Hope Despite the Times

Instead of pharmacology enhancing psychology, psychology is enhancing placebos

2009-08-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

The pharmacy industry is investing heavily to develop new psych drugs. At the same time, it is investing heavily to promote and advertise old psych drugs. Placebos are becoming stronger, perhaps because Big Pharma is convincing us that drugs can cure anything.

Joel on Software Articles Worth Reading

2009-08-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

I've started boning up on software engineering and programming leadership reading. As I find articles worth reading, I'll post them here.

Apocalyptic visions and crotch kittens

2009-08-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

One link to scare you and make you think, with lots of interesting explanations of the end of the world as we know it (or at least the US).
One link to make you laugh, as science teaches us how to attract women's attention through the careful placement of a kitten.

Roombas of Doom

2009-02-24T21:40:00.000-08:00

Samantha Bee interviews iRobot CEO Colin Angle.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Future Shock - Roombas of Doom

Daily Show Full Episodes

Watch to the end for a terrifying view into the future of robotics...

robots.net - Japan's Most Pointless Robot

2009-01-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Is there anything more pointless than the most pointless robots in Japan? Also, I've got to visit Japan one day, before they hit the singularity...

Real Life Super-Hero Wannabes

2008-12-28T11:24:00.000-08:00

People are actually dressing up in costumes and fighting crime (found here). This makes me think of the brilliant Mystery Men.

How to export GMail Contact Phone Numbers to T-Mobile Contacts

2008-12-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

On my first try, exporting my contacts as csv or vcf to the T-Mobile Contacts didn't quite work. It imported the names, home numbers, and home emails. After mucking with the VCF file some and reading the VCF standard for telephone numbers, I was able to get it to work.
This is how to do it properly:

In GMail, go to the Contacts link on the left, then the Export link on the upper right of the box.
Export a group of contacts (I made a new group for my wife's contacts) as the vCard format (this is a .vcf file).
Open the .vcf file in an editor.
Replace TYPE=CELL with TYPE=cell,pref,voice,home on all Cell numbers. This allowed T-Mobile to parse the numbers as "Personal Mobile" numbers
Replace EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET with EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET;TYPE=HOME for all home emails, to T-Mobile would parse them as "Personal Emails".
Save the .vcf file
In my.T-Mobile.com, choose Contacts, then Import contacts from another address book
On the next page ("Get Contacts from Other Address Books"), choose "VCF File" and then Browse to find your .vcf file you edited.
Click "Upload and Preview", glance over the data to make sure it all looks good, then click "Add selected contacts to my address book".
On the phone, I went to Settings > Synchronization > Sync Now, although I'm sure if I waited it would have worked.

This is on my wife's Samsung T-339. On my new Android phone, I didn't need to do anything except add phone numbers I hadn't copied into my GMail contacts. It just worked and I had my GMail address book including phone numbers auto-magically within 5 minutes of powering the phone on for the first time. More impressive, this was about 2 days before I actually signed up for phone service.

I have seen the future, and it's ubiquitous

2008-08-28T23:06:00.000-07:00

ps. Oh yeah, I have a blog!

A few places I've been lately

2008-04-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

Lake Tahoe

Disneyland

Table Mountain, South Africa

Cape Town, South Africa

Cape of Good Hope and Penguins

Stellenbosch

Blyde River Canyon

Gomo Gomo

More to come...

You might be in Sillycon Valley, Pt I

2007-07-31T09:04:00.001-07:00

You might be in Sillycon Valley when you're on the light rail, with your bike, on your way to your high tech job, checking your e-mail and posting to your blog, all while sitting across from a guy with a Segway on the train.

We don't need no stinking badgers

2007-07-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the blog posts just write themselves. I quote the NYTimes: "Many residents of Basra have convinced themselves that the British Army has loosed savage cattle-eating badgers onto its unsuspecting populace as a final gesture of ill intent." I quote the British military spokeman: “Of course we categorically deny that we have released badgers into Basra." I have nothing to add.

And in other news, robots are cool.

2007-07-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

This guy has hypnotic and fascinating wind-powered walking robots:

glumbert.com - Kinetic Sculpture

This AAAI '07 video pretty much mirrors my experience with Grace. I didn't use profanity in my very public appearance, but the NYTimes did report I was arguing with the robot.

Brave New World

2007-07-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing much going on here. Since my last post, we've:

Finished residency and grad school.
Taken a three week vacation in Tahoe and the Pacific Northwest.
Packed and moved out of a spare bedroom, an apartment, and a storage facility into an apartment and two storage facilities. [1]
Started new jobs at interesting places.
Entered into contract on a house.

So pretty much business as usual, in other words.

[1] S would like to note we're not sleeping in either storage facility, as that's illegal, as is storing dead bodies.

Symphony of Construction

2007-05-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with the musical theme, check out Maestro Woody Phillips leading a symphony of wood-working tools, playing a classical piece by Bizet:

PS. Life proceeds apace. Theoretically, I'm in the middle of a month trip to Austin, but I have two flights back to San Jose for jobs in that span. S just accepted a position in the South Bay, so that narrows my job search. Everything's still up in the air, but I have some good leads.

Beauty Squandered is a Sin

2007-04-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Most buskers aren't world-class musicians like this guy playing a Stradivarius in a DC Metro station. But I've heard some pretty good ones on BART, the Metro, and other various subways and common spaces. I hope I would have stopped to listen to Josh Bell, who performed the music in The Red Violin. Usually I listen a bit to buskers, just because I can't help but listen to background music and read odd bits of text. Other times, I'm the guy in a hurry or listening to my iPod or just plain oblivious.

I'm vowing to give to the street performers whose music I enjoy. (Image from Flickr of an unrelated musician.)

If you have ever wanted a microbial stuffed animal,

2006-06-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

Look no further, here are six friendly fuzzy germs.

This is me. This is my life.

2006-05-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

window prop
Originally uploaded by 1600 Squirrels.

My life in a nutshell: coffee, paper/proposal to review, bike, random location. It was a sunny day in Oakland sitting in the window of Hudson Bay Caffe on College. The window would slowly slide closed, so I propped it open with my bike seat (carefully removed from my double-locked bike across the street). Thanks to my retired AI game programmer, screen- and novel-writing, shutterbug friend for the shot, taken at one of our occasional lunch and afternoon sessions, each escaping our apartments to write, read, edit, or hack a few pages closer to our own quixotic goals.

Mind-Blowing Idea of the Week: Colonize the Cloudtops of Venus

2006-05-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

Colonization of Venus Cloudtops. As far as I can tell, they're serious, but I suppose it could be the result of drunken planetary scientists watching Empire.

Just another Band into Boston

2006-04-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

When I was forced to drop the "S-Bomb", my buddy A used to explain, "Not to worry, he's on the 'Special Education Track.'" So it's appropriate that my first full paper at AAAI is in a "Special Technical Track". Still, I'm about as happy as when I got the "Congratulation" letter.

I felt the earth move (barely)

2006-03-21T13:58:00.000-08:00

I just felt my first earthquake in a total of about 5 years in California: Map, Data.

Beer and Robots, Together at Last!

2006-02-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

Forget the Roomba, I think this is the robot we've all been waiting for: Asahi’s Beer Pouring Robots. Found on Robots.net.

More details on the Stanford Stanley Steamer

2005-12-29T09:06:00.000-08:00

Important Questions

2005-12-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

Richard Hamming, as related by Paul Graham, asked:

"What are the important problems of your field?''
"What important problems are you working on?''
"Why aren't you working on the important problems?"

Hamming dedicated the afternoon after lunch on Friday to thinking about the big hairy important problems in the field and how he might attack them: "Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important."

PS. Back in Oakland to 1/15, in Austin til the end of Feb.

Last Day of the Summer

2005-09-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Today's the autumnal equinox, aka the last day of Summer. A good time to look back, especially since I'm now back in Austin. I'd say safely back, but for the hurricane bearing down on us. At least I'm not in Clear Lake any more, though I worry for my friends who are...
It's been a busy summer, as my travel map shows:

19 of the 51 states and DC, or 37%. I also drove within a mile of KS, NJ, and MS.
I had good conferences in PA and NY, and visited friends in PA, NY, and VA. I had a productive internship in DC and a blast in NV and HI. I lived in CA, TX, DC and MD for more than a month each, being generous with summer (which is easy to do in Texas, where summer lasts about 6 months. It was nearly 100 degrees today.). I drove through the rest of the states, though I think I set foot in each at least at a gas stop. Maybe not WV... I slept in HI, CA, NV, TX, TN, PA, DC, VA, MD, NY, and IN. Three different cities in PA, actually and two in NY.

Ich bin ein Hoosier

2005-09-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm about halfway home, in Terre Haute, Indiana. My only impression of Terre Haute is an apocalyptic scene from King's "The Stand". My only real impressions of Indiana are sports cliches from Hoosiers and the University of South Bend. Oh and that Gary, IN is an awful place to be a radiology tech. But an interstate hotel is an interstate hotel and this one has wifi.
I'm on my way back from Washington by way of New York. I visited friends in Rochester, which is really a pretty city, at least in the summer... After that stop, I proceeded to Ellicottville, an hour south of Buffalo, for COSIT.
COSIT was an interesting conference, on GIS and spatial cognition. It had about 100 people, so you could talk to almost everyone over the 4.5 days. The isolation in BFE, NY helped too, so everyone went out to dinner together. Best of all, the folks there really liked my research.
I listened to a lot of German this week, and spoke a but. The COSIT community is really dominated by Deutsch. Even the Aussies are really Germans or Austrians (except for the Brit). Maybe that's why everyone confuses Austria and Australia!

Kepler's Bookstore is Dead, Long Live the Independent Bookstore (maybe even Kepler's)

2005-09-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

Kepler's Booksellers was a great bookstore near the Stanford campus in Menlo Park. It was a great place to browse books, grab a cup of coffee, people watch, all the things I love to do in bookstores. Now Kepler's is closing, although there is a campaign to Save Kepler's. The effort is partially inspired by Kepler's rich history I never knew about.

Kepler's will come back, or not, but I think this is a wakeup to support your
local bookseller. BookPeople in Austin is fanstastic, both the downtown monster store
and the Bergstrom Airport branch. (I lover how ABIA stocked the airport with local flavor in the restaurants, bookstore, music, etc.) If you need an excuse, Neil Gaiman in Austin at Bookpeople this month.

Powell's, in Portland, is also wonderful, both the physical store and the online presence. I should also check out Cody's Books next time I'm in Bezerkeley.

Natural Stupidity and Natural Disasters

2005-09-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

This morning, our president, on national televion reassuring the nation about the drowning of New Orleans, said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." This is mind-boggling incompetence, ignorance, and ineptitude. I was talking to people last week about what would happen if the levees break, and I'm not a civil engineer, a disaster planner, or more than an occasional visitor to N'awlins. Wasn't Bush briefed before meeting the press? Wasn't Bush briefed as Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast?

An article on the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness website reports:

Last year, "in an eight-day tabletop exercise, more than 250 emergency preparedness officials from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies and volunteer organizations began using that catastrophic scenario -- dubbed Hurricane Pam -- to develop a recovery plan for the 13 parishes in the New Orleans area."

The planning scenario had a Category 3 storm flooding New Orleans by flowing over the levees and through gaps. They predicted a Category 3 hurricane could

"leave 300,000 people trapped in New Orleans, many of whom would not have private transportation for evacuation, send evacuees to 1,000 shelters, which would likely remain open for 100 days; [and] require the transfer of patients from hospitals in harm’s way to hospitals in other parts of the state;"

Last week, the Category 5 Katrina was headed straight towards New Orleans, before it lessened slightly to a Category 4 and swerved a bit to the east. Katrina was obviously worse than the doomsday scenario they planned for. Why was FEMA not ready even for Pam? First class ideological stupidity combined with cronyism.

Here's Bush in context, from a Washington Post story, since the official transcript is not posted by Good Morning America. The full context makes his quote even worse:

Sawyer: "Mr. President, this morning, as we speak . . . there are people with signs saying 'Help, come get me'. People still in the attic, waving. Nurses are phoning in saying the situation in hospitals is getting ever more dire and the nurses are getting sick because of no clean water. Some of the things they asked our correspondents to ask you is: They expected -- they say to us -- that the day after this hurricane that there would be a massive and visible armada of federal support. There would be boats coming in. There would be food. There would be water. It would be there within hours. They wondered: What's taking so long?"

Bush: "Well, there's a lot of food on its way. A lot of water on the way. And there's a lot of boats and choppers headed that way. Boats and choppers headed that way. It just takes a while to float 'em! ..."

Sawyer: "But given the fact that everyone anticipated a hurricane five, a possible hurricane five hitting shore, are you satisfied with the pace at which this is arriving? And which it was planned to arrive?"

Bush: "Well, I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday. I mean, I understand the anxiety of people on the ground. I can imagine -- I just can't imagine what it is like to be waving a sign saying 'come and get me now'. So there is frustration. But I want people to know there is a lot of help coming.

I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we are having to deal with it and will."

South Seas Interlude II

2005-08-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming as poor a blogger as I've become a correspondant. We came back from HI three weeks ago and still I haven't fininshed relating the trip.
Images from the rest of our time in Hawai'i:
A black sands beach, with a sign strictly forbidding the playing of horseshoes.
A backpackers' hostel, where they confused the reservation for our threadbare suite.
A half-mile of subterreanean lava tube, opening up into the rainforest.
Rainbows and waterfalls everywhere.
Hiking past a line of cars, past where the road was enveloped by a lava flow a few years back, and over the ropy fresh ground to see lava flowing down the hillside to meet a steamy end in the ocean.
Walking around the Mauna Kea observatories at sunset.
A sign warning "BEWARE OF INVISIBLE COWS" at the Mauna Kea Onizuka Visitor's Center.
A rainy four-wheel drive ride through the Waipio "Valley of Kings".
Circumnavigating the Big Island in a Buick : beaches, coffee farms, temperate and rain forests, cities, cliffs, 14000' volcanoes, 1700' valleys, open grassland, desert.
Watching the sun set into the sea with S from an outdoor table above the ocean.
Snorkeling with sea turtles, tropical fish, and an octopus.
Another 13 hours of plane rides back to BWI.

Captain Cook, Hawai'i

2005-08-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

We're in Captain Cook, Hawai'i, having a great time. The town is named for Cook's stops in the nearby bay. On the first, he re-discovered the Hawai'ian islands and was treated like a god. He sailed away, came limping back a few days later with a broken mast, and was brained with a shark-tooth club in a skirmish over a longboat stolen for its nails. I don't think we'll be stopping back here after we leave. "Blue Latitudes" seems like a good book although my fellow travelers keep reading it before I can.
Spent several days in Maui with S's family. Did all the mandatory things -- beach day, resort day (got kicked out of the guest only pool despite spending about twice the cost of my Memphis Motel 6 room at the bar), snorkeling day, volcano day, Mama's Fish House (delicious) and Luau. The Luau was total tourist cheese, Velveeta at that. G said she'd walk out if they sang "Tiny Bubbles". They did; she did. Beautiful beach though.
S and I went diving yesterday and saw eels, wrasse, trigger fish, huge blowfish, and of course the
state fish, the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. We're staying at a B&B where the managers
lived for a few years in Flower Mound, a few in Austin, a few in San
Miguel de Allende, and several in So. Cal. We leave for Volcanoes Nat'l Park
this morning, with a stop at a black sand beach along the way.
So Aloha

AAAI over; Book done; Room moved into

2005-07-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

I had a good time at the conference, which I'll try and write about later. I went for a quick spin around Pittsburh this morning, on my newly tuned bike (Thanks, D!). Then I got on the Pike and crossed PA and MD. I missed the 70 turnoff I wanted to take, but then that allowed me to finish Summerland as I was cruising down Connecticut Ave. Summerland was a fun read/listen, good not great.
I arrived at the International Student House of DC in pouring rain, which fortunately abated after dinner, before I moved my baggage in.
ISH seems a very social place. Most everyone is eager to meet the new guy and introduce themselves. It helped there was a going away gala for a half-dozen Italians tonight, so they had a punch and a small keg of Yuengling.
Get set up at the internship tomorrow, which reminds me, the crowd of international-minded individuals looked askance at me when the word "Naval" appeared in the name of the lab. Usually looked slightly reassured when I explained about Thomas Alva's head and developing technologies, not immediate applications.
The houses themselves are a lot like living in a row house, especially upper row international focus houses, for you ex-Farmers in the audience.

Made it to Washington; Passed through Pittsburg 2 days back.

2005-07-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

Washington, PA and Pittsburg, TX, that is. After two solid days of driving, here I am at the
Super 8 Motel in Cannonsburg, PA. It is two better than the Motel 6 in East Memphis: Free wireless and a bigger room. No sign of super powers yet though.
First day of driving, I enjoyed mp3 CD's on my self-installed, yet miraculously working new stereo. Today I enjoyed the first two-thirds of Summerland, by Michael Chabon. Kind of a "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" meets "Shoeless Joe" (the book that morphed into "Field of Dreams".). A nice light read/ listen, and especially appropriate for driving into Pittsburgh, a Chabon home. I forgot I had it until I heard Michael and his wife on NPR this morning as I was looking for coffee and breakfast.
Off to AAAI tomorrow, the workshop I'm sitting in on, not the workshop I have a paper in.

My First Blog Name...

2005-06-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

This blog had a brief life as "Natural Stupidy". Maybe I should have kept it, because it was so self-descriptive -- "Natural Stupidy" was exactly how I spelled it. Once I noticed the typo and realized there was already a "Natural Stupidity" blogger site, I decided to change.
I looked through a collection of old quote files, looking for felicitous concordances, easy to spell, easy to say. I can across a snippet from "These Days" by R.E.M. I always liked.
I'm a cynical optimist, so I do have hope, despite the times.