The Process

I've moved blogs!

2011-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've moved blogs... Check me out at

Taking BASE jumping to a new level

2008-01-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

Rad Video: These BASE-jumping free-fallers can fly around like a flying-squirrel with the Mountain Wingsuit. Check out this video.

Too cool for school

2008-01-19T10:03:00.000-08:00

Video from researchers at MIT shows a design environment that "comes to life."
..

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Doomsday is coming...

2008-01-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of movies with apocalyptic themes, so I got pretty excited with this trailer for the upcoming Doomsday film by writer/director Neil Marshal who wrote/directed the Descent, one of the best horror movies of 2005. Click on this link to check out the preview.

The naughty tail of the top-less starbucks mermaid.

2008-01-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that the Starbucks Mermaid has two tails??? There's a very naughty reason for that... I found this interesting pop-cultural tidbit on Dead Programmer's Cafe. The story: "How the Starbuck's Siren Became Less Naughty."

Check this mini-MacGyver:

2007-11-29T15:15:00.001-08:00

This is just too fucking cool. These kids turn their Wiimote and a rocking horse into a full body game controller. Wish I had one. How much you wanna bet Nintendo comes up with something like this in two years?
.

Happy Halloween : A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead

2007-10-31T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Jäger Deer

2007-10-27T19:37:00.001-07:00

This is from the Modern Drunkard Magazine On-Line in an article on the ten greatest alcohol icons of all time. My ex-roommate loved his Jägermeister so much so that he hung a giant wall sized flag of the Jager stag. I don't personally like the stuff, but it's a hell of an icon and has a pretty good story behind it. Can we say, Pagans?

~D.

The Jäger Deer
Shoot Me, Shoot Jesus
Jägermeister Liqueur

There is something unsettling about the level gaze of the Jägermeister deer. While most animal icons demurely look askance, this beast stares you directly in the eye. It also appears to have Christ on its side, or at least on its mind.

Jägermeister is German for “expert hunter” and if you examine the edge of the label you’ll find a German poem by Otto von Riesenthal, which roughly translates into:

This is the hunter’s badge of honour
That he protect and nourish his game
Hunt sportingly, as is proper
And honor the Creator in creation.

So what's with all the religious stuff? you're probably thinking. The deer's got a neon cross stuck in its antlers and the label's got some goofy rhyme kissing up to the Creator--what gives?

Well, back around the 7th Century, a pagan sportsman named Hubert was about to bag a magnificent stag when a glowing crucifix appeared between its antlers. And if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, Christ himself gave a shout out, proclaiming in a very loud voice: “Hubert, unless you turn to the Lord and lead a holy life, you shall quickly fall into the abyss of Hell!”

Hubert didn't need to be told twice. He was soon ordained and spent the rest of his life putting the arm on the local pagans and idolaters and erecting monasteries. Then, long after he died, he became St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. And opticians, but that's another story.

So, in 1935, Curt Mast, an avid hunter and inheritor of a venerable German distillery, adapted the legend and imagery of St. Hubert to his spanking new concoction. A combination of 56 herbs, roots and spices, Jägermeister was meant to be something you’d more likely keep in your medicine rather than liquor cabinet. Early advertising swore it was a cure for incessant coughs, digestive problems and other common ailments. It became somewhat popular in Germany, but that was about it.

The Jäger blitz, launched in 1970, targeted nearly every country on the planet, and was met with immediate success. Eschewing traditional advertising methods, the liqueur was introduced with a clever grassroots strategy of throwing bar parties (manned by squads of “Jägerettes”) and sponsoring hard-drinking metal bands, including Metallica, Pantera and Slayer. Its rapid expansion was also facilitated by false rumors suggesting the liqueur contained deer blood and/or heroin extract.

Evolution: The Jäger deer hasn’t changed a hair since it appeared 70 years ago, and isn’t likely to, so long as it maintains its stranglehold on the liqueur shot niche.

Dark Secret: Jäger creator Curt Mast was allegedly a member of the Nazi party and fast friends with Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe.

Claim to Fame: The de rigueur shot of frat boys and bikers alike, Jägermeister succeeded in capturing the highly-prized middle ground between girly and manly shots.

Niggy Tardust

2007-10-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

Trent Reznor (of nine inch nails) is colaborating with Saul Williams (most known for his blend of poetry and hip-hop) to release Niggy Tardust. This album will be released a-la-Radiohead, that is label-free and downloadable from the net November 1st. You can pre-order the album for $5 or $0 and it comes in 192Kb/s MP3, 320Kb/s MP3, or FLAC lossless flavors. Trent released a statement (below) about this. This is, in his words "the most involved I've been with any project outside NIN since Antichrist Superstar".

NiggyTardust!

As many of you know, I've been working closely with Saul Williams on his new record. We've spent many hours together in hotel rooms, busses, backstages and studios around the world working on something we knew was great. This is the most involved I've been with any project outside NIN since Antichrist Superstar, and I've been impatiently waiting for the chance for you to hear it. Well... guess what?

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! has arrived! After my own recent dealings with record labels we decided to release it directly to you. Head over to http://www.niggytardust.com for all the details. Register now and you can download the record November 1st. Working on this project was a real pleasure. Saul was interested in breaking boundaries / crossing genres / defying expectations and we learned a great deal from one another in the process. When asked about the sound of the record, I've had to resort to "... I really don't know HOW to describe it." That's a good thing more than ever these days.

A word on the way we've chosen to release this. There are obvious similarities in how Radiohead just released their new record and the way we've chosen to. After thinking about this way too much, I feel we've improved upon their idea in a few profound ways that benefit you, the consumer. You obviously will be the judge of this in the end. One thing that IS very different in our situation is that Saul's not the household name (yet!) that Radiohead is, and that means we need your support on this more than ever. If you like what you hear, spread the word.

I hope you enjoy the music,

Bat for Lashes: Whats a Girl to Do

2007-10-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

Video for the day:

Landlord refuse to rent to those with tattoos and piercings

2007-09-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

Some San Antonio apartment complexes are refusing to rent to people with tattoos and body piercings.Owner of one of these apartment complexes, Edward Frankel, states they do, in fact, "reject prospective tenants who have... tattoos exposed on the neck, head, hands and wrists, or large tattoos that cover over 40% of the lower or upper arm."

Frankel says, "We do not discriminate. The above applies to persons of any race, color, gender, etc." Frankel, and his partners, have purchased numerous upscale apartment complexes in San Antonio and Dallas, where they've also banned pierced eyebrows and tongues.

See original stories at cnn.com (video) and liveleak

End of Days: Ministry's Final Album

2007-09-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Ministry's final album, "The Last Sucker", came out today. Front man Al Jorgensen has spent the last few years in my home town of El Paso, Texas working on a trilogy of albums that culminated in this week's release. (One of his tattoo artists worked on me as well, neat!) Check out a review from the All Music Guide.

The Amazing Story of Paul Potts

2007-09-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

In seven amazing days Paul Potts went from selling mobile phones in Wales to winning 'Britain's Got Talent' and signing a 1 million record deal with Simon Cowell. A real rags to riches tale with Paul £30,000 in debt, suffering years of bullying and recovering from a serious motorbike accident, he now has a massive recording contract and a huge singing career ahead of him.
(--from http://www.paulpottsofficial.com/)

Google street view gets a major update

2007-08-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

Not sure when this happened, but I was playing around Google maps today and discovered that Street View underwent a major update. Google has taken continuous pictures of streets in select cities allowing you to take "virtual car rides." You can navigate within the street view, pan your view, and zoom in.

More info at Google Maps Street View Video.

Rubber Johnny

2007-08-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

While I'm in video mode...

Royksopp Remind Me Video

2007-08-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

Really cool video from Royksopp. If anyone comes across a higher quality version of it let me know.

Pizza on the Radio

2007-08-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

"These Days", a local radio show on San Diego's public radio station had a show about making the perfect pizza. (My favorive food.) Local Pizzeria owners/chefs discuss ingredients, methods and pizza history. Including a phone call from a guy who worked in New Jersey's Pizzaland, the pizzeria featured on the opening credits of The Sopranos.

Music Search and Discovery on the Internet

2007-07-30T11:23:00.001-07:00

A list of free music search and discovery websites on the internet, please feel free to add your own in the comment box:

AMG Tapestry - Generate playlists based on descriptive keywords.
AOL Radio - Large number of radio stations.
Critical Metrics - Collects music recommended by various popular music websites and magazines.
Deezer -
Epitonic - Music discovery with playlists guided by Epitonic's editors.
The Hypemachine - Collects mp3's from popular music blogs. Music is usually downloadable through the blogs.
LastFm - The most well known social-networking based music discovery site.
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music - Music discover in its purist state, you can peruse through a thorough list of electronic music sub-genres.
iLike - Another social-networking based music discovery website.
Live365 - Listen to user generated radio stations. This service is free, though a paid subscription gives you access to add-free content.
LivePlasma - Search based on artist similarity. Innovative visualization of results as a map.
Magnatune - Listen to unlicensed music.
Mercora - become a Mercora DJ and stream your playlists to others.
Mog - Another social-networking based recommendation website with a focus on user generated recommendation blogs.
Musicmesh - meshes online audio tracks with videos from You Tube.
Musicmobs - music discovery based on user generated playlists.
Musicovery - An innovative user interface allows music discovery based on mood, and dancability.
MusicStrands - music recommendation based on your music collection.
Pandora - Songs are labeled by musicologists to generate high quality playlists based on artist similarity.
Project Opus - supporting local and independent artists
Project Playlist -
radio.blog.club - collects mp3s from the web and allows you to generate playlists which you can post to your website.
Rhapsody - Free version offers limited access to Rhapsody's library of music.
samurai.fm - huge collection of dj sets (electronic music). [Thanks to Phil]
SeeqPod - Search for media on the web and store it in personalized playlists.
Shoutcast - Listen to hundreds of free radio stations.
SkreemR - Search for downloadable audio files on the net.
Slacker - Seems to focus on streaming mainstream music.
SomaFM - Listen to add-free radio stations generated by professional deejays. Emphasis on indie and electronic music.
Stage.FM - Discover independent (unsigned) bands.
UpTo11.net - music recommendation based on users music collections.
Yahoo Music - Search for artist info, music and videos. Does not support Firefox.

Artist information websites that do not offer playable search results:

Discogs - A site with discographies of all labels, all artists, all cross-referenced, Generated from users.
MusicBrainz! - Search MP3 meta-data.
AMG (All Music Guide) - Search for artist information and artist reviews.

Other music related websites

Amie Street - cheap music downloads. Prices vary with popularity. You can get a download for as cheap as 20 cents.
Rap Space - Focuses on the rap and hip-hop communities
Reverb Nation
Splice Music - make your own music with an online sequencer.
YourSpins - remix tracks and share popular tracks
MusicHawk -social networking site centered on music fans.

Links to other lists like this:

from mashable.com

Scholarpedia

2007-07-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

Found an interesting experiment on the web, Scholarpedia. In essence its Wikipedia written by experts. It seems to be in its initial state but it looks promising with Encyclopedias of Computational Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems, and Computational Intelligence already in progress.

The following is from the Scholarpedia website.

Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program - MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link.

However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very important ways:

Each article is written by an expert (invited or elected by the public).
Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information.
Each article has a curator - typically its author -- who is responsible for its content.
Any modification of the article needs to be approved by the curator before it appears in the final, approved version.

Herein also lies the greatest differences between Scholarpedia and traditional print media: while the initial authorship and review processes are similar to a print journal, articles in Scholarpedia are not frozen and outdated, but dynamic, subject to an ongoing process of improvement moderated by their curators. This allows Scholarpedia to be up-to-date, yet maintain the highest quality of content.

Summer Costume Festivities around San Diego Comic-Con: Zombie Walk, X-Sanguin VI, and the Labyrinth of Jareth

2007-07-07T15:36:00.001-07:00

A list of costumed festivities going on around San Diego Comic-Con time.

Zombie Walk - San Diego is taking place Friday, July 27 on Comic-Con Weekend. Sounds like its gonna be fun.

The Labyrith of Jareth on July 13th and 14th.

X-Sanguin VI : The Damocles Protocol on Sat. July 28th on Comic-Con weekend. (Tickets are selling out fast)

Independence Day

2007-07-04T15:04:00.000-07:00

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in this history of mankind.

Mankind -- that word should have new meaning for all of us today.

We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore.

We will be united in our common interests.

Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution -- but from annihilation.

We're fighting for our right to live, to exist.

And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice:

"We will not go quietly into the night!

We will not vanish without a fight!

We're going to live on!

We're going to survive!"

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

Family Guy / Star Wars 10 Minute Preview.

2007-06-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

According to variety, Family Guy is kicking off its 5th season with an hour long tribute to Star Wars Episode IV. There's a hilarious 10 minute preview floating around the net. I'm posting several links to it because it seems the Fox's lawyers are probably trying to kick this off the net.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L0RqENlmQs
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/62681/detail/
http://www.devilducky.com/media/62681/

Beer Updates and the Alcohol by Volume Calculator

2007-06-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

We started brewing our first batch of beer last Friday. Fermentation has already slowed considerably, probably due to it fermenting at a warmer temperature.

I decided to cook up a spreadsheet to calculate the % alcohol by volume given the specific gravity and temperature of your first and last hydrometer readings. You can down load the Alcohol by Volume Calculator at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phcv9BEOrYoq4FN1API_eMA&output=xls

Details about our own brew: The first reading was 1.046 (at 76 deg. F). The last reading was 1.011 (at 70 deg.F.). Yielding a tasty little brew of between 4.9 to 5.6 % alcohol by volume. If the reading stays about the same tomorrow, then we are ready to bottle!

UPDATE: Hydrometer reading for June 20 (next day) 1.009. (We bottle when the difference in readings is negligible.) June 22: 1.008.

Best of the 10th Annual San Diego Real Ale Festival

2007-06-04T23:06:00.000-07:00

The 10th Annual San Diego Real Ale Festival was this past weekend. Here are some of my favorite beers from it in no particular order.

Deschutes Brewing Co., Quail Springs IPA
Four Peaks Brewing Co., Hop Knot IPA
Oggi's Pizza, IPA 101
Koningshoeven Quadrupel

Beer Brewing Videos on the Web

2007-05-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Me and my roomy are trying to start a beer brewing project soon, and that inspired me to find some beer brewing videos out on the web.

How to Brew Beer Presented by Lake House Brewing Co. The quality is shoddy but it contains a good information.

How to Brew Beer with Joe Nguyen - This video is aimed at the home brewers:

The Result of a Homebrew Yeast Starter - Digs a little deeper into home brewing:

Good Eats "Amber Waves" Episode - Goodle video hosts the beer brewing episode of Alton Brown's show, Good Eats.

Urban skeleton artwork

2007-05-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

Machine learning video lectures on the WWW

2007-05-21T11:48:00.001-07:00

A collection of webcast lectures on the topic of machine learning ( artificial intelligence ):

UCLA hosts a collection of lectures on the topic of extraction of information from graphs and high dimensional data. Talks include a series of tutorials by Micheal Jordan on the topic of graphical models.
The previous link also has a tutorial on spectral methods for dimensionality reduction by Lawrence Saul, which can also be found here.
Yet Another Machine Learning Blog points to collections of machine learning videos on the web, as well as some recent Google Tech Talks on the topic.
Videolectures.net has a sizable collection of machine learning videos.
ML Videos has a collection of eight videos spanning different topics in machine learning.
Machine Learning, etc. has a blog thread collecting various links to machine learning videos.

Business Intelligence, Data Mining & Machine Learning has a few videos too.

huh?

2007-05-19T16:01:00.001-07:00

I'm in lovecraft

2007-05-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

And while I'm on the topic of hot brainiac babes (last post)... I came across this video on the Table of Malcontents. Quoting the blog article:

With an ankh hanging around her neck, butt-length hair brushed a thousand times and a prim mouth set in grim academic determination, graduate student Laura Campbell goes on the British quiz show Mastermind and completely owns her chosen subject: the literature of H.P. Frickin' Lovecraft.
Honest to god, the only way this could be sexier is if Laura was wearing a bikini made out of tentacles.

Winnie Cooper is a math geek.

2007-05-18T01:05:00.001-07:00

I had been meaning to get to the bottom of a rumor that comes up now and then in the graduate school hallways, that being that our childhood sweetheart Danica McKellar, a.k.a Winnie Cooper on the ABC series The Wonder Years, is quite the math geek and has even published in a peer reviewed journal. Here is a copy of that journal article. She's even coming out with a popular-math book geared toward middle school girls (more info on her website). As if she wasn't hot enough, Danica McKellar just got hotter.

some cool web data visualization tools

2007-05-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

From Mashable.com, a list of 16 awesome data visualization tools. Check out the Digg visualization tool. You can see news stories being dugg in real time.

PHD Comic for today...

2007-05-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

this feels strangely appropriate to me too....

customize and share your own google maps

2007-04-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Google has added a new features to its Maps application that allows you to landmark your favorite spots. This post by GRIDSKIPPER.com, the urban travel guide, lists some public maps. I still don't see a dive bar map for San Diego...

Nine Inch Nails Year Zero CD Changes Colors

2007-04-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I've been listening to the new NIN album, Year Zero. I took it out of its case this morning when I brought it over to listen to it at work. I popped the cd out of its case and noticed the CD label was black. Odd, i thought, yesterday afternoon after I got it in the mail, I could have sworn the cd label was an off white. I remember making note of that because I expected Trent, being the master of darkness that he is, to decide to print black cd labels on the new album. Sure enough the cd label is thermally sensitive, it turns white when exposed to heat. Play around with it yourself!

This is a great example of how artists can keep physical media alive. I.e., by keeping their packaging creative and turning it into a work of art. MP3's are here to stay, they may even become the primary form of music distribution, but there will always be a market for collectors, and here's where the record companies can keep their physical unit sales. Load the CD with memorabilia and turn the CD market into a collectors market.

If you are a fan of great album packaging check out compact discs by artists, Sigur Ros. These guys are artists to the core.

Sex in the NYTimes

2007-04-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

An article in the NY times discusses recent discoveries on sex and genes.

2007-04-11T23:54:00.001-07:00

I couldn't help but post another PhD comic. Cause this is how I feel, right now!

Frontier Psychiatry

2007-04-10T00:58:00.000-07:00

Recommended by my good friend Milan,

Seminar Bingo!

2007-04-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I go to a lot of talks. I think this is the fucking funniest thing I've seen in a month!

Listen Up! A new online multiplayer music game.

2007-04-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

My lab just came out with a new online multi-player music game called listen. It's ultimately tied to our explorations on the words people use to describe music. Check it out if you have a chance, its pretty cool.

http://listengame.org/

~david

Computer Audition Lab
University of California at San Diego

How to Archive your Gigantic Gmail Inbox

2007-04-04T12:38:00.001-07:00

How to archive all of your gmail messages quickly.

Google TiSP beta, get internet access through your cammode now!

2007-04-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

Google TiSP beta, get free internet access through your commode now! April Fools!

We have wine lists galore, why not beer lists?

2007-03-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

One more beer link while I'm on the topic. NY Times had an article today on Todd and Jason Alstrom, creators of beeradvocate.com and the state of microbrew beer culture. Why do so many places have great wine lists, but shit beer lists?

Some Beer Links

2007-03-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a few beer links that I found while compiling my last post:

liquidsolutions - a site to buy specialty beers
beer mania - another specialty shoppe
beer blah blog - a beer blog
beer advocate - webzine

The 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party Wrap-up

2007-03-27T23:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party hosted by Pizza Port, Carlsbad. There's lot of great flavors to be explored in Belgian beers, for those who haven't tried them. Here are a few of my favorite from the festival. (The numbers in parenthesis are the percentile scores from ratebeer.com.)

Abbey des Rocs Tripel Imeperial (99)
Abbey des Rocs Grand Cru (100)
De Dolle Still Nacht (97)
De Proef K-O (90)
Gouden Carolus Grand Cru
Gouden Carolus Tripel (95)
Gouden Carolus Ambrio (86)
Lamoral Tripel (69)
La Chouffe Houblon IPA (98)(a Belgian-IPA hybrid yum!)
Lost Abbey Judgment Day (The Lost Abbey website.)
Maredsous 8 (86)
Unibroue Edition 15 (91)
Unibroue Trois Pistoles (99)
Westmalle Dubbel (98)
Orval

prices comparisions on the go via sms text

2007-03-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

Cool stuff: Mobsaver allows you to sms-text the upc or isbn code of any product, and will send you a message containing the lowest available prices at amazon and ebay.

Is there science behind good music?

2007-03-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Litmus' Stereolab reports on Musak, purported specialists in the physiological and psychological applications of music, and the guys who ultimately lead to the elevator music that pervades our grocery stores.

http://www.litmuszine.com/stereolab/index.html

Transfat: What is it, where does it come from.

2007-03-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

The Mad Gastronomist reports on transfats, what it is and where it comes from:
http://www.litmuszine.com/food/index.html

The harm of illegal drugs, a study in The Lancet

2007-03-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

From the article:

"...a new paper published in The Lancet has looked at this issue and has put together a more rational scale to assess the relative levels of harm from drugs, both legal and illegal. The work was carried out by a cross-disciplinary group of rather eminent scientists, including Prof. Colin Blakemore, the head of the Medical Research Council (equivalent to the NIH). The study involved surveying two groups; a national group of leading psychiatrists, and a more general group made up of experts from a range of disciplines including forensics, pharmacology, the police and legal services, chemistry, and epidemiology."

"The paper highlights the failings of the current Misuse of Drugs Act, and although they do not suggest that alcohol or tobacco ought to be criminalized, from a scientific perspective they "saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances. The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use.""

How I became a music pirate

2007-03-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

How copyright management "solutions" drive avid music lovers into music pirates!

Twisted Art

2007-03-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

Taken from the Table of Malcontents, sculptist Thomas Scott Kuebler crafts lifelike freaks and monsters...

The Internet Vibrator?

2007-03-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

The Table of Malcontents tells of a USB enabled vibrator which will enables people on the internet to control the toy via a chat program. You can download the software here. (You know I thought about a device like this a year ago. Let that be a lesson kids, when inspiration strikes, listen.)

The Smoke-Free Smoke?

2007-03-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

Wired news has an article on new developments on the search for a smokeless cigarette.

Type-O Neg Album

2007-03-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

Type O Negative just released a new album this week! Joy!

Statistics of the Blogosphere

2007-02-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

Really cool website: http://www.blogscope.net/. It allows you to observe and compare the popularity of terms found in the blogosphere.

Dataheadz: Try Swivel

2007-01-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

A website that encourages collaborative dataanalysis, yes you heard me right. Swivel.com let you upload data of all kinds ( Crime statistics, stocks prices, SAT score trends) and lets you and others mix and match data for all kinds of interesting analysis. Anyone interested in seeing if ice cream sales are correlated with rising crime rates?

Bruce Campbell is the new spokesman for Old Spice

2007-01-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Bruce Campbell is the new spokesman for Old Spice. What!?

New Skinny Puppy Album, Jan 30 2007

2006-12-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

Can't wait! New Skinny Puppy album hits stores on Jan 30, 2007!

Astrology

2006-11-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

A large-scale test of persons born less than five minutes apart found no hint of the similarities predicted by astrology. As a counter argument, some astrologers argue that a birth just a minute apart can make all the difference by altering what they call the 'house cusps;' naturally they don't worry about such levels of precision when performing their own evaluations, they'll just take what they can get.

An article from the Washington Times describing the study:
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030817-105449-9384r.htm

and...

The actual study published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in 2003:
www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf

Geek Out: The Technology Behind Motion Sensing.

2006-11-20T14:21:00.000-08:00

Apropos thanks to the release of the Nintendo Wii: Here's an article on CNN on motion capture technology.

Steak Connoisseurs Take Note:

2006-11-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

What difference does it make what you feed the cow? Slate.com examines the best way to raise your steak.

What about love?

2006-10-27T00:50:00.001-07:00

An article about how we choose mates, based on research being done at the University of Texas, Austin.

The Bolshoi : A Way

2006-10-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

Look at what I found all you old skool fans...

Its about the bills... the trouble with the financial aid office at UCSD

2006-08-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

Late last week I was informed that my financial aid isn't going to last me through the winter quarter. I’ll be lucky if I can finish up by then. Bills, as if they aren’t painful enough to pay right now as a UCSD computer science masters student, are only going to get worse. I think things are a bit better as a PhD student because there seems to be more funding available for them. This is understandable, PhD's are associated with the school for the long haul, spending some 5-7 years in school, with the opportunity to contribute significantly to research, arguably the most important "export" a top tier university provides. As far as I know only masters students have to take out loans in our department. (Correct me if I'm wrong, friends, but isn't this so?) But the problem isn’t the loans, rather its how much time the financial aid department says I have to finish my degree requirements.

I'm at issue with a particular rule that dictates I have about two years and a quarter to finish my master's program. This amount is fine for students who graduate by taking a comprehensive exam at the end of their two years, but for a student like myself who is doing a master's thesis to graduate, this route can take up to 3 years to finish. The first year is spent taking classes and unless one is lucky, finding a thesis topic in a year is difficult. We have a year to choose a particular subfield of interest, become acquainted with research in that field to a proficient degree, and then choose an outstanding problem in this field to work on. This is assuming we don't switch fields in the middle of this process. To add to this, we may not even know if a thesis project is interesting enough to work on until we have spent months of work on it. In my own experience, I suffered a false start on a project that set me back a whole quarter. Judging from my own experience and from friends experiences, I would estimate that it takes about a year and a half, usually a little bit longer, to find a thesis project that one is happy with. Once the topic is chosen it will take another six to nine months to not only write the thesis, but also conduct experiments, implement code, etc. In some computer science fields, like systems, projects can take up to a year to complete.

With this in mind I would guess that the average masters student under thesis option takes somewhere around two years and two quarters to finish their research. If the financial aid office made funding available for 3 academic years that would be a huge relief. I would estimate that that would cover the academic careers of most masters students under thesis option. In the absence of this option we’ll need to resort to alternate sources of funding (for many of us our parents are already helping us out in addition to aid that we procure), private loans, and extraordinary feats of penny-pinching.

I’m lucky enough that this is just a big annoyance to me. I’ll make it out of the program one way or another. But it’s a shame for those students who, because of this imposed timeline, cannot continue with their education because sufficient funding is not available. And it’s a shame for the school, who is not facilitating the education of its masters students. These facts leak out to the public, much like I am making them known here, and will only detract from the prestige of this excellent university.

Geek Out: The thermal properties of cookwear.

2006-08-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

Allow to me to geek out for a little bit: This article on cookingforengineers.com explains the thermal properties of cook wear. What to use, Copper, Aluminum or Cast Iron pan? Read and find out.

The San Francisco Burrito

2006-08-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Cool Wikipedia entry for the day: The San Francisco Burrito, fans of Chipotle or Freebird's down in texas will recognize this burrito, typified by its huge size and number of ingredients. I was surprized to find out that this Burrito actually got its start in the Bay Area.

Bat's Day

2006-08-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

It was Bat's Day weekend this weekend. Bats Day is a day where all the goth kids crawl out of their coffins and invade the happiest place on earth, Disney Land. Storm clouds looming over Cinderella's Castle -- Neat! Seeing as how the last time I was at Disneyland I was six, this was a great opportunity to go. There must have been around 2000 of us in attendance, I don't know what the exact number was but we were almost number 1000 and I'm pretty sure there were about 1000 behind us.

My big moment at Disneyland was when I got to see ASIMO, Honda's bipedal robot, and one of the most sophisticated humanoid robots in the world. I tried getting a hold of the ASIMO team at Honda about a year to see if I could score an internship with their computer vision group. They didn't call me back. (A friend of mine, Ben, did score an internship with the ASIMO team this summer though.)

I'll be posting pictures of Bat's Day soon.

In other news: some how I managed to see Snakes on a Plane, this weekend. This film is a little bit like eating at McDonalds. You know it isn't going to be good, but it still leaves you pleasantly satisfied. Snakes is a solid B movie, and as long as you keep that in mind, I think you'll be very entertained. It's total throwback to campy survival films of the 70's and 80's. And you get to see Sam Jackson in another bad ass role. Can you get enough of this man spouting 12 letter expletives? I can't.

The 2 Million Dollar Comma

2006-08-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Punctuation is important: Comma placement cost a company 2 Million Dollars.

On the Radio

2006-07-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

Check out this blog on ways to find out that song that is playing on the radio. Make sure to check out the comments too.

The Questionable Practices of Electronic Arts

2006-07-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

EA, the publishers of Madden Football and a number of other popular games, has some shady working practices, namely working employees on a mandatory 12-hour-per-day, 7-days-a-week work week. Such practices are understandable in an industry that must adhere to strict deadlines. But, according to ea_spouse's blog on livejournal, "crunch times" such as these are rarely rewarded and are exceedingly becoming the norm for any EA project, regardless of how far ahead or behind schedule a project is.

Rob Zombie interview on NPR

2006-07-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

Rob Zombie interview on NPR's "The Business," regarding his Devil's Rejects film and how he coaxed an R rating from the MPAA. (Doesn't Rob Zombie sound awfully similar to George Clooney?)

Geek Cooking...

2006-07-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

Cool site: Cooking for Engineers.

King Edward the Plant

2006-07-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

San Diego has no fans. Which would not be problem if San Diego had air conditioning units installed in their apartments. But for whatever reason they have failed to do so, so the heat chases me from my very own room every single afternoon. Fuck that. I went in search of a fan today. I already own a fan actually, but it's much too weak, so I went looking for something with a little more umph.

The fan isle at wal-mart looked like a tornado had blown through it. They were out of fans, dead fan parts were strewn across the shelves, I can only image the ravenous crowd that pillaged that isle early in the morning. The only lesson I could take from this was, "hit the store up earlier, " because all throughout town everywhere I went, Home Depot, Target, San Diego was out of fans. Somewhere in this town today some elderly person has perished because there were no fans in this city, I can feel it. So in stead of my fan what did I end up with at the end of the day? Groceries, and my first live plant, "King Edward the Plant," he's a Dracaena Compacta, a mighty little plant and if he's lucky, mightier than my general propensity to kill any living thing that happens to fall under my care. Good luck, King Edward the Plant.

People I'm looking forward to seeing at Comic-Con.

2006-06-20T01:50:00.000-07:00

Ok so posting about Comic-Con finally got me to check the Special Guest's lists. Here's a list of peeps that need to autograph my shit:

Ray Bradbury

-- (good god he's still alive)

Yoshitaka Amano

-- best known for his art on the Final Fantasy video games and on the Vampire Hunter D manga. He also did the art for The Sandman: Dreamhunters, for all you Sandman fans.

Mark Buckingham

--Vertigo artist. (Hellblazer, the Death miniseries's, ...)

Art Clokey

--Creator of Gumby (!!!)

Robert Kirkman

--artist on the Walking Dead.

Walter Koenig

--for you Startrek Geeks, he played Chekov on the original series.

Jean-ClaudeMezieres

--art designer for the movie The Fifth Element.

Jimmy Palmiotti

-- the inker

John Romita Sr.

-- Marvel heavyweight known for his art work on Spiderman.

San Diego Comic-Con and X-Sanguin V

2006-06-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Not that S.D. people need reminding, but some of you outside of SoCal may be interested in attending the San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest comic convention in the world. There is a lot more to the Comic-Con than comics books though; the SD Comic-Con is a gathering ground for the sci-fi, fantasy, movie, tv, and video game industries. Info at : http://www.comic-con.org/index.php

Anyone attending the festivities should also check out X-Sanguin. A lavish party thrown by the Brotherhood on the Saturday of that weekend. This event always sells out. Tom King and Brenden Cahill of club Decade will be spinning.

Military takes a hint from Harry Potter...

2006-05-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Military is taking a hint from Harry Potter as it seeks to develop an Invisibility Cloak. Researchers claim that such a device is well founded from a theoretical standpoint, what is standing in the way is our engineering capabilities.

Even Einstein had his problems...

2006-05-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

Unseen papers going on sale show how even Einstein struggled with maths.

Blogs Blogs Blogs

2006-05-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

I found Neil Gaimen's blog, fantasy-horror writer and creator of the Sandman series. And while we're at it here is Robin Guthrie's blog, guitarist of the now defunct (for the moment) Cocteau Twins.

vinyl media

2006-05-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

New laser disc decvice can play your vinyl records: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/

Fun stuff for today:

2006-05-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments.

What is Heaven?

A fucked up Super Mario Game.

How to Dress Emo

Baby Meets Big Brother for Science

2006-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Who would follow around their baby with a 24 hour surveillance system? Daddy works at MIT media lab.

Expectation Maximization

2006-05-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

So I spent the day the other day trying to get a hold of some good EM tutorials. Here's a list of some papers which I found useful: I found the presentation of EM in this tutorial by Sean Borman to be the most straightforward, even though the derivation which is described avoids some intuition and motivation behind the algorithm.

Hemant Tagare's tutorial, particularly section 3.1, does a good job of describing how we can obtain the likelihood of a distribution of observed data given a model which incorporates unknown data as well. And from this we derive the EM process.

Finally, Aaron D'Souza EM paper serves as a quick summary and cheat sheet of EM as applied to Mixtures of Gaussians.

You can connect Google Calendar to your iPod

2006-05-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

Found a neet little page filled with Google calendar tips. The coolest trick on there: Google calendar can text message you with reminders and daily agendas. Won't forget mom's birthday this year!

(neet not neat)

Homebase

2006-05-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

I have an office! Okay, actually I have a desk on the fourth floor of the new engineering building. The point is, I have a homebase now, so to speak. I need a coffee.

Godlike

2006-05-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

En Esch in the flesh. Caught the Slick Idiot show tonight. It was quite a treat. I don't think too many people were hip to them because the crowd was meager at best, there was perhaps only about three crowded rows worth up at front and sparse people standing around behind us. No worries though because I was so close to En Esch I could punch him. The great thing about the 'cross pollination' of all these industrial rock bands is that they all do each others songs. 'Cross Pollination' is that phenomenon of industrial rock bands that seemingly everybody is a member of everybody else's band. And it pays off when En Esch, lead singer for many a'song in Industrial Rock God's KMFDM, decides to treat the crowd with KMFDM singles.

It reminds me of an Ohgr show I went to in Tempe years ago. We were all crossing our fingers that they would play some Skinny Puppy tracks, but come on, I thought, they are promoting Ohgr, not Skinny Puppy. (As a side note, my best friend, Ivan, got Nivek Ogre's autograph on a poster that night which he signed "Ogre, I am Dead.") My point is that many of these side projects can probably make use of singing original band material, because it does wonders for firing up the audience. Slick has some fantastic tracks, but after playing "A Drug Against War," a KMFDM track, they totally galvanized the audience. The crudest piece of shit song would have been pure gold after playing that track.

So, very much in line with the other industrial shows these guys do tonight's show was a thumbs up.

Impure Mathematics

2006-05-05T00:26:00.000-07:00

For those who get this... this is so wrong.

70 Channels that you can watch on the web for free!

2006-05-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Cool finding on the web: A listing of free television concent you can see on the web!

Here come the Robots...

2006-05-03T00:29:00.000-07:00

I had my second interview today. I'd mention which company but I don't want some spider to pick this up and post this on google. Anyway, the interview went very well. I spent four hours talking to the eight or nine employees who work at the company. The stuff that they do, which is working with robots, is very interesting and definitely something I am interested in. There is the issue of when I am going to graduate though, which is still in a very uncertain state until I start working on implementing my project and writing the thesis. I'm concerned about how this is going to effect my job prospects at the moment.

But the good thing is that they know I'm out there and interested and really that's the main thing I wanted to accomplish with these guys. I actually haven't seriously considered what I would think if I were offered a position. I mean this would be the start of my career we are talking about here. It sounds so unreal that I can't even picture it. But hell yes I would take it, the work is almost exactly what I'm looking for.

Dog

2006-05-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with this dog?

Grand Master says...

2006-05-02T00:26:00.001-07:00

"Always be able to kill your students."
-- Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi, last living master of ninjitsu

The future of next-gen game consoles

2006-05-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

From Next Generation: A massive 188-page report from Wedbush Morgan Securities analysts Michael Pachter and Edward Woo details why they think the Xbox 360 will retain its first-mover advantage -- for two years, anyway -- and how Sony is more interested in the HD format wars than the console battle.

Fuck certification...

2006-05-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

Will certification become a thing of the past? To those not in the tech fields let me explain, there are number of technical certifications that one can acquire that will allow them to work in a particular sector in the tech field. These programs are typically targeted towards fields related to IT (Internet Technology) divisions of companies such as networking fields or computer security.

A recent article in eWeek reports that the average pay for non certified IT-workers has actually trumped the average pay for certified workers, indicating some kind of shift in employer's attitudes in these certification programs and perhaps "they are finding other qualities of IT professionals more critical to their businesses going forward, and they are willing to pay more for those."

I actually don't have much experience with these certification programs. Though I'm in the tech field, my typical rolls in employment are in software development which are less influenced by certification programs than IT fields. I like it that way, it puts a focus on my natural talents and abilities rather than on having me worry about passing a certification exam every few years. Which is not only a time-effort-sink, but is also very expensive, as these exams are several hundreds of dollars a pop not including the price of study material. Putting too much emphasis on passing certification exams forces the worker to devote his or her energy to learning the exam when instead he or she could be using the time to develop critical skills that go beyond the scope of the rote learning that these exams require.

While certification is a good way to get kids in the door, to ensure that someone entering the field is competent enough to work, I believe that requiring people to recertify every few years is wasteful. Even at the pace which technology changes, the fact is if you are competent enough to pass a certification once, then you are probably competent enough to keep up with technology changes as you gain experience.

A to do list for google calendar

2006-04-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a good do lo list program. I found this neet little script that works with Google Calendar. Get it.

Real Fake Grass

2006-04-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

You photoshop kids are good. Tutorial on creating photo-realistic grass in photoshop.

Take my son to the prom...

2006-04-25T01:17:00.000-07:00

Craig's list strikes again... This mom is willing to pay you to take her son to Prom. Requirements are that you are cute and could pass for 17-19.

Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day!

2006-04-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

Hey all you starving college kids, another free food opportunity awaits, Today is Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day.

2006-04-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder where the THX sound comes from? If you are like me, probably not, but once you find out you think it's pretty cool:

Blog from Music Thing.

Fortune

2006-04-17T03:52:00.000-07:00

Its been a mix of being busy and not being busy. Of filling my time with things to do, but not quite going forward in the ways I need. Im very close to finishing school now, but the problem is that the things i need to do to graduate, my thesis project, is so fuzzy right now. I have taken some time to incubate ideas, doing reading, researching, but I think I get to distracted when I do these things and I go off on tangents. Interesting tangents, though, for example I spent some time tonight learning about the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method of density estimation. Lord knows how I would apply it to my thesis topic, though.

I have an interview tomorrow with for a job when I graduate. Its with a company called Vision Robotics Corp., a small startup of nine employees who work on computer vision applications. They are based in San Diego, which is rad because I'd like to live here in SD for another year or two, and the work they are doing is just about a perfect match with what I want to do with my career. Academia has been great, but I need to get my hands dirty and start building things, implementing ideas. Besides, I'm going to continue stimulating the old noggin till the day I die.I don't need to be in a classroom to continue keeping up with research.

I wish I had a little more than work to talk about, but I don't. Thats better than having some personal problem to complain about. We should all consider ourselves fortunate who have nothing new to say.

Google Calendar

2006-04-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

Google Calendar is up and running!

Don't think too hard.

2006-04-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

The saying "Don't think too hard" may have just found some scientific backing. The following is from the Health and Science News Round Up: (The actual study can be found here.)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Complicated decisions might be best left to the unconscious mind because thinking too hard may lead to bad choices, a Dutch study found.

Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, said conscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among simple products, whereas unconscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among complex products, the Guardian reported Friday.

The problem with thinking about things consciously is that you can only focus on a few things at once, so when in the face of a complex decision this can lead to giving certain factors undue importance and thinking about something several times is also likely to produce slightly different evaluations, highlighting inconsistencies, according to the study published in Science.

Dijksterhuis said that when he has to make an important decision he gathers together the relevant facts and gives it all of his attention at first.

Then 'I sit on things and rely on my gut,' he told Science.

[[ Check out the paper discussion for more of the researcher's interpretations of their results ~d ]]

General Discussion
Unconscious thought improved the quality of decisions. When people are faced with complex decisions, a few minutes of distraction during which people could engage in unconscious thought - but not in conscious thought - led to superior decisions, compared to circumstances under which people could not engage in unconscious thought or to circumstances under which people engaged in conscious thought. Moreover, a few minutes of conscious thought generally did not lead to better decisions compared to conditions where people did not consciously think. The relative inferiority of conscious thought was expected to be the consequence of the low processing capacity of consciousness....

Play for today

2006-03-20T00:28:00.001-08:00

Really nice weekend. Nothing criminal went on for Saint Patty's day. I went out with some of the guys to Rancho's in North Park which has become my favorite Mexican restaurant in the city. Afterwards we went to Hamburger Mary's to drink and smoke. It was a gay fest in there, I hope the guys didn't mind. Then we hit up Cj's which is a small neighborhood sports bar around Matt's place.

Saturday I spent it chilling with Mona and Cibele and Van. We went to see V for Vendetta, which was surprisingly good. I was expecting it to be some dumb action movie, and considering that it was written by the Wachowski brothers, and their incredible let-down of a movie called Matrix Revolutions, it didn't seem like this film had anything going for it in my book. But I did hear some buzz about it this weekend so I thought, hey what the fuck? V for Vendetta is unusually good. The story is actually very well constructed. There's more politics in the film than action scenes which in my opinion makes the action scenes that much cooler. All in all its worth watching.

I also saw another little gem at the recommendation of Mona. The movie Oldboy is a Korean film-noir mystery gore movie cast in the same spirit as Takashi Miike films, though the gore is a little less glorified and over the top than in Miike's films. Oldboy's main character, Oh Dae-Su, is kidnapped by a mysterious group and forced to live in an apartment room as a prisoner for fifteen years. Upon being released, its time to figure out who wanted him locked up and why. The fight scenes in this film, though its not an action movie and they are not the film's focus, are really refreshing. They are very wet and raw and real. There is a brawl that occurs in the film where Oh Dae-Su takes out a gang of twenty or thirty guys. Many action flicks will default to a barrage of snazzy martial arts, elevating the hero's fighting skills to what you would see in a comic book. Not this film. If a man were able to beat the shit out of twenty guys in a hallway in real life, then this is what it would look like. Oldboy is out on video.