. Tests after quizzes after home­work pile on, and there’s no end in sight. We get a brief reprieve from the stress for Thanks­giv­ing. It’s a wel­come week of rest, food, and relax­ation in an oth­er­wise high-strung semes­ter. But when we return from break, finals are sud­den­ly upon us. A week and a half of class­es give way to exams, and we find our­selves one semes­ter clos­er to grad­u­a­tion, with no idea where the time went.

This sum­mer is my last “sum­mer job”. There are no more sum­mer semes­ters after that: just grad­u­a­tion, and a life­time of work. No more eight week intern­ships, no more fam­i­ly vaca­tions with sum­mer read­ing for class­es. No more order­ing text­books in the final days, or drop­ping and adding cours­es at a library some­where far from home. After this, the world becomes ours. We can do any­thing we want: any­thing, except go back to what we had.

There’s three semes­ters left in col­lege. Sure, I’ll go back for my MBA, but those will be dif­fer­ent times, with dif­fer­ent peo­ple. What will we make of the time we’ve got left?


Posted
9 December 2006 @ 11am

Comments Off on Wii! A remote takes flight

Wii! A remote takes flight

There’s sto­ries all over the inter­net talk­ing about acci­dents with the Wii remote.

There’s a series of prob­lems com­ing togeth­er that result­ed in this.

  1. Peo­ple don’t know what a gam­ing grip is. Stran­gle that remote, peo­ple. When you get ambushed by zom­bies, act scared. Hold the remote like you’d hold a .45.
  2. Nin­ten­do put a remote strap on the remote. Yes, that’s a prob­lem. Why? When you give peo­ple a safe­ty device like that, one that seems effec­tive, they become reck­less, and they stop being care­ful. If the remotes had no straps, peo­ple would be much more cau­tious with flail­ing arm motions and whole body swings in ten­nis or bowling.

Speak­ing of bowl­ing: my friend and I have done more than our fair share of bowl­ing in Wii Sports. It’s quite easy to hold onto the remote. You’ve got a grip on the con­troller and you’re mere­ly let­ting off a lit­tle bit of force on the B but­ton to release the ball. I guess peo­ple are let­ting their whole hand go slack instead…

In short, there’s noth­ing wrong with the remote or the strap. Peo­ple need to not rely on what was meant to be a back­up safe­ty device for their pri­ma­ry remote-secur­ing needs.

Update: The gen­tle­men at Freako­nom­ics have weighed in on a sim­i­lar mat­ter relat­ing to seat­belts.

The ques­tion becomes: does the inclu­sion of a fea­ture such a seat­belt or wrist strap pre­vent enough acci­dents such that it over­comes the reck­less behav­iour that its exis­tence encourages?

In the case of seat­belts, I think it can over­whelm­ing­ly argued that they do indeed do more good than they incite harm. The wrist strap on the remote may be dif­fer­ent, how­ev­er, but it’s dif­fi­cult to mea­sure with­out some exten­sive stud­ies by Nin­ten­do on usage patterns.

How­ev­er, as my friend was dis­cussing with me ear­li­er, there’s no doubt that if the strap is break­ing by the tens and hun­dreds, this ear­ly in its launch, it should be made stronger.


Posted
29 November 2006 @ 7pm

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An Old Habit, Reborn

“It’s a bar­bar­ian’s game, played by gen­tle­men.” I went out to a rug­by prac­tice today. The VT team is putting togeth­er a win­ter 7s squad for a few tour­na­ments over break. It felt great to get back out onto the pitch and take a few hits.

It’s incred­i­ble how quick­ly the rules, the tech­nique, all of the things I learned over five years ago, came back to me. Phys­i­cal­ly, I’m leaps and bounds ahead of where I was in high school, and it’s great to get out and see how far I’ve come.

Now, I need to get a mouth­guard, and I need to go run­ning every day from now until mid-Jan­u­ary. I’m so out of shape for sprint run­ning, it’s depressing.

But it gives me a pas­sion, a goal to chase, to com­pete with. It’s been gor­geous weath­er this week, so it’s hard not to run over to the drill­field and kick around for an hour. But come the real win­ter, the 35 and windy I adore, I’ve got to get out and real­ly go at it.


Posted
27 November 2006 @ 3pm

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Tell Me If I’m Going Crazy…

Some­how, the past is easy. You can look back, see all the things that went wrong, the mis­steps, the motives behind it.

You lose some­thing when you try to ana­lyze what was. If you tear it apart, try­ing to get at the meat of what made it so great, you find that it was just lies, con­ve­nience, and a will­ing­ness to not rock the boat. Sud­den­ly, that which was holy, won­der­ful, divine, seems cheap, fake.

Unease takes over when you speak of uncer­tain things. Peo­ple love to know. They hate the idea that they don’t con­trol things. They want to be the mas­ter of their fate, and con­trol the flow of their life.

Fate is hard­ly that kind.


The best thing you can ever do, is for­get. Rem­i­nisce about what was, how great it felt, how per­fect every­thing seemed. Enjoy it, and then look to the future. The past is what was, not what will be. Peo­ple change, coins get flipped (it was tails today), and ran­dom events inter­fere with our best-laid plans.

The best we can hope for is some sort of abil­i­ty to cope. Hope that we can deal with the knives thrown our way, dodge them, catch them. We stand and say, with con­fi­dence, that we love to live on the edge, one ran­dom deci­sion away from com­plete chaos, but no one means it. Peo­ple want com­fort. They want the same.

But noth­ing is sta­t­ic. It’s all motion, move­ment, and change. You can react to it, and hope to sur­vive with your head above water for one more day, or you can embrace it. Learn to love the quirks that the next hour, the next day, the next month will bring. Let go of assump­tions, of pre­con­ceived notions, and of the sta­tus quo. Change is the only thing that stays the same.

Embrace the unknown. It brings great joy, and great sor­row, but it is unavoid­able. Make peace with its inevitability.


Posted
25 November 2006 @ 10pm

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A Death Knell

After over a year and a half of trusty and loy­al ser­vice, the Toshi­ba 30 GB 4200 rpm hard dri­ve was mor­tal­ly wound­ed ear­li­er this week. An unknown dis­ease struck it in its prime, and with­out warn­ing, it was on its way to the grave.

I’ve run back­ups reli­gious­ly, every night, for the past year. Every piece of my data that mat­ters (TV shows and movies don’t real­ly count) exists in two places. I woke up on Wednes­day morn­ing to a hor­ri­ble grind­ing noise ema­nat­ing from the iBook’s case, about where the hard dri­ve was. I quick­ly saved my tabs in Camino, quit all run­ning apps, and ran one last back­up to a trusty 40 GB 2.5\” exter­nal dri­ve. After that was done, I shut down and reboot­ed from the back­up, and was able to take a clos­er look at the dri­ve with­out wor­ry­ing about the sys­tem as it ran.

The S.M.A.R.T. sta­tus of the dri­ve showed noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. It did have one amus­ing num­ber, how­ev­er: “Pow­er On Hours: 11801”. I bought trad­ed the iBook G4 for an iBook G3 back in April of 2005. 11801 hours is almost 492 days, or about a year and a third.

After a test back­up from my active dri­ve (the exter­nal) to the inter­nal dri­ve, how­ev­er, the prob­lems became clear. There were inac­ces­si­ble sec­tors, and the dri­ve was slow as molas­sas at times. The sound it makes is like­ly the read/write arm drag­ging on the disk surface.

An inter­est­ing “fea­ture” of OS X became appar­ent just now. I’m run­ning from a Firewire attached hard dri­ve. When the machine went to sleep yes­ter­day before I left, I removed the dri­ve and stashed it in my bag. After recon­nect­ing every­thing when I arrived in town tonight, I sim­ply woke the iBook back up, and it spun up and read the exter­nal dri­ve as though noth­ing had hap­pened. This cer­tain­ly makes it eas­i­er to trav­el in this half-crip­pled state.

I’m in a bit of a tough spot for what to do about repairs, how­ev­er. If I take it in to the book­store now, I’m with­out any machine for at least a few days, and that sim­ply won’t do. I have anoth­er dri­ve to back­up my (for­mer back­up, now active) dri­ve to, so there’s no chance of los­ing any­thing should the exter­nal dri­ve fail as well. I sup­pose I’ll limp along on this ghet­to-rigged dri­ve set­up until Christ­mas, when I can take it in for a prop­er repair.

The over­ar­ch­ing les­son here: back­ups are your friend. For any­one using OS X, SuperDuper! is indis­pens­able, and is a sec­ond-to-none tool for the job.


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