Full disclosure

For readers of ye olde blog who aren't up-to-date with the more meanigful aspects of my life, a quick update on the parts of the world which I revolve around and, on occaision, revolve around me.

I've moved to the upper Upper East Side of NYC and begun working full-time for a relatively young company named Google, Inc. As their headquarters are in Mountain View, I'm working in their remote office in midtown Manhattan.

Amusingly enough, Google has made me part of the Blogger team. That's right, I now spend my time making this site better and cooler. I'm really enjoying my first few weeks at work and I look forward to (positively) impacting company and... the world. At least the internety parts of it.

surreality

it's funny because it's true

More fun links

Got a lot of positive feedback on the last post, so I figured I'd put up some more links to interesting programs/links

• Google pedometer - Measure the length of paths using google maps! (double click to mark path anchors).
• Deskwin - A little application for Windows that gives you multiple desktops. What makes it nicer than most other applications is that it's easy to move windows between desktops (drag them in the little preview window), your taskbar only shows the windows on that desktop, and you can set keyboard shortcuts for switching between desktops.
• TopDesk - Apple OS X's Expose for Windows. In lay terms, it's a nifty little eye-candy program that makes switching between windows cooler than you ever thought it could be.
• Metrofreefi.com - What's that? Just moved into a new apartment in a big city and don't have any internet till the cable guy comes 2 weeks from now? Well, you're probably not reading my blog if you are, but if you ever find yourself in such a situation, use this site to find somewhere you can get your wireless fix for free.
• Web Sudoku - I started doing sudoku puzzles when my home paper (L.A. Times) began carrying them. They can get pretty tough and are surprisingly enjoyable for a game that involves nothing but numbers....
• Google Firefox Extensions - Little plug-ins of goodness from everyone's favorite search company for everyone's favorite browser. Includes the recently released Google Firefox Toolbar.
• Google SMS - Ok, I know, this is a lot of Google and this one isn't even an internet thing; still, when people ask me about what kind of stuff is left for Google to do, Google SMS is the cool little application no one's heard of but knocks everyone's socks off. SMS a geographic query (e.g. store + zip code: "Jamba Juice 10128") to GOOGL (46645) and Google will text message you back with the address (and phone number) of the nearest store that matches (you can be general too, querying "Ice Cream 02139" yields the addresses for Toscaninis, Dunkin Donuts, and Baskin Robbins). A lifesaver in an urban jungle like Manhattan.

That's it for now. If this stuff is still tickling your pickle, let me know and I can keep this stuff coming.

Move to NYC is almost done -- a few of the last apt. pieces fall into place this weekend.


I am thoroughly incompetent at all things Ikea.

Internet round-up

I've been home for a little over 3 weeks and just now has the boredom finally reached "maybe I'll post to the blog" levels. Well, that's not totally true... I did make that last post about penguins, but who could resist posting about penguins?

Anyways, I mainly distract myself by surfing the internet. Periodically I'm surprised by how many people know nothing about all the interesting software/websites out there on the internet. Really, this isn't very surprising since the only reason I know all these cool net things is because (a) I'm a geek (b) I have a fast internet connection (c) I'm generally quite bored. Anyways, here's a round-up of interesting stuff that I think is cool... some of it is common stuff, some of it is a bit obscure.

1. Firefox + Adblock (+ filter) is good stuff. I know I've posted about this in the past, so I won't say more.
2. Tracks up the Tree - is a podcast focusing on indie music. You don't need iTunes/an-ipod/macosx whatever to listen. You just need a computer and an internet connection to listen. The hosts (Funtime Ben and Josiah) didn't strike me as terribly funny when I first started listening (I used to listen primarily for the music) but their last few shows have been quite hilarious.
3. del.icio.us/popular - in big words, del.icio.us is a "social bookmarking community" or something like that. Practically speaking, it's somewhere you can bookmark cool/interesting websites, adding little tags to describe what the site is about (my bookmarks can be found here). The /popular page lists those websites which have received a lot of attention recently -- thus acting as a collection of cool new websites for the exploring. Particularly if you're bored, like I often am. Yeah... I check /popular about twice a day....
4. skype - you can talk (voice talk, not typing talk) to other people for free through your computer. This isn't the crappy, circa 2001, shouting into a cheap headset internet telephony... it's really easy to use (especially on laptops, which almost always have a built in microphone, even the old ones) and is like using a normal speaker phone... except that it's *free*... even talking to people on the other side of the world.
5. Google Maps - somehow, some people never found out about Google's venture into online cartography. Well, if that someone is you, then get your fingers clicking. Note, you can drag the map. no waiting to reload, just move the map as needed. Apparently you can do smooth zooming in IE too, but really, it's not worth using a crappy browser.
6. answers.com - is like m-w.com or dictionary.com, but much cooler, better looking, useful, and informative.
7. CommunityBits - snippets of politics related media (like the Daily Show). It's rss friendly, so easy to keep track of through a podcast subscriber or through an rss aggregator like
8. Bloglines - It's not for reading blogs (though you can use it to do that). It's about being intelligent when surfing the web and not having to read the same thing twice. News sites, webcomics, blogs, media sources, what have you -- find out when there's something new and never have to sort through stuff you've already seen. Trust me, it'll change the way you use the internet.
9. Live Music Archive - recordings of live concerts by groups/musicians like Howie Day, Jason Mraz, the Grateful Dead, Tenacious D, Jack Johnson, and (one of my favorites) Glen Phillips. All for free. You used to need a winamp plug-in to play the music, but now-a-days a lot of it is available in .mp3 so just go ahead and listen.
10. flickr- I don't actually use flickr... yet. A lot of other people do, however, and it's really one of the best online photo sharing websites I've ever seen. So use it and when you have pictures to share with me, I'll appreciate it.
11. TinyURL - Too many links but not enough space in your AIM profile? Have a long url that would be a pain to send anybody? TinyURL will totally rock your socks around the block. It makes long urls really short so you can send them with ease. AND TinyURL comes in a handy bookmarklet form. Just take (TinyURL!) <-- that link and drag it to your bookmark toolbar. Then, whenever you're surfing the net and you want to send someone a link to the page you're at, click the "TinyURL!" in your bookmark toolbar and it'll automatically make a tinyURL for you. It's like magic! Except not. But it's still cool.
12. How to (painlessly) phase out of MIT e-mail - Aimed at MIT alums (or soon to be alums) but it really can work for anyone in college. Your school e-mail will expire eventually and, presumably, you'll start using online e-mail services like Gmail instead. This handy little website (written by me... because I was bored) shows you how to set up your current e-mail preferences so that when that day comes, you'll be able to make the school->web transition with remarkable ease.
    

Alright, that's enough listing for me. Time to sleep. Hope y'all found something useful in the list.

Apple - Trailers - March Of The Penguins

This has to be one of the cutest things ever: Apple - Trailers - March Of The Penguins (courtesy of nanphan).

more arrested development

As reported by an article on the TV Squad website, the best-written show on television, Arrested Development, will be back for a second season. The only way this could get any better is if they start distributing it online too.

The MPAA/RIAA Guide to Leveraging New & Promising Technology: just kill it

Today the MPAA targeted and shut down 6 major websites which specialized specifically in trading television programs via bittorrent (cnet story).

I, personally, was a regular user of the first site listed in the MPAA press release, shunTV. While I can't speak for the other websites which were targeted, shunTV had a very specific and strictly enforced "no HBO shows and no DVD rips" policy. As a result, almost all shows posted to the site were captures of television shows freely availible on broadcast television. Thanks to shunTV, my tv viewing habits grew by approximately 700%, I started buying television show DVDs that I would have never purchased otherwise, and I started writing a column for the MIT school newspaper about all things television related.

What is particularly frustrating is that, as far as I can tell, there isn't a very strong legal standing for the MPAA's actions. Movies? Music? You know, the MPAA and RIAA came off as bullies, but it truly was within their prerogative to take legal action -- both are content which users pay for that is often behind a content protection technology. Broadcast television, on the other hand is transmitted over what is considered the "national resource" that is the television broadcast spectrum and is, by definition, NOT enclosed in any sort of content protection. IN FACT, the federal courts just recently ruled that the FCC (taking action requested by the MPAA) did not have the authority to even INTRODUCE such restrictive technology. In this case, the MPAA is just plain-ol-big-enough that it can flex its muscle and shut down these sites which can't take the risk (shunTV didn't charge money or run ads, so I seriously doubt it was trying to make a profit, let alone a signficant take-on-the-MPAA like profit) or bear the cost of questioning their authority.

All of this two weeks after the return of a television show which was resurrected, more than two years after its cancellation, thanks to staggeringly high DVD sales fueled ALMOST ENTIRELY by extensive online trading by young adults.

Such stupidity

look ma, a blog

I went to a talk Friday about algorithmic analysis of social networks. The talker collected data from the livejournal community and so, as an aside, asked a room full of ~40-50 members of MIT CSAIL how many of us had a blog. About 4 of us raised our hands. Is it me, or does that strike you as rather low? I still remember how at the beginning of last summer I had to explain to one of my coworkers what a blog even was. I thought these things were commonplace by now.

Moon toilet/the cobbler is in Taiwan right now providing humrous cultural commentary she's allowed to make because she's the right ethnicity. Anyways, apparently National Geographic there had a show about viruses which devolved into a sexually charged indian music video. This leaves me utterly speechless... I'm flabbergasted and so confused as to (a) how someone could ever come up with this (b) what it was doing on Taiwanese television.

More comics which will disappear evntually.

i hate the flag policy

This makes me very happy

can you even do that with a cheeseburger?

more colorful commentary can be found here. If you don't understand what's going on, perhaps you don't know what "i'd hit it" generally implies.

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > The Man Date

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > The Man Date: "Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie 'Friday Night Lights' is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not."

It's an interesting thought -- though the author left "getting drinks" off the list of non-man-dates despite it being a common guy thing and (i think, at least) a viable date possibility. I'd never really thought of it before, but most of my lunch appointments during the week are with women (not all though -- Whitehead Inst. salmon on Friday's with Javy is a regular). Intriguing that the article author had to make up a name for the activity.

Lastly, am I hallucinating or does the by-line state her middle initial is "8"?

more comic

The problem with blogging about comics is that they generally disappear after about a month, so the image files I link to will probably not be in this post after a few weeks. Oh well.

It looks like Aaron McGruder of "Boondocks" fame is back at trying to get himself censored again. It's hilarious stuff.

no comic swap

It used to be an April Fool's tradition that on April 1st, comic strip artists would swap comics for the day (e.g. Jim Davis would draw "FoxTrot" and Bill Amend would draw "Garfield"). Doesn't look like anyone did that this year, which is sad -- it was cool to see artists trying their hand at someone else's character.

The only hack I'm aware of is this one (as documented by @ philly.com): "Three of the strips, Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley, Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, and FoxTrot by Bill Amend, are virtually identical. They feature a story about a Ouija board that is supposed to spell out messages from the great beyond, but is used by one character to write out insults to another. Satchel in Fuzzy, Paige in Fox and Pig in Pearls get the taunts, and all reply with the punch-line, 'I imagined the afterlife to be a more peaceful place.'"

the strips:

does anyone else know of other hacks?

more mashing

Still listening to mashups. Here are some more songs I'm listening to.

• Screaming Pro in Hell by Team9 (Beck vs. Michael & Janet Jackson vs. AC/DC)
  
• DJ Love Affair by Loo & Placido. (The Notwist - One with the Freaks, Curtis Mayfield - Astunded, Indeep - Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, Daft Punk - Harder Faster Stronger Better)
  
  
• Astounded Saliva by solcofn (Curtis Mayfield vs RJD2)
  
• Sexual High by Go Home Productions (Marvin Gaye / Radiohead)
  
• Sweet Home Country Grammar by DJ Mei-Lwun (Lynyrd Skynyrd vs. Nelly)
  

enjoy.

pod world

After getting my new ipod about 3 weeks ago, I decided to check out podcasting (of recent mention in the NYTimes). While I still think there's a pretty high signal/noise ratio out there amongst podcasters, there are a few goodies like Coverville, The Laporte Report, and (my favorite) On the Media. "On the Media" is actually an NPR show, i.e. a real bona-fide radio program; it's just waaay more convenient to listen to it on my iPod than trying to catch on the radio.

Anyways, you don't need an iPod to listen to these things, just a computer and a podcast aggregator. I used to listen to the radio 24/7 when I was in high school but now only listen for the 30 seconds it takes to get me out of bed in the morning. While I love the music I have, it's nice to have some new music(or intelligent/interesting fodder for thought) to freshen things up.

Partly due to listening to Adam Curry's The Daily Source Code, I've started listening to a lot of mashups recently. Some of them are quite good and I'm especially fond of Beatles mashups because they add flavor to quality music that's almost gone bland after static repitition. Anyway, a few favs are: "No One Takes Your Freedom" by DJ Earworm, "Numb/Encore" by Linkin Park + Jay-Z, and "Boulevard of Broken Songs" by Party Ben. Check 'em out and see if you get addicted too.

The New York Times > National > Jailing of Reporters in C.I.A. Leak Case Is Upheld by Judges

The New York Times > National > Jailing of Reporters in C.I.A. Leak Case Is Upheld by Judges: "Two reporters who have refused to name their sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer should be jailed for contempt, a unanimous three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington ruled yesterday.

The panel held that the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, may have witnessed a federal crime - the disclosure by government officials of the officer's identity. The First Amendment, the panel ruled, does not give reporters the right to refuse to cooperate with grand juries investigating such crimes."

It's a good question, should reporter's be able to receive information that is illegal for anyone to disclose? What pisses me off is that Robert Novak, the guy who published the identity of a secret agent, is not the one being jailed. That makes no sense to me.

baby eaters

as posted on the recently killed
lokitorrent.com





Good god, when was the last time you saw a company consciously launching a campaign of terror? I don't use bittorrent to download illegal music but tactics like these inspire me to commit egregious acts of violence against the heads of the MPAA (and RIAA).

Perhaps they should use this as inspiration for future campaigns?

the way we speak

I've always been very sensitive about the way people speak. I often identify voices not by their tone or pitch, but the way they pronounce words and their inflection. If only I could consciously reproduce these subtleties, I would be great at doing impersonations.

Anyways, over the last few months, I've noticed that I speak like a theoretical computer scientist, or, at the very least, an MIT theory of CS person. In everyday conversation I talk normally, but when I start explaining something, or stating an opinion, I start introducing pauses, emphasis, and sentence inflections in a way that people in my lab do. I've always been slightly conscious of this, but as I sit here in the Theory of Cryptography Conference, I'm acutely aware of how distinct a way the people here have of explaining things. There are some variations of this "Theory accent" and I'm quite sure that the MIT version of the accent has been heavily influenced by the Italian accent of Silvio Micali.

This, I think, is due to the facts that Silvio a) has the strongest accent in the department and b) is easily the most interesting person to listen to for any period of time. Regardless of the cause, however, it's rather surreeal to be talking to someone about something utterly non-geek-related and realize I'm speaking with a mild Italian inflection (not pronunciation, mind you, inflection).

For example: In normal English, when you pose a rhetorical question, you do it much in the same way you would pose a normal question: your voice rolls up and down as you ask the question, with natural peaks at both the key word in the question (i.e. who/what/etc.) and the sentence end. With an MIT TOC accent, however, your voice naturally ramps up during the entire question, raising in urgency until you reach the end of your rhetoric question. Then you have a pause, where it is clear that no one should interject an answer, then you give your answer with strong emphasis.

I guess it's natural for people who spend a lot of time talking each other to speak in a similar way (e.g. siblings), but it's just so strange to think of that happening to you in someplace like the crypto group at MIT....

the end is nigh

Just a few minutes ago, I saw a girl running on a treadmill and talking on her cellphone at the same time. And I'm not talking "earbud crazy person wire"-talking on the phone -- she was full on holding the phone to her right ear as she ran at an awkward angle to compensate for the fact that she was only swinging around her left arm.

Crazy. Maybe she was talking to her personal trainer? I don't know.

do the evolution

Now that I've stopped updating my news-related blog, i feel the need to post striking facts in this blog. Apparently not only are youth ignorant about the 1st amendment, but only recently did half of this sountry start believing in evolution. I remember my Biology AP teacher, a devout Christian, started the evolution unit with the disclaimer "I don't believe this, but it's covered on the AP so I'm going to teach you this." But it's still amazing...

The New York Times > Science > Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes: "In a 2001 survey, the National Science Foundation found that only 53 percent of Americans agreed with the statement 'human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.'

And this was good news to the foundation. It was the first time one of its regular surveys showed a majority of Americans had accepted the idea. According to the foundation report, polls consistently show that a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds believe that this belief should be taught along with evolution in public schools."