Dabu's Blog

Pretty neat flash game

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:58:34 GMT

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AtomicCicada/minim

Goodbye geocities

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:32:48 GMT

I will miss your outdated bandwidth restrictions greatly.

I demand a recount

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:54:06 GMT

So I went and counted the number of steps between each floor on my building.

Every story has 17 steps between each floor, with four exceptions:

The first to second floor has a much larger number (but the lobby on the first floor has a large ceiling, so this was to be expected).

The 10-11th floor has 18 steps.

The 12-14th floor (there's no 13th floor) has 21 steps (though with a large intermediate step in the middle, perhaps to signify some kind of inbetween floors).

The 22-23rd floor has 18 steps.

Why do 10-11 and 22-23 have an extra step? I haven't a clue.

And I didn't miscount since I always started the stairs with my left foot and I ended those two on my right!

Don't you wish your Saturday nights were as exciting as mine?

Facebook pet peeves

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:37:26 GMT

Did I miss any obvious ones?

-application invites
-quizzes
-farmville, mafia wars, etc.
-Chain letter like notes ("tag ten friends who you want to respond to this")
-Being invited to events that are physically impossible to attend
-posting something minor on someone's status, then having tons of other people post on it causing you to receive updates about it
-people who have their relationship status set to engaged/married to when it's not true (usually with a good friend of the same gender)
-people listing "anything" under music, movies, ...
-Being photo tagged to pictures not of you.
-Applications that send out notifications to your friends without telling you
-Nonsensical quotes as status updates
-facebook continuing to remove features (the latest to go: advanced search)
-facebook's mobile version completely hijacking your phone

I'm wondering how universal these are.

Shaq vs Time Columnist

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:11:33 GMT

Who do you think is the better writer?

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1920271,00.html

Super Mario Galaxy Cake (animated)

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:17:41 GMT

Really cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaMHPJHIglE&feature=channel_page

(Also old, but it was new to me so I'm linking it anyway!)

So exercise doesn't lead to weight loss?

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:35:40 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090806/hl_time/08599191485700

"Whoops?"

Microsoft what?

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:39:34 GMT

I got a kick out of the autosuggestion for "Microsoft suc" on bing.com

Youtube 3D

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:57:41 GMT

http://gizmodo.com/5318548/youtube-experiments-with-3d-video-supports-multiple-headache-technologies

Now if only I still had those glasses...

Starcraft "Pimpest Plays" 07

Sat, 23 May 2009 21:00:54 GMT

Yes, SCLegacy is really late, but it's better late than never!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3j5fUraMaQ

It doesn't start until 2 minutes in.

My favorite was the fake expo.

Churchgoers more likely to support torture?

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:27:11 GMT

At least, that's what one survey suggests: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/

And Time Warner begins imposing bandwidth caps

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 01:27:40 GMT

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090331_726397.htm

The worst part? Time Warner Cable offers four cap levels of 5, 10, 20, and 40 GB

5 GB? For a whole month? Seriously?

I hope this plan backfires. I suspect the real motivation for this is to prevent people from just streaming/downloading cable shows (something that I suspect is really hurting Time Warner), but such a harsh limit (even their most expensive cap of 40 GB is harsh, honestly) will do so much more than that for anyone who uses their connection for more than just checking e-mail.

Facebook changes

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:41:13 GMT

As pretty much everyone has noticed (or heard) by now, facebook recently transitioned its users to a new homepage style which greatly resembles that of twitter. "Why?" many users outcried, and for good reason: For many, the new style is a step backwards, and at first glance there doesn't seem to be any logical explanation for fixing something that wasn't broken.

Back in 2004, I signed up for a website called "www.thefacebook.com" back when it had the "the" as part of its url. At the time, you had to be a college student, and only about 50 colleges were supported (it is not surprising that a technical school like RPI would be among the first). Things were much simpler than as far as this website was concerned. There were no applications, no quizzes, no videos, and your "wall" consisted of a single post that anyone could edit (that is, the analogy actually made sense). It's closest competitor was connectu.com, a website that hardly anyone remembers, despite it being almost identical (identical enough that it led to a lawsuit, in fact). thefacebook had a few advantages though; it had a better name, you could search by classes (a feature that has been removed), and -- most importantly -- it had a larger user base. Given that everything else was the same, why use connectu?

Next up was myspace. After connectu was more or less done, it didn't take too long before facebook decided to mimic its next competitor: myspace. Despite being horribly disorganized, there were things you could do on myspace that you couldn't do on facebook. You didn't need a college e-mail to sign up, you could keep a blog, you could add music and videos, and comments on your profile were more like a message board than a single post. Facebook gradually added all of these features. They started by opening up to high school students. At first, they were kept separate and couldn't interact with each other, but eventually the two were merged. They added notes for the bloggers among us. The wall posts were made the same as myspace's wall equivalent. Eventually they added applications to let users add videos, music, pictures of bidoof, and the kitchen sink to their profile. And now, with myspace and facebook so much closer in resemblance, what reason does a facebook user have to make a myspace profile?

Of course, they still weren't the most used means of social communication. That honor goes to AIM. Facebook added chat communication, but it doesn't have most of the bells and whistles that AIM does. I suspect they realized the same thing I did; cell phones and text messaging are already doing a great job of suppressing AIM on their own, so there's no need to flesh out the feature (and let's face it, facebook chat is pretty bad). I will not be surprised if facebook adds live voice communication within the next year or two.

I'm not just rambling here. I do have a point! Right now, the three biggest social networks in terms of userbase are 1: facebook 2: myspace 3: twitter (at least if wikipedia is to be believed). Twitter first appeared about a year ago and currently has about 6 million users and 55 million monthly hits. What's the best way for facebook to deal with this new site? Their answer is to look as much like twitter as they can, and that's *exactly* what the new facebook homepage is. Now, what reason does a facebook user have to sign up for twitter? After all, they look almost exactly the same (now, at least).

Facebook doesn't care if most of its users detest it. They just want to prevent you from also going somewhere else.

Justice has come

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:53:23 GMT

Mr. Bauman (ebaumsworld.com) himself actually got fired from his own website. Since he sold the name of it as well to the new parent company they are still keeping the old name, so most will never realize that he's not in charge anymore. He actually blogged about it on his new website: http://blog.ebaum.tv/2009/01/so-this-is-how-it-all-went-down.html

I think it's great that someone who stole content from every other site for ten years and watermarked it as his own finally had the same thing happen to him. This is long overdue, as far as I'm concerned.

The comments there are the best. He and his team were probably expecting sympathy but 90% of them are overjoyed at their departure.

Inauguration day from space

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:25:33 GMT

http://www.popsci.com/files/DC-capitol-970.jpg
http://www.popsci.com/files/DCCM20JAN2009-970.jpg

Quals

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:34:24 GMT

Dear Brian,

You earned the grade of B on the written exams. You will
only have to repeat the Linear Algebra exam.

As an explanation, there are three written exams. Each exam is graded A,B, or F and to continue on in the PhD program one has to get an A on all three. To get a "B" overall but to only have to repeat one means that I received an "A" on two of the three and either a B or an F on the third.

Going in, I actually expected Linear Algebra to be the easiest, and I was surprised to find that it was the one that I had the most problems with. It wasn't that it was difficult (it really wasn't...), but (I felt that) it was more computationally involved than the other two, and it was the only one where I really suffered from the time constraint. I don't think insufficient preparation had anything to do with it, as there wasn't anything on the test that I didn't "know" so to speak (this means I thought all of the questions were doable).

The fact that I was physically exhausted when taking it probably didn't help either (as usual, my insomnia kicked in and I didn't sleep much either night before the exams... about 4 hours the first night and 2 the second), though it didn't seem to hurt me significantly on the other two, so (as usual...) I don't think it played a huge factor.

An A on all three would have (clearly!) been the best scenario, but only having to retake Linear Algebra is the second best outcome. After all, passing it won't be a problem, as it's the easiest of the three... right?

Top jobs in America

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:01:22 GMT

Based on work environment, income, outlook, physical demands, and stress levels

Top 5:

#1: Mathematician [!]
#2: Actuary
#3: Statistician
#4: Biologist
#5: Software Engineer

Full list: http://www.careercast.com/jobs/content/JobsRated_Top200Jobs

Crazy night

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:29:48 GMT

So last night I went to bed around 10 PM, maybe a bit earlier. That seems like a fairly reasonable time to get to sleep, right? Unfortunately, I didn't sleep through the night, and woke up a little after midnight. So I got up, had something to eat, and not feeling especially tired anymore I stayed up a bit and worked on old written qualifying exam problems (including one that eerily reminded me of a problem from the 2007 putnam) until 2ish, and then I played Super Paper Mario for an hour or so (which I'm enjoying a lot, despite some of the critical reviews, although I haven't really had the time to spend too much time playing it).

Around 3 AM I decided that enough was enough (yay tautologies) and headed to bed for the second time that night. Unfortunately it was not to be, as the little town of Mandeville decided it would be relatively chilly that night, which prompted the house here (which has a mind of its own it seems) to jack the heat up to compensate. Since my bed is right under a vent, I was scorching hot, and found myself unable to sleep. Around 6 AM I had the bright idea to relocate, and I went and took over a couch in the "TV room" downstairs (forcing the dog to relocate as well, but he didn't seem to mind too much at the time). This lasted about 30 minutes before my father decided that it was a good time to watch the news, and he came in and turned on the lights before uttering a "Who's there?" I apologized and offered to move, but he said he'd use the TV in the kitchen, which he listened to at a high enough volume that he may as well have just listened to it in the TV room. Eventually he shut it off, and all was quiet again.

So I finally slept for a couple of hours (and had a crazy dream about someone cutting me in line in a supermarket), only to find that I hadn't avoided my initial problem at all, as the heat got to me there as well (that and the sun was out and shining directly on me). so I got up, walked past the dog who was wagging like crazy (who stopped wagging the second I walked past him, making me feel guilty), and went back to my original bed. I slept for about an hour only for the dog to get his revenge by whining like crazy. So I got up to see what he wanted, although my sister beat me to it and I went back to bed *again*. This time I slept until 2 PM (which is 3 PM in the time zone I'll be returning to before long) [and had an equally crazy dream about some kind of math residency in NYC], and now my sleeping schedule is completely out of whack. The chances of me fixing it (my sleeping schedule) before I take my written exams in a little over a week are roughly 0, and I suspect that I'll be taking them with the same state of mind as every important test that I've taken over the past several years: Exhausted with 2-4 hours of sleep the night before. Guess there's no reason to break that tradition now...

"Pope puts stress on gender roles"

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:41:56 GMT

"Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction."

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7796663.stm

While I think he was making an analogy and not trying to equate the two as the article implies (or maybe he really was, I certainly wasn't there), the point still stands. "Self-destruction of the human race." Really? It's good to see that the Catholic Church has its priorities straight, isn't it?

What day is it again?

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:26:54 GMT

I went and got my hair cut today. The person before me was trying to schedule a future appointment. She asked, completely serious, "What day is new years eve again?"

"It's the 31st."

"... Are you sure it's not the 29th?"

The weather's been great so far...

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:32:26 GMT

But of course, the day I'm actually scheduled to return, it decides to snow like crazy. As a consequence, my flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Blah.

Speaking of Snow

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:59:16 GMT

There's supposed to be crazy snow here tomorrow. Right when I'm leaving.

I'm going to be really annoyed if my flight is delayed/canceled.

Semester is done!

Well, it's snowing

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:13:22 GMT

I'm not sure how it snowed in Louisiana of all places before here, but that's not the point!

www.weather.com still says it's supposed to rain all day.

edit: Well, that didn't last long. 90 minutes?

Professional Grocers

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:36:55 GMT

I went and picked up a few items at a local grocery store. What I saw at the checkout lines was incredible. Despite having comparable items, one girl was going through customers significantly faster than the others (3 to 1). When it was my turn I put my items on the counter and she took one quick glance and immediately said "$11.97" without scanning any of them, and before I could even pull my wallet out already had 3 pennies ready for my change and said "next please!" There wasn't a receipt, so when I got home I wondered if maybe she just guessed or something. So I looked at the price tags and added them up, and I found that she was correct.

I've never seen anything like it before.

Dog saves dog

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:03:59 GMT

Wow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpYRITtLSg