artless processes

The Future

2011-04-13T01:50:00.000-05:00

I will be attending the University of Texas in Austin in pursuit of a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering starting fall of next year. There's something comforting about knowing that the next five plus years of your life will still be spent as a student. I'm definitely not ready to enter the "real world," whatever exactly that entails. Guess I'll get to find out first-hand the validity of PhD Comics.

Hook 'Em Horns!

The End

2011-03-28T23:54:00.001-05:00

Today was the last first day of a quarter for my undergraduate college career. I cannot believe how fast it has gone by. Absolutely ridiculous. And I still have so much left to do.

Friday Night Lights

2011-02-11T22:07:00.000-06:00

One of the greatest TV series of recent times came to an end this week. Aside from the soundtrack inspired by Explosions in the Sky, which is incredible, the show told a common story in an incredibly realistic and moving manner. I feel like it really portrayed the actual culture in a town where football is everything and the greatest thing the majority of its inhabitants experience are the lights on Friday night. The show felt real and meaningful, something most shows fail to even come close to. It's sad to see it end but I feel it was done appropriately. If you've never seen it before, I'd highly recommend checking it out sometime.

Texas Forever.

New Music

2011-02-07T23:41:00.000-06:00

I find it interesting that three of the bands I've listened to since I can recall independently finding and listening to music all have albums coming out within a few weeks of one another. The Get Up Kids released their first album in seven years, There Are Rules, after deciding to reunite after their 2005 breakup. While they sound significantly different on their latest work, the same differences can be found between all of their previous releases. Definitely a worthwhile listen from some of the founders of the "emo" genre.

Next up is ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's latest work, Tao of the Dead. The Trail of Dead have definitely been one of my favorite bands since I first found Source Tags & Codes back in high school. Since then, I've managed to accrue all of their albums through Seattle's excellent record stores and they remain the band for which I own the most CDs. I haven't heard much about the new record, but I've enjoyed pretty much every style/sound they've gone through over the years, so I'm pretty psyched.

Finally is the latest Bright Eyes release from Saddle Creek and Conor Oberst, The People's Key. While I liked Cassadaga and Oberst's solo projects, The People's Key is a welcome departure from those more folksy records. The People's Key has a much more "indie rock" demeanor and has really grown on me after a few listens. Definitely a worthwhile listen over at the NPR website for it's upcoming Feb. 15th release.

The Future of UW HvZT

2011-01-30T00:28:00.000-06:00

The Humans vs. Zombies Tag game at the University of Washington has become a point of controversy following the most recent iteration of the game earlier this Winter quarter. Several instances of rule-breaking (e.g. shooting Nerf darts from the 4th floor of a building) have led a few people to call for an end to the game (UW Daily article). While the game is effectively moderated by the players, who are supposed to report any instances of rule-breaking, there are situations where names cannot be obtained and the infringing players not banned. The administrators of UW HvZT are already planning on cracking down more heavily during next quarter's game (should it be allowed).

What's frustrating about some of the arguments against the game are the claims that the game "makes people violent." This is nothing more than a re-hashing of the "vidoegames make people violent" frenzy the U.S. media absolutely loves to cover. Someone was quoted claiming that HvZT basically "trains people to be assassins." The game no more trains people to be assassins than it trains people to be flesh-eating, mindless hordes.

The game is played with socks and Nerf guns. Future iterations of the game will ban the wearing of masks (fine with me). The UW Police and administration have been on board and informed of every game and event. The game was suspended during President Obama's visit without a hitch. Sure there are occasional disruptions with people running around but does that really hurt anyone? Banning this game will accomplish nothing. By the logic many of the dissenters have presented, we should also ban cars on campus because someone could get hit by them. It's just not worth the risk.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T12:18:00.001-06:00

2011 is going to be different.

Only Two Left

2010-12-29T23:29:00.000-06:00

My next-to-last quarter as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington begins in only a few days (we start back up on January 3rd) and I'm finally on the tail-end of my bioengineering coursework. I'm done with the core classes and only need two more senior elective classes in addition to my capstone project. This will be my first quarter with only 12 credits, which is the minimum for maintaining full-time student status. Since 3 of those credits are accounted for by my capstone project, I'm really only taking 9 credits across two classes.

My only bioengineering class is BIOEN 455: BioMEMS (Introduction to Biological Microelectromechanical Systems) and covers state-of-the-art techniques in patterning biomolecules, machining three-dimensional microstructures, and building microfluidic devices. It's my first more structural/mechanical bioengineering class and should be really interesting.

The other class is an Honors Civ class (HONORS 392A: Science and the Master Narrative) that explores the "profound turn in human thought - the emergence of a master scientific narrative of the human experience." The class looks at the effects of science and scientific discovery upon humanity over its existence. As my last honors class, I'm excited to be done with the program requirements.

Hopefully the quarter won't be anywhere near the nightmare of last quarter. Between 18 credits of class, my capstone project, and frantically applying to graduate schools, I didn't have much time to stop and do much of anything. I plan on dedicated a significant portion of my time to my capstone project and hopefully advance it significantly towards some of my more ambitious goals.

I still can't believe I'm almost done with college.

Use PHP Image in Forums

2010-12-25T11:47:00.000-06:00

Many forums don't allow the use of non-standard image extensions (NOT .jpg, .png, or .gif) in the signatures area for obvious safety reasons. I've been using the little PHP-based LastFM image seen in the top right corner of the header area on this blog in my signatures for quite some time without trouble.

Unfortunately, several websites have changed their forum systems a bit such that the .php extension is no longer recognized as a valid image file. This obviously sucks as it's really cool having your most recently played song visibile in your signature area. Rather than making a cron script to update an actual .png file every 5 minutes or so, I just decided to use some .htaccess redirect trickery to avoid the extension limitation. Basically, you will input an acceptable file extension into the forum's signature code area but the file you provided will redirect to the php image file.

First you need to find the .htaccess file in the directory where the desired .php file is located. If it's not there, just create it using your FTP client and then open it in a text editor. Copy in the following line of code:

Redirect ORIGINAL_FILE REDIRECT_FILE

Replace "ORIGINAL_FILE" with the path to the nonexistent .jpg, .png, or .gif file and "REDIRECT_FILE" with the path to the actual PHP-generated file. Both paths need to be full paths from the root directory of the visible website. For example, I'm running mine on my student server at UW so the following redirect code is used:

Redirect /csullend/recent.jpg /csullend/recent.php

I am providing the "recent.jpg" file as the fake file for the forums which redirects to the recent.php file. So what I use in the forums is the following link:

http://students.washington.edu/csullend/recent.jpg

The .htaccess file redirects the inbound traffic to recent.jpg (which doesn't even actually exist) to recent.php, thus tricking the forum's signature checker into accepting the .php extension file even though they aren't allowed.

My Most Used Applications of the Year

2010-12-23T11:55:00.000-06:00

I figured I'd jump on the end-of-the-year bandwagon and make a list of some of the most used desktop applications on my Mac. It's most likely similar to the majority of lists out there and anyone following my Twitter account has probably seen me mention them before. I think I made one of these a few years ago, so there are probably still some similarities because I'm choosing the applications I use the most. These are in alphabetical order so I don't actually have to decide which ones are the most important to me. That would be far too difficult and I'm far too lazy.

1Password - Link
After saying these aren't in order of importance, it's ironic that 1Password is heading up this list as it probably is my most-used application. 1Password is an unrivaled password manager for the Mac, iOS devices, and now Windows. It's cross-web browser, so it works in Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Camino, etc. and centralizes all your passwords in a single database rather than having each browser maintain your login info. Gone are the days where I have to rely on unsafe Word documents to store my list of passwords. 1Password puts them a simple keystroke away and protects them behind a singular master password. It's password generation features allow you to create legitimately strong passwords that you never have to remember because it stores them all for you. Combined with Dropbox syncing and the iOS app, you can remotely access all the passwords via a sweet HTML-based version of the application. 1Password is worth every cent and has definitely increased the security and diversity of my Internet passwords.

Dropbox - Link
Dropbox has proven to be an incredible resource during my undergraduate education. I experienced two graphics card failures that made my laptop inaccesible for over a week each time. Fortunately, all my school-related documents were all safely located in the cloud courtesy of Dropbox and ready to download onto my temporary replacement computers. When the file server in my department experienced a catastrophic failure that resulted in most of the data being lost, all my MATLAB programs were safely stored on Dropbox ready to be redownloaded. Backing up on external drives is smart, but using an easily accesible online service like Dropbox is smarter. Combined with the ability to earn bonus storage space via invites (I'm up to 9 GB from the original 2 GB), convenient online interface, and background-running application, Dropbox is a must-have for any student.

Google Chrome - Link
I never really used Safari on my laptop, I didn't like the shortcuts required to navigate tabs and it didn't have any of the plugin features that Firefox sported. When Chrome was launched I was reluctant to swap because 1Password didn't have any support and extensions were still relatively sparse. However, once the 1Password extension launched and a working Adblock extension were released, I decided to give Chrome a try. Any Firefox user knows that the application tends to become increasingly sluggish the longer you have it open. I frequently uninstalled and reinstalled the application every few months just to get it to speed up. Google Chrome is a completely different browser. It doesn't run slow. Flash failures only crash a single tab, not the entire browser. When it crashes,which is rare, the "restore open pages" feature actually works. Combined with the ability to sync your bookmarks and extensions between computers via Google, Chrome is all-around a superior browser compared to Firefox and Safari.

GV Connect - Link
GV Connect brings Google Voice functionality to your Dashboard. You can initiate calls and send/receive text messages with Growl notifications without having to load the Google Voice website or finding your iPhone/iPod/Android/Phone. It's extremely convenient for quick text message conversations and getting notified of new messages, voicemails, or calls.

HandBrake - Link
With the demise of the VisualHub application and absolute atrocity that is Quicktime Player X, Handbrake has risen as an amazing video conversion program (mainly for conversions to the x264 codec). It's fast and is capable of handling a wide array of codecs and enclosures (including those pesky MKV files). There are ample customization options for the serious encoders out there as well as several easy-to-use built-in settings.

iStat Menus - Link
iStat Menus is an incredible system monitoring application that resides in your OSX menubar. From CPU and memory use, to harddrive space, to your current network connections and bandwidth, iStat Menus offers an expanse of information about the current state of your computer. I especially like it because you can add a drop down calendar to the Date/Time so you don't have to launch iCal just to see the monthly calendar. If you're a user that likes to know what's going on your computer, then there's no reason not to have iStat Menus.

Little Snitch - Link
The built-in firewall in Mac OSX is not exactly the most functional or user friendly product developed by Apple. It's actually pretty horrible and either leaves your computer completely open or causes troubles with using many third-party applications. Little Snitch is an excellent expansion upon the firewall that allows you to easily define which applications, networks, and ports you want your computer to be able to connect to. Anytime a program attempts a previously unseen connection, Little Snitch notifies you about it and allows you to quickly allow or deny the connection from a pop-up window. It is definitely a step above the build-in firewall functionality of the OSX operating system.

Max - Link
While iTunes is a versatile audio converter, there are still many files it cannot handle without modifying the application. For example, it can't handle the popular lossless FLAC format. Max is a versatile audio converter application that can convert to and from essentially every audio format. Max offers a wide array of codecs and quality options and should be able to handle any audio files you find.

MKVtools - Link
The Xbox 360 is an excellent media center extension for both Windows (Media Center) and MacOS (Playback or Connect360). Unfortunately, it doesn't handle the commonly used MKV container, so any files have to be converted in order to stream. Many MKV files use AC3 audio and X264 video, which means only the audio needs to be converted while the video can simply be passed-thru into a MP4 formatted file. Using Handbrake to convert a HD-quality MKV file is a multi-hour task even when the computer is not in use. MKVtools can quickly convert the MKV file to an Xbox 360-ready MP4 file in a matter of minutes because it only has to convert the audio and not the entire video.

Things - Link
Before I started using Things, I had to rely upon iCal's todo list entry system, which isn't the easiest or most efficient. There was also no way to see my todos on my iPod Touch since Apple decided it wasn't important enough to add that feature to iCal (seriously where is it?). Things is an excellent task management application that makes creating todo lists incredibly easy. You can create "Areas of Responsibility" and "Projects" to classify your todo items and sync them to iCal for viewing in Apple Mail. Combined with the iOS application and wireless syncing, Things offers a great upgrade beyond the simple capabilities of iCal and definitely help me organize my homework and other school stuff.

Tweetie - Link
Since its initial beta release, Tweetie has been my only desktop Twitter client (and my iPod Touch client where it is called Twitter). In the months following its release, it was hands-down the best Mac Twitter client in terms of the features it offered and the usability of its design. However, since the creator atebits was incorporated into Twitter, the desktop client has not been updated. It doesn't support the native "retweet" system that the Twitter site now uses nor geolocation for location-aware tweets. Twitter has basically announced that the application is no longer being updated in lieu of focusing on their mobile app development. Once another well-designed, more functional client emerges I'll probably jump ship, but until then, I'll stick with Tweetie.

The Unarchiver - Link
The Archive Utility program on MacOS X is a functional albeit limited unarchiver application. It has limited file support and is completely baffled by password-protected archives. The Unarchiver is a vastly superior application that can handle zip, tar-gzip, tar-bzip2, rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other old and obscure formats. I have yet to find a file format that it cannot efficiently and effectively unarchive.

So there's my list of my most used applications for this year. I left out some obvious ones like iTunes, Adium, iScrobbler + LastFM, and Cyberduck since I'm pretty sure I've mentioned them before.

Forgive and Forget

2010-11-21T18:13:00.002-06:00

I think I've waited long enough.
Our world was once forget-me-nots
And now I wait another year.
Now I wait another year. I need you here.
I think I've heard this one before,
But it's not you walking through my door.
And now I wait another year.
Now I wait another year. I need you here.
I need you here. I need you here. I need you here.
Don't bother it now, Let sleepers lie.
Bygones have all gone by.
Forgot what we fought for, Hard as I might,
Don't have the will to fight.
Forgive & forget Whatever was said
Because we're growing up By the hour.
I never would let It go on like it did:
All good things Have endings.
Forgive & forget Whatever was said
All good things Have endings.
Don't bother it now, Let sleepers lie.
Bygones have all gone by.
Forgot what we fought for, Hard as I might,
Don't have the will to fight.
Don't bother it now, Let sleepers lie.
Bygones have all gone by.
Forgot what we fought for, Hard as I might,
Don't have the will to fight.

- The Get Up Kids

Halo: Reach Elevator Bug

2010-09-25T00:25:00.009-05:00

To start things off, Halo: Reach is an incredible game. It's definitely the best of the Halo: CE followups and a fitting end to Bungie's hand in the Halo franchise. The campaign was excellent. The multiplayer is excellent (all forms of it). Forge World is incredible. It is absolutely fun and has lead me to throw down 73 hours of playtime since it's launch 10 days ago (huzzah for late-starting school!). Now for the little problem I encountered today whilst playing through the campaign on Legendary difficulty.

I was nearing the end of the eighth mission "New Alexandria" when I ran into an elevator glitch/bug that made it completely impossible for me to advance. After entering Sinoviet Center to destroy the final communications jamming device I was trapped in the upper room and multiplayer map Reflection by apparent elevator malfunctions. When the jammer device is destroyed you are promptly attacked by Drones so I immediately took off for the set of elevators for a quick escape. Once I made it into the right elevator I activated the lift and descended to the lower level. At this point I could have exited the elevator and continued onwards towards the last part of the mission but I had heard about an easter egg regarding the elevator music in the left lift. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try going back up in the left elevator to see if anything would happen. Unfortunately nothing sounded any different so I immediately hit the button to return to the lower level. However, when I got there, the door would not open completely. It just repeatedly opened slightly and then closed as if something were blocking the door mechanism. At this point I assumed it was just an indication to use the other elevator so I went back up and called the other lift back up and tried returning to the lower level. Once again, the doors failed to open and I realized there was a really good chance I was completely screwed.

Video from someone else who experienced the same bug
The unfortunate part of this entire scenario is that I received a checkpoint while riding the lift back up to the upper level after my opportunity to continue onwards. I was completely contained in the upper level and elevators with no means of exiting. I couldn't just quit and restart because of that inopportune checkpoint. I realized I had just blown an hour of gameplay for a nonexistent easter egg (damn you for tempting me Siege of Madrigal).

After about ten minutes of running around trying to find a way out and wasting all my ammo and grenades I started messing around within the elevator at the upper level while activating the lifts. In retrospect I should probably have been trying this on the lower level since that is where I needed to glitch through the door. Anyways, by walking backwards immediately after hitting the button I managed to glitch through the door of the elevator, leaving me perched precariously on the edge of a long drop.

View on Bungie.net

I obviously tried dropping down and managed to land on another ledge where I once again received another terrible checkpoint (Film on Bungie.net). I tried dropping down again to the lower level elevator doors but hit a kill wall on the way down. There was no way back up and no way back down so now I have to replay the entire mission. Had I tried the door glitching on the lower level I might have been able to make it through and continue, but unfortunately that was not the case.

So as a warning for people playing through New Alexandria on Legendary with the Grunt Birthday Party and IWHBYD skulls on: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RETURN TO THE UPPER LEVEL OF SINOVIET CENTER OR YOU MAY HAVE TO RESTART THE ENTIRE MISSION BECAUSE OF AN ELEVATOR DOOR GLITCH.

Update
I've played the mission again and think I figured out the reason for this apparent bug. After you exit the elevator on the lower floor the elevators enter a mode that prevents reentry to the upper level. I believe that after I exited the elevator I entered the other elevator before the door malfunction prevented my reentry. Now in the elevator with the system operating to prevent entry functioning I was trapped in the elevator. The obvious way to avoid this is to not try to return to the upper level.

Update x2
Looks like the walking out of the elevator backwards glitch can be used to escape the elevator. Check out the first comment for the exact instructions but it essentially boils down to 1) going to the bottom floor in the elevator 2) hit the elevator button and immediately walk backwards into the door 3) having glitched through the inner elevator door start jumping up while walking backwards to eventually glitch through the messed up door. It seems that dying while performing this glitch is common but still can be used to escape the trap.

Bring Back the Old (Good) iTunes Logo

2010-09-01T14:00:00.001-05:00

By now you've no doubt seen the new iTunes 10 and the atrocious logo it's rocking. I'm really not a fan of the current trends in Apple application icons (see Quicktime X). Every logo update has been in favor of a more cartoony feel rather than the professional style of the original icons. Obviously there's nothing we can do to stop these changes but you can always revert to the old ones by changing the icon. If you want the old iTunes (pre-ruining) logo then you can download it from this link: http://bit.ly/oldituneslogo

This method will only work on a Mac. Open the zip archive and Right-Click > Get Info on the expanded file. Click on the icon at the top of the Get Info screen to select it (should have a light blue outline) and copy (Command + C). Now Get Info on the new iTunes application in the Applications folder, select the icon the same way, and paste the copied original icon (Command + P). If you did this right, then you should be rocking the old-school iTunes logo on the new iTunes 10. Of course, anytime you update the application the icon will probably get messed up and you'll have to reapply the switch. Obviously you'll eventually get used to the new logo and stop worrying about how lame it looks. But until then at least you can hide it for a while.

Prevent Bootcamp Partition from Mounting

2010-08-09T01:19:00.000-05:00

If you're on a Mac with Windows installed via Bootcamp then you've no doubt noticed that the Bootcamp partition mounts as another drive when using OSX. I rarely needed access to the contents of my Bootcamp installation so I thought it'd be nice to prevent the partition from mounting at all on the Mac side of things. There's a relatively easy way to achieve this using just a little bit of command line inputs. The only things you need to know are tje name of your Bootcamp partition and the type of formating (NTFS or FAT). You will also need administrative rights on the computer. In my case, it's just "BOOTCAMP" in all capital letters. It's important that you get the capitalization and spelling correct otherwise this won't work. If you have a space in the name then you'll need to modify the text a bit. All you need to do is add a backslash slash (\) immediately before the space in the name (e.g. "Windows\ Drive").

Armed with the name of your partition, open up the Terminal application (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and type in the following command

sudo pico /etc/fstab

You will be prompted to enter an administrator password (more than likely just your account password) to continue.

This will create and open a file on the command line where you will then enter the following text, replacing "DriveName" with the name of your partition (e.g. BOOTCAMP).

LABEL=DriveName none ntfs rw,noauto 0 0

Note that if you have a FAT32 formatted drive you will need to change the "ntfs" to "msdos" for this to work.

Press the keys Control + o and then enter to save the modifications to the file. Press the keys Control + x to exit the file editing interface. At this point you're done and you can exit Terminal. If you've done it correctly, the next time you restart your computer the Bootcamp partition shouldn't be mounted. You can always mount it manually with the Disk Utility application.

Note that this isn't limited to just the Bootcamp drive, you can do it with any partition on your computer's internal or external drives.

Fall Quarter, Senior Year

2010-08-05T16:16:00.000-05:00

Know what's fun about the quarter system here at UW? I still have almost two whole months of summer vacation left while everyone else I know pretty much starts school in the next few weeks. This quarter is going to be downright hectic because I have to finish my last few non-major classes and start on my senior elective courses. I'm technically signed up for six classes for a total of 18 credit hours but two of the courses aren't "real" classes. I'm taking an intro class on biochemistry (BIOC 405), an honors class about communication technology and politics (COM 407A), and four bioengineering classes. One of those classes (BIOEN 402) is my capstone project and the other is for departmental honors (BIOEN 498A). The other two classes are on medical imaging (BIOEN 420) and synthetic biology (BIOEN 423). I have no idea how much work this will be and on top of it I have to work on my capstone project. I'm really looking forward to the medical imaging and synthetic biology courses just because the topics are intriguing.

My Thoughts on the iPhone 4 Reception Problem

2010-07-04T15:14:00.002-05:00

By now you've no doubt heard of the apparent "design flaw" plaguing the latest Apple iPhone 4 that results in significant signal degradation depending on the orientation and positioning of the device in the hand. There are countless YouTube videos demonstrating the signal strength decrease that occurs when the device is held in a common hand position (cupped such that the lower-left edge is in direct contact with the skin of the palm). The video below shows how holding the device in such a manner results in a dramatic decrease in apparent signal strength via the signal bars.

Needless to say, people are demanding an explanation from Apple and even filing class-action lawsuits against Apple and AT&T for general negligence and misrepresentation of a product. After a week of complaints, Apple posted a letter on their website on July 2 responding to the claims of a physical hardware defect causing the problems. Apple asserts that the problem arises because "the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong." The letter basically explains that they have been inflating the actual signal strength such that it appears there is a greater signal than there actually is. This is a reasonable tactic given the inconstant coverage and signal quality problems of the AT&T network. AnandTech performed an extensive review of the iPhone 4, including a mapping of the iPhone 4 Bars to Signal Strength. They obtained the relationship seen in the image below where each bar is mapped to a specific signal strength (in decibels).

A significant problem is immediately evident in the way the bars are being mapped to the signal strength, which is consistent with the Apple letter. The "full bars" scenario is mapped to having a signal of at least -51dBm while "1 bar" is mapped to having a signal of at least -113dBm. According to the AnandTech review, -51dBm is the best signal you can possibly get while -113dBm is the worst signal you can have before disconnecting entirely. This is fine and all, but over half of all possible signal strengths between -51dBm to -91dBm are being reported as the "full bars" scenario. This leaves an entire four bars to map the much smaller -91dBm to -113dBm range. What this means is that the iPhone 4 has an incredibly small dynamic range for displaying signal strength, which leads to the apparent inflation in signal the Apple letter blamed for the problems. The solution proposed in the letter would indeed improve the quality of the display of the signal strength by better mapping the intensity to the bars. It is important to point out that AnandTech review did agree with Apple's claims that the iPhone 4 has the best reception of all the iPhone models.

But there is one more thing...Apple's response does not completely address the problem people are experiencing. It is possible that in the video above, the person is actually in a region of questionable signal strength (say only -90dBm), which would fall within the 5-bar range. It is common for signal strength to be attenuated when any antenna-containing device is held because of interference from contact on the antenna functionality. This could cause the signal to drop anywhere from 1-20dBm, which could place the signal strength in the 1-bar range, which is what is seen in the video. This raises two issues, first being the severity of the drop (up to 20dBm according to the AnandTech report) and second the actual effect of the Apple software "fix" on the problem.

Experts are attributing the signal problems to the external antenna design of the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 consists of two antennas that form the outer edge of the device, with one for Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS and the other for UMTS and GSM (see image below).

External antennas offer both advantages and disadvantages over their internal counterparts (more). Because they are not confined within the casing, which is often an insulator or some kind, they can achieve greater signal strength. This has been seen with the iPhone 4 vs. previous iPhone iterations. The problem is that external antennas must operate in less controlled conditions that an internal antenna and are therefore more prone to unintentional attenuation (loss of signal strength) and detuning (changing the functionality of the antenna by introducing external factors). In the iPhone 4, these problems are thought to arise because of the two separate antennas that have been specially designed to coexist and function as the outer edge of the phone. However, when the two antennas are bridged by a conductive material (sweaty palm, skin, etc.) they are no longer separate entities electronically. Each is then operating with external factors (the body and the other antenna) that fundamentally change the tuning and functionality of the component. The side-view of the iPhone 4 below shows the small gap between the two antennae on the left side of the device that can easily be bridged.

It is because of these fluctuations from the expected conditions that the massive attenuation (and in some instances nearly complete attenuation) occur. The video below shows how the 3G network connectivity completely drops when held in the "death grip" with the iPhone 4 resting in the hand such that the gap is bridged by the palm of the hand.

Apple must have realized the potential difficulties inherent with utilizing an external antenna, more or less two in such close proximity that bridging was possible. The problem with the iPhone 4 design is that it almost seems like this was completely overlooked. Maybe it was the iPhone 3Gs disguise that the prototypes were field tested in that masked the potential complication. Or maybe Apple doesn't have enough left-handed testers or people that hold the phone in "weird" ways to pick up on it. It's interesting that a professor from Denmark's Aalborg University predicted problems with the iPhone 4 two weeks before it was released. Granted he based his hypothesis solely on the presence of an external antenna, not the interference caused by connecting the two together. Whatever Apple may attempt to rebrand it as, this represents a very significant industrial design flaw. Regardless of the signal strength being reported incorrectly, it is undesirable that such a significant drop can occur simply because an external antenna is utilized over an internal one. At the very least Apple should have coated the metal in an insulator to minimize inadvertent electrical conduction through the body.

This brings us back to the proposed "fix" by Apple. Obviously a software fix is the first and by far the cheapest and simplest solution. A hardware fix would require a recall of over 1.5 million iPhone 4s, which would be an unimaginable setback. I agree with Apple that the signal strength should be remapped to a more sensible scale such that a greater dynamic range is made available to more accurately portray the current network conditions. I think the downside of this will be that the AT&T network's shortfalls will become more apparent. Presumably the range covered by each of the five bars would become more standardized, which will result in previously 5-bar signals potentially being shown as 3 or 4-bar signals. It seems reasonable that any attempts to bridge the antenna will result in no more than a single bar (maybe two) of signal loss rather than the four or five that are occurring now. Apple will be masking the hardware problem by minimizing the effect of the signal drop by increasing the dynamic range available for reporting the signal strength.

In the end I seriously doubt anything more than this software fix will be implemented because it should essentially eliminate the problem from the point of view of the user. The AT&T network will probably seem weaker in places that were previously 5-bars because of the re-mapping but probably won't affect performance. Overall, the best solution are to hold the phone in a way that doesn't bridge the gap or just get a case that covers the entire region. Honestly why would you be walking around with a phone that has glass on two sides without some kind of case? I think it's also important to once again point out that the AnandTech report demonstrated that the iPhone 4 has the best antenna out of all the iPhones and that any wireless device can be held in a particular manner to impede its wireless communications. That being said, since the AT&T network is so crappy for making calls (or at least it used to be), there's no real harm in getting the iPhone 4 for all its other features (FaceTime doesn't even support 3G anyways).

Update
Looks like Applecare is already confirming that the software update will not fix the antenna problem on the iPhone 4. They are suggesting two solutions:

Hold the iPhone such that your hand does not bridge the two antennas
Buy a case

Obviously the customer must be making the error because Apple products are never flawed right? You shouldn't be walking around with an iPhone 4 without a case anyways so go get one and that'll (hopefully) fix everything.

When was the first time you listened to that artist?

2010-07-02T11:28:00.005-05:00

I randomly had the idea the other day to make another little LastFM app using the very excellent API services. I thought it'd be cool to be able to see the first time any user listened to a particular artist. So I made this little site on my student page that does just that.

Basically, you just enter any LastFM username and a particular artist and then hit submit. The site loads the user.getArtistTracks API method which returns every single track a user has listened to performed by a particular artist. The XML file is segmented into pages of 50 track plays but fortunately reports the total number of pages in the first child element. This number is stored and used to access the last page of the data, which theoretically contains the very first track listened to by the user from that particular artist. From there it just grabs the first (chronologically) entry and pulls the timestamp and produces the page seen below. ~~I could also have it report the track name but decided that wasn't really the focus of the webpage.~~

Check it out here. If you don't have a LastFM account, I'd highly recommend signing up for one because it's quite cool being able to track all the music you listen to and get recommendations on new music based on your listening habits.

Digg v4

2010-07-01T02:16:00.000-05:00

I finally got access to the new Digg (v4) alpha site and I'll post my thoughts once I use it some over the next few days. I've been Digging since September 2005, so I've seen a fair bit of the site's development over the years. Check out the new front page and check back for a longer blog with my thoughts on the new site design and function.

Scrobbling

2010-06-29T22:41:00.000-05:00

I've been having trouble with scrobbling music to LastFM lately from my Mac. After the iTunes 9.2.0 update I started having trouble with the unofficial iScrobbler application for both iTunes and iPod submissions. I was already aware that the program had difficulties with multiple plays of a single track from iPods (it does not submit multiple track plays for a single song) but had never noticed it occurring. Fortunately submissions from iTunes were still functioning perfectly.

I decided to try out several other scrobbling clients to see if any of them worked any better. Unfortunately the majority of the alternative applications were unable to handle iPod submissions, which was an immediate deal-breaker for me. One program that appeared to work is called ScrobblePod. Unfortunately while it appeared to function quite well, it consumed more CPU and memory than I would expect for such a background application. It was also incapable of handling multiple track play submissions.

I then decided to try the official LastFM client knowing from previous experiences that it is a quite bloated but functional application. Once again, the CPU and memory consumption were far higher than that of iScrobbler and even ScrobblePod, making it less than desirable for my background scrobbling of music from iTunes. It's main advantage is that it can handle multiple track play submissions.

I finally decided to use a combination of the official LastFM client and iScrobbler to meet my requirements. The iScrobbler client is kept open all the time for iTunes scrobbles while the LastFM client is used solely for iPod submissions and therefore only needs to be opened when syncing. This allows me to keep a lightweight client running in the background (iScrobbler) while having the option for more functionality should I require/want it (LastFM). This is far from an ideal setup and the best solution would be for either client to fix its problems or add functionality. The optimal client would be a lightweight menu-bar-based application that can handle both iTunes and iPod scrobbles without consuming too many resources.

Hello? Anyone home?

2010-06-29T00:49:00.000-05:00

I seem to have hit another one of those lulls in blog-posting that seem to occur in yearly intervals. Maybe it's because I now post links and YouTube videos over on My Tumblr and am too lazy/busy to generate my own original content for this blog. Seeing as it's summer one would think I would have the necessary free time to rectify that deficiency but that seems to not be the case. Maybe I'll update it more frequently now that I've realized this.

5 Years of Scrobbling

2010-03-06T21:26:00.000-06:00

March 5th 2010, marked the fifth anniversary of my starting to use the LastFM music tracking system. As usual, here's a look back at my listening habits over the last year and overall. All data was collected via the LastFM scrobbling service from a variety of sources (mostly Apple iTunes and recently the Lala music service).

Album Playcount Decay

2010-01-14T20:20:00.002-06:00

I just passed the 120,000th song scrobbled/listened on my Last.FM account a few days ago. Usually when I pass these "milestones" of sorts I randomly decide to do some kind of analysis on my listening whether it be my top ten songs, bands, trends, etc. This time I decided to look at the playcounts across my top ten albums (according to LastFM). More specifically, I wanted to see what the general trend in playcount was as the album progressed. I knew that I most frequently swapped albums about halfway through and expected there to be a decrease in playcounts after that point with a fairly constant playcount leading up to that.

I used playcounts for each of the top ten albums from LastFM itself because my iTunes has been reset and songs replaced with higher quality versions over the years (thus disrupting the playcounts). This was unfortunate because the easiest way to get that data into Excel was manually copy from my library page into the spreadsheet. So here's the result (click to see the full-sized graph)

Clearly my trend prediction was wrong. In general I listen to songs less the further into the album they are. The black line represents the best fit of the average of all ten albums. Granted I don't listen in a truly linear manner as there are spikes in all of the album lines, but on average I kinda do. That kinda sucks because I know that many of my favorite songs appear on the latter half of albums, so if I'm specifically listening to the album, there is a good chance I won't make it to that song. That's where playlists and shuffling come in I guess.

Expensive Much?

2009-12-17T13:29:00.000-06:00

This ends my first three months of living outside the University of Washington dorm program and the HFS food system. Everyone knows that the food in the cafeterias on campus are rather outrageously priced, but there's not much you can do about it when you live on campus. Last Fall Quarter I spent about $1,200 on food within the HFS system. This doesn't include eating out or anything we bought at the grocery store. Since we didn't have easy access to a stove or a sizable refrigerator, cooking for ourselves was pretty much out of the question.

This Fall Quarter I only spent about $340.85 for three month's worth of food. That's 3.5x less than what I spent last year in the dorms. I'd be willing to say that I also ate more food this year compared to last year too. Once again, this doesn't include any eating out, which I definitely have done less this year. How exactly the dorms can inflate prices so much is beyond me, but I'm glad to be out of that mediocre, expensive food nightmare.

Over

2009-12-17T02:16:00.003-06:00

This hellish quarter is finally over. I'm going to avoid taking four math/science intensive classes at the same time in the future. Seriously, two bioengineering classes, physics, and organic chemistry don't mix well.

Next quarter will be substantially less hectic as I'm only taking two bioengineering classes (BIOEN 303 - Signal Processing and BIOEN 305 - Physiology II) and an honors science class on Astrobiology. I'll also start working in the Thomas lab in the Bioengineering Department on the design of a force-sensitive fluorescent protein. Should be fun.

8 Years Ago Today

2009-11-15T13:32:00.000-06:00

Today is the eighth anniversary of the release of the original Xbox and one of the greatest games ever made: Halo. I can't even begin to guess how many hours I've spent playing that game and its sequels over the years. I'm sure it would be considered unhealthy. For all that Halo has now become, it all started with the vision of a few at Bungie, an overpowered pistol, some vehicles, and the sound of chanting monks.

H1 >> H2, H3

Busy

2009-11-12T23:35:00.000-06:00

My junior year so far has been much more time-consuming than either of my prior years here at UW. I haven't had time to watch The Daily Show or Colbert Report in weeks, which is a disappointment. I guess that's what happens when you take four different science/math intensive courses at the same time.

My brain is about to explode trying to memorize the amino acids, hormonal control of the digestive system, random physiology stuff, and physics stuff for two exams tomorrow. Then I get to swap to ochem for an exam on Monday.

Hooray.

happy birthday to me

2009-11-07T02:56:00.000-06:00

I'm 21 years old and still feel like I haven't done anything with my life yet.

It's been a while

2009-11-04T20:00:00.000-06:00

Every time I start a blog I seem to have a flurry of activity for the first few weeks/months and then just forget about it and eventually delete it. I wonder if I'll eventually do that to this blog or just keep reviving it like I have at least twice now?

My birthday's in a little over 2 days. I'll finally be able to go to those over-21 concerts here in Seattle after missing way too many because of those stupid underage venue rules.

iPod Vacuum

2009-09-09T14:15:00.001-05:00

No doubt you've heard about the new iPod Nano and the more spacious iPod Touch/Classic announced today. My only hesitation in the past about buying an iPod Touch was the limited storage space compared to my 80GB iPod. Now that there is a 64GB iPod Touch, I'm sorely tempted to drop the $399 (or whatever the education priced version costs) to get one. However, after seeing the splattering of new features packed into the already minuscule iPod Nano, I feel like the iPod Touch feels kinda lacking. Sure, it has the App Store and everything the iPhone does minus a camera, microphone, and cell phone service, but now even the iPod Nano is sporting a camera. The iPod Nano even has a FM receiver and pedometer. Sadly there was no camera or microphone added to the iPod Touch, leaving it lagging behind the iPod Nano in input features. Because I feel that adding a camera to the iPod Touch is inevitable, I'm hesitant to move forward on purchasing one even with the increased storage space. If Apple can cram all that stuff into the iPod Nano without changing its size, then what's up with their avoiding it in the iPod Touch? I think it must be their need to draw a distinction between the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Once the camera and microphone are added to the Touch, then only the cell phone aspect of the two define their differences. It sucks for the consumer that isn't in the market for a cell phone but would like a new iPod.

Customize Snow Leopard Exposé Glow

2009-09-04T17:56:00.003-05:00

If you've installed Snow Leopard then you've no doubt noticed the wonderful blue glow that encompasses the selected window when Exposé is activated. Many people have pointed out how "un-Apple" this style is when compared to the rest of the operating system. Fortunately, the style of Exposé is controlled in a similar manner to that of the Dock, which means that it can easily be customized. I've tried out several modifications people have made ranging anywhere from simply removing the color in the glow to a fancy transparent outline.

I liked the idea behind the transparent outline, but didn't really feel that the angle of the lighting was that balanced (white on one side, but not on the other). I decided to make my own customization such that there was still the transparent effect but the window was outlined symmetrically and didn't draw attention to the sides so much.

The terrible blue glow...

To a more Mac-friendly style...

First, download the custom images.

There currently aren't any nice installation programs for this modification like there are for the Dock, but it's really not too complicated. The outline is controlled by two different .png files, so changing the style is as simple as replacing them with different images.

These files are located at the following path:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app

Once you have the Dock.app selected, right click and choose the "Show Package Contents" option.

Now navigate to:
Contents/Resources

Locate the following two images, which control the outlines of normal windows and minimized windows:

expose-window-selection-big.png
expose-window-selection-small.png

At this point I'd recommend backing up the originals either by copying them somewhere safe or duplicating them (select and press Command+D). I included the originals in the download just in case.

Now move the two custom images into the folder. You will be asked to authenticate the movement, so simply enter your password and confirm the replacements. If you get a weird error message, try deleting the two original files and then move the custom images into the folder.

Now that you've replaced the images, the Dock.app needs to be restarted so the new images are loaded. There are two ways of doing this 1) by logging out and back in or 2) opening the Terminal application, typing killall Dock, and pressing enter. This will quit the Dock application, allowing the images to be reloaded.

Fire up Exposé and you should see the new style when you hover over the windows! Of course, you can modify the images however you want, just make sure you keep the same filename, format, and size.

Instructions adopted from CodeResources

Ok. This is Awesome.

2009-08-26T08:07:00.001-05:00

Someone hooked up an iDance Wall-E (basically moves and flashes light to the music) alongside some death metal from the band Behemoth (song is "Inner Sanctum"). What results is basically the best trashing from a robot ever. Seriously, Wall-E looks like he's gonna kill something. Or explode. Whatever he's doing, it's freaking awesome, especially at the beginning when the drums start playing and its eyes are flashing.

win.

Wow

2009-06-30T23:31:00.002-05:00

This is a really great Nike advertisement I saw on TV just now. It's called "Driven" and features Lance Armstrong talking about his upcoming 8th Tour de France attempt. The song is "Auto Rock" by Mogwai. It's definitely one of the best ads I've seen on TV in a while, just because of how well the imagery fits with the music

R.I.P. The Pirate Bay

2009-06-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

Not for what you helped facilitate, but for what you represented.

Tetris

2009-06-28T23:00:00.000-05:00

Tetris was the first videogame that I actually owned. I had it for the old Gameboy Pocket, which was also my first videogame console/device. Prior to that, I had never been allowed to buy any videogames and had to rely upon my friends for playing them.

How I came by the Tetris game is a little weird. I knew I was getting the Gameboy for Christmas and planned on buying a game later with any money I received. Needless to say, I was surprised when I found Tetris included amongst my Christmas presents from my Dad.

He had originally bought the game for a terminally ill patient in the Children's Hospital who loved puzzle games. I don't remember his name or what he had but he'd been there quite a while.

He didn't make it long enough to get the gift.

I wonder if the game's abilities to reduce the effects of traumatic experiences would have helped him.

That's how I first played Tetris. That was my first videogame [to own].

MLG on ESPN

2009-05-28T19:33:00.000-05:00

Major League Gaming is continuing its march to bring competitive gaming to the masses and into the mainstream with its latest announcement for the upcoming MLG Columbus (Ohio) competition next weekend (June 3-5). ESPN360 will be broadcasting the Friday Night Kickoff events live on their streaming broadcast network starting at 9:00PM EST.

This is awesome because 1) MLG is finally bringing competitive gaming into mainstream sports coverage and 2) I was an admin of the site that eventually lead to MLG incorporating live streams of gameplay (HaloTV). I have several friends that in MLG's video department (Synide as Director of Video and Trigger119 as B-Stream director), so I'm sure they're pumped about working with ESPN for an actual live broadcast rather than just having the ESPN tag on their Saturday night events.

It's gonna be awesome.

Heat Transfer

2009-05-27T02:07:00.003-05:00

Today's bioengineering (301) lab examined radial heat transfer via the denaturing of proteins in an agarose + egg whites mixture in a plastic tube in a water bath. The actual experiment consisted of heating water to a certain temperature, putting three different tubes into the bath, and removing them at predetermined time intervals (2,4, and 6 minutes for my group). The tubes were allowed to chill so that the contents hardened into into the shape of the tube before being removed, sliced into thin layers, and then scanned onto a computer for a pixel intensity analysis (basically looking at the variation of the grayscale value across each slice).

Of course, heating water is excruciatingly slow, so we entertained ourselves by not being productive whatsoever. A couple of us installed Counter Strike onto our lab station computers and proceeded to play. Aside from the absolutely abysmal (and old) 128MB graphics cards and crappy Dell mice, these are high-end computers, so CS played wonderfully.

We eventually finished our labs by the time class ended.

Christian Bale's Guide to CPR

2009-05-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

If you go to see the new Terminator Salvation movie opening this Thursday, you'll get to see a wonderful CPR class taught by Christian Bale, who plays the protagonist of the series, John Connor. It's a very simple, three step process that ensures that anyone who is "dead" can be resuscitated with ease.

Step 1: Check for Consciousness
Yell violently at the the inanimate person for at least thirty seconds before considering any other alternatives. This ensures that if they're not asleep or something similar. Don't even think about checking their airway for clogging or for breathing.

Step 2: Chest Compressions
Immediately after the lack of awareness is confirmed, begin violently slamming your upper arm and elbow into their chest. Do this from a height if possible for maximum efficiency. Do this several times until you realize it isn't working at all.

Step 3: Defibrillate
Since you're in the future and in the bad-robot (a.k.a. Skynet) base, you should have no trouble randomly finding electrical wires to use as a makeshift defibrillator. Simply grab any set of wires (the more the better), cross them to make some sparks (cause it looks cool), and then start poking the body with them without any kind of pattern. This step pretty much guarantees that the person will suddenly come back to life and immediately get up and start kicking ass.

Well, that's it for Christian Bale's guide to CPR. I might talk about the movie some other time, but I'll just say that it wasn't terrible. I think it was better than T3, but definitely not as good as the first two. Plus the special effects are pretty awesome. If you've been a fan, you should definitely check it out.

Xbox 360 Repair, Update #5

2009-05-16T23:20:00.000-05:00

I restarted the "repair my Xbox 360" endeavor last Sunday when I decided to resubmit a repair request for my broken game console. Rather than request a box be sent to me for shipping and having my dorm address, I swapped to the E-Label printing and home address. I received the E-Label on Monday, printed it out on Tuesday, and had my Xbox completely packed for shipping on Wednesday. Of course, it was raining that afternoon so I decided to take it the next day (or whenever the rain stopped). So Thursday I dropped it off at the UPS store 0.4 miles away that I had not previously known about. As of 9:30 PM PST on Saturday, May 16th, the console is somewhere between Hermiston, Oregon and Dallas, Texas. It's final destination is the Xbox Repair Center in Mesquite, TX.

Hopefully the cost of the repairs will not exceed the base quote of $99 or I will have to weight the merits of getting it repaired or simply buying a new console. At this point, I'm kinda hoping for either a quick or slow turnaround. Why? Because there won't be anyone at my home address after May 25th for like 2 weeks. The Xbox site says the turnaround is usually about 2-3 weeks, so my Xbox may find itself delivered to a house with no one there. That means it will either be sitting on my front porch for at least a week, or the UPS people will be unable to deliver it, requiring a pickup or some kind of return-to-sender fiasco. That would just be wonderful and not entirely unexpected seeing as how this entire process has been so far.

Sadly I will not have Rock Band 2 over the summer as it is way too much trouble to move the instruments cross-country. As a bonus, I don't have to drag my Xbox around when I'm traveling home in June.

Musics

2009-05-14T23:52:00.000-05:00

Some of the music I should be able to see in the next few weeks:

Tomorrow (May 15) - Sleepy Eyes of Death @ Ground Zero in Bellevue, WA
May 29th - Built to Spill and Ra Ra Riot on the UW HUB Lawn
June 4th - Metric at the Showbox Market (maybe)

Terminator Salvation screening on Tuesday, should be awesome if I can manage to get there in time.

I also booked my flights home to Alabama for the summer and back to Seattle in the fall. I'm taking a red-eye home on Friday, June 12th and returning on Sunday, September 20th. Fun stuff these transcontinental flights.

star trek

2009-05-07T00:30:00.001-05:00

I have never seen an entire Star Trek film and only seen a handful of various episodes with no real connection to the story or characters. I went into the movie with expectations riding mostly upon the casting of Zachary Quinto as Spock (Sylar from Heroes), J.J. Abrams as the director, and the special effects being awesome.

All I can say is that this is one of those movies you would pay again to see. The first scene of the movie was amazing and instantly showcased the new style of the film as compared to some of the older ones I've seen parts of. From the sound of the audience, there was approval from even the more die-hard Star Trek fans even though there is are some major differences.

The special effects were quite amazing and the effectiveness of the Abrams filming style was definitely noticeable. There is an abundance of epic panning scenes that really showcase the special effects of today's films (which is fine by me).

The score to the film was also quite excellent.

Acting was excellent.

Story was excellent (imo).

Definitely worth the cost (free) and the wait (2 hrs) plus the 15 minutes spent repairing the ripped film in the middle of the film.

This is definitely the first big (and good) film of the summer. You should see it.

Glass Danse

2009-05-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

Ladytron and The Faint last night at the Showbox SODO were quite excellent and actually worth the ridiculous price I paid (see previous entry about Ticketmaster) and the rather lengthy trip to get to the venue. The SODO is located near the two massive sports stadiums (Mariners and Seahawks) in the southern part of the city. Unfortunately, the bus service from the downtown area to that area is really quite terrible, so we had to walk about a mile from the bus stop to the venue. It'd been raining heavily earlier in the day and we were fortunate that it let up during our walk across campus to the bus stop. But almost as soon as we started the walk to the venue, the rain and wind returned (boo). By time we got to the place we were thoroughly dampened and had to endure about another ten minutes of waiting to get our will call tickets (screw paying $2.50 to print them).

Probably within ten minutes of us getting inside, Ladytron came on stage and started playing (dunno what happened to the opener band). They had some fancy LED+strobe light panels they were using, which was cool. I'd only listened to them for a couple days so I didn't really know most of their songs but they sounded pretty good live. However, their music is a lot more laid-back than the Faint so people were mostly just standing and bobbing their heads to the beat. Judging by their sound alone, Ladytron never really seemed like a band that would be flailing about while playing, which usually translates to a less active crowd. They played for about 45 minutes and then left and came back to do one encore song (dunno what it was) and then left the stage again.

The set change probably took about 30 minutes mainly because of the complexity of the two bands setups. The LED + strobe light rigs had to be dissembled and about six keyboards unplugged and moved out. The Faint have two massive projectors and several rotating light fixtures and strobe lights that had to be set up in addition to their keyboards and guitars. They probably could have had everything done in 20 minutes but they were having trouble with something on the drum set and spent a good ten minutes fixing it while the crowd stood around (there was someone in a banana suit!).

Finally the Faint came on and it was epic/awesome/win. Compared to Ladytron, the Faint are a million times more energetic and that definitely was noticeable in the crowd. Combine that with the ridiculous background animations and abundant lights+strobes and it was freaking awesome. Picture taking became almost impossible because of the flashing lights and the pushing crowd. I've been wanting to see the Faint for some time, but had never gotten around to it, so this concert was definitely worth it just for them alone. They probably played over an hour when they finally left the stage after their three song encore at 12:40am (i think curfew was at 12:30), the best of which was Glass Danse. Definitely going to see them again if I can. I wish I could have seen them when they toured with Natalie Portman's Shaved Head last year. That would have been an awesome concert to see

Why I Hate TicketMaster

2009-04-30T19:14:00.002-05:00

So my roommates and I are looking at going to the Ladytron with The Faint concert this Saturday at the Showbox Sodo here in Seattle. The tickets are listed on the venue page as $22.50 in advance and $25.00 on the day of show. Of course, there are numerous advantages to buying the tickets ahead of time (show could sell out, we don't have to go early, convenience, paying with credit cards, etc.). Unfortunately it appears that Ticketmaster recognizes this and still wants to screw the customer over as much as possible. It's math time...

$22.50 ticket
+ $8.45 convenience fee
+ $2.50 printing fee

= $33.45

I know I can't be the only one that finds it ridiculous that it costs 50% of the base ticket price for this to be convenient. In fact, I'd say it's downright unacceptable. Why does Ticketmaster feel the need to charge more for something that costs them less? Not having to keep the ticket window open and not having to actually print tickets themselves lowers their costs. And what do they do? They increase their earnings by charging us more for "convenience." That's insane. Charging me $2.50 for printing something at my expense is insane. Especially when you consider that the cost of preparing the digital ticket and the entire bandwidth used during the online purchasing process is essentially nonexistent (around 0.000075 cents with bandwidth @ about 0.15 cents per gigabyte). I'm seeing around a 3 million percent profit there. Sure there are costs associated with setting all this up and running it and whatnot, but they're making an absolute killing off of it regardless.

I wouldn't mind paying like $5 ahead of time total for the convenience of buying the ticket online and printing it out on my own. I wouldn't mind paying a few more dollars if I knew it would be going directly to the bands. But I guarantee you that 100% of this money goes straight to Ticketmaster.

I feel bad that these venues have to associate themselves with vendors such as Ticketmaster in order to attract bigger acts, but it really sucks for the consumer. Like 150% the base ticket price sucks for the consumer.

I hate you Ticketmaster. I even hate you when I'm typing in the reCAPTCHA, which is helping to digitize books online. I hope your monopolistic company gets sued/investigated/smitten for this. You guys probably eat small children.

twitter + misinformation = panic

2009-04-27T01:25:00.000-05:00

The past few days have put the world on its edge fearing for a "flu pandemic" caused by the recent appearance of the Swine Flu (Wikipedia | CDC | WHO) in Mexico and the United States. As the governments of the world put their respective health agencies on alert and issue travel warnings, the Internet, specifically Twitter, is turning a currently small flame into a roaring inferno.

Twitter is currently supporting a maelstrom of misinformed tweets (Read Article) from people without any real knowledge of the situation. There is definitely a new strain of the flu (Type A Influenza H1N1) that has already spread around the world and has killed over 100 people in Mexico. And yes, it has been found across the United States in highly populated places like New York City. What Twitter has done is allowed countless people to express their completely unfounded/uneducated thoughts on the situation. Sunday saw tweets referring to the "flu" at a rate of nearly 2,000 per 100,000 (2%).

Source

While there are plenty of tweets passing along actual information with links to news stories and health advisories, there are even more from people expressing worry/fear about the situation. The problem with this is that there are a lot of statements being made that are completely irrelevant or even downright incorrect:

be careful of the swine flu!!!! (may lead to global epidemic) Outbreak in Mexico. 62 deaths so far!! Don't eat pork from Mexico!!

This isn't mad cow disease. It is transmitted in exactly the same way as the flu virus that goes around during the winter season. That means you can proactively protect yourself by washing your hands, covering your mouth, and in general following the typically cold/flu season precautions.

This also isn't the avian flu that has been coming up in the news the past few years. It's a completely different strain of the influenza virus that infected pigs. And unlike its avian relative, this strain is capable of human-to-human transmission, which is the truly worrying part of the entire situation. With the virus already spread globally by our massively interconnected societies, the risk of pandemic is definitely present. But unlike past ages (Spanish Flu, 1918), we are better prepared now more than ever to tackle such an incident. The United States alone has stockpiled massive stores of the antiviral Tamiflu, which has already been confirmed as effective against this current strain of influenza.

So instead of tweeting what essentially boils down to the equivalent of fear-mongering, why don't you take some time to read about what swine flu is and how you can protect yourself.

In the end, this is definitely still a worrying situation, especially when the World Health Organization drops that "the current events constitute a public health emergency of international concern" and the word "pandemic" is floating around on forms of media. The WHO is set to vote on Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic level from 3 to 4, signaling the impending threat of a global pandemic. Hopefully the virility of the virus is less than expected and the threat can be minimized to the affected regions thus far.

New Music - Zé Dos Frangos

2009-04-24T16:12:00.000-05:00

My cousin's band, Zé Dos Frangos, has an album release coming up in the next few weeks. They're hosting release parties in three different cities in the United States and Europe and will be broadcasting each live on their website on May 16th.

The double EP is entitled Portugal/Slovakia and incorporates English, Portuguese, and Slovak lyrics with a combination of musical genres ranging from indie rock to world music. The Austin Chronicle listed the band as a Top Pick of the 2008 SXSW music festival last year.

For more information, visit their website

Sometimes

2009-04-24T02:38:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I write up blog posts, decide not to publish them, and forget that they have been autosaved. It's interesting to read what I thought I didn't need to share.

see

No good

2009-04-20T01:28:00.000-05:00

I played in two ultimate games today, which really sucked. We lost both games, but I don't really care about how we do as long as it's somewhat entertaining. Aside from the usual sore shoulder and feet (don't have good shoes), I also accrued some other injuries. I have a welt running down the middle of my forehead where someone whacked me with a frisbee. It's not really noticeable, but I definitely wasn't seeing straight for a few seconds after that. More annoying/worrisome is my right index finger, whose uppermost joint is currently slightly swollen and painful to apply pressure to from the side. I can press down with the finger without any pain, but merely brushing the side of the finger, especially the left side of it, results in pain. I also cannot fully curl that finger as it is partially swollen, but only on the left side of it. Hopefully I just jammed my finger really badly and this will go away in a couple days.

meh

Awesomeness

2009-04-18T21:56:00.000-05:00

So back in February, we (friends and I) went to a Sleepy Eyes of Death concert at a small venue called Holy Mountain. By far the best opening band was called Bronze Fawn and they combined with SEoD made the night well worth the five bucks for entry. Both bands are entirely instrumental with Bronze Fawn being more guitar and drums while Sleepy Eyes of Death is more synths and drums. Apparently some people were recording the entire show for some reason and released high quality audio and video a while ago back in February. My roommate somehow found this and now the entire mass of content is downloading onto my computer. The videos were recorded in HD but have been compressed into a H.264 mp4 file so that there is noticeable pixelation in the available videos, especially in darker scenes. Fortunately, the audio was recorded directly from the audio board (allegedly at least), so that's available in an awesome FLAC download. Both bands start off kinda slow, with SEoD having nearly 5 minutes of looping track while they solved a messed up signal problem at the beginning. While neither video is of professional caliber, it's awesome to see these small Seattle bands performances in such quality.

View the Video/Audio Release

100,000 Songs

2009-04-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

I've finally hit the 100,000 songs scrobbled mark on Last.FM. It took me a little over four years to accomplish this rather insane mark. I think it's cool that I've listened to so much music and that I can see the entire history since March 5, 2005, if I wanted to.

The 100,000 song scrobbled was "I Will Become the Reaping" by the band Oh, Sleeper at 1:14 pm PST on Tuesday April 14, 2009.

I wonder

2009-04-07T23:30:00.000-05:00

Today in my bioengineering lab I had the opportunity to participate in a cadaver dissection. I think it is the first time that I have actually recognized that I was looking at a dead body. I have only been to two funerals in my life and at neither was I old enough or close enough to see and remember the body.

The cadaver had already been dissected by medical school students (whoo undergrads get used stuff) so it was in fairly poor condition. My lab group was examining the structure and function of the shoulder region (deltoid, trapezius, humerus, clavicle, etc.) in order to calculate a force free body diagram for the arm while holding a weight.

But we had to get to that region first. Scalpels cut surprisingly easily.

As we did our work I couldn't help but wondering who this person was and what kind of life she had lived and how she had died. I wonder what her story was. I wonder how her family will feel when they get the cremated remains back in the coming weeks. I wonder how it feels to know that your body will be used as a instrument of learning before your family finally gets to lay you to rest.

I wonder what my fellow classmates were thinking...

Xbox 360 Repair, Update #4

2009-04-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

Well, that didn't take long. I got an email today notifying me that there was a problem with my repair application and that I would need to contact Xbox Live tech support to rectify the situation. So at 3:36 pm PST I called the service. What follows really ticked me off...

Automated system answers and I enter the repair help section. It lists the categories, none of which really apply to my problem. So I choose the repair status option and am prompted for the phone number I used to submit the order. I tell it my phone number, which it promptly does not understand. It then requests my order number, which it once again fails to understand. I am transferred to a live agent, which is what I wanted in the first place
Agent picks up and I have to go through a gauntlet of questions to prove my identity. I am then asked why I am calling. I reference the email and then the person tells me that the repair cannot continue because the address I gave for the shipping is an invalid address. Wonderful.
I ask why it is invalid and I am informed that my university address is not a viable shipping address. This is complete BS as I have shipped packages to this address with every major delivery service (FedEX, UPS, USPS, DHL).
The tech person apologizes for the inconvenience and asks if I would like to have the order shipped to the address (my home address) that I gave in the confirmation step. I say that is not an option as I am all the way across the country and it would be silly to ship my Xbox there only to have it shipped somewhere else (and so forth).
I then request that the entire replacement order be canceled as it will now be impossible for me to get it fixed until the summer. The person repeats what I said as if I was an idiot and didn't realize that I would have a broken Xbox for nearly three months. The agent says that her repair department needs to be contacted to confirm the cancellation and asks if I would like to be put on hold (Sure, why not?).
What begins is probably about 15 minutes of me waiting with intermittent apologizes from the agent and requests for me to remain on hold. In fact, I am put on hold at least six times during the period. The person randomly asks me in the middle of the break what the address I wanted to have it shipped to (my school address) and then later comes back and says that it wasn't possible to ship there (o rly? no wai XD).
Finally the agent connects and confirms that my order has now been canceled (I check on the Xbox website and see the order is indeed no longer listed). Another apology is offered and about 40 minutes later the call finally ends.

So what I hoped would be a quick/painless repair procedure has now turned into a multi-month long wait for me. I suppose I should be lucky that I have one of the first edition consoles (2nd shipment of the release) and that it has lasted this long. But I am furious that the entire repair order submission process never halted me when I entered my school address. There was even a credit card waiting to be charged upon the repair process beginning. Why is a school address that every single delivery company can and has delivered to considered impossible for this repair? Why the hell am I paying for a repair on a console that has a much higher-than-normal failure rate anyway? If this was any other company but Micro$oft, this would be completely unacceptable.

I have already paid for the several months of Xbox Live service that I will now be missing and have lost the media center extension that is used on a weekly basis in my dorm. The $200 Rock Band 2 set my roommates and I bought is now completely useless as are all the games that will be left to gather dust on my shelf.

And to think that I was actually willing to pay the $100 repair fee without question because I was out of warranty and not experiencing the red ring of death. I guess that wasn't good enough for them was it? I guess I get to wait until the summer now unless something happens that either gets me a new Xbox or somehow gets it fixed before then. This sucks. Fuck you Microsoft.

Xbox 360 Repair, Update #3

2009-03-31T13:07:00.000-05:00

I submitted a repair order on my Xbox 360 console this morning. Hopefully the repairs will not cost more than the default pro-forma invoice. Hopefully it won't take too long either.

Xbox 360 Repair, Update #2

2009-03-30T15:42:00.000-05:00

I called Xbox Live technical support and got to have fun navigating their automated system for about ten minutes before finally getting to my desired help topic. They don't really have a definite option for having problems with registering your Xbox. I went through both console support and Xbox Live support before finally giving up and going into the Account and Repair support. I finally managed to talk to a real person and got the problem fixed. Somehow my Xbox 360 was never linked to my gamertag and Live account (which is silly because I had that fixed years ago). Anyways, it took about 5 minutes to get that all sorted out and now I get to decide if I want to pay $99 + 9% sales tax (thanks Washington state) to get it fixed. Yay Micro$oft and your wonderful products...

Xbox 360 Repair, Update #1

2009-03-30T01:51:00.000-05:00

First update of the process I am going through to get my Xbox 360 fixed/replaced/something. After submitting a help email through the Xbox.com website, I received as response telling me to go through the steps of swapping cables, changing TVs, and resetting settings. As I had already done this, and made sure to explicitly say so in my email, I immediately submitted another query. This time, I referenced the initial problem and then asked why I was unable to register my Xbox on the website, which was my question in the first email.

I got the second response just now and the person basically told me that I cannot do this over the Internet. I have to call Xbox Live support and fix the problem with my console registration over the phone. I hate calling the Xbox hotline. I had to do it a few years ago because my gamertag was still being recognized as a child account even once I was 18. That process took forever to fix. Hopefully this will be less painful and I can get my Xbox registered so I can decide upon repairing it.

Gah. right as school starts. wonderful

Oh fun...

2009-03-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

I think the graphics card/system in my Xbox 360 just failed. I can already tell that the customer support/repair process for this is going to be abysmal compared to my MacBook Pro repair earlier this school year. I'm not looking forward to this at all.

I guess I'll post about how it goes once stuff starts going. I can't do anything yet because I cannot register my Xbox 360 on the website. Why? Because it has already been registered. To me. But the support site doesn't seem to make that connection. So now I get to wait on customer support to respond to my queries...

I'm either gonna have to pay about $150 for repairs (hopefully that includes shipping costs) or just buy a new one for about $300. Depending on how much it costs to get it fixed, I may just buy a new console to get the larger hard-drive (60GB vs. my current 20GB).

GAH

Anatomy of a Video Release

2009-03-27T16:05:00.000-05:00

I've been the media content director for Treeskunk Productions, a machinima group, for nearly two years now and I have done a lot of stuff to optimize how stuff is produced for that site. The website is massively more useful that it used to be, download counts are now tracked, and videos are hosted elsewhere on the internet to promote popularity. My main job is to take the final version of a video, add various titles and animations, convert to a myriad of formats, upload on the internets, and then maintain the videos (comments, etc.). The slowest part is probably the actual uploading process because upload speeds from my dorm can be really variable (I blame people who are torrenting).

I get the raw video (complete audio and video except for titles)
I convert to DV format for editing in Final Cut Express
I render the titles for the specific episode in Livetype and then import into Final Cut Express
I combine the main video with the default intro clip and overlay the specific episode titles. I add the closing titles
I export to Windows Media Format (Hi and Lo-quality), Quicktime (Hi and Lo-quality), and MP4 formats using Flip4Mac and Quicktime Player
I upload the videos to the Treeskunk server using Cyberduck
I write up an episode summary and make a new Wordpress page with the necessary information
I add the new videos to the click-counter program and put the appropriate links wherever they need to be
Two days before release, I upload to Machinima.com because they are terribly slow at processing through videos.
At about 10-11:00pm PST I start the release by publishing the Wordpress page and making a new post talking/linking to it.
I being to upload to both YouTube accounts (one in Firefox, the other in Safari) and then once those are complete: Myspace, MLG Gameroom, Mogulus, HaloTube, Google Video, and Vimeo
I add links Treeskunk release post to the streaming video sites as they are made available
Day After Release: Machinima.com either has the video up, or sends me an email saying it messed up and I need to re-upload. Screw you.
The next few days I get to moderate comments and remove useless spam, respond to questions/accusations, and in general promote/protect the video from the Internet and keep track of download counts

That's pretty much the process I get to go through on average about once a month. I get to do it three times in the matter of a week this week, but fortunately it's spring break so I don't/didn't really have much to do. If there's a few things I've learned about YouTube kids from all of this, it's that they have absolutely no patience and no intelligence about proper grammar. Literally within minutes of posting a video, the masses demand the next episode in a manner so difficult to decipher I'm not entirely sure what they are asking. I blame 1337-speak and lolcats.

Why I Hate Microsoft Office Mac

2009-03-11T02:03:00.000-05:00

Simply put, it doesn't work. It doesn't fulfill the simple purposes of its existence. It wastes my time. It frustrates me. It messes up my work. It turns simple things into excruciatingly painstaking tasks because I have to find workarounds for the problems. It is absolutely terrible.

Microsoft Word 2008

Seems to think it knows what I want it to do and does the complete opposite
Text-boxes in the upper-quarter of the page ALWAYS, ALWAYS randomly move and stick to the top of the page for no reason.
Text will randomly decide to no longer wrap around text-boxes and disappear underneath the boxes or completely page break

Microsoft Excel 2008

Almost every time I try to manipulate the data within an already generated graph, the program crashes. I will literally have to sit and repeatedly open the program, try to access the menu, and then have to restart after it crashes until it works.
Randomly crashes when I am trying to change the graph appearance settings
Why can a program designing for data entry and GRAPHING not perform 50% of its purpose WITHOUT REPEATEDLY FAILING IN A REPRODUCIBLE MANNER?

Microsoft Powerpoint 2008

I've had the least trouble with Powerpoint so far but it runs terribly slow for no particular reason. Just likes to be super slow sometimes even though I have pretty much every other app closed and various effects turned off
Why do images not wrap correctly around text? And why can't I put an image inside of a text box? I used to be able to do that. Now I cannot.

These relatively major problems plague everything I do in the Microsoft Office. I spend hours trying to get my text to work with my text boxes and graphs in Word. Usually results in my massively changing the actual paper (written) layout to fit the problem. I spend even more time trying to make the graphs in Excel which crashes on average every 10 minutes, and probably every 2 when I'm working specifically on editing the look of a graph. Why? Powerpoint has been the most reliable but it just gets slower and slower to the point I have to close and restart the app. But these are just minor inconviences compared to the mother-of-all-Micro$oft-Office problems.

Apple Spaces.

NONE OF THE PROGRAMS WORK WITH SPACES AT ALL AND THE STUPID UTILITY PALLET ALWAYS GETS LOST AND SPLITS THE APPLICATION ACROSS SPACES WHICH THEN REQUIRES ME TO FIX THE GLITCH BY GRABBING THE MAIN WINDOW AND GOING BACK AND FORTH AND THEN CLOSING AND REOPENING THE PALLET WINDOW.

I don't even define any of those apps to appear in a specific Space because I realized it cut down on the frequency of this error. But it still happens? And why for the love of anything has this not been fixed yet?X

And so, my reviews of the office 2008 suite are as follows...

EXCEL << WORD << POWERPOINT << the worst thing you have ever encountered in your life

Posters

2009-03-09T02:50:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a poster on the ATLAS experiment (particle detector in the Large Hadron Collider) for my technical writing class. I've probably spent more time fiddling with color schemes and images rather than the actual content of the poster. It's fun dealing with multi-megabyte images in Powerpoint 2008 Mac (it really sucks). The poster looks pretty good so far I think, it might be a little too dense though. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that because it's a somewhat complex subject matter. A very interesting subject matter (at least for me) though, which is always nice when doing a project.

This is the color scheme I'm running with right now, although I'm sure that it will change by tomorrow.

4 Years of Scrobbling

2009-03-05T19:26:00.002-06:00

Today marks four years of using the Last.FM + Audioscrobbler service to track my music listening. My musical taste has evolved quite rapidly over the years and it hardly resembles what I listened to when I joined on March 5, 2005. When I joined the site, I had only recently started to listen to music beyond whatever was on the radio (e.g. crap alternative) and didn't have much variety in what I was listening to. So as I have done in the past on other sites/blogs, here is my annual report on the current state of my musical listenings...

This data only takes into account the music in my iTunes library because I rarely use the Last.FM or Pandora Radio services to listen to music. My top ten bands make up only about 15% of my total music plays, so there is quite a lot of variety in what I am listening to. My top ten bands have been played a total of 14,179 times and have an average song length of about 4:02.

I listen to music at a somewhat high rate (but I don't really have anything to compare it to). I average about 24,288 songs per year, which means I have listened to about 15 songs per hour for the past four years.

Next is something rather cool to look at. It is essentially a visual representation of my musical history. Generated by the LastGraph website, it represents you music in a horizontal stream that fluctuates based on the amount of music an account has been listening to. Within each section the top artists are displayed relative to how much they have been listened during that period of time. It's pretty cool to look and see that UnderOATH has been on my music list since the beginning and how Bright Eyes has persisted throughout the entire spectrum. It's also cool to see the when I went on vacation over the past years and the massive explosion of music listening when I started college (Fall 2007). The original image generated by the website was a whopping 152 MB and some insane pixel width so some of the text is no longer legible in its current 2MB form you can see below (click to open full-sized). Warning this image is 2MB in size and over 15,000 pixels wide. Just watch out for the browser-hang.

Obviously music is a big part of my life at this time and it's a rare instance to find me doing homework/studying without any music playing. I think that it really helps me concentrate when studying (post-rock music ftw) and doing homework (pretty much anything goes). I wish I had a way to track what music I listen to when I'm doing certain tasks or how it changes with regards to the weather, but I don't have the time/ability to do any of that.

Last.FM is an excellent web-service and it has been an invaluable asset in finding new music over the past years. I even subscribed to it for almost two years (not really necessary anymore). The ability to see all of the trends and phases I have gone through musically is really quite amazing. Of course, none of this would ever have been possible without the Audioscrobbler team that built the first "scrobbling" service that Last.FM now implements. I have never used the actual Last.FM application for scrobbling my music from iTunes, but rather a third-party menu-based plugin called iScrobbler that I have believe works far more efficiently.

Fun stuff right? I just wasted a good part of my day doing this instead of studying for physics. yay!

Final Encore

2009-02-18T01:12:00.003-06:00

Natalie Portman's Shaved Head played an excellent concert tonight at the Vera Project. It was the third time I've seen them at that cool, all-ages venue in the Seattle Center. And it will also probably be the last time. NPSH has grown quite a lot over the year after going on tour with CSS, Matt & Kim, The Go! Team, and their upcoming tour with Lily Allen this year. While it's always great when a small band is successful, it comes at the price of cheap concerts at small venues with people who truly know/love the music. This concert was a surprise announced on Saturday, so the turn-out wasn't quite that of past shows that took place on the weekend. There were still plenty of people there, which is always good for a band like NPSH that interacts so much with the audience.

Best thing about the show aside from their performance? They were the only band that played. Doors were at 7:30, we got there at about 8:15 and the show started just after 9:00 and lasted until about 10:00. Which was excellent cause I was already tired and hadn't been feeling that great all day.

So this will probably be my last blog about one of their concerts, which is a little sad. But I wish the best to them in their upcoming tour and their future as a band. Hopefully their next release will be just as excellent, whenever it may come.

Hmm...

2009-02-09T01:52:00.003-06:00

I don't know.

I don't like making decisions and unfortunately I have to make one within a week and a half. No fun.

I wonder if it will snow tomorrow...It'll probably just rain.

The new Animal Collective CD is excellent. You should check it [Merriweather Post Pavilion] out.

It's fun looking through other people's iTunes libraries. I wish the stupid router would work how it's supposed to so I can see these things.

I have a new screensaver. It's kinda cool/weird/disturbing/fun. It basically is a Twitter visualizer centered around six different words: love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. It swaps between them every minute or two. What it does it display all of the tweets from the public feed that contain the specific phrase "I + word." It's really interesting to see what people are talking about, especially with those specific phrases as the basis.

The Internet has been the cause of so much wasted time. I really should go.

Walking Is Still Honest

2009-02-06T01:48:00.055-06:00

So it's been a month since I've been back in Seattle (technically a month plus one day). Last quarter I had a random idea that basically involved keeping track of everywhere I walked so that I could see exactly how much walking I did up here. So a little spreadsheet data entry and the amazing UW Route Finder have resulted in me having a full month's worth of data. And although it's a little surprising, I'm not entirely mystified by the results.

I basically have a data entry for every day of the month that contains the approximate distance I walked that day and the approximate time I spent walking. For the times I walked off campus, I used Google Map's walking directions to estimate the distances (there aren't that many). So one month later, here are the results...

Total Distance Walked: 83.85 miles
Total Time Spent Walking: 26.6 hours
Average Distance Per Day: 2.54 miles

Click for Full-Sized Graph

So clearly I walk a lot up here. The single day with the most walking was January 17 when I walked 5.53 miles, mostly exploring downtown Seattle with Kara. There were only two days out of the entire month that I didn't go outside (January 25 and February 1st) and they were both Sundays. Something about doing a lot of homework that day seems to have a bad effect on my outdoor appearances...

Oh and my average walking speed is about 3.1 miles per hour, which seems a bit high but I tend to walk rather briskly.

And the ridiculous distance I walk each day is because all of my classes are on the complete other side of campus.

I guess it's healthy for me and good for the environment (even though there isn't really any way I could drive to class), so whatever.

Sleep.

2009-02-03T02:17:00.003-06:00

It's 12:16am and I'm up stumbling around the Internet rather than going to sleep when I have to wake up at 7:00.

I don't understand myself.

I don't understand why I waste so much time that I could better spend doing a million other more productive things.

It's probably just because I'm stuck on repeat.

Listening to very instrumental post-rock isn't helping right now either.

I should go to sleep but I feel like it's a waste of time.

Wasted Time

2009-02-01T19:34:00.022-06:00

I feel like I'm wasting my time taking physics at all this year. Unfortunately, I need another complete science/math sequence for my honors requirements and I only had the option for physics or biology (already did chemistry and skipped the math one). In retrospect I really should have taken the biology series because I don't even need to take the physics classes since I got credit for all of them from AP physics in high school. So rather than taking a class that I have never taken (biology) I get to "relearn" all the physics concepts that I already have credit for.

What really sucks is that I haven't learned a single thing this year in this class. Not a single thing. The class isn't easy because you still have to apply the concepts and do some calculus to get the answers, but I haven't learned anything yet. It's really frustrating when you know something but apply it/do math the and get less-than-desirable grades on stuff. I know it's better to get the basic concepts down, but I'd rather be learning something new in a different field than repeating things I already understand.

In short, I really wish I had taken the biology honors sequence. I would have actually used my physics AP credits towards something in my major (the physics requirement) rather than just tossing them away as general credits. I would not be so pressured in terms of taking prerequisite classes for my major which is pretty much already have completely planned out. I wouldn't spending the somewhat gratuitous amounts of time on homework assignments/web assignments/tutorial assignments/labs/crap we have to do for that class that I could better spend doing something else.

So rather than doing any studying for my biology exam this Wednesday, I spent the entire time from 11:00am to 5:30pm doing about 10 physics problems. I like physics, but the manner in which the content has be taught (I'd say not taught), the textbook is written (poorly), and the excessive amounts of work (way too much) has really been pushing me away from the topics. Which sucks cause I really do find it [physics] interesting.

/rant

Sleepy Eyes of Death

2009-01-25T13:23:00.001-06:00

Finally got to listen to the CD after leaving it with Kara on Friday night. It's quite an excellent EP from this Seattle electronic post-rock band and was well worth the $8 I paid for it over at Sonic Boom Records. It's definitely gonna be on repeat for a while (just like all their other stuff really). I made another iTunes visualizer recording to one of the songs from the album. It starts off a little slow with some 8-bit noise and effected 'singing' but then picks up into typical epic SEoD. Enjoy!

Sleepy Eyes of Death - Final Heart Beats Black
from the album Dark Signals

Happy Birthday Macintosh

2009-01-25T00:06:00.001-06:00

It's been 25 years since the first Apple Macintosh went on sale after that monumental Super Bowl advertisement directed by Ridley Scott. It's seen its ups and downs over the past quarter century, especially during the early nineties. Its designs have been heralded and degraded by the tech world yet it has always innovated. Apple has pushed the computing industry forward through its designs and now sits as the most respected computer company in the world. It's hard to believe what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's small startup have meant to the personal computer over these years. It's even harder to see how that chunky box with an 8 MHz processor, 128 KB of RAM, and 9" monochromatic screen evolved into the all-in-one iMac with a dual-core 2.6 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, and 20" high definition display.

So remember, even though we live in a PC world (according to Micro$oft), it started as a Mac world. And if current trends continue, we might find ourselves living in one once again (whether that would be good or bad for the Apple image remains to be seen). I wonder what they'll [Apple] think up next, especially in the wake of Steve Job's temporary absence...

A Good Guy

2009-01-23T01:48:00.000-06:00

If you haven't heard of Vince Offer then you've probably seen his TV commercials. He's that goofy-looking guy with the headset that makes you want to buy that amazing towel the ShamWow and that cool kitchen cutter the SlapChop. He's pretty much the new Billy Mays (OxiClean guy who yells all the time) of TV advertisements. Aside from selling some ridiculously cool products that actually seem somewhat useful (the Graty looks absolutely amazin'), he's actually quite a person.

He's the director of one of the worst movies ever made, the "Underground Comedy Movie" and an ex-member of the Church of Scientology. He was heavily involved in the church when he was making the film and used his connections within it to help get people like Slash and Michael Clarke Duncan in his little project. Unfortunately, once the church got wind of exactly how crude/rude/inappropriate the film was going to be, they basically cut him off. They blacklisted him, they turned the community against him, listed him as a Suppressive Person, and eventually brought him to Scientology Court where he was convicted of 23 crimes against Scientology. Basically completely screwed over. He lost his connections, money, and his life, as he had put it all into Scientology.

He got to start over from scratch, landing a job selling vegetable choppers. If you seen his commercials, he's pretty pro at selling stuff, so it quickly grew into a successful business. Now he sells his products on major cable channels and gets a good laugh out of everyone watching the commercial at how enthusiastic he is. But do you know where all the money he makes from his sales go?

Fighting the monolithic Church of Scientology for what they've done.

He is single-handily attacking an institution that has quite a bad reputation (more) when it comes to its treatment of former members. Not to mention basically being the arch-enemy of the entire Internet population.

So next time you see that commercial, instead of laughing at his ridiculous sales pitch and products, think about what he's been through and what he's doing. He's a good guy now. Plus you probably would like a ShamWow or Slapchop with limited offer free Graty!

Original Article

ShamWow Commercial

SlapChop Commercial

It's a Hit

2009-01-22T12:56:00.005-06:00

The Jenny Lewis concert at the UW's Meany Hall last night was excellent. So was sitting on the second row away from the stage. Apparently it's her first time to do a "solo" show even though Johnathan Rice played with her on about half of the songs. Unfortunately the place has a no-photo, no-video policy but I think the staff gave up once they realized half the audience was taking pictures. There wasn't any special about the show and it was nice/interesting to hear the songs without a band. I managed to record one song, "It's a Hit," from an older Rilo Kiley album but realized about halfway through I was holding the camera sideways so the resulting video is taller than it is wide (lol). Check it out below, sorry for the poor video quality but the audio is all that really matters right?

8 Years.

2009-01-20T01:38:00.001-06:00

Our nation has been suffering for 8 long years. We've become entrenched in two wars with no end in sight, one of which was initiated under false pretense. We've found ourselves in the middle of a massive financial crisis whose closest relative is the infamous Great Depression. We've turned a blind eye to the civil rights of both American Citizens and the rights of those that we hold as prisoners of our "wars." We've stalled the advancement of the human race by cutting funding to educational and research institutions on which we rely for the inventions and ideas of tomorrow. We've ignored the overwhelming threats of global warming as the nations of the world rally against it.

We've been told lies.
We've been cheated.
we've been manipulated.
We've seen our Constitution shredded.
We've watched that torch fade.

We've had enough.

We voted to change that on November 5, 2008.

That change begins tomorrow at high noon on the steps of the Capitol when Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States of America and shatters the norm into pieces.

Now we have Hope.

About F**cking Time

2009-01-18T03:36:00.000-06:00

President-elect Barack Obama said Friday he wanted legislation in Congress to permit federal funding on stem cell research and overturn a ban imposed by President George W. Bush.

Obama, who favors medical research on stem cells derived from human embryos, told CNN he was still exploring an executive order to revoke Bush's ban.

Source

Finally we'll be able to research the full potential of stem cells without being limited to non-embryonic stem cells. Finally we can catch up to the rest of the civilized, industrialized world in medical research and hopefully renew America's engineering and science strength.

There are a lot of dreams riding on Barack Obama's presidency. While I think that it is illogical to think that he will do everything he promised, I think he will do his best to do as much as he can. America will be a different place come Tuesday noon when he recites those simple yet powerful lines that mark him as the next President of the United States of America. It seems that a little hope can go a long way. ;)

Sleepy Eyes of Death

2009-01-16T02:12:00.003-06:00

Dark Signals sounds like it's gonna be an excellent EP (should really be an album considering how long it's been) from Sleepy Eyes of Death. Possibly one of the best live shows ever simply because of the intensity and the effectiveness of the lights + smoke show. Too bad the CD release tomorrow night is 21+ (stupid Washington state laws about bars and underage people). I haven't decided if I'm going to buy it digitally or wait until I can get over to Sonic Boom to pick it up. Tough choices...

Reviews for the upcoming EP Dark Signals:

The Stranger

"...the EP's six songs are largely instrumental, layering precisely arpeggiating analog keyboards, sweeping synth pads, vocoded vocals, alternately blurry washes and sharp stabs of guitar, and both programmed beats and pounding live drums. The songs range from the aggressive autobahn night-drive of "Shattered Limbs" to the suspenseful stalking of "Pierce the Air" to the breathtaking final liftoff of "Crushed by Stars." It all sounds rather like an M83 record with just the vocal pop songs sucked out."

Seattle Weekly

"Watching the four-piece (five, if you include "Industrial Light and Magic" charge and erstwhile Scarecrow Video employee Brandon Lanich) methodically build layers of chilly synth and celestial samples over thick drums (both organic and manmade) while impaling themselves occasionally on shards of Gibson and Fender guitars is essentially like watching a team of scientists build a futuristic Frankenstein before your eyes. Should Seattle music fans ever find themselves lamenting the lack of Mogwai or My Bloody Valentine–flavored bands in the landscape, they clearly haven't been to a Sleepy Eyes of Death show."

Sound Magazine

"...navigating between pulsing, looming lows and majestic, chaotic highs, drawing on the epic sensibilities of Sigur Ros and sonic fury of Kinski."

Space

2009-01-12T16:11:00.000-06:00

It's really quite amazing. This is a photo of Saturn from the dark side of the planet (the sun is in the background) and it's not photoshopped at all. Pretty cool. Click for full-sized image.

Stupid Things

2009-01-12T02:12:00.000-06:00

1. I really think that scheduling a class to fill an entire lecture hall is a terrible idea. Why? Just because a room has 345 seats, that doesn't mean that 344 people will fit in the room at all, more or less comfortably. But that's the case with my Biology (BIOL 200) class this quarter. And it's quite frustrating and I can't even imagine what exams will be like in there once that time comes. What exactly is preventing us from using the same massive lecture hall we had for the previous iteration of the class (BIOL 180)? Whatever it is, it's probably stupid.

2. Stupid people on buses that decide to think people who are talking on the phone are actually insulting them and then proceed to cause a ruckus and result in people leaving the bus as the driver calls police(mb?).

3. Slow internet speeds at school. I know my internet should be going at 10 MBps up and down in my dorm room. So who/what is preventing that? Stupid pirates.

4. I don't understand why people sometimes feel the need to lie about everything

5. Microsoft. Why does every window in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel feel the need to get mixed up across my Spaces windows on my Mac and then cause a disastrous recovery attempt that requires the closing of all but the main window with typically negligible effects? It's been a year and you still haven't fixed that crap. Internet Explorer. Please for the love of everything start making it support Internet standards. Microsoft Points? 80 points = 1 dollar. What is up with that conversion?

6. Sleep. I really dislike sleeping cause I feel like I'm wasting time that I could spend doing something productive. I've probably said this before but seeing as we spend like 1/3 of our lives asleep, imagine what we could do with that time?

7. Ignorance. People who attack someone's beliefs because they contradict their own disgust me. Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts/ideas/beliefs so long as they do not interfere with those of others. It's that simple.

I can't think of anything else cause I'm tired. But in other news, a research team has recently synthesized a RNA enzyme that can self-replicate itself indefinitely (limited by available resources). Looks like the good old chemical evolution theory is looking even better. yay.

iTunes is Finally Free

2009-01-06T13:42:00.000-06:00

Apple announced today during its MacWorld keynote address that iTunes will finally be freed from the shackles of the ancient DRM system by the end of this quarter. Nearly 8 million songs today were transitioned from their original $0.99, 128kbps, DRM-laden formats to the iTunes "Plus" format (varying prices, 256kbps, no DRM). This ends several years of heated debate about the appropriate distribution of copyrighted digital media. Clearly this is a massive win for both the consumer, Apple, and even though they probably don't realize it, the record labels. Now that iTunes songs are no longer hindered by DRM, you can share you music freely without have to resort to stupid tricks to eliminate the DRM or authorizing multiple computers to play songs you rightfully own. Not only are the songs in higher quality, a new cost system has been initiated with three tiers of price ($0.69, $0.99, and $1.29) depending on a variety of factors. So not only has Apple sold over 6 billion songs through the iTunes store since its creation, it is about to have the largest online, DRM-free music store once all 10 million songs available are fully transitioned to the new system by the end of this quarter. But more importantly, with the world's largest music store jumping out of the DRM system, the best path for the future of digital media distribution is starting to become evident. And we now know for sure that DRM was never meant to be, which is excellent for the consumer.

Apple also announced new versions of the iLife (Garageband now has lessons...iPhoto has facial recognition and geotagging capabilities) and iWork suites and the new 17" MacBook Pro with its ridiculous new features (e.g. battery).

It seems that Apple is quite capable of giving a presentation and making an impact even when Steve Jobs is not the one giving the keynote. That's really fortunate.

My Day of Packing

2009-01-03T22:06:00.000-06:00

1. Wake up (11:30am)
2. Lounge around watching TV (12:00-1:00pm)
3. Do laundry (1:00-2:00pm) while playing videogames
4. Play videogames (2:00-6:30pm)
5. Go out for dinner (6:30-7:30pm)
6. Play videogames (7:30-9:00pm)
8. Mess around on the computer (9:00-9:45pm)
9. Pack (9:45-10:00pm)
10. Write Blog (.....

Yup, that's how I spent my last day at home.

I Have No Resolutions

2009-01-02T00:33:00.000-06:00

I spent the first day of the new year doing absolutely nothing. I sat around watching TV, playing videogames, and eating junk food. That is an adequate description of my day. And the day before that. And pretty much everyday this break.

I am not a fan of doing that. It's just I have nothing else to do. Which is something I hate.

I didn't make any resolutions for the new year because I don't say that I'm going to do something when I know I won't do it. And that seems to be what a new year's resolutions has devolved into these days.

I have to start packing soon. And by soon I mean Saturday. Today felt like a Friday for some reason. Perhaps it was the leap second added between 2008 and 2009. Officially, the regular progress of time on the planet Earth was paused for exactly one second to adjust for differences between our time-keeping methods and the actual rotation of our planet. I spent the one second added at exactly 17:59:60 CST (which was 23:59:60 GMT) solving everything. Unfortunately because that time never actually existed, I can never actually know what I thought. 'Tis unfortunate.

19 days

So this is the new year.
And i don't feel any different.
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogs bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then i could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that could hold us back.

There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back

So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year...

Finale

2008-12-31T16:30:00.002-06:00

The year 2008 is in its death throes as the sun sweeps across the planet ushering in a new year.

I wonder what 2009 will be like.

And there's a bright light on the horizon that will be reached in less than 20 days.

I think this video sums up the year pretty well...

Happy New Years!

11 Years

2008-12-31T00:45:00.000-06:00

That is approximately how much time I have caused to be wasted watching machinima through my affiliations with Treeskunk Productions. I updated the total viewing counts of our videos today and decided to figure out how much time people have spent since late 2006 watching them. I must admit I am relatively stunned that so time has been spent watching a tiny studio's productions. I can't even begin to imagine how much time has been wasted watching Red vs. Blue episodes or wasted on YouTube in general. It's even more ridiculous to think about how much productivity is lost because of these Internet video sites and what the potential output could be if that energy were directed elsewhere (e.g. saving the world from global financial crisis/global warming/World War III/Aliens/Meteors/Crappy Music).

So there you have it. Not only do I waste a vast majority of my time, but I have caused another 11 years of time to be wasted watching videogame videos. There's my only contribution to society thus far.

Yippie.

My Top 5 Apps

2008-12-28T23:55:00.003-06:00

I've been meaning to get around to this for a while but I guess it takes severe boredom for to actually make my top-5-most-useful-apps-on-my-computer list. So here it goes...

5) VisualHub
My number five application is called VisualHub and is now considered a dead application (no longer being produced). In addition to Handbrake, VisualHub has been an invaluable asset in my converting of video files to a variety of Apple Product-supported formats (yes I know AVI and MKV files are better). I don't know how many files it has ripped through with only a handful of errors (usually my fault) or failure-to-converts. Not only did it support a wide range of formats (both input and output), it was also very quick when compared to other encoders (like Quicktime which is really slow). It handled even the most massive 1080p HD files without a problem while other apps just crashed or took so long I stopped the encode. Hopefully a new converting program will emerge this year that is just as efficient and reliable as VisualHub has been.

4) Cyberduck
I do a lot of website work (both personal and for Treeskunk) and require a highly functional FTP (SFTP, etc.) client to make interacting with the server-based material easy. Cyberduck can do that and more and is completely free. It has a highly efficient (and easy) interface and supports working with files directly from the server via various text-editors (I use BBEdit). It even has a Quicklook-like preview system (although it tends to work better on really fast internet connections). Cyberduck has been pretty much priceless for my personal website work and the class I took at UW (UW CSE 190m). I know there are a lot of FTP clients out there but Cyberduck has done a great job. Plus it has one of the coolest icons!

3) Quicksilver
Quicksilver is an application that few people ever notice that I have installed on my computer for two reasons 1) it doesn't actually show up except when being used and 2) I tend to use it very quickly. Quicksilver is the ultimate do-everything command utility for the Mac. Aside from being an intuitive launcher program, it can quickly perform various functions such as open them in user-defined applications, uploading files without ever leaving the interface, perform conversions, do web searches, control iTunes, control Mail, and many many more things that I barely even know how to use. And it all sits a quick keystroke away. After first installing the application (and figuring out how exactly to do basic things) I pretty much stopped using Spotlight to search for stuff or the Dock to launch applications. It's always impressive when something has the ability to replace the built-in functionality of the Mac OS operating system.

2) iScrobbler
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a ridiculous amount of music and that I am always listening to it. They probably also know that it is fairly random (quiet acoustic indie stuff to heavy death metal) and that I use the Last.FM service to keep track of my listening habits and to find new music. While there is an official LastFM client for the Mac, I prefer the 3rd party iScrobbler client for my "scrobbling." I find the minimalist menu bar icon interface and highly reliable submission/queuing of songs better than the official client. Plus I have used it since I joined LastFM back when the official client kinda sucked and didn't support iPod submissions (it now does!). iScrobbler is one of the few applications that I have in my login items list and is guaranteed to always be running on my computer as it awaits new music listening.

1) Adium
The application with the most random icon of them all falls into the number one spot. I know that iChat is a great application and it is unrivaled in its video and audio chat capabilities (as well as Screen Sharing and file sharing via iChat Theater) but it pales in comparison to the multi-client chat powerhouse called Adium. Besides supporting a plethora of chat clients (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, MySpace, Facebook, Google Talk, Jabber, etc.) it is completely customizable with skins and icon packages for both the contact list and the actual chat windows. While it doesn't support audio or video chat, I find that I rarely use those services anyways so it isn't too much of a loss (there are plans to add support in future versions...maybe). One of iChat's limiting factors is the support of only the Jabber and AIM clients, which Adium covers quite handily. Adium falls into the number one spot not because it is always open on my computer but because I use it all the time to keep in touch with people all over the place.
This has taken a lot longer than I intended...

Honorable Mentions:
Firefox - duh
DropBox - awesome cross-computer, cross-platform, web-accessible sync program
NetNewsWire - Excellent RSS reader
Little Snitch - amazing rule-based Firewall for the Mac
MetaX - metadata tagger for videos

I just wasted an hour of my life. I guess it could have been spent doing something less productive than writing a blog post...

Presents

2008-12-26T12:17:00.001-06:00

Christmas was about what I expected it to be. I got money in various forms (gift cards, checks, and cash) and an exorbitant amount of candy that I will consume in a very short time span. I think my favorite present overall is from Kara. She got me Barack Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" and an Obama action figure! I'm debating whether or not I should remove it from its packaging or leave it inside...But it's definitely an awesome present :)

I also got about 5 free apps for my computer through MacHeist's Giving Tree program for this year. I got two games (Enigmo and iConquer) and couple productivity apps (Synergy, 1password, and Headline). These are all the full applications with legit registrations in my name, which is pretty awesome.

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas and are having a good Boxing Day (if you celebrate it).

Minor Tweaks

2008-12-18T01:15:00.003-06:00

I made some minimal tweaks/fixes/changes to the current design. Most of it had to do with various links not showing up correctly (wrong color, not underlining on mouse hover, etc.). I also did a lot of work on the "2nd" sidebar with the Twitter and FriendFeed streams so that the fonts were a little larger and easier to read and the colors fit the rest of the style better. I also widened the area the text could occupy so it wasn't just two word lines, which is really annoying. The whole thing doesn't come anywhere near validating, but Blogger makes it really difficult to do that with their theme setup. I'm happy with the look of it for now so hopefully I wont' waste another night working on it anytime soon.

Technical Difficulties

2008-12-16T00:09:00.000-06:00

1. The Internet on my laptop is continually going on and off. The Internet works fine when the computer is wired and one other laptops on the same wireless network. Problem with the new Leopard (10.5.6) update maybe or just something acting up?

2. I have 4,294,966,905 (4 billion) messages in Mail

3. Time Machine drive still acts up by saying disk is unavailable. I thought 10.5.6 update was supposed to reduce this problem's frequency?

Why I Hate Xbox Live

2008-12-15T11:53:00.000-06:00

First off, I don't hate it because I waste countless hours of my life playing games on it. Xbox Live is a great service for playing video games online and has been very successful in that market over the years. What I hate about it is what it allows people to become because of the anonymity associated with the system.

You get to basically make up an entire personality when you register your gamertag with Xbox Live. You get to choose what you look like, how you talk, and how you act. Because of this you can be a completely different person who talks and acts nothing like your actual self. I don't know if it is because of this anonymity or simply because of the effects of modern pop culture upon kids that the majority of younger kids on Xbox Live seem to be extremely racist/sexist/homophobic/vulgar/etc.

I feel like I can't play a single game of Halo without having what sounds like a 12-year-old screaming about someone else on our team being [a] gay/fag/f*cker/[insert obscene comment here]. I don't really care about the use of curse words anymore because I feel like they have lost their original intensity after years of propagation in movies, music, and the current culture in general. They simply don't mean that much to the current generations because of how widespread their use has become. Replacing them in taboo (at least for me) is the use of words like gay, fag, fagot, etc. People drop these as mere replacements for words like stupid and dumb without any attention to their actual meanings. And of course you can't forget the absolute idiots who still spew racist-era phrases without the slightest hesitation.

I know it's practically impossible to moderate the in-game voice communication and that the Xbox Live feedback system requires massive quantities of negative inputs before any action is taken against an account, but I feel like something needs to be done. Sure I can mute the kids (which I tend to do), but that ends up negatively influencing gameplay. I leave feedback on them, but it doesn't do anything unless more people do as well. Sometimes if I feel confrontational enough I'll ask them to stop at which point I will typically be flamed for pointing out their misconceptions. It's amazing how many people think that an acceptable argument for using a word is to repeatedly call someone else the word with various modifiers attached as if to increase its already meaningless usage. The most recent incident was in a Halo 3 matchmaking game where a player (whose profile said he was 14) kept screaming that everyone on his (and my) team was a "gay fag." It took about two minutes before I started to mute him when I decided to tell him to stop yelling cause I couldn't tell what anyone else was saying. He then proceeded to direct his entire vocabulary of ten words directly me at which point someone else on my team asked him to stop calling people gay because it was insulting to him because he (the other player) was actually gay. That was probably the worst thing that person could have said because the remainder of my 6 person team immediately started to harass him for being gay. Because of the recent Halo stats reset, I was the dominating player in the game and was essentially carrying my entire team. As they continued to flame the guy for his sexual orientation I told everyone on my team that I would quit the game if they refused to stop. The absolutely ridiculous thing is that every single idiot on my team immediately stopped. They cared more about the outcome of a single stupid videogame match than the trouble they had caused another player on our team. Of course that same kid that started it all forgot everything that had just happened in about two minutes so I left the game as promised. We lost the game if I looked at the Bungie.net post-game report correctly.

What scares me the most is that this isn't a trait of only a small population of younger gamers that I've encountered on Xbox Live. This commentary seems to spew forth from a large proportion of the younger generations as if they were never told what exactly they are saying. It ranges from racism to sexism to homophobia to sheer stupidity. Girls online are treated the same as that unfortunate person from the stroy above. It's disgusting. If my generation was thought to be socially irresponsible and inappropriate, what exactly will theirs be quantified as? I don't know what can be done about this problem because it extends far beyond the realm of videogames. There are those who would like to tie the problem to videogames and I'm not entirely sure that they are wrong. I don't necessarily think it's the actual videogame, but the online aspects that allow it to develop this way. It might even be the fault of the Internet and the anonymity it allows for that has caused this to happen. Whatever it is, what it has caused really isn't cool.

Counter-Productivity

2008-12-15T00:42:00.000-06:00

I haven't done a single thing.

Goodbyes

2008-12-12T12:02:00.000-06:00

I leave Seattle in less than twelve hours and start my trip to the airport in about nine hours. I think that half of my cluster has left now with the latest two leaving this morning around 7:30. This quarter went by really quickly for some reason. Maybe it was because of the slightly ridiculous schedule I was taking but managed to survive through. Maybe it was because of the wonderful Seattle weather. I don't really know.

So I guess I need to start packing soon, not that it will take me that long. Of course it's raining outside so I'll probably get wet on the way to the bus stop to the airport...

I finally get to take a bioengineering class next quarter, which is going to be awesome because it focuses on the tools that have been developed by bioengineering (which is awesome). I'm also going to try to go to some more concerts as compared to the one concert I went to this quarter. I already know I'm going to the Jenny Lewis show at the UW and the Sleepy Eyes of Death EP release party if it's all ages.

I wonder what 2009 will be like...

Environmental Change

2008-12-10T20:56:00.000-06:00

Barack Obama will be announcing tomorrow his picks for the Secretary of Energy, White House Council on Environmental Quality, head of the E.P.A., and top White House official on climate and energy policy. The four people he picked will basically be tasked with undoing the wrongs the Bush administration has wrought on our country's environmental policies. Obama is bringing in both new and old faces to help with the global climate crisis that our government will finally recognize in less than 40 days. The next Secretary of Energy will be the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Noble Prize winning physicist (1997) Steven Chu. The other officials will be Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor of LA for energy and environment, Carol M. Browner, the former head of the EPA under President Clinton, and Lisa P. Jackson, New Jersey's commissioner of environmental protection. Browner, one of the major backers of Al Gore and his environmental initiatives will have massive support in Congress powerful Democrats heading up major Energy committees (House Energy/Commerce and Senate Environment/Public Works).

Hopefully this team of qualified and knowledgeable experts will be able to slow and eventually halt our country's downward spiral into environmental disaster and push the United States back into the forefront and lead the way for the remainder of the world to do the same. Unlike the Bush administration which just ignored the issues of global warming and climate change, the Obama administration plans to take them head on, as anything so dire should be. The only question is: Is it too late?

4 Days. 4 Exams.

2008-12-07T18:44:00.000-06:00

Finals week is here! Unfortunately.

I have four finals on four different days. Three are at 8:30 in the morning and one at 2:30 in the afternoon. All of them have two hour allotted lengths although I hope to finish several of them early. I really hate studying for these...

Monday - Math 308 : 8:30-10:20am
Tuesday - CSE 143 : 2:30-4:20pm
Wednesday - PHYS 121 : 8:30-10:20am
Thursday - BIOL 180 : 8:30-10:20am

Flamed

2008-12-01T20:45:00.000-06:00

So the University of Washington has a student-run daily newspaper called "The Daily." Last Tuesday they ran an Op-Ed written by John Fay entitled "Gay marriage? Let’s stop and think about this." The controversial article was quickly picked apart and a massive outcry of protests emerged amongst students as they read it. The online version of the story saw over 100 comments pile in by 10:45am that day. There are now currently over 330 total comments against the story on the online version of the story.

What was wrong with it? Quite a lot. Actually, pretty much everything. The Daily ran a massive opinion section today called "Free Speech Monday." After two or three opinions on the current financial crisis and the UW's renewal of its contract with Nike, the gauntlet of opinions against the article beings. Stretching almost seven full pages sit 57 opinions from people across the United States and a wide range of occupations. There are opinions from UW freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, graduate students, professors, doctors, and alumni against the article from essentially every academic field. There are comments from people in New York City, Malibu, California, U.C. Berkeley, the Minneapolis City Council, Arizona State University, and even Richmond, Virginia. Every single one of the fifty-seven articles reprimands The Daily for running such an article, John Fay for writing such an article, and Matt Jackson for illustrating it the way it was. Clearly free speech was the basis for such an article being published and clearly popular opinion and free speech will be its undoing.

You know what I think? I think he's completely wrong on multiple levels. His argument is flawed with typical "slippery slope" fallacies and his definitions are crude at best. He calls homosexuality an "emotional state" despite every major American psychiatric association having taken it off their "mental illness" lists in the early 1970s and overwhelming research that shows it is a natural (not nurtured) trait. He compares it to the likes of "polygamy, incest, bestiality" as alternative forms of unions when none of those actually possess of any form of consent as marriage does. He says that legalizing gay marriage would lead to "social dysfunction" and the "overturning of traditions by our government" much the same way the racists in the South argued against the ending of slavery and segregation. He claims that "traditional marriage" would be overturned when nearly 50% of marriages in the United States now end in divorce. There's nothing wrong with Mr. Fay believing the things he says. But when it is published in a newspaper at a school with over 30,000 students and in a form that strings together misconception after misconception, then there is something wrong. The 57 published opinions, over 300 online comments, and Stranger article with over 100 comments clearly shows something amiss.

I'm not proud that my school newspaper published such an article but I am proud that the student body has responded with such an overwhelming cry of protest. It's one thing to argue that free speech and freedom of press shouldn't be limited by the school editorial staff, but when that speech is as terribly flawed, inaccurate, bigoted, and socially unacceptable as this article was, they probably should have said no and stopped it all.

I have below the full context of the article and the entirety of today's seven-paged opinions section. Click on the images for full-sized readable versions.

Gay marriage? Let’s stop and think about this

Few issues of cultural importance in America long escape the gaze of a Simpsons’ episode.

In the episode titled “There’s Something About Marrying,” the city of Springfield legalizes gay marriage, prompting Homer Simpson to become an Episcopal priest in order to reap lucrative benefits for conducting such unions.

Homer very quickly realizes that he could make even more money in nuptials if he is less discriminating, and by the end of the episode he’s proceeding to marry the Sea Captain to the mermaid-shaped masthead of his ship.

We laugh about scenes like this and say they could never happen; of course, that’s what our grandparents were saying about gay marriage a generation ago.

Now, I realize the gay marriage issue surrounding the California voters’ decision on Proposition 8 is extremely emotional for a lot of people, and I respect their difference of opinion, but let us try and consider the vote from a rational basis.

The decision of California’s Supreme Court in May to legalize gay marriage, which Prop. 8 overturned, was extremely rash. There is nothing constitutional about gay marriage on a state or federal level. For gay marriage to even fit within the court’s jurisdiction, it must have some basis in constitutionality.

Yet the court argued that forbidding marriage rights to gays is discrimination, “like a person’s race or gender.” Race is a biological state; homosexuality is more of an emotional condition, and we should not, for that reason alone, start passing laws condoning it.

Being homosexual, like other emotional tendencies, doesn’t make someone a bad person, but it’s a problem that needs to be dealt with, not denied.

Now, there are several major problems with legalizing gay marriage. Once you’ve legalized gay marriage, why not polygamy, incest, bestiality or any other form of union? If the only criteria is that people love each other, then who says it’s wrong for a 70-year-old man to marry 10 underage girls?

Also, the Christian concept of marriage predates any state-sanctioned licensing program, which means marriage is an inherently religious concept in America. Any state interpretation of marriage that violates traditional church views may well be a violation of the First Amendment.

There’s also a social consideration. The potential of open homosexuality for creating social dysfunction has been made manifest in the protests against Prop 8 since Nov. 4.

Organizations such as the Mormon Church have been intimidated; people who financially supported Prop. 8 have had their names posted on antigayblacklist.com — some have been harassed or even threatened with losing their jobs.

This sad reaction illustrates the danger of gay marriage. Now, this is not to suggest that all or even most supporters of gay marriage have acted inappropriately.

Once people become accustomed to violating certain social norms, they tend to feel less constrained about breaking others.

It’s hard to tell someone they should respect basic social rules — such as not harassing people for honest disagreement — when they already reject other customs, such as traditional marriage.

So, let’s think long and hard about this before overturning a tradition that has been in place for 2,000 years.

If traditional marriage is overturned, it won’t be the last tradition to be abolished by our government, and some of those will be ones none of us want to lose.

Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Too Much Food

2008-11-30T14:44:00.000-06:00

Wednesday Night

Potato Bar
Taco Bell - Combo #1 (Taco & Burrito Supreme)

Thursday

Thanksgiving Lunch - Turkey, Potatoes, Bread, Green Bean Casserole, Sweet Potato Casserole, Pumpkin Pie
Thanksgiving Dinner - Turkey, Potatoes, Rolls, Yam Casserole, Random Deserts

Friday

English Muffin with Jam
Part of a 6ft long Subway party sub and chips
Arby's - Two Arby's Melts, Curly Fries, Potato Cakes

Saturday

Waffles
Ham and Bean Soup
Taco Bell - Combo #8 (3 crunchy tacos), Cinnamon Twists

Sunday

Donuts

I clearly ate way too much food this weekend. Fortunately I have no chance to eat like this at school. I might explode if I could.

One week of school left and then finals. Hopefully this goes well.

Successful at Being Unsuccessful

2008-11-29T12:33:00.000-06:00

People keep on trying to Rick Roll me for some reason. It doesn't work very well it seems. It doesn't seem to ever work actually...

Humans vs Zombies Tag

2008-11-25T01:42:00.000-06:00

This winter quarter UW will join several other schools in participating in the Humans vs Zombies game (Wiki). What it basically is a campus-wide, outdoor-only, tag game of epic proportions. There are two teams (obviously) comprised of humans and zombies. The goal of the humans is to outlive the zombies and the zombies to infect all the humans. The two teams are differentiated by bandannas worn on the arm (humans) or head/neck (zombies) and the "weapons" the humans have to fight back against the zombies with. While the zombies cannot be killed, they can be stunned either by being hit with a sock or shot with a Nerf gun dart, after which they have to wait 15 minutes before rejoining gameplay. The people organizing it on campus have gotten everything approved by the UWPD and the Residence Halls now allow the possession of Nerf guns (woot). There are a bunch of technical rules and whatnot but the main area of competition is anywhere/anytime outside. The inside of buildings is considered to be a safe zone for humans (and to prevent people from running through hallways).

This is basically going to be the coolest thing ever. So watch out for us this winter quarter cause we're going to be running to class.

Low Standards

2008-11-24T01:46:00.000-06:00

Ever wonder why the two newer Batman movies have been so good? Cause they had really low expectations compared to previous batman movies/shows. This is from the original 1960's Batman TV series. Yes, he is punching a shark and yes, it does blow up at the end and yes, Robin is always a epic fail. Try not to laugh. I dare you.

My Feelings about How I waste my Time

2008-11-22T12:44:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately I can't stop taking physics without dropping the honors program. This is stupid.

Graph

2008-11-20T19:51:00.000-06:00

This graph is completely and utterly true. Daniel is capable of turning all the lights off in a room instantaneously. Don't ask how he does it, just know that he can and it's quite frustrating.

Why Amazon.com is Awesome

2008-11-20T14:26:00.000-06:00

Amazon released their "Best Music of 2008" lists yesterday and number 60 on the Editors Picks for the Best Songs of 2008 was

"Sophisticated Sideways Ponytail" by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

Link

Pretty amazin' right?

Untitled

2008-11-18T01:15:00.000-06:00

I love you.

2008-11-15T19:36:00.000-06:00

Despite how terrible this comic is in terms of loss of life, destruction of everything as we know it, and humanity destroying itself with fear, it certainly does show that nothing is truly impossible in the eyes of a child, who doesn't know that there are things they cannot do during the life. I think the point when people stop telling children that they can do anything they want with their lives is one of the worst turning points in so many lives. Children should have every opportunity possible and no limitations on their growth and development in adults. They don't need people telling them they can't do something because their a minority or they're poor or any other reason. They just need to be told that they can do anything they can imagine and are capable of, not the opposite.

That's the word and I didn't even know what it was.

Jenny Lewis + UW + January

2008-11-15T01:22:00.000-06:00

Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley) will be playing at the UW's Meany Hall this coming January 21st. Tickets will be $17 for students with a Husky Card and will go on sale soon (not sure how much it costs for non-students). This is exciting after missing the Conor Oberst + Jenny Lewis concert earlier this quarter at the Showbox that sold out. Yippie. I wonder if it'd be possible to get to meet her somehow...

Kara also won tickets to go see the only Seattle pre-screening of the new Twilight movie (comes out Friday) next Tuesday. She's pretty stoked about that. :)

Yesterday, I Wrote Love on My Arm

2008-11-14T10:37:00.000-06:00

To Write Love on Her Arms
In a sharpie, in my terrible cursive lettering, on my right inner wrist.

You're not alone
There is more to this i know
You can make it out
You will live to tell

- Saosin, You're Not Alone

Longest Day

2008-11-13T01:46:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow (Thursday) is going to be a ridiculously busy day. And by ridiculous, I mean ridiculously ridiculous. School is pretty much business as usual (Physics Tutorial, CSE Quiz Section, Biology Lab) but it's going to be the midnight screening of the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace that throws a wrench into my 6AM winter quarter registration plans on Friday. That and my Math 308 (matrix/linear algebra) midterm at 10:30 that morning. I didn't do a single thing to get ready for that today even though I had full intentions of at least doing some practice problems, but once again was distracted by the video-games in the other room. Instead I get to do all that studying/note-sheet-making/reviewing tomorrow amongst my classes and whatnot.

Tomorrow is also the 2nd annual "To Write Love on Her Arms" day that the TWLOHA organization has started. I missed it last year (more like forgot about it) but I'm good to go for this year. They've been a pretty successful organization and they have a good cause.

There's a Minus the Bear concert next Saturday that I'm pondering about attending. I can't make up my mind whether it's worth the $25 it cost for tickets (+ ticketmaster rape fee). I saw them last year at the UW but they're one of the bands I said I would definitely try to see live this year sometime...Just can't decide.

Oh well, I figure it out...until then...Cupcake-o-saurus!

Gmail Video Chat

2008-11-11T22:09:00.000-06:00

Google unleashed yet another Gmail function upon the Internets today. What is it? Gmail-based audio and video chat. Yes, you can now not only instant message chat via the Gmail interface but upon installation of a little plugin for your internet browser, audio and video chat with others in your contact list. It works surprisingly well and minus any type of Flash requirements. It does, unfortunately, require you to install that plugin, but aside from that is a great web-based videochat interface. Check it out and download the plugin here to see it in action. Note: You will need to quit whatever browsers you have open prior to installing it.

Here is the Google Gmail Teams's introduction of the feature...

Triumph

2008-11-10T15:46:00.000-06:00

Being done with the Biology midterm is extraordinarily nice. Especially since it's really nice outside today. And there's no school tomorrow. Unfortunately I have to write a computer program by Thursday now. But that can wait. As can doing my Physics homework. And studying for my upcoming Friday Math midterm. What fun.

On a sad note, the Mars Phoenix rover has ceased communication with Earth and Mission Control. The Martian winter has set in and daylight is scarce on the pole where the rover is located and its electronic demise has been long foreseen. Its finally communication via its Twitter account was a string of binary that translated to the word "Triumph" after its short yet highly successful mission on Mars.

01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000 <3

-Mars Phoenix (05/28/2008 - 11/10/2008)

I feel this song is strangely appropriate for this situation...