Nuh Likkle Bickle

WolframAlpha - days until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 release date

2011-06-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

WolframAlpha - days until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 release date

I know this is random after two months of silence, but I'm so excited about the movie and the harry potter conference and other wonderful madness going on that when I did this search on Alpha, I had to make a widget.

Disclaimer: I work for Wolfram Research, Inc.

Japan's Earthquake

2011-03-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

From npr.org

Japan's earthquake was terrible, the tsunami was really terrible, but the impending nuclear disaster is much worse. As my readers know, I went to Japan nearly 2 years ago. It was my first trip to Asia and I was struck by the people. Even in the chaos of the subway, there was an order. Everyone always seemed perfect. It was as if even if they're lives sucked, they were still going to put themselves together and look perfect. That's why I felt worried when it seemed like Japanese officials were understating the risk at the nuclear plants, and that when they started to ramp up the rhetoric to say that there actually was a high risk, it seems pretty scary.

On the NY Times, I found interesting features that explain exactly what's happening in with the nuclear reactors and puts it in context with similar past nuclear disasters.

So what now? The Japanese have pulled through so much that I'm sure they'll pull through this too, but in the meantime, I started to think about donations. Unfortunately, after the Haiti debacle, this has kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, so I'm looking out for different ways of helping. NPR has a link to appropriate ways to help. From experience, I'd guess that Japan is more organized than Haiti...but I do wish it didn't feel like I'm putting my money into a black box and hoping that it goes where it needs to.

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

The Vault: The best food Engrish in Japan

2011-03-04T13:55:00.000-06:00

One of our favorite pastimes when we were in Japan was finding hilarious Engrish - which wasn't hard at all. Here are some food themed ones for an amusing Friday read.

4. Bar Soul Blood, Kobe, Japan. Now I don't know why this place was called Bar Soul Blood, but I do know it was pretty hilarious. Also awesome: the picture of Michael Jackson. I think the it was pretty much the most expensive glass of coke I've ever had though...but the ambiance was awesome!

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iRobot Create + BAM + Mac OSX

2011-02-28T17:14:00.000-06:00

There's a depressingly low amount of advice online on how to communicate with your iRobot Create robot on Mac OSX, so here's my tech tip of the day.

First there's connecting to your Create over bluetooth. This isn't too hard, simply open the Bluetooth Explorer, find the Create (it'll have a name like ElementSerial), pair and then connect. Easy. Of course, don't forget to plug the BAM bluetooth adapter into your Create and turn it on before.

Next there's the issue of sending commands. iRobot recommends that you use RealTerm, but unfortunately that's not an option for us Mac users. So I went through a series of free options. The one that I wanted to like the most was using the screen command in the terminal. Unfortunately, I could connect but I couldn't type and send commands once I was connected. This happened when I tried some other free programs too (including the every popular ZTerm), so that was a bust.

The key was trying Serial Bridge. Now this isn't a free program, and I really wanted a free program, but it had a 30 day trial, so I figured I'd try it out. It's actually a combination of Serial Bridge + Apple's Apple Script. This, after some configuration, worked out perfectly! As an added bonus, Apple Script is super easy.

Download SerialBridge, fill out the form to get the code for a free trial, and Install. This is a dmg so it's pretty straightforward.
Open SerialBridge and go to File to create a new connection. I just called mine New Connection.
Make sure the settings are 57600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, 0 flow. Save and you're now connected!
Next I worked off one of the example files that came in SerialBridge. Just edit the byte list to one of the examples that come with your Create. For example, byte list = {128, 132, 139, 2, 0, 0} turns on the Play LED on the Create and turns off all the other LEDs. You can delete or comment out the rest of the file, comments are pairs of (* and *).
Now, press the run button in the Apple Script editor. Success!

Once I got this working, this got me thinking that there must be a free way to send Apple Script files over a serial port connection. Do you know of any? I've fiddled around with a couple of stuff but nothing's worked so far.

Adventures with Pie Pt 3: Banana Rum Cream Pie

2011-02-10T14:24:00.000-06:00

Continuing the theme of custardy pies, this pie is ridiculously easy to make. It barely requires any baking (just the curry infused graham cracker crust, easy as pie)! I stumbled upon this recipe after getting a request for a banana cream pie. Not being a huge fan of bananas, I was looking for a twist on a standard banana cream pie and found this recipe. As a Jamaican, everything's better with rum, especially some good Appleton Estate Rum.
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New Music - Adele, Lady Gaga, PJ Harvey

2011-02-08T12:07:00.001-06:00

Music I'm eagerly anticipating: Adele's 21. You can actually hear the entire album online courtesy of npr. I love Adele's voice and her previous album, 19, was one of my personal albums of the year.

In a bit of a guilty pleasure, I'm also really curious to see what Lady Gaga has done with her new album, Born This Way. Apparently the first single will be released on February 11th , which (not coincidentally) is 2 days before the Grammy's [she will of course be performing the song at said award show]. Stefani Germanottta is, if nothing else, a publicity genius.

Edit: Apparently today was my day for finding new music. Check out PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, also courtesy of npr. The album comes out on Feb 15th. I sort of stumbled upon this and am unfamiliar with her previous music, but I love love love the track Written On The Forehead, which samples the classic reggae song Blood and Fire by Niney the Observer while Harvey croons about the end of the world...you have to check it out!

Adventures with Pie Pt 2: Pumpkin Pie

2011-02-08T11:43:00.003-06:00

Mmm pie. Pumpkin pie is such a quintessential fall pie that I thought this was an excellent second pie. I was very happy with the filling, but wasn't thrilled with this crust paired with this pie, which lead to 2 more pies. The recipe is from my favorite baking site, joyofbaking.com.

Now the crust is what you call pate brisee, french for short dough, because of the high ratio of fat to flour. The most important thing to remember is that butter needs to be really cold. I didn't have access to a food processor when I was making this, so I actually used a frozen stick of butter and then grated it using a cheese grater. This allowed me to be able to combine the flour with the butter and ice water without over mixing, which leads to a tough less flaky crust.

The Blueberry Experiment

2011-01-23T13:23:00.001-06:00

Blueberries...a fruit that I don't care for particularly on its own, but add them to something and they're amazing. What's great about them is that you feel no guilt when using them because they're supposed to be so good for you. I've read that they can enhance memory, reduce blood sugar, and even reduce depression! I started this blueberry experiment last summer, with fresh blueberries. It involved Blueberry Zucchini Bread (because zucchini was in season too) and Blueberry Pancakes (because I never need an excuse to eat pancakes).

From Drop Box

Why I hate Comcast sometimes

2011-01-11T13:32:00.003-06:00

#comcastsucks This just in, Comcast is still as infuriating as ever. Guess what? I don't care if you claim to have ended a special, if you're still advertising it ON YOUR MAIN PAGE then you should honor it. Period. Would it really have hurt you that much to honor your advertised $19.99/month? Was it worth it to insist upon $29.99/month? I was actually going to suck it up and go with you as my internet provider again and possibly even a cable provider and you lost my business.

Edit: I just realized that it's worse than I thought, the site says this special is valid till 3/31/11 if you click terms and conditions. For shame!

World Harvest

2011-01-11T12:09:00.000-06:00

Champaign's best kept International food secret: World Harvest. I'm continuously amazed at the stuff I'm able to find there, surprising since sometimes when you're out in the middle of cornfields, you don't expect to find:

The Vault: Jamaica in Japan

2011-01-04T14:36:00.000-06:00

Wi likkle but wi tallawah. The ridiculous amount of Jamaican stuff in Japan leads me to wonder how it's possible that such a tiny island could have such a big cultural influence on the world.

Adventures with Pie Pt 1: Chocolate Pie

2011-01-02T13:30:00.008-06:00

My adventures baking pie started in the summer, when I made my very first pie: Chocolate Pie. This was a good starter in some senses, because the crust was a simple Graham Cracker crust. Plus it has chocolate, and not only do I love chocolate, I was preparing it for the wake of my friend Dan, a budding chocolate maker. If I remember correctly I actually prepared the crust and filling the day before, since the filling needs to be refrigerated overnight.

Song(s) of the Day: Auld Lang Syne/My Dear Acquaintance

2010-12-30T23:30:00.000-06:00

To ring in 2011, I have my last holiday themed post. Kenny G. Regina Spektor. Pink Martini. Byron Lee & The Dragonnaires. Salsa Celtica.

Auld Lang Syne loosely translates to for the sake of old times. The song basically reminds us that we should remember old friendships. It's fitting that this is the song that has become associated with celebrating a new year beginning.
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Food Consumption in Jamaica

2010-12-29T17:31:00.002-06:00

I thought this was nifty. We consume a lot of cassava and yam in Jamaica! Click submit to see the stats for a specific country and click more for the stats broken down by food group. I tried to include a random selection of countries. On a side note, the widget builder in wolfram alpha is kinda cool: http://developer.wolframalpha.com/widgetbuilder/

The Element of Freedom

2010-12-28T20:00:00.009-06:00

Amazon has Alicia Key's The Element of Freedom on sale for $5 so I finally got around to purchasing it. I admit before I wasn't super excited about it, but I've bought all of her albums so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I was pleasantly surprised. For instance, I'd watched the video for Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart but a year later now that I've listened to it on the album, I actually like it more. I've totally been in that place before and perhaps that's part of the appeal of the song. In retrospect I was probably distracted by the whole Hancock/Rogue from X-Men/typical lonely super hero storyline in the video. (Check it out at the end of the post and tell me if you agree with the Hancock analogy!) There's something very plaintive about the refrain, "Tonight, I'm gonna find a way to make it without you". Sometimes when you've lost someone, whether due to a break up or moving or death, the hurt is so bad that you can only take things one day at a time. This I understand.

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Why would you dream of a White Christmas?

2010-12-27T02:29:00.000-06:00

Why would you dream of a White Christmas? I mean yes it's beautiful, and it was nice to sit by a fire crocheting and eating christmas pudding at the end of the day, but in all practicality, White Christmas = Christmas Travel Nightmare. And these airlines really need to come up with a better way of handling this. 2 hours on hold trying to fix your flight is just unacceptable, and at 1 hr, 40 minutes on hold, I'm getting pretty close to the 2 hr mark. Shame on you American Airlines.

Argh.

Song of the Day: The Christmas Song

2010-12-24T23:00:00.001-06:00

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...and so begins my absolute favorite song. And while I absolutely love Natalie Cole's version, the classic is her father's, Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song. I have a special treat with this post because I stumbled upon a video of the man himself singing the song.

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Song of the Day: Christmas Soca Party

2010-12-23T13:50:00.001-06:00

It's not Christmas in Jamaica until you hear Christmas Soca Party, Byron Lee's party. In fact, just play it and you can almost picture yourself running around with your cousins on Christmas day, playing with new presents, eating Christmas cake...the good old days.

Song(s) of the Day: Someday at Christmas/Dream a Dream/All I Want for Christmas is You

2010-12-19T20:49:00.001-06:00

Not a lot to say today, but I do love when artists come up with _good_ original Christmas songs.

When I was in high school and in my the world is such a terrible place phase, I really loved Stevie Wonder's Someday at Christmas:

I really wish Charlotte Church was still making used of her voice like she did in Dream a Dream:

Finally, I know it's pop, but Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You is just fun:

What are your favorite non traditional Christmas songs?

Song of the Day: Joy to the World

2010-12-18T13:45:00.005-06:00

Joy to the World needs to be joyous. It needs to be grand. It needs to have soul. You'd think that'd be obvious, but the problem is that if you just perform the music as is, it's sort of repetitive.

The words are by Isaac Watts but adapted from the Bible; the music is by Lowell Mason but based on a melody by Handel. Fun fact: this was, at the some point, the most published hymn in North America. It's unclear if it still is.

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Song of the Day: Carol of the Bells

2010-12-17T13:46:00.002-06:00

Carol of the Bells is... magical... sprightly ... mystical... happy. My love affair with the song started after I sang it in a choir for the first time, in 8th grade, one of the few good memories I have of middle school. We also had actual bells that we ran while singing, and the combination of that, and just something about that song...I just loved singing it, in fact I still love singing it, it's hard for me to resist singing along to this day. It's also pretty near impossible to sing this song without smiling, even if you're Scrooge or the Grinch.

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Song(s) of the Day: Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!/Winter Wonderland

2010-12-16T21:07:00.007-06:00

It snowed again last night. Don't get me wrong, the world covered in a blanket of white is beautiful, but I swear it's snowed more frequently this winter than my previous ones here. Edit: Check out that mountain of snow! You can barely see the FedEx truck over it!

I was a little hesitant to choose Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! as one of the songs of the day because it feels like I'm encouraging the weather. To be fair, I love snow, it's the other wintry weathers I don't like (Ice, sleet, hail, windchill factors). Fun trivia: This song was written by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne in July 1945 on one of the hottest days on record. Also, despite this song being treated as a Christmas song, it makes no mention of Christmas itself.

So my favorite version of this song is Aaron Neville's. His Soulful Christmas album brings back memories of Christmases at my Aunt's house, with her dancing while cooking the dinner or baking Christmas Cake. It's funny, but I believe the reason we love Christmas music so much are the memories we've associated with it. And Aaron Neville is able to convey the pure delight he has with the snow.

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Song(s) of the Day: Linus and Lucy/Christmas Time is Here

2010-12-15T14:49:00.003-06:00

A Charlie Brown Christmas. Possibly the best Christmas movie ever made. And it gave us one of the best Christmas albums (by Vince Guaraldi), another reason to love it. Interesting trivia, A Charlie Brown Christmas was the first prime-time animated tv special. It was also the first time Charlie Brown was on tv. It took a lot of convincing to get Charles Schulz to agree to move the Peanuts Gang from print to tv, but apparently once he started and Lee Mendelson, executive producer, brilliantly decided on Vince Guaraldi as the composer, things went full steam ahead. Of course the network was nervous because of Linus's little Nativity speech, the choppiness of some of the animation and the general anti-consumerism moral, but the ratings were off the charts and a Christmas tradition was born.

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Song(s) of the Day: Christmas in Jamaica/Christmas in the Sun/Welcome Home to Jamaica

2010-12-14T20:00:00.010-06:00

The cold front that has gripped the US is making me antsy about not spending Christmas (or Crismus as it is in patois) in Jamaica. No sorrel, no Jamaican Christmas cake, no Christmas dinner cooked by my mom and my aunt, no beach, no warmth, and no family. Hence the inspiration for this post.

Toni Braxton's Christmas in Jamaica I choose just for Shaggy's little interludes in the song about jerk chicken and ackee and saltfish. I suspect if you either aren't Jamaican or haven't spent Christmas in Jamaica, the song may not be so special. The song itself has an ordinary R&B vibe to it.

I almost just chose Fab 5's entire Christmas in the Sun album but decided to stick with just two songs. The titular song, Christmas in the Sun, surprisingly has some inspiring moments in it, especially with the state of emergency/Dudus calamity that we endured this year. "Have you ever ever stopped to realise that our home is tropical island paradise? We have our problems but we can solve them, but we have no problems with snow and ice." "No roasted chestnuts on an open fire, but roast caawn and breadfruit and turkey for Crismus dinner." "Down in Jamaica, it's hot sunny weather, and people are warm and friendly all the time. Now it's the Crismus season and the fun cyaan done, so have a joyful irie Crismus in the sun." Oh how I wish I were.

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Song of the Day: Twelve Days of Christmas

2010-12-13T20:26:00.036-06:00

Oh the memories of annoying the grown-ups with singing this song in the car...it's the song that doesn't end. The weird thing is that by the time you got to the eighth day of Christmas you were usually running out of breath and your mouth was dry but you persisted in singing. So where does it come from and why is it my song of the day?

Welcome to the Christmas edition of my new song of the day feature. I'm counting down to my favorite holiday by attempting to pare down my many favorite christmas songs down to 12...it will be tricky, but I shall persevere.

When I started to do some research on this post, I was surprised to find that there is apparently a religious interpretation of this song. The Twelve Days apparently refer to the days starting with December 26th (Boxing Day) to January 6th (the Day before The Epiphany). In popular culture however, this usually refers to the twelve days leading up to Christmas.

There are many traditional versions of this song. Burl Ives' version comes to mind as a definition of the traditional twelve days, but being Jamaican, I'm also a fan of Harry Belefonte's. Classical music lovers will definitely appreciate Leonard Bernstein's Twelve Days, it's definitely the grandest, complete with a choir and full orchestra.

Edit: I forgot to mention a mostly unknown instrumental version of this by Byron Lee & The Dragonaires, you can listen to it here: Twelve Days Of Xmas/ O Come All Ye Faithful/ First Noel (Medley). For some reason it's not played on the Jamaican radio as often as some of the other songs on this album...listening to it I can almost picture myself at home in the warmth.

The parodies of this song are the best versions. My two favorites are Natalie Cole's version and Frank Kelly's Christmas Countdown. My Jamaican readers will all know Christmas Countdown, the Irish version of Twelve Days (affectionately known as Dear Nola). (Edit: I was told I should mention that the Christmas season has not officially begun in Jamaica until you hear this song.)
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NXT wifi

2010-12-09T12:33:00.002-06:00

OK, this is just awesome, you can now have wifi on your Lego NXT Robot (found here). This is so cool, kind of how I imagined a 3rd party wifi sensor would be built too, clearly more work than I thought it would take [typical, I'm always underestimating].

So....can I buy one? I mean I love that you have such clear instructions, but I just want to buy one.

Edit: I just realised there's an update to the first post about the WifiBlock. Still looking to see if it's for sale.

Brett Daniel

2010-12-08T19:17:00.002-06:00

My friend Brett [second from the right in the below picture] has lost his almost decade long battle with cancer.

Cute explanation of Revision Control

2010-12-07T18:41:00.009-06:00

I found this handy little tutorial about CVS:
Understanding CVS: A brief introduction to the concepts of CVS

Nice pictures, clear explanation. NB: CVS is a revision control system used when multiple software developers need to collaborate on a project, it maintains consistency.

Edit: I changed the title of this post due to some...strong opinions about CVS, which is a legacy system, and SVN is pretty much it's successor. I just thought the explanation of the concepts was cute.

Song of the Day: You Can't Always Get What You Want

2010-12-06T15:08:00.000-06:00

But if you try real hard, you get what you need. Were truer words ever said? This is classic Rolling Stones, and the choir and non-typical rock instruments just adds to the big feeling of this song. During my exploration this past summer of the so called Holy Trinity of Rock (The Stones, The Beatles and The Who), I rediscovered this amazing song. I remembered the main gist of the song, but it's all the little details that make it what it is. It's funny, while the organ may not be my favorite instrument to listen alone, I find it's in many of my favorite songs, Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross comes to mind. Well I've had a bit of a rough year, and this song just sort of sums it up I think.

Song of the Day: Balance

2010-12-03T16:29:00.003-06:00

Because sometimes you can't find the words to express what you're going through but there's a song that fits your mood just right. Today, it's Sara Taveres' Balance:

Sara Tavares belongs to my group of musicians I like to think of as modern African, I believe she has Cape Verdean and Portuguese roots. The song itself is part of a lovely album, one of my eMusic finds a year or so ago.

Harry Potter...

2010-11-23T12:13:00.001-06:00

...and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1!!

The Lego Mindstorms Vision Command

2010-11-22T17:38:00.000-06:00

This video was part of my inspiration to pick up robotics as a hobby and ultimately as a career!

The music is so 90s!

I'm back...

2010-11-16T11:40:00.000-06:00

...with a bit of an update. I'm now an employee of Wolfram Research, so I'm going to avoid posting anything Wolfram or work related. I have some fun posts planned though, and of course I'm counting down the hours till the Deathly Hallows midnight showing on Thursday!! Also, people seem to be a fan of me doing more music posts, which definitely is not work related, so look forward to that too.

Blog Stuff

2010-10-22T12:48:00.001-05:00

So I noticed that I actually have 6 followers, which is slightly scary, that means people might actually be reading this! I've been absent a bit recently, and I apologize for that, and I also apologize for the sudden end of Grace Hopper posts (I kinda got food poisoning I think from Metro Cafe Diner, remind you of Japan anyone?), but now I'm wondering, what do my readers want to read? More food posts? More tech tricks? Maybe music stuff? I'm curious to know. Also coming up, a Bay Area post! (Silicon Valley and Berkeley impressions, and a one day walking tour of San Francisco!)

Women of Color Session

2010-09-30T11:25:00.000-05:00

#ghc10

This might be one of the most inspiring sessions I’ve attended so far. The women on the panel were:

Cecilia Aragon, Lawrence Berkeley Lab & U Washington

Patty Lopez, Intel

Sandra Johnson, IBM

Loretta Moore, Jackson State U

All of these women had wonderful stories. Sandra Johnson said she believes she was the first African American woman to get a PhD in Electrical Engineering! She is also the only African American woman who is an IEEE fellow. Cecilia Aragon left with a MS, took time off and then went back for the PhD and was still able to not only work in a National Lab, but to then get 6 offers for faculty positions and to accept an offer as a tenured professor. Patty Lopez took a risk after working at HP for almost 20 years and moved to Intel. Patty Lopez didn’t make the cheerleading squad (she couldn’t do cartwheels, like myself!) and decided instead to compete with the boy in class who thought he was smarter than her (haven’t we all?). Loretta More told a lovely story about how she decided that Chemistry was rather unforgiving to mistakes (the story involved an explosion!) and switched to Computer Science.

Here’s an interesting thought. Someone asked about dealing with people saying that you only got a position or an award because you’re female or a minority. The consensus from the panel was to know that you got where you are because you’re qualified, but Sandra Johnson mentioned that for years men actually got positions without being qualified!

My personal question was about carrying the burden of representing my race. Patty Lopez had a great insight, in a book on corporate tribalism, it was shown that white males see themselves as individuals but tend to see minorities as groups. So I need to work on separating myself from the group and stop seeing myself as a representative of all women, all Jamaican women, all Women of Color.

Grace Hopper

2010-09-29T08:14:00.000-05:00

#ghc10

As promised, I’ll be giving a couple mini posts on Grace Hopper! The conference started yesterday evening. First impression: oh my god there are a lot of women! It’s so refreshing, I spend my day surrounded by men, and that’s great, but you miss having other females around. Everybody is so friendly, much more so than at other conferences.

Cool feature: Poken! They’re futuristic business cards, you hold them up to each other and they exchange sort of your business cards, but even more if you add social networks to your profile. A little tip: When you go to register, plug in your Poken into a usb slot. It should ask you to the open the folder to view files, double click the Start Poken icon, which will take you to the Poken webpage. On the webpage, your username is the email you used to register for Grace Hopper, and the password is poken.

Off to go meet some more cool women!

Grace Hopper

2010-09-18T12:25:00.000-05:00

Grace Hopper #ghc10 is around the corner and I'm getting excited! I plan on doing some blogging, I think I'll be aiming for a couple short posts and then maybe one longer summary post, but we'll see. I'm not quite sure how to get my blog added to the blog roll or if it's too late, but even if it isn't, I'll have this in my twitter feed. A couple of notes so far:

The Linkedin Grace Hopper group is very useful, lots of good articles about making the most of the conference. As a first timer, I really appreciate all of the online resources:

Argh, what's that song?!

2010-09-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

You've had that moment, you hear a tune and can't place it. It's even worse if it's an instrumental song, because there's no hope of you remembering some words and googling them. Well in 2010, apparently there's a plethora of solutions. I'm still behind the times so needed a solution that didn't require a smartphone or super cool mp3 player, so no Shazam apps. Still, there are solutions out there. The first thing we tried was midomi. The idea is great, hum a tune, and it'll try match what you hummed to tunes other people have entered. Didn't work so great for us though. So I hummed and my guitar playing friend picked out the notes using his guitar and wrote them down. I meanwhile found another site, musipedia, which appealed to the musician in me. This site has several ways of finding tunes, one of which is playing the notes on an on-screen keyboard. It took just a couple seconds of me entering a dozen notes or so, and I had my answer. (If you're curious, the bugger of a song was Minuet for Harpsichord by J.S. Bach.)

What's your favorite way to identify songs stuck in your head? For more suggestions, here are some articles I found:
http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody
http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-name-of-songs/12316/

Koran Burning Story

2010-09-09T21:28:00.003-05:00

Otherwise known as one man's attention getting scheme. Not to take sides here, but after reading this story in the Times, I wonder why we allow these people to get the attention they desire. Take a look at the following excerpt:

Mr. Jones, who stutters a bit in his sermons and calls himself doctor based on an honorary degree from an unaccredited Bible school, has at times seemed sincerely shocked by the response he has attracted. But not unhappy.

His church has been in financial trouble for years — the property is now for sale — and even before General Petraeus and the president made him a household name, he said in an interview that he hoped to become well known as a critic of Islam.

He was in his office at the time, alone, and to his right there sat a drawing of a bearded man — a terrorist — that had been used for target practice.

The mix of guns and visions of grandeur would come to embody the end of his planned bonfire as well.

On Thursday, several of his parishioners carried pistols on their hips — the product, they said, of death threats — that also served as a sign of church membership and the outsized role their small group had taken on in world affairs.

Clearly something is wrong. I'm not a regular church goer, but it seems to me that at the point that wearing a pistol on your hip is a sign of church membership, let alone the leader of a church using the image of a "terrorist" as target practice, you have gone off course. This is not what religion is supposed to be, is it?

Including LaTeX in Presentations

2010-08-19T08:19:00.001-05:00

Here's a debate I know many of you have had. If, like me, you usually have a fair amount of equations in your presentation, just out of necessity, what's the best way to include them? Even better, we'll add the constraint that I don't want to pay money for any of the products we use.

1. Beamer: This I'm sure will be the first suggestion from many people. I love LaTeX but I don't love LaTeX for presentations. I think the presentations it makes all look too similar, and while this quality is lovely for papers, it's not ideal for a talk. Still, if you want to be hard core, you can make your entire presentation in LaTeX, then you have no problems when it comes to equations.

2. Open Office/Google Docs + texify.com: This is a lovely little site that generates image files of equations for you. Problem? The first is that it is a little clunky, and if the presentation is remaining in Google Docs then you can just drag the images, but if you're going to export it, I believe you'll have to actually save copies of all the equations. Even worse, you generally have to export the presentation, because Docs doesn't do relative placement of images properly, so when you move from a small screen to a larger screen, images have moved. Still, this does work, and I've done it for many presentations. One other word of advice: The names for the image files that texify generates is different on a mac than on a windows machine, which turns out to be bad because it uses a character on one that the other os doesn't like (I think on a mac it uses ! in the file names which windows dislikes).

3. Open Office/Google Docs + http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php: I just discovered this lovely website. The problems here I'd imagine would be much the same as with texify, so the main advantage is that you can use codecogs to easily embed LaTeX equations like this on your blog. Texify doesn't really like you doing this and does this

when you try.

4. Open Office LaTeX plugin: I forgot that this exists, but you could also you this. For some reason I've had problems installing it in the past, which is why I almost left it off the list. If you're just working in Open Office, this should be the way to go.

Those are all the solutions I know of so far. Do you have any? Please share!

Coping with Death

2010-07-30T23:17:00.002-05:00

I distract myself, I go out with people, I laugh, and yet...
When I'm home alone again, with the silence, the tears come again.
The sadness just won't leave.

Dan Schreiber

2010-07-27T18:07:00.000-05:00

This was going to be a post about Inception, but something actually managed to push it out of my mind. A dear friend of mine, full of life, Dan Schreiber, has passed away. I can't even comprehend it. As I write this, I think the emotions are churning, I actually feel like something just took the breath out of me. I think this may actually be my first friend who's died. It's part of life right? We all die eventually. Last summer I had my first friend get married, but this is part of life too. I'm not even sure if this post makes sense or if I'm just rambling, I just know that I have to deal with all of this emotion. Dan was a fellow graduate student and an aspiring chocolate maker. He was brilliant, top of the math department during his undergrad at the U of I, and chose to do a PhD in computer science. Last summer he started experimenting with chocolate making, from the cacao beans, and he got quite good at it. ..

I just had to take a walk. The silence is deafening. I walked in a daze, listening to Here Comes The Sun and Because. There was something very melancholy about the department when I walked in. Maybe I was just projecting my emotions, I just don't know...

From Drop Box

You know, any time you see someone young died, they always say how full of life they were, how nice they were to everyone. It's so cliche but it's completely true about Dan. Why do the nice ones go first? I never told Dan this, but he really inspired me. He was brilliant enough to get a PhD with ease but chose to do what he loved instead, make chocolate. It's so funny, the other day I was cleaning my fridge and came across one of his earlier chocolate wrappers. I'm a packrat, so instead of throwing it away, I tucked it beside the jam bottles. I look at it now kind of in shock. When I started experimenting with baking this past semester, I wanted to try baking this scone recipe I found that called for chocolate chunks and dried cranberries. I described the recipe to Dan, and he instantly knew what chocolate I'd need to go with the cranberries. I've never known anyone so enthusiastic about chocolate. That's the wrapper I unintentionally saved and now have. I won't be throwing it away.

Vegetable Torte

2010-07-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

Now I haven't stopped cooking just because it's summer, I just haven't been sharing as regularly. I didn't realize NYTimes had cooking videos, here's a vegetable torte recipe that I'm dying to try.

Do you have any good vegetable recipes? I made a salad (not a vegetarian one) last night that was amazing, and it's really made me appreciate how good a salad can be.

I thought I was a geek but...

2010-07-16T00:32:00.000-05:00

...apparently I'm a modern cool nerd! It has the word cool in there so it must be cool right? I had no clue I was that dorky though!

Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test...

Modern, Cool Nerd

83 % Nerd, 57% Geek, 22% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

-- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

Take The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test at OkCupid

One more thing: I really liked the graphs. The vertical line = average.
Nerdiness (83%, higher than 93% of my peers) :

Geekosity (57%, higher than 82% of my peers):

Dork points (22%, higher than 21% of my peers):

Janelle Monáe

2010-07-13T18:45:00.001-05:00

What do Janelle Monáe and Sesame Street have in common?

If you follow me on twitter, you'll know that I've been gushing all week about Janelle Monáe, enough to share some notes while I wrap up thesis writing.

Read More...

My favorite Fourth of July tradition: Capitol Steps

2010-07-05T21:25:00.000-05:00

With the recent Arizona illegal immigration law, Capitol Steps was bound to have some interesting commentary. Sure enough, it may have been my favorite part of the show.

Capitol Steps is political satire group (see the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Steps) that releases a new show four times a year: New Year's Eve, April Fool's Day, Fourth of July and Halloween. Interestingly, they started off as being a group of senate staffers, but now the group is made up of professionals. I have many fond memories of listening to them in the car on the radio, and with the passage of time, on iTunes and on my iPod. I admit I was worried they'd be scraping the barrel for material after George Bush, but then there's always a humorous side to politics isn't there?

I enjoyed the Arizona song so much I decided to post the lyrics, especially since a quick search revealed that I couldn't find them online.

On a dark desert highway, staying just out of sight.
Just like white house crashes, I don't have an invite.
Up ahead in the distance, just past the cactus and sage,
I know I can find a brand new job and I'll make minimum wage.
Walking inside the border, a million stars out tonight, and
I was thinking to myself this place is heaven if you were just white.
Then I saw a big searchlight, it was heading my way.
I was spotted by a border guard, and then I heard him say,
"Welcome to the state of Arizona.
Have your papers please, or you'll have to leave.
There isn't much room in the state of Arizona if you're darker than George Hamilton."
Would you stop Obama, say his race isn't pure?
"Last week I stopped someone named Sonia Sotomayor"
Let me check my pockets, I belong here of course.
I will show you my proof now if you will show me yours.
Welcome to my homeland I was born here.
Yes we've been here 5000 years.
I'm Navaho, we own the land you're on here,
We fought illegals too since 1492.

Harry Potter Epicness...

2010-06-28T21:46:00.007-05:00

...i.e. me screaming like the Harry Potter fangirl I am.

YouTube - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer:

Comments [also courtesy of my fellow fan girl sister]:

Rupert Grint has gotten exceptionally skilled at making grimacing faces.

The protective barrier around Hogwarts looks an awful lot like a globe. Is that France I see?

Was it really necessary to edit out the blood from Hermione's hands? Not a fan of gore, but I hope they didn't do that in the film.

So the group shot of Voldemort and co. is kinda bad-ass. Seriously, a lot of computers will have a new wallpaper tonight.

Helena Bonham-Carter will be stalking me in my nightmares. Her eyes as Bellatrix when she's throwing that knife...[shivers]

Voldemort: "Why do you live?" Harry: "Because I'm not dead." Ooh, or "Well you see how it works is that while you're still breathing and functioning, that generally means that your alive." I kid. Radcliffe actually delivered his line "Because I have something to live for" in a believable not corny fashion.
(NB This was the line I was worried about in my previous post on the ShoWest preview reviews!)

Crap, that is a really huge snake.

Voldemort screaming like a girl, is that when he discovers his horcruxes are gone? "OMG, they stole my locket!"

Is that scene with who I assume is Voldemort plus Bellatrix on the moon? [Okay, I don't think it's on the moon, but my sister is convinced of this.]

I love the irony in Voldemort saying "Only I can live FOREVER" Harry - "Really?"

All snarkiness aside, I literally screamed "Oh my god oh my god oh my god" when I watched this. The cinematography is so gorgeous, the emotions are crescendoing with the music, all the shots of the final battle seem perfect, and Dan Radcliffe [Harry Potter], Ralph Fienes [Voldemort], Alan Rickman [Snape] and the rest of the cast all look amazing. Absolutely epic and now I can't believe I have to wait till November before watching Part 1, much less till July for Part 2.

November, hurry up!

Gulf oil spill may actually get worse

2010-06-26T16:58:00.000-05:00

Gulf oil spill: Could 'toxic storm' make beach towns uninhabitable? - CSMonitor.com

"In the case of a hurricane hitting the 250-mile wide slick and pushing it over sand dunes and into beach towns, residents fear they’ll face not only mass evacuations, but potential permanent relocation."

"On Friday, the Coast Guard announced it would start moving boats and rigs away from the Deepwater Horizon geyser site 120 hours before a hurricane’s approach, at that point ending all collection efforts and delaying the drilling of relief wells, which are now on track to plug the well by late August – the height of the hurricane season. The geyser blowing at full tilt without a containment cap could spew between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels of oil a day, possibly more."

It wasn't till I spotted the headlines about Tropical Storm Alex heading into the Gulf that it occurred to me just how much worse the Gulf situation could get. Please world, never forget what BP has done to the environment. It is unforgivable.

(Image above: "Tar balls from the oil spill wash ashore in Grand Isle, La., awaiting cleanup.")

Oil Spill (Again)

2010-06-16T20:34:00.000-05:00

I'd really like to leave my numerous thoughts on the horrific oil spill, but I'm in thesis-writing-experiment-finishing mode, so for now I'll leave you with a picture I'd describe as haunting.

You can see the source for a larger version of the picture:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/picture/2010/jun/14/bp-oil-spill-oil-spills#

Map showing areas of violence

2010-05-30T09:16:00.001-05:00

A visual record of reports of violence, road blocks, or other key activities related to the State of Emergency declared in Kingston and St. Andrew, Jamaica on May 23, 2010.

The State of Emergency was declared in order to execute the extradition warrant for Tivoli strongman Christopher "Dudus" Coke.

Please note that locations given may not always be exact.

OGNR - On the Ground News Reports
http://www.facebook.com/onthegroundnews#!/onthegroundnews
http://twitter.com/onthegroundjm

CVM - CVM Television

TVJ - Television Jamaica
Gleaner - The Jamaica Gleaner

Observer - The Jamaica Observer

RJR - Radio Jamaica

View Official OGNR Situation Map in a larger map

P.S. Thanks so much to all who helped me with this!

Resources to keep up to date with unrest in Jamaica

2010-05-24T15:07:00.004-05:00

This is a scary time for all of us members of the Jamaican diaspora, both at home and abroad. Here are some resources I've been using to keep up to date with the situation at home:

JNN: For 24 hr footage.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jamaicalive#utm_campaigne=synclickback&source=http://www.jamaicalivetv.com/&medium=375288

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

onthegroundjm: The fastest resource for live news, both confirmed and unconfirmed. I highly recommend this one.

Jamaica Observer: They've been remarkably fast with updates

http://twitter.com/jamaicaobserver

That's it for now, check back for updates to sources. As always, don't panic if the story is not confirmed, which is about all we can do right now!

Edit: My twitter list of various Jamaican news sources:

http://twitter.com/kamilah/janews

Including rasterized images in a latex file

2010-05-21T00:00:00.001-05:00

I recently ran into a problem that I hadn't previously encountered. Latex cannot deal with vector images (.eps) and rasterized images (.pdf, .jpg, .png) simultaneously! There may be a better way around this, but since I had mostly eps files in my paper, I decided to convert the jpegs to eps with this handy little site: http://www.tlhiv.org/rast2vec/. I love it!

Edit: To clarify, if you're compiling your file with latex then dvips then ps2pdf, you need to have eps files. If you're compiling your file with pdflatex, then you need pdf, jpg, png, etc. Hope that explains why you can't have both types simultaneously!

Oil Spill!

2010-05-07T11:17:00.000-05:00

I'd call this one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of the 21st century. This was such a news week. What with the oil spill, the attempted Times Square bomb, and the near collapse of the Dow Jones yesterday, it's like everyone is just on edge. Also, I can't believe NOAA's estimate on the rate of oil leakage is 10 times lower than BP's - is this some sort of pr stunt by BP? My question: when does the cleanup process begin?

Anyway, to help keep up with the big stories, some interesting articles:

Oil Spill:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/05spill.html?src=mv

Wall Street [Can you say "The sky is falling!!"]:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/business/economy/07norris.html?bl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/06/AR2010050604545.html

Times Square, Oil Spill and Obama:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/05/gwens-take-the-politics-of-panic-1.html

Il Solito Sesso

2010-05-03T00:46:00.002-05:00

I will never forget the Italian for sesso (sex) and cesso (toilet). So some friends and I were having a cultural exchange of music and they played this song for me by Max Gazzè:

I forgot that in Italian c sounds like ch so when I wrote down the song name, I wrote Max Gazzè - Il Solito Cesso, and my friends had a good time laughing at how I'd called Gazzè a toilet.

Anyway, there are no good translations of this song online, and it's really sweet, so I thought I'd post this rough translation I got from an Italian friend.

Read More...

Bun and Cheese

2010-04-05T19:48:00.008-05:00

Ok, I know, my Jamaican readers (if you exist!) must be thinking really, a blog post on bun and cheese? Have you run out of things to blog about? But consider that I'm not in Jamaica, so procuring bun and cheese for Easter requires effort.

In Jamaica one of our Easter traditions is to eat bun and cheese. Jamaican Easter Bun looks nothing like hot cross buns, and I'm not sure if it tastes like it either, but I suspect the tradition ought to have some relation. There are several ways to make Easter bun. My cookbook, Enid Donaldson's The Real Taste of Jamaica, Rev. Ed., has 4 recipes! Each recipe uses a different leavening agent: Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Yeast and Stout. I decided to do the baking powder version, partially because the Yeast recipe yields 7 loaves, partially because I prefer bun with just raisins, not mixed peel, and partially because I wanted to try making it with port. So without further ado, the recipe (found on Pg 114 of the first ed.):

Lemon Bars

2010-03-23T21:43:00.004-05:00

I know, I've been in a crazy baking mood. The problem is that I go online and see these yummy recipes and then I start craving the end product. That's how I ended up baking lemon bars for our movie night (2010: The Year We Make Contact).

So the key to good lemon bars is apparently the lemons. You should use freshly squeezed lemon juice and lemon zest. Lemon zest is from the outer skin of the lemon. You get it from using a lemon zester, or if you're a poor grad student like me, from using a grater and grating the outer skin. Make sure you don't get the inner white rind, it's very bitter, and zest the lemons before squeezing them.

From Randomness

Bread

2010-03-22T08:02:00.004-05:00

From Randomness

I'm not entirely sure where I get these whims from, but for some reason (I blame it on that joyofbaking site) I've been in a baking mood. Even more arbitrary, I had this hankering to bake my own bread. I had lots of time to kill last night (I was watching the Republicans whine on C-span, yay health care!), so it seemed like a good time to try my hand at baking with yeast.

Deathly Hallows Excitement!

2010-03-19T17:59:00.006-05:00

Get ready for what may be the most exciting piece of Deathly Hallows news we've gotten in a while! I stumbled upon these two articles today(here and here), and there are some tantalizing bits about what to expect from the finale. Apparently quite an extensive preview was shown at ShoWest 2010, and I've got to say, it sounds epic. Finally!!!! I really hope they don't screw up these last two movies, because I'm sure it'll be a while before we can get the remake. I loved the impression that it's really set up as Voldemort, the Death Eaters and even the Ministry all against Harry. Quibble:

The footage ended with what might be the final confrontation with Voldemort as he asks Harry, "Why do you still live?" to which he gets the response, "Because I have something to live for."

Ralph Fiennes delivering that line sounds like it'll give me chills, but I hope Daniel Radcliffe delivering that line doesn't end up being another cheesy movie thing.

Other than that, November couldn't come soon enough!

Edit: I also, of course, found more info here.

We saw little bits of everything, from the seven Harry Potters escaping from the Dursleys house (totally surreal) to the attack at Bill and Fleur's wedding to the escape from Gringotts on the pale dragon and even Hogwarts on fire. With unfinished effects it's hard to really say how it all looks, though some of the most effective moments were the simplest -- Ron and Harry's fight in the tent, Harry visiting his parents' graves, running away from the Snatchers in the woods, Harry defiantly telling Voldemort that he stays alive "because I have something worth fighting for."

...the first scene of the extended trailer was Harry and Voldemort's confrontation in the woods outside Hogwarts. Harry, bloodied and visibly terrified, approaches a cold Voldemort (flanked by Bellatrix Lestrange); Voldemort taunts Harry, "The boy who lived, come to die."

They said that Radcliffe's delivery was defiant and very effective, so now I'm just excited! Please don't disappoint me David Yates!!

Tasks in NXC

2010-03-18T16:18:00.003-05:00

I'm finding an interesting application of operating systems to coding and debugging my little robot -- tentatively named HAL 0.

From Drop Box

Interestingly, the NXT not only supports multithreading, it can have up to 255 threads. NXC (Not eXactly C) calls these threads tasks. We also have to deal with mutexes, which is necessary when you consider the consequences of having parallel threads all trying to control the motors.

My understanding thus far is that

(1) You always have a main task. This task is executed first, sets what sensors are connected to which ports, and can determine the order in which the other tasks are started.

(2) If you want task 2 to start after task 1, you can start it off with a Follows(task 1) command. I suspect, however, that this is part of the problem I'm having with switching mutexes between tasks. Unfortunately the StartTask command doesn't seem to work and since NXC is kinda like C, I can't use a StartTask(task 2) command in task 1 because task 2 hasn't been defined yet. Oh the joys of C.

In the course of writing this post, I've had a bit of an epiphany, so I may edit this post later today...

The Perfect Biscuit

2010-03-11T23:26:00.002-06:00

I found a great site for baking recipes, http://joyofbaking.com/, and I've been putting their recipes to good use - at least I think it's been good. So far, I've tried their biscuits and scones. I seem to have managed to not take pictures of the scones, so I'll just have to make more this weekend. But for now, biscuits!

From Randomness

The main trick to making biscuits is using really cold butter and not over mixing or over kneading the dough. In fact, my biggest baking tip is to bake with cold butter. If you microwave the butter or use margarine, then you've completely killed the recipe and you're better off using a mix.

Yamaha AvantGard

2010-03-06T10:23:00.002-06:00

I think I just found my dream gadget. It's a little bit out of my price range, but it would shave off $80,000 dollars! That's the pitch I'd sell to anyone I'd try to convince to buy this, though I have sneaking suspicion that someone will be me.

Enter the Yamaha AvantGard. This baby was made to replicate the experience of playing a grand piano at a fifth of the cost, half the size, and a third of the weight - and without the need to tune! Consider the following (according to PopSci):

Grand Piano:

$100,000
9 feet
1500 pounds

AvantGard:

$19,000
4 feet
450 pounds

I've long been a fan of Yamaha's digital pianos, so the choice seems clear to me. Not many of us have the money for an acoustic grand piano. And yes, I know that the experience is not quite the same as an acoustic for the pianist, but it's so damn close who the hell cares? There's a price difference of $80,000! I say bring on the future of digital piano technology, though I admit that if I were able to, I probably would buy an acoustic.

Valgrind

2010-03-01T14:15:00.006-06:00

It has a strange name, but who cares, this tool will apparently help you debug your c/c++ code! And after the all nighter I just pulled, I must say I wish I'd known about this before when I was diagnosing that stupid segfault (c++ shall be the death of me). Big plus: it will work on Mac OS X, but unfortunately it won't work on Windows. Will report back on how useful Valgrind actually is, since I apparently will be spending a lot of time with good old c++.

Failure and Imagination

2010-02-10T14:12:00.004-06:00

Inspiration comes in many forms. Today I took a little moment to watch this amazing video of JK Rowling:

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

It's an interesting speech, with jokes sprinkled throughout, - "Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion" - on the benefits of failure. This being something that I've been tackling recently, it really struck a chord. My favorite quotes?

"Poverty is only romanticized by fools."

"Ultimately we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it."

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was."

"It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case, you've failed by default."

"Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes."

[This following quote really reminds me of Voldemort and the Death Eaters. I understand the inspiration...]

"Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power."

[Again, here I can not only see references to Harry Potter but to history, the Nazis, Rwanda, Darfur.]

"And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know."

"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

What are your favorite quotes? Do you think you've had your big failure yet?

Useful command line things I'm learning

2010-02-03T16:14:00.002-06:00

I know I'm way later than I should be, but at long last I'm learning all sorts of useful command line stuff. For instance, if you've ssh'ed to a machine and you're running ubuntu over a virtual machine, do you know how to shutdown? You type shutdown! I know, why didn't I think of that. It's actually:

sudo shutdown -h now

Another terribly useful thing I've finally learned about: MacPorts. It definitely gets added to my list of useful mac software. It's like synaptic but for macs. If there's something you want to install, for instance player, you type:

sudo port install player

Then, like magic it finds all the software that player relies on and installs them for you before installing player. Brilliant.

Deathly Hallows Teaser Trailer

2010-01-06T15:22:00.004-06:00

I was so pleased with Half Blood Prince that I'm dying to see the last two installments of the Harry Potter franchise. This was leaked about a month ago, but has now supposedly been officially released:

What are your thoughts? It's not much so far, and I suspect that there may be parts from both Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 (otherwise there really isn't much left for part 2). It's quite exciting. The image of a horrified Hermione looking at bloody hands (perhaps from Ron splinching) is very eerie. Also, thanks to Pottercast, my sister and I are convinced that the eyes belong to Bill Nighy as Scrimgeour (he has the exact same expression in Pirates of the Caribbean 3). Splitting the book into 2 movies may end up being not just a financially smart decision after all.

Another exciting tidbit is that Miranda Richardson will reprise her role as Rita Skeeter. Now all we need is for John Williams to confirm that he's back as composer and I can safely say we're in for a treat.

Gaucho's Grill Gripe

2010-01-06T14:38:00.001-06:00

I wanted to make a short little note on my Gaucho's experience. A week or so ago, some friends and I made an impromptu decision to dine at Gaucho's Grill. This, unfortunately, was not an entirely satisfactory decision. While I have no complaints about the food (their Ye Ole Fish Sandwich, a fillet of snapper sandwich), the service left something to desire. There is no exageration in saying that we were first ignored before being seated, then we waited at least 5 minutes before demanding menus, and then after that waited a good half hour before being moved to another table. After another 20 minutes, our orders were finally taken and we were finally given some glasses of water. Needless to say, they were not tipped.

Now then, this rant is more a message for the management. You have a couple of options. You can (1) hire more waiters/waitresses, because when we first arrived there were none in sight, and we were told by the hostess that the reason for our interminable wait was that the waitresses were busy bringing out food for other tables. You could also (2) reduce the number of tables, since clearly you cannot handle the current capacity. It is unforgivable to have people waiting for an hour just to be served water and to give their orders. You should also retrain your hostess, because I am really in no mood to hear any sad and sorry tales about having to serve other tables who got there first. You see without this, you'll lose customers, because as much as I enjoyed your food and your manageable prices, I'm in no mood to plan to have to wait an extra hour just to place my order.

That's all.

Tokyo – Akihabara, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Fish Market, Tokyo Museum, Sushi Train, Odaiba, Kabuki

2009-11-24T22:02:00.002-06:00

Edit: Though this post was started while in Japan, and much of it written in Japan, I didn’t finish it till recently so have decided to move the publishing date. Originally this was going to be in multiple posts, but I decided to put my 4 days in Tokyo in one post – a tall order, I know! Hope you stick through to the end, sorry this is so delayed, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed all the experiences. =)
Being the geeks that we are, our first order of business in Tokyo was Akihabara, home of the electronic flea market.

This place had everything electronic you could think of. Really, everything.

If I weren’t a starving grad student, I’d have gone to town here. And of course where you find nerds you’ll find anime and manga fans, so….

Read More...

LEGO NXT and Programming in NXC

2009-10-30T16:58:00.004-05:00

My newest project is playing with LEGO's - every child's dream! Or at least mine. I find it really satisfying to come in every day and work with LEGO's. I want to properly document my progress, so I'll update this from time to time with little things I've figured out, videos, etc. For example, as soon as I find a satisfying way to use NXC on a Mac, it'll be here on this blog.

For now, here is a picture of my little robot - I-Bug. It is a differential drive robot with two touch sensors and a light sensor. I'm currently working on boundary following, and as soon as that's up and running, I'll do a video.

If any of you know of a good solution to NXC + Mac OS X, let me know!

The Dorrit Dilemma

2009-09-25T20:09:00.003-05:00

I have a bit of puzzler. If there's a book I really think I'll enjoy,I generally read it before watching the movie/mini series. I have violated this recently, watching the miniseries of Desmond Deronda without reading the George Elliott novel, but to be fair I wasn't aware of the novel before watching the miniseries. I also watched Atonement and The English Patient without reading the novels. On the other hand, I recently finally read The Lord of the Rings, and feel pleased that I can watch the movies without a sense of guilt. So question: should I watch the much lauded mini series Little Dorrit, which just won 7 out 11 Emmy's and is available for free legally on http://video.pbs.org/? Or should I wait and read Little Dorrit, considering it's one of the few Charles Dickens novels I haven't read and Dickens is one of my favorite authors. It's such a dilemma. Any opinions?

Bacon Chocolate

2009-09-19T18:14:00.004-05:00

This is inexcusable.
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Why? Why would anyone even think of ruining two wonderful foods like bacon and chocolate by combining them?

Edit: I don't think there's enough anger I can express about the thought of inventing bacon chocolate. The worst part is that the back of the chocolate bar said the woman had been trying to combine bacon chocolate since she was 5 years old. Why did growing up, getting a bachelor's degree and going to cooking school in France not stop her?

Movies of Summer 2009

2009-08-14T23:44:00.005-05:00

What's summer without movies? I don't tend to shell out money to see a movie in the theatres without being very motivated. I watched many movies that I rented/borrowed from the library - but that's for another post. This summer boasted two movies I was dying to see - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Star Trek - and two movies that I just happened to see - Up and District 9. How did they pan out? I'll list them, from my least favorite to the cream of the crop.

As a side note, I do plan on getting the dvd's of at least Up, Half Blood Prince and Star Trek.

3. District 9

Don't get me wrong, it's not that District 9 was a bad movie. It was just a little bit too gory for my personal taste. The only thing that kept me from disliking the movie was the wonderful philosophical question it raised. There always seems to be some sort of superiority complex in the Original Star Trek. I mean if there are aliens out there, what does the phrase human rights, or calling actions humane imply? District 9 really highlights these issues. If aliens landed on Earth who looked nothing like us, who completely repulsed us and who seemed to be savage creatures, what would we do? Is it right for us to perform experiments on them and keep them in Apartheid like concentration camps? And at what point will we get over our greed for better weapons? I really loved that the film asked all this and more. I just didn't love the pain a character was going through being reinforced over and over again. Why on Earth (if you'll pardon the phrase) would I want to watch someone pulling off their fingernails or their skin? It was just a little bit too much for me.

2. Up

Pixar is magical. For a while, I felt that Disney had lost the magic of the summer movie. As a child I couldn't wait to see the decorations put up at Sovereign Centre that would indicate what Disney's big summer movie would be. I memorised the songs from Lion King as my best friend and I listend to soundtrack on cassette. I ran around singing the songs of Pocahontas. We waddled like the ducks in the Aristocats. And now I can safely say, after several summers of solid hits (Ratatouille, Wall-E) that Pixar is really on a roll and has totally reimagined the magic of a Disney movie. Up was poignant, almost brought me to tears within the first 20 minutes. That was completely unexpected! And then it had me laughing for the remainder of the movie. I can't really say much without spoiling the plot, which was completely unexpected for me. It's just pure pleasure. Loved it.

1. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Speaking of magic...I start with a disclaimer. I am a Harry Potter geek. I've lost count of how many times I've re-read the books. I could probably enter competitions on Harry Potter trivia. And now, finally, I've gone to a Harry Potter movie, been completely sucked into the world, and left the theatre wanting to watch it again.

The above picture is from what I'd say is the second of the 3 opening scenes, that all seemlessly run into each other. I couldn't find an image of Dumbledore hugging Harry, but I have to mention it because that was the instant I knew I'd love the movie. It's not a long moment, and it's letting the audience in on a moment from the end of the previous film. This serves two functions. It ties this movie in with the previous one, and it gives us a glimpse of how much Dumbledore cares for Harry, protecting him at this harrowing time from the media and from the sorrow which must be sinking in. It's brilliantly done, because even though the books let us know how much Dumbledore cares for Harry, it hasn't been quite as apparent in the films (let's not forget the shouting/shaking scene in GoF). It also let us see how Daniel Radcliffe has improved by leaps and bounds in his acting skills.

HBP was full of these little moments. It had lots of laughs - Harry on Felix Felicis, why didn't I realise it would be like he's high? We kinda stormed into Harry and Ginny are attracted to each other, but it had to be done since Ginny's attraction to him wasn't set up enough in the previous films and Harry's realisation in the book is all internal. The cinematography was amazing; just look at that shot of Hogwarts.

And then there's Michael Gambon. One day he'll accidentally read one of the HP books and realise that the Dumbledore he almost faithfully portrayed in this movie is the Dumbledore he should have been portraying all along. Still, he did a wonderful job, and the cave scene at the end looks just like the British book cover. I was upset about his beginning of year speech and one of the things he said in reaction to Slughorn's memory but I suppose that's the script writer Steve Kloves' fault.

I of course commend everyone else's performances. Tom Felton had his best performance yet as Malfoy, very memorable. Emma Watson has improved a lot I think, along with the other younger cast members (Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright). Lavender Brown, played by Jessie Cave, was absolutely perfect!

I'm aware that people exist who haven't read the books, and of course not everyone watched the film in the theatres so I won't say much more. I do wholeheartedly recommend that you watch this movie though, even if you're an HP newbie. I'd say that you should probably start with movie 4 or 5, movie 3 prefferably, before getting to this one, since there isn't much introduction to the world.

Final thought: I'm counting down the days to Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2!

1. Star Trek

Tying for first place was the 11th Star Trek film. Another disclaimer - I'm on my way to becoming a Star Trek geek. I watched the entire original series (TOS) in preparation for this movie and I watched the first 6 movies (technically 5 1/2, didn't finish movie 6 in time) before. It was a wonderful decision because as much as this movie was skillfully made to be enjoyed by non Star Trek fans, it was made to be even more enjoyed by anyone who knows the original series.

My favorite thing about this movie may have been the casting. Uhura finally seemed to have a real job, Kirk wasn't getting every woman who walked in his path, and Spock's human side was visibly struggling with his Vulcan side. I'm not sure if I prefer Zachary Quinto's Spock to Leonard Nimoy's Spock yet, but I most certainly prefer Chris Pine's Kirk to William Shatner's. The others (Scotty, Bones, Chekov, and Sulu), who we were all waiting to see, played their roles well.

I can't say much about the plot without giving it away. Suffice it to say that I think it was a brilliant move and it gives them lots of leg room to make sequels. You can just see from the image below that this duo has lots of movies ahead of them.

Sometimes I get annoyed at the end of a movie when I can see their setting it up for sequels. In this case I say bring it on!

Setting up a Windows Machine

2009-07-15T17:54:00.000-05:00

Purely for selfish reasons I'm compiling a list of programs I add when setting up a windows machine. I say selfish because this is the second time in a month or so that I've had to set one up from scratch and i don't want to have remember again. I have so many programs that I need to survive, and I figure others may be interested, so it may not be so selfish. Here is the list, in roughly the order of importance and order they should be installed in. In case you're wondering, I have a different list for setting up Mac's and Linux machines and will try to get out posts with those lists.

Google Chrome
Firefox
Java
Open Office
JDK (If you use Netbeans, I recommend getting this distribution, which includes Netbeans and is much easier to set up)
Netbeans
MiKTeX (or whatever LaTeX distribution you prefer)
Xemacs (or whater text editor you prefer for LaTeX, right now I'm actually trying out TeXMaker)
Adobe Acrobat Reader
SSH Client
AVG Free
Dropbox
logmein
iTunes (I know it's heavy but if you have an iPod it's still the best way to go, and even without an iPod I've found it to be one of the easiest ways to make an mp3 cd)
Windows Live Writer (The only Microsoft product on this list, it's the best blogging software I've found so far for Windows, very useful for updating your blog when you're not near the internet, which is often the case when you're travelling)
VLC (Plays pretty much any kind of file you can imagine)
Skype
Inkscape (Wonderful for making diagrams, definitely comparable to Adobe Illustrator, and it's free!)
Audacity
Google Gears
eMusic
Amazon mp3 store installer
last.fm scrobbler (I'm maybe a bit too obssessed with analysing my music listening patterns)
Handbrake

I think this is just about everything I installed. Is there something you think I've overlooked? Let me know!

Toadstools

2009-07-14T15:07:00.002-05:00

There's something delightfully fairy-ish
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

There's something delightfully fairy-ish about calling these toadstools isn't there?

I hate you too eMusic

2009-06-02T20:06:00.009-05:00

How dare you eMusic?

I'm trying very hard to be calm.

So I'm browsing around the internet, looking up articles on Napster's 10 year anniversary, when I stumble across this story about eMusic. Now as a customer of eMusic for 1 1/2 years, my first reaction was eMusic couldn't have changed their prices, that must be for new customers. Then I stopped and thought about it. My two out of my three interactions with eMusic's customer service have not been pleasant. So I rushed to my eMusic software, only to notice a nice little notice on the homepage: "In July, we'll be rolling out a major expansion to our music catalog. Please read the announcement for details on how this change affects your account."

Lets pause for a second and think about this. You may not be aware for this, but eMusic is a subscription based service. I give them $15 every month for 50 downloads. I'm a subscriber, going on 2 years now. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but WHY THE HELL HAVE THEY NOT EMAILED ME? They change my plan and they don't even have the decency to inform me?

Ok, still trying to remain calm. So, I go to their announcement. Guess what I see? Starting July 24th, I will recieve 37 downloads instead of 50. Yup, they reduced the number of downloads and didn't have the ******* decency to tell me. Sure the announcement was full of "Oh, we got Sony on board" and "Our catalog will be expanding" but the number of downloads are decreasing and they DID NOT TELL ME. And look at this nice little blog post from the CEO. Guess what he doesn't mention? The price hike. And lets not forget that was dated May 31st, a Sunday. They knew fully well they were having this price hike, and I was on eMusic on Friday and Saturday and got no notice.

So I'm pissed. This is unforgiveable. It is not cool for you eMusic to change your customer's plans without telling them because guess what - without customers, you don't exists. Furthermore, you've just lost out. I've been considering increasing my download plan to 75 for a while, but there is no way in hell that I'm giving you any money, and if I start to feel to restricted by you 37 downloads a month, I'm leaving. You will never get more than $15 a month from me, and considering how tight my finances have been, don't count on that for too long. And guess what - I'm not the only one. Oh yea. The message boards have been so bad that they had to respond themselves - what a mistake. Maybe Cathy thought that this message would soothe us -

Hi Everyone:
We're here, and we're reading every word. We feel as passionately about eMusic as you do and would not have made this decision if we did not feel strongly that it will be beneficial to everyone involved.

We've given it a lot of thought, and we're confident that we can integrate Sony music in a way that does justice to eMusic -- and not just eMusic as a business, but eMusic as those of us who use it every day know and love it.

Obviously, a lot of comments have been about the pricing. The Great Recession of 2009 is not the best time to be doing this. We own up to that. However, we - and our labels - simply cannot sustain some of the lowest cost plans that many of you currently have. The price increase is not just about Sony, it is for all of our labels, including the ones that have left over the years and those we have yet to sign.

We appreciate you, our most loyal customers, and we understand that people have naturally reacted strongly to yesterday's news. All that we can ask is that you show some patience, that you see how we go about handling this catalogue. We have a lot to offer real music fans. We have since 1998, we do today, and we will once Sony launches. That will not change.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We will continue to check back.

Cathy Halgas Nevins
eMusic

- but she was mistaken. Even more mistaken was dear Yancey.

A few things to note:

The new pricing benefits everyone. Existing indie labels, future labels (indie and major), etc. It's not just for Sony.

Regarding the grandfathering plans, it definitely sucks to see your downloads cut. But this isn't out of a lack of loyalty: this is because those plans, which we have grandfathered for a few years, would now be priced at a loss. We changed what some of you spend per-track so that it was equal to what everyone else spends. Whether Sony happened or not, this was an eventuality. An eventuality that stinks, yes, but one all the same.

The majority of folks saw very few to no changes in their plan. The plans that did see changes were the ones whose pricing was far below what we pay out. We just couldn't continue subsidizing those accounts. It's more math than anything else.

The broader question of how Sony incorporates into eMusic is one that I have been thinking about quite a bit. And I'll be honest: there are some definite challenges and we'll be figuring them out as we go along. But as I said in the 17 Dots post, our taste and our values -- and here I'm talking about me, Joe, Alex, Maris, Jayson, our writers and the tone of the site that you help define -- is the same. All of you regulars in particular I hope will recognize how deeply we hold our beliefs, and how much we love indie music. The idea that any of us would ever abandon that... just not going to happen.

The last 36 hours have sucked. I went quiet as I waited for tempers to cool a bit. I've been getting a lot of emails from folks saying that yesterday was a range of emotions, and that while they still aren't sure how they feel about this move, they're going to see how things shake out. And that's a completely rational way to approach this, and I can't argue with it at all. I'm crossing my fingers that that's what can happen this week.

I'm going to be posting a new arrivals on 17 Dots soon. God knows what will happen in the comments, but there are great new records to talk about and I don't want us to overlook them over our inside-baseball stuff. So if you read this and are feeling like talking about music, I'd appreciate a comment or two. If you don't feel like it, totally cool.

Yancey

PS: I am going on vacation on Thursday and will be gone about two weeks. Completely unrelated to all of this.

PPS: It seems a meme has developed around this "slight" word. The NY Times wrote that, not us.

PPPS: With album pricing and all of that: this will not just be Sony titles. All labels will be able to opt in (and we will introduce it to the UK, EU and Canada later on). I don't have many more details yet, but when we do we will share them. This will be a good thing for everyone.

Admitedly, I wasn't amused by either of those posts. Still, you live and you learn. Or you go out of business.

Tokyo – Shibuya at night

2009-05-21T17:45:00.002-05:00

I didn’t know a city could be so colorful. We arrived in Tokyo by the Shinkansen, then went took the train to Uiguisudani, where our hotel is. The train was packed, I think we were in the tail end of rush hour. Anyway, after we put our luggage up, we left to see Shibuya at night and got off from the train station at the biggest intersection I’ve ever seen.

Read More...

Shinkansen

2009-05-20T18:31:00.002-05:00

I can now say I’ve seen Mount Fuji – we sped past it on the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo. Of course we bought a bento – a box lunch. This is a requirement for riding the shinkansen.

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Kyoto – Day 2: Rokuon-ji Temple and Ryoanji Temple

2009-05-20T17:07:00.001-05:00

Before leaving for Tokyo, we spent the morning sightseeing, at the Golden Pavilion and the Zen Garden. Rokuon-ji Temple is known as the Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku, because it has a Pavilion which is golden. Not fake gold either, some shogun went all out when designing his retirement home, and used actual thin sheets of gold on the outer walls.

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Kyoto – Day 1: Nijo-jo and Kiyomizu-dera

2009-05-20T16:36:00.002-05:00

Kyoto is very different from Kobe and Nara. It has the history of Nara, but is much bigger and has more temples, but has less charm somehow. It’s also not as pristine as Kobe…I could see myself living in Kobe, at last for a little while, but Kyoto was different…I can’t put my finger on it. Still, it has amazing stuff, we were only able to walk through a castle and a temple in one day, they were both so huge and took so much time to walk through.
We first went to Nijo-jo, Nijo Castle. This is from 1603 though it’s been through at least 2 fires (lightning and a big Kyoto fire). It’s surrounded by a huge moat.

Then it of course has a super huge gate with some beautiful gold details.

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More Nara

2009-05-19T23:05:00.001-05:00

The first Nara post was becoming unwieldy so I decided to break it into two posts. Incidentally, I took 357 pictures/videos during our Nara sightseeing day, so it’s understandable that I have to break this day into two posts.
After seeing Todai-ji, things start to blur together…I know we saw a really big bell, but I’m not sure what it was attached to. It’s definitely the biggest bell I’ve ever seen though.

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Nara

2009-05-19T08:03:00.002-05:00

Nara is without competition one of the most peaceful tranquil beautiful places I’ve ever seen. We got there around 6 pm and went down this really cool street, Sanjo-dori, which is apparently the center of Nara.

Our Ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) was actually on this street (so we were happy with Lars for at least one night). We stayed at the Ryokan Hakuho –

- a place which seemed absolutely amazing and charming…until our second night, when Lars and Kristen found a roach in their suitcase. Needless to say, we packed up and switched hotels, to the Super Hotel close to the Nara JR Train Station. Luckily I hadn’t written up this post yet, so I don’t have to take back all the nice things I was going to say, and will instead warn people against going to this place, since their only reaction to finding a roach in Lars and Kristen’s suitcase was to spray some roach spray. Then they disappeared and went to take a shower or something.
This doesn’t spoil the amazing time I had in Nara. There were all these school children, from the very young to the very old, all out on field trips -

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Highlights from ICRA ‘09, Kobe, Japan

2009-05-17T19:25:00.003-05:00

ICRA has begun and ended. Here are my highlights from the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2009. Located in Kobe, Japan, there were definitely perks to being able to present at this year’s ICRA.

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Himeji-jo (The Himeji Castle)

2009-05-17T18:30:00.001-05:00

Before heading to Nara, we made a detour to see Himeji-jo, a castle about 30 minutes by train from Kobe. So we had breakfast and bid farewell to Kobe. It’s really quite a lovely city.

The day was persistently rainy, but we still had fun. The castle is really beautiful. You can see it from a distance, almost as soon as you leave the train station.

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First Conference Presentation

2009-05-16T00:59:00.004-05:00

I just gave my first ever conference presentation. The level of nervousness will never recaptured (thank God), and all things considered, I think it went quite well. Really. I was so nervous before, it reminded me of back in the day when I'd have a piano exam or a piano recital and my hands would just be shaking. The benefit here is that shaky hands can just be put behind my back. I don't think my mouth has ever felt so dry, I'm actually kind of glad now that my talk was so late in the conference, because I may have self destructed if I had a larger room of people. I even got some laughs (the picture to the right helped)...and of course, when I gave my anecdote about getting lost in Kobe last night, after Karaoke, there were some shared smiles in the audience (the people I was at Karaoke with). All in all, not a bad memory.

Now I can finally enjoy Japan without this presentation hanging over my head. There'll be a couple more posts about my past couple of days in Kobe, and then it's on to Nara!

Day 3 - Feeling Sick and the Starship Enterprise

2009-05-15T00:58:00.003-05:00

I must have eaten something that disagreed with me, because yesterday was painful...hence no update yesterday, and I'm yet to add pictures for yesterday. Also, I'm overwhelmed by the number of cool things I've seen, the highlight of which (at least for yesterday) was a fashion museum that looked like the Enterprise from the outside, especially at night.
Edit: Beam me up Scotty! The Enterprise has landed on Rokko Island, Kobe, Japan.

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Jetlag - Day 2

2009-05-13T06:12:00.003-05:00

I keep waiting for jetlag to set in. I am kinda tired now, at the end of the day, but I don't feel completely thrown off...maybe because I messed up my sleep schedule so much before I got here. Hehe...

I love Kobe. Pictures to follow later.

Edit: Kobe is very picturesque.

We first went to the conference building to pick up our registration stuff,

and found this cute little “French” cafe.

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Seoul

2009-05-12T04:53:00.005-05:00

I'm in Asia!! And I've had lots of Korean food, had this dish called Bibimbab twice already. This place is a century ahead of the US, my poor phone isn't advanced enough to work here (not 3G). Well, I'll edit this post later with my notes I took on the food on the plane (quite good), stay tuned, got to run.

Edit: I really recommend Korean Air, their service is great and their uniforms are adorable. It may be the best airplane food I've ever had...I was worried when they started by giving us peanuts, but then they gave us 2 meals plus this roll with meat in it.

Of course the conversation with the flight attendant was hilarious.

Flight Attendant: "Beef or Bibimbap?"

Me: "Beef or what?"

Flight Attendant: "Bibimbap."

Me: "What is in bi-bi-.."

Flight Attendant: "Bibimbap."

Me: "Ok, I guess I'll have Bibimbap."

Really it tasted good, but man I was confused.

First Japan Post

2009-05-11T12:34:00.002-05:00

Well here we go, my first japan post. I'
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Well here we go, my first japan post. I'm dead tired from excitement. The korean air flight attendants are super cute, they look like dolls! Time to take off, next post will be from a foreign land.

We aren't cool enough for this

2009-05-04T17:53:00.002-05:00

P020109PS-0339
Originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream

The Obamas and a room full of White House guests in 3-D glasses? Need I say anything else? I think the awesomeness of the picture speaks for itself.

Mac OS X Tip of the Week

2009-05-01T19:03:00.004-05:00

I figured this out a week ago actually...the best way to rip movies from dvds on a Mac. Now let me start with a disclaimer: I'm not advocating stealing movies, but if you have paid money for a dvd, and you're going on a trip and want to watch it on your iPod, then you may want to make a copy of your movie that you paid for instead of paying for it twice. With that said, this is my quick and dirty way of doing this.

Now for a while, just using Handbrake was fine. It was completely easy, and as long as I changed the encoding to MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) instead of H.264 (does not work reliably on my iPod Classic), I was fine. Recently, I've been stocking up on movies to watch on my long flight to Japan, and suddenly, Handbrake is not decoding dvds properly. I'm not sure what's changed, perhaps I updated my version of Handbrake, but I was a bit bummed. After some searching around, I discovered MacTheRipper. It's amazing! So here are the steps:

Insert DVD
Start MacTheRipper and then press Start (you may want to change the location that it saves the files to in the menu)
You now have the VIDEOTS folder on your harddrive
Now, start Handbrake
Use your VIDEOTS folder that's been ripped onto your harddrive as the source folder in Handbrake
Change output settings appropriately, depending on what device you'll be watching the video on

And that's it! It's ridiculously simple, and this way, you can actually do multiple movies at once, since Handbrake's source is now your harddrive.

Summary: Use MacTheRipper and then Handbrake
Cost: Free, both programs are open source

Grilled shrimp caprese at olive garden

2009-04-26T15:12:00.002-05:00

Grilled shrimp caprese at olive garden
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Maybe I've had too much real Italian food and my taste buds are starting to get acclimatized... but the grilled shrimp caprese at olive garden was not all I hoped it would be. I mean it was good...the shrimp was grilled well...but it was either too garlicky or too salty or too cheesy. Or maybe all of the above. I think Olive Garden has been making their pastas too saucy, at least the one here, and this detracts from their dishes. Oh well.

The last of the spring pictures

2009-04-22T12:36:00.002-05:00

This may be the last of the spring pictu
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

This may be the last of the spring pictures because it should be clear that winter has lost the battle. And all these freakish cold days are just desperate cries for attention. Really, the only season winter can beat is fall.

The march towards spring continues.

2009-04-19T14:26:00.004-05:00

The march towards spring continues
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

The march towards spring continues. Take that winter! Despite all your best efforts i wore flip flops yesterday and i hear the crows and other birds returning as i text.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Live Trailer

2009-04-16T19:51:00.006-05:00

Here's to hoping that this is the movie where a Harry Potter film lives up to or surpasses the book...Also, I just wanted to try out this live streaming of a trailer. I know, I played right into their marketing strategy.

[The Hulu live trailer was here when it was...well, live. See youtube link below for the trailer.]

Edit: So the trailer is epic, more epic than the previous trailers for this movie. And I know the book was epic (HBP is one of my favorites in the series). So the question remains, will the movie be epic too?

Edit 2: I downloaded the quicktime HD version of the trailer...and now I'm kind of drooling over both this movie and the Star Trek movie. Looks like a good movie summer is shaping up...

Edit 3: A more permanent link:

Blooming tree

2009-04-14T10:07:00.003-05:00

Blooming tree More evidence i've collect
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

More evidence i've collected to prove to myself that this is just a cold spring, but spring nonetheless.

April eMusic Downloads: Ojos De Brujo and Jamaican Oldies

2009-04-11T14:56:00.008-05:00

I'm starting a new segment where I blog about what I've downloaded on eMusic this month. When I first joined eMusic, I wasn't sure if I'd eventually run out of things to download, 50 seemed high, but I figured I'd try it out, and as soon as it started to get hard, I'd cut back to 30 a month. That was October 2007. Two and a half years later, I'm still finding tonnes of stuff to download, and if I had 75 downloads available this month, I think I would have used it up. This is not to say that I'm completely happy with eMusic. I would prefer a rollover system, where my unused downloads rollover to another month, at least for 3 months. I'm also unhappy with their customer service, which is practically nonexistent, and when you do find someone, they're unsufferably rude. But enough, I digress.

This month found me downloading music by Lura, Habib Koite, Ojos De Brujo, Myriam Makeba, Sanchez, Buju Banton, Tony Rebel, Musical Youth, Pluto, and Sean Paul & Sasha.

Now technically I discovered Lura (Afro-Portuguese/Cape Verdian) last month, upon recommendation from one of my Aunts. She and Habib Koite (West African/Malian) fall into a category of music I've been exploring recently, modern African music, or Afro-something fusion. I say something because many of these artists have grown up in Portugal, France, Spain, England, America, wherever, and their music reflects this fusion of African and other genres. This genre is really becoming a favourite of mine.

Next up we have Ojos De Brujo ("jipjop flamenkillo"/Flamenco), which may have been my greatest new artist find this month. I'm not sure how I never ran across them before, but thanks to my Buika Pandora station, I heard their amazing song, Todo Tiende. Their style is similar to Gipsy Kings and Rodrigo y Gabriela.

Of course the music download that might have made me the happiest was "Love Tastes Like Strawberries", by Miriam Makeba. [See previous post] I've been looking for this song for ages, and while investigating the new prices on the newly DRM-free iTunes, I stumbled upon the album, "Le Monde de Myriam Makeba", finally avilable digitally. I then hopped over to eMusic to find that it was available there as well, so after long months of patience, I own it! It truly is a lovely song, probably one of the best love songs.

Finally, with 8 downloads remaining, I was missing Jamaica this morning, so I went on a hunt for some Jamaican oldies. eMusic seems to have a deal with VP Records, because I was able to find such classics like "Ramgoat Liver" by Pluto and "Pass The Dutchie" by Musical Youth. Also, Sean Paul's remix of "I'm Still in Love With You" with Sasha is one of the best remixes of a song, certainly one of the best dancehall songs of a reggae song.

The one song I'm still searching for is "Two White Girls Pon a Minibus" by The Word, though I did find it on youtube.

I already know what I'm downloading next month - "Fresh Vegetable" by Tony Rebel.

Steak at jim gould

2009-04-09T23:04:00.004-05:00

I just had an amazing 6 oz filet topped with steak butter and haricot vert at jim gould. If it weren't an etiquette dinner, I'd have taken my camera out to take a picture. Steak should always taste just like that.

The first course was a garden sald with a lemon-oregano vinagreitte. Was a good salad dressing, though a little bit too much of it, should have said on the side. No worries. The bread was also very good, I mean yes, I'm talking about bread, this was really nice, fresh baked melt in your mouth bread.

So all of this had me anticipating my 6 o.z. filet. And I was not disappointed. At all. There are very few chefs who understand what well done means. Well done does not mean that I actually meant medium well, or that I wanted it overcooked, or that I wanted it charred. Well done means that I want my beef cooked while remaining juicy, moist and succulent. They certainly delivered. I left absolutely nothing on my plate, not even a grain of the wild rice medley.

Of course by the time we got to the melt in my mouth Chocolate Torte with strawberries, I was understandably full, but I still couldn't resist eating half of it, and packaged the rest for hopefully not a midnight snack.

So the famous jim gould lived up to their reputation, I'd definitely recommend them to anyone looking for fine dining in Champaign.

Crocheting a Baby Blanket

2009-04-09T22:55:00.004-05:00

So my rug crocheting project is on hold because I'll be crocheting blankets! Now I know I have a number of options. I can go the granny square route, which has maximum portability and is kinda fun. I did, however, stumble upon these two adorable patterns:

Yellow Ducky Blanket and Crayon Blanket

Which do I choose?! I'll update you with pictures whenever I choose...Plus there's a second blanket project I have to start immediately after, I might work on it on that long flight to/from Japan.

Dandelions!

2009-04-08T15:10:00.003-05:00

DSC00377
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Maybe i just want to believe, but dandelions are a sure fire sign of spring!

Today i spotted the first signs of spring

2009-04-01T12:19:00.003-05:00

Today i spotted the first signs of sprin
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Today i spotted the first signs of spring. Yay! I'd be in a good mood - but ranting blog post to come later.

FW: Flickr test 2

2009-03-13T10:28:00.003-05:00

FW: Flickr test 2
Originally uploaded by Cool Super Geek

Flickr test 2

So I've tried forever to directly upload photos to my blog from my phone, which by the way is a Sony Ericcson W580i, so it's supposed to be so easy. It never worked. But yesterday it occurred to me, let's try uploading to flickr and have flickr automatically post it to my blog. It worked!!! Doesn't that seem wrong somehow?

I will return to blogging about food, I promise.