Thursday, April 29, 2004

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I?

Sent to me by a coworker: What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I? My result:

What Video Game Character Are You? I am a Gauntlet Adventurer.I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly.

I don't think I hoard food. I eat it too quickly.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Orkut GeoMapper

I've seen this a couple of times now: Orkut Personal Network GeoMapper. It geographically displays links between you and your orkut friends, to the second degree (FoaF).

Here's my map:


Looks like I know mostly people on the East and West Coasts. No new news here.

Friday, April 23, 2004

Pat Tillman

Pat Tillman, former NFL strong safety for the Arizona Cardinals, was killed in Afghanistan yesterday.

I remember a couple years ago when he left the NFL, giving up $3.6 million over 3 years, to join the Army Rangers. Even then, his bio read like a storybook; small guy with intensity who made it as a linebacker in college, student athlete who refused to redshirt and graduated in 3.5 years, pro football star who quietly walked away from the game to serve his country.

It's too bad the story couldn't have had a happy ending.

Thursday, April 22, 2004

everyone wants a Prius

Apparently I am an "active" blogger user. I'm almost tempted to sign up for another account, but I suppose that would be silly.

I've talked to several people recently about the new 2004 Toyota Prius. Regardless of whether people are buying them (and they are) the fact is that buying a hybrid has become an option to be discussed. One theory is that people are increasingly aware of environmental issues and sensitive to gas prices. My theory is that Toyota has done a really good job building and marketing a true hybrid car to more mainstream consumers.

The Prius is a midsize sedan, base priced at around $20K. The electric motor generates 67 hp and 295 ft/lbs of torque, and the gas motor generates 76 hp and 82 ft/lbs of torque. The combined hp results in a somewhat respectable 0-60 time of 9.8 seconds. The 2004 Camry LE is also around $20K, has a 0-60 time of 9.2 seconds, and it doesn't handle nearly as well. So, the Prius is comparable in price and performance to one of the most popular cars in the US.

But the real story is that for whatever reason, the Prius has become trendy. Hollywood is full of Priuses, even at the Academy Awards. Waiting lists are months long, and everyone wants what they can't get, right?

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

MIT non-geek

Yesterday I went with some friends to the Giants vs Padres game at Pac Bell Park. Our group consisted of MIT alums trying to catch a glimpse of Jason Szuminski, Padres relief pitcher, and the first MIT alum to go from MIT to the majors.

We knew from the start that probably the only way we'd see Szuminski pitch was if the Padres were getting blown out, so when the Padres quickly scored 3 runs in the first inning, we were a little bummed. In the end, we saw pretty much every other San Diego relief pitcher except Szuminski (Linebrink, Oropesa, Otsuka, Hoffman), but luckily the Giants made it a pretty good game in the middle innings, with a couple homers from Bonds and Feliz, so we weren't too disappointed. I guess we'll have to try again when the Padres come back to town.

Friday, April 16, 2004

Kill Bill Vol. 1

I watched Kill Bill Vol. 1 again yesterday, in preparation for seeing Kill Bill Vol. 2. It was still good.

That might seem like a stupid comment; one might ask how a movie could be good the first time and bad the next, but I've found that to be the case for movies like Memento, which depend heavily on a plot twist, or summer blockbuster types.

Kill Bill is a visually arresting piece, with great attention to detail and a tautness that suggests Tarantino knew what he wanted and elicited just that from his cast. There's a rhythm to the scenes, in which conversational pauses are just important as words. Throughout the movie, the music is great, and fabulously matched, from "Bang Bang" during the opening credits, to the fight sequences, several of which were choreographed to original pieces by RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan. The entire movie plays something like an animated film (well, one part is literally anime). By that, I don't mean that it's cartoonish, but more that its story is painted with broad, exaggerated strokes. As always, Tarantino pays homage to his cinematic influences, this time with an emphasis on Japanese samurai warrior movies.

There are some great small moments, too. I love Oren's deadpan delivery when she accuses the Bride of being a silly Caucasian girl who "likes to play with samurai swords", and even before seeing this movie I was fond of calling people "silly rabbits" but now I just can't stop. Plus, GoGo rocks. I want one of those crazy ball on a chain looking things.

I was also very impressed with the actress that plays Sofie Fatale, both her Japanese and French accents were spot on, as far as I could tell (which isn't saying all that much, I suppose) and her English was unaccented as well. I'm going to venture a wild guess that she's European and not American.

A mostly unrelated thought: I was reading reviews for Vol. 2 when I found BugMeNot.com. How did I not discover it before now? I hate having to register just to read one article on a small town news site, which happens a lot nowadays since I read Google News all the time.

Sunday, April 11, 2004

cure the common cold. please?

I'm so sick of being sick. I came down with a cold somewhere between one poker game (at work) and another (at Stanford) two Thursdays ago. I was miserably ill for the entire weekend, ended up taking two days off of work, and finally went back with a residual cough and some congestion. The congestion cleared up a couple of days later, but I'm still coughing.

The worst part is when it gets better, to the point where I think to myself, gee, I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll be gone! Then, I wake up, and have an uncontrollable coughing fit, and start the day with no voice.

Last weekend I tried to pretend everything was fine, but it kept getting worse, until I couldn't eat because the swallowing part was hurting my throat. This weekend I gave up and decided to just veg out. I'm hoping after two days of basically nothing but books and TV, this cold will finally decide I've offered it enough rest, bland food, and vitamin C, and leave me alone. Yes, I'm anthropomorphizing my cold. It's mean and diabolical and I hate it with a passion.

On the bright side, I've had lots of time to experiment with home remedies, and I've concluded that the best things for a cough are: my old staple of Ricola cough drops, Japanese green tea, New Zealand honey, and Pi Pa Gou, which is like a thick minty cough syrup from Taiwan that actually tastes good. Also, Nyquil and a big stack of pillows are essential on the worst nights, since something about lying down seems to trigger coughing.

Thursday, April 08, 2004

gmail some more

A friend of mine wrote me regarding yesterday's Gmail-related post. His concern:

"In essence, the index can be considered a profile of the email/emails and of the user. So who has ownership of the index? If google has ownership, that sets a worrisome precedent."

I think that the user should own his/her e-mail, but Google should be granted the right to scan/index the e-mail for searching, spam filtering, spell checking, and content ad targeting purposes only. Upon deletion of an e-mail, that right is revoked for that particular e-mail. Upon deletion of an account, that right is revoked for all that user's e-mails. Google may still have residual backups of the user's data for some time, but should not have the right to use or share it with anyone.

On a related topic, here is an interesting blog entry on Google products in general. The author concludes:

"Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.

While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.

This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world's biggest computer and most advanced operating system? "


If nothing else, it's a well-written piece of speculation.

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

gmail

Wow, what a flurry of press coverage on Gmail. I wonder how much of it is because the service itself isn't available to the public yet, so reporters are stuck scrutinizing every last word in the privacy policy.

The two biggest complaints seem to be the targeted ads and the deletion policy. My thoughts...

I don't have a problem with a computer scanning my e-mail. Spam filtering and spell checking are both dependent on my e-mail being scanned. The difference is that in Gmail, the result of the scanning is the possibility of targeted ads being displayed in my mail client. I have no problem with this either; the ads are extremely unobtrusive and Gmail is very conservative about displaying ads at all. My only concern is, if I click on an ad, then does the advertiser now know something about the contents of my e-mail? Can the advertiser link my click with any identifying information, such as my IP address? This concern would be allayed by a privacy policy saying advertisers only get aggregate data on how well given keywords are performing.

As far as the deletion policy goes, I don't see how it is anything new. Yahoo! explicitly states: Please note that any information that we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your deletion request. This may be the case even though no information about your account remains in our active user databases. I'm sure Hotmail does the same.

I think people are concerned that deleted e-mail is being used to profile users, when really what the policy is trying to say is that it's technologically difficult to support redundancy and instantaneous purging of data. Clarification that this is the case would be great.

I personally have no problem with Gmail deleting just the pointers to my e-mail, over a predefined period of time (30 days?), instead of instantaneously wiping and overwriting my e-mail on all servers and tape backups. Yes, the e-mail might still be able to be retrieved by a data-recovery specialist who has access to the Gmail hardware, but it resides on my local machine (in my browser cache, even when expunged) for an indefinite period, as well.

So yes, I'm comfortable with using Gmail...and it rocks. My favorite Gmail features:

Ultra-super-fast search (with snippets!) of course.

Keyboard shortcuts: My biggest complaint about webmail is how mouse intensive it is compared to Unix mail systems. Now I can navigate through my e-mail with almost no mouse interaction at all. (I've yet to figure out how to send a composed message without using the mouse.)

Threading: Gmail displays a message and all its subsequent replies as a "conversation". I must say, the UI for this is very well done. I hate the Outlook threading UI, and was not optimistic when I heard Gmail would use threading, but it's actually very convenient and intuitive. The logic that collapses quoted text is great. It's also nice that you can always tell if you've replied (and what you've replied) to a given message.

Labels vs Folders/Directories: I love that each message can have multiple labels. I realize that the point of Gmail is that you never have to categorize your e-mail again, but I can't kick the habit yet. Then again, it's only been a week.

 

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not that of my employer.