Archive for October, 2004
-
29 Oct 2004
Red Sox World Series victories predict incumbent presidential defeat with 100% accuracy!
Discuss (2) -
29 Oct 2004
Grand Theftendo, a Nintendo Entertainment System fan port of Grant Theft Auto. It’ll be available for free download when it’s done!
-
27 Oct 2004
With a 225 million dollar haul, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has reportedly broken the opening weekend for sales of any entertainment anything. Ever. Spider-man 2 only made $192M. With GTA:SA, Half-Life 2, Halo 2, the Nintendo DS, and the Sony PSP, this is shaping up to be a huge season for video games, perhaps even bigger than the fall of 2001 (when PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube were all released).
Also: Read Wil Wheaton’s story on how he ended up doing a bit voice-acting part in San Andreas.
-
26 Oct 2004
Seven days to go. “You know what they call a candidate who’s counting on a lot of new voters? A loser.” — James Carville
-
25 Oct 2004
The Gimli Glider: how a talented airline pilot saved hundreds of lives when coincidences converged and his 767 ran out of fuel. This should be made into a movie.
-
25 Oct 2004
Free graph paper PDFs. Now if only I needed to graph something..
-
22 Oct 2004
Blu-Ray? HD DVD? Confused by the tech? Unsure why you should even care yet? Gizmodo presents a good overview called Blu-Ray Has Already Won.
-
22 Oct 2004
As of roughly 15:30 this afternoon, I am no longer a programmer. I am a Unix System Administrator. Go, me. As my first Unix Admin-related post, I’d like to announce that the Sun v20z is a clean, precise, fast-as-all-hell piece of genius.
I’d say more, but it’s Friday evening, and I’m feeling terse.
-
22 Oct 2004
There will be a total lunar eclipse next Wednesday, October 27 starting at 20:05 EDT. Totality will last between 22:23 and 23:44. (These times are for Naugatuck, CT. Use the lunar eclipse computer to calculate for your location).
Chris, I’m depending on you to get some good photos.
-
22 Oct 2004
SPOnG.com has a long story up about their recent hands-on demo of GTA: San Andreas. This game sounds totally fucking gonzo. You need to eat? You need to exercise? (Oh, the irony of gamers working out at a gym in-game). Swimming! Cars that disappear when you walk off for too long can be retrieved (read: re-stolen) from the SAPD impound lot. And there are far more interesting features hinted at and detailed.
I’m definitely looking forward to this game, although I’ll have to wait a while, since I’m not really willing to buy a PS2 for it.
-
22 Oct 2004
Regret The Error, a blog that follows major newspapers’ corrections. Interesting, sometimes funny, marginally socio-political, with a touch of Schadenfreude.
-
21 Oct 2004
Between both cellphones and M’s Palm, we’ve got three things on my bureau charging every night. Woe is me, if only there was a simpler solution! There is: Splashpower. That is so damn cool.
Update 10-22: You know, this would be even cooler if there was a module for rechargable alkaline (or NiCD or NiMH) AA batteries. Then my GPS, GBA (non-SP), and even my Gamecube controllers could all recharge on a single mat.
-
21 Oct 2004
The second MozParty series is being scheduled right now for the upcoming release of FireFox 1.0. There’s going to be one in the East Village (at the cool Remote Lounge) that might be neat to go to. Either that or this one at the South Pole (I love the directions).
-
20 Oct 2004
I’m normally pretty ambivalent about baseball. I enjoy watching the game, sure, but I’m not really a fan of any specific team. But I have to say that when a sports juggernaut goes up against a perennial fumbler, I have to root for the underdog. That’s why I’m a bit excited that Boston has done what no other team has ever done before: come from a 3-0 deficit in a League Championship and force a game seven. In celebration, here’s a fun post about the antics last night, from a Boston fan.
In fact, read through most of the recent entries at baseballblogs.org. Most of them are about last night or tonight, and all of them are emotional. I can hardly imagine being that wrapped up in baseball.
-
20 Oct 2004
A zero-score Boggle board is possible. A chance to run to the bathroom for those who are addicted.
-
20 Oct 2004
For the time being, let’s ignore the environmental implications of mass-marketed self-destructing DVDs. Let’s also ignore the fact that this is starting with some low-budget indie movies. Those things ignored, I think the business plan is a remarkably good idea.
Tell me, if you could get a 48-hour DVD of something like The Incredibles the day it comes out and watch it at home, would you do that instead of going to the movie theater? Call it hyperbole if you must, but I think this could revolutionize movie marketing.
On the other hand, piracy? Selling one DVD at $5 (or even at $10 or 20) instead of several nine-dollar tickets? The loss of snack bar profits for the theaters? If this ever happens on a wide scale, it won’t be for a long while.
-
19 Oct 2004
How to make your own photo mosaics, courtesy of Engadget.
-
19 Oct 2004
I know I signed up twice to be emailed when it was available for pre-order, so why didn’t Amazon tell me that you can get The Return of the King (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition) now? How many times do I have to sign up to get the email?
-
18 Oct 2004
Half-Life 2 is Gold
The release date is November 16. Mark your calendars. More information here. No word on Steam availability yet.
Update: Everything I’ve read so far is indicating that Valve will honor their contract with Vivendi, so even those who purchased through Steam won’t have it for a month. Update 10-19: Changed the details link to the official press release.
-
18 Oct 2004
It looks like a Firefox 1.0 release is imminent. Unless some big regressions pop up soon, I’d bet that we’ll see the release either this week or next. The list of bugs marked as “blocking 1.0″ has gotten pretty short (15 as of this posting).
-
18 Oct 2004
Results of a terrorism poll, courtesy of cockeyed.com:
How many foreign-born men or women, with the intent and the will to carry out a suicide-attack plan, do you think live in the United States right now, in October of 2004?
Check out the results
-
16 Oct 2004
As if you doubted its promptness, GTA San Andreas has gone gold. In other, less inevitable news, Gamespot is claiming that Half-Life 2 has gone gold. True? Not? I’m preloading part 6 right now, and I’m hoping part 7 will be the last.
-
14 Oct 2004
Welt (Windows Event Log Tool) collects event logs from an arbtrary number of Windows machines and allows for centralized reporting and monitoring. I’ve built in a SiteScope hook, so we were able to replace 1200 NTEventLog monitors with fewer than fifty Welt monitors, and we now have far greater flexibility with thresholds. The engineering team also uses the Welt web interface to gather information about an outage.
-
14 Oct 2004
Flashback with me to my CompSci days (and realize how much I’ve forgotten, and how easy it is to remember) with this inefficient sort algorithms analysis. Check out the O(n! ^ 2) code at the end!
-
14 Oct 2004
Remember the 2000 election (sure you do), when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote? Well, it’s happened before, and it’s one of the strongest arguments that people use for abolishing the electoral college (an argument that I haven’t chosen a side on, to be honest). It got me thinking: how much could a candidate lose the popular vote by and still win the electoral vote? The candidate would have to get half (plus one) of the votes in “strong states”, and zero votes in “weak states”. In this case, a state’s strength is defined as electoral votes per voter.
A candidate could win the election with only 21.7% of the national popular vote by just squeaking by in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NM, NV, NY, OK, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WV, and WY and getting no votes in any other states. You’ll note that CT, MD, and VA are “weaker” states than California, but since it has such a large population, including it instead of the three weaker states increases the final total quite a bit.
Note that I had to ignore Maine and Nebraska’s congressional district method, since it would add too many extra variables.
Update 10-15: I should probably point out that I used the turnout numbers for the 2000 election, since I assumed that was a good enough estimate, but the new electoral vote counts (i.e. 7 for CT instead of 8). You can check out my actual data.