File under “Alpha Loser”
The next step was to put each claw under the wire brush wheel to give
them a “brushed aluminum” finish, which Nate determined would look
closest to “adamantium”, which Wolverine’s claws are actually made out
of. [read]
Archive for September, 2005
First, your body will fail you
Last week as time relentlessly marched on, I asked Moshe “What will it
be like, old man? What will happen to me tomorrow?” “First,” he told
me, “your body will start to fail you.”
I thought he was joking. I was sure that at least if he were serious
I had a week to get some ya-ya’s out. Then tonight something
inexplicable happened. Right around “you ain’t happy unless you got
one” cranked to 11 in my headphones and me thinking “…maybe in my
log I should record when I last ate?” I fell while running. This has
never happened before. I’ve never run a marathon but I have been
running off and on for the last 15 years of my life - now that I hit
the halfway point, now is when I fall?
It feels like I’m only a short walk away from gray hairs, black
balloons, and actually having to pay attention to Medicare. And more
bodily failure. What will be next? It’s cool comfort that my nose
and ears will keep on growing. And then I’ll find myself with a leaky
banana - or will it only be a leaky banana moistening my trousers and
I still have some time to go?
In the meantime I’ve got a great wife and a great bunch of friends who
pulled together for some totally enthusiastic karaoke last weekend. I
ought to write an apology to the KJ from the bar for jumping up on
stage during his song at the end of the night last weekend — but what
could I do? I heed the call of “Fat” Bob Smith — he was howling for
me to scream into the mic and my body still had 4 days to go.
Rockbox
I was looking around for news, revised firmwares, or anything I could
find on Tanya’s new
T8 (which is really great) when I ran across news that the good
folks working on rockbox have
made progress toward getting it to run on an iRiver. Sweet! If
you’re not familiar with rockbox, it’s an open project to build a new
firmware for the Archos line of - uh, whatever they make (digital
audio players? maybe they do some video?). I tried their iRiver port on my H120 and it’s awesome. The upgrade is really simple:
- Get a copy of the iRiver firmware and the rockbox firmware
- Get the Rockbox firmware patcher and patch your iRiver firmware.
- Copy the patched iRiver firmware to the iRiver and the rockbox stuff
- Upgrade the firmware on the iRiver like normal
Now when you turn on the iRiver, the patched firmware loads the
rockbox firmware and you’re in. If you want to get back to the iRiver
firmware, you can hold the record button while you turn the device on.
If you want to switch back to the iRiver firmware completely, you’d
just copy an unpatched iRiver firmware over and upgrade back to that.
For legal reasons they are unable to distribute patched copies of the
firmware, so step 2 is required.
Once the alternate firmware is available and you get to use the new
Rockbox features you’ll see why it’s worth your time in the first
place. The Rockbox boot is way faster and its resume behavior
is better - it’s about 8 seconds from pressing the “on” button to
resuming playback where I left it (iRiver firmware was 20+
seconds). On-the-fly playlist editing - creation and management
- is finally available. Playback is almost gapless - people
cry for this feature all the time and I didn’t realize how nice it
would be until I went jogging for the first time with rockbox and
listened to the transition from “We’re that Spic Band” to “Poco a
Poco” from Los Crudos classic “Canciones Para Liberar Nuestra
Frontieras”. With the iRiver firmware there is almost a 1 second gap
between tracks but with rockbox the transition is barely noticeable
and the feedback sustain between tracks lasts. Oh sweet, sweet
Crudos… The resume behavior is better, too, and rockbox comes
with convenient features like an image viewer (which would have been
great when I was using my iRiver as backup from my digital camera in
Morocco) and some silly games like Snake.
Rockbox isn’t quite for everybody but if you’re a sucker for
customization and more features, it beats the pants off the iRiver
firmware. If you aren’t a DIY whore, it’s solidly worth checking out
anyway. The interface isn’t terribly hard to learn and being able to
perform operations on a track like “enqueue” and “queue next” in your
playlist are really, really nice (as any iPod owner will tell you).
Paper towels have never been more entertaining
If you’ve been saying “Isn’t this 2005? Why the hell does it still
take me up to 20 seconds to replace my paper towels??!?” then the good
folks at
have got your solution:
Change a paper towel faster than ever
read about our quick release knob
Upcoming shows
- September 21 - me on karaoke someplace - hooray!
- September 22 - Flat Margaret at EMP Liquid Lounge
- October 1 and 2 - Franz Ferdinand at the Paramount
- October 21 - Turbonegro at the Paramount
- October 21 - Bauhaus at the Paramount (goddamnit!)
- October 25 - the Go Team at the Paramount
- November 16 - Street Dogs at El Corazon
Free Doughnut Friday
Top Pot who make the
best doughnuts (sic) in Seattle (as proven by their ability to get
Seattlites to shell out close to a buck fifty per grease ring) are
opening a new store today! The only thing that would make me happier
would be if they opened shop across the street from my house, but the
new location by 70th and 35th in Wedgewood is definitely close enough
for me to make regular visits. There are flyers available around town
(at least there were yesterday at the Roosevelt Whole Foods) for “buy
a drink, get a free donut” and I’ll certainly be in line for one
tonight.
Google Maps is still awesome
Google Maps + census data -
so cool. Has anything like this been built on
interesting exercise:
- zoom out and recenter over Seattle
- focus between Medina/Clyde Hill just south of the 520 bridge on the east side of Lake Washington
- –> Median Income: $126,421 (the average, at 209k is skewed a little)
- refocus 0.5 miles east of there (cut out the waterfront property)
- –> Median Income: $64,698
Ex-Lion Tamers postmortem
If I haven’t mentioned this, I captained a mini-golf team this
summer. We were named
Ex-Lion Tamers (a reference to what’s turned out to be a pretty
obscure song by
that you can
and this summer I’ve added another cherished memory to my list of
teams I’ve helped lead into miserable defeat. Like The Hedgehogs, The
Crack Sheriffs, and The Knockers (the last three sports teams I’ve
been on), we finished last. But this time I’m ready to sit down and
look at some of the numbers to try to figure out “Jesus, what went
wrong this time?” Let’s see where the
exercise goes…
| Overall Standings |
Team | Week 1 Standard |
Week 2 Moneyball |
Week 3 Costumes |
Week 4 Best Ball |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | We’re In Your Hole | 177 | 94 | 191 | 78 |
| 2 | Indy #3 | 204 | 126 | 181 | 82 |
| 3 | Pint-Sized Putters | 194 | 146 | 191 | 79 |
| 4 | Par-Tee Putters (Indy #1) | 207 | 118 | 210 | 86 |
| 5 | Slooper De Lux | 199 | 158 | 200 | 82 |
| 6 | Grumpy Stew | 196 | 156 | 199 | 89 |
| 7 | Kitten Killers | 210 | 146 | 207 | 82 |
| 8 | Chico’s Bail Bonds | 227 | 150 | 219 | 87 |
| 9 | Indy #2 | 246 | 132 | 237 | 77 |
| 10 | Ex-Lion Tamers | 228 | 174 | 215 | 82 |
Figure 1. Drinks on the Links League 4 (DOTLL4) Overall Standings
Problem definition: Referring to Figure 1. DOTLL4 Overall
Standings the problem to address is clear - we lost. [Possible
future research topic - had there been 11 teams, might we have still
placed 10th and not won but not come in last??] [
Figure 2. DOTLL4 Overall Standings
Slight trends Based on Figure 2, DOTLL4 Overall
Standings we see some disconcerting, but subtle, trends. The
Ex-Lion Tamers appear toward the back of the pack (top, graphically),
but solidly within the pack over all weeks except week 2,
Moneyball. The weekly stroke delta by
which we trailed first helps make the progress through the league more
clear.
Figure 3. DOTLL4 Weekly Stroke Delta
Moneyball, part 1 Figure 3. DOTLL4 Weekly Stroke Delta calls
our attention to a startling inconsistency in the stroke delta trends. Weeks
1, 3, and 4 show all teams basically clustered together and the
Ex-Lion Tamers scoring close to last. But in week 2, Moneyball
we finished dead last. How damaging was this for the team?
Figure 4. DOTLL4 Running Stroke Delta
Moneyball, part 2 Figure 4. DOTLL4 Running Stroke Delta
shows that Moneyball was an early finishing blow for our hopes of
finishing really drunk. Wait - I meant, “for our hopes of not
finishing last.” Did you ever see that Tom Hanks movie
it’s really bad so if you haven’t, don’t, but Moneyball was a
lot more like a Moneypit except instead of money, think of
strokes. So they really should have called it Strokepit. Are
you with me? [Continue]
Figure 5. DOTLL4 Adjusted Overall Standings
Adjusted standings Any good statistician will tell you that you
can throw out any samples that are outside the margin of error or
don’t help back up your theory. Since Moneyball was outside
the margin of error (”stroke delta that makes the Ex-Lion Tamers
lose”), rather than dwelling on the overall standings we should focus
on Figure 5. DOTLL4 Adjusted Overall Standings which clearly
show our team finishing in 8th. Great job everybody!!! [
Addendum - tying up loose ends Naturally you’re probably
wondering two things right now. First: is this guy really serious?
Jesus Christ - you’re treating a minigolf “league” like a management
seminar. Did the windmill chop the heads off your puppy? I mean,
chill out already - it’s just minigolf! Second: how would the Ex-Lion
Tamers have stacked up against the other DOTL leagues? I’ll address
these questions in turn.
First, Is this guy serious? Of course. The fact that you’re
even asking just shows that you aren’t Ex-Lion Tamer material. “It’s
just minigolf”? I weep for your children.
Second, How would the Ex-Lion Tamers have stacked up against the
other DOTL leagues? I’m very glad you asked!
In league 1, the Ex-Lion Tamers’ (uncorrected) 899 total score would
have pushed the 12th placed
with 905 points to 13th, securing our spot in the top 40th percentile
of 20 teams.
Had the Ex-Lion Tamers played the 15 teams of league 2, we would have
dominated and been solid playoff material. League 2’s 5th place
Sized Putters would have been shoved to 6th and we would have
helped push their 15th placed
Team with a Putting Problem, who racked up an embarrassing 1051
points, into a more accurate 278th.
How about league 3? That was definitely more competitive, but again,
we would have come out on top! Of someone other than no one, that is.
Our score would have put us in the top 10th percentile with a 30 point
margin above their
and
placed teams.
Summary Drinks on the Links is tons of fun, run by really cool
people, and conveniently finishes in time for the Peso’s happy hour
where nachos are half off. You should
I am the Walrus
This via Cory…
You are Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. You are
on a neverending crusade to interrupt the
silence of God. You desire to know secrets
that aren’t yours to know. You probe too
deeply, and tussle with death. Ultimately,
there is nothing.
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Damn, that’s not too uplifting. The “interrupt the silence of God”
thing is right on, though. A wise man once said: “Jesus don’t love
me, he just loves my doggy style.”