The scariest part of my commute has bike lanes now, but I’m not totally sure if it’s in improvement. Part of Cambridge St in Boston is wonderful (separated by plastic posts close to City Hall), but other parts are weird (no separation) or bad (the Blue Bikes in front of Whole Foods is.. IN THE BIKE LANE!?), and the pavement is still a potholed disaster.
And after biking in Chicago a couple weeks ago, I really wish this city had dedicated bike traffic signals.
Why does posting here feel so much more navel-gazey than Twitter did? I know it’s the same but it feels different?
Waiting for Gödel
I did not realize until I deleted my Twitter how much I depended on it for a mental health outlet. Going back to Wordpress looks kafkaesque by comparison, how did we ever live like that?
Tomorrow, it will be 2020.
In 2010, I was a web developer and manager at a small company outside of Boston. Now, I’m a developer and team lead at a very very large international company. In 2010, I programmed in mostly Java and Perl. Now, it’s mostly Go and C++.
In 2010, I lived in South Boston in a condo I owned with a small patio. Now, I live in South Boston in a different condo that I own with a large back yard (for this neighborhood at least). In 2010, I lived with my beautiful wife and beautiful dog Gus. Gus isn’t with us anymore, but we’ve got two adorable toddlers that keep us busy instead.
In 2010, my parents lived in an RV on the road. Now, they only live half of the time in their RV on the road, and the other half of the year they spend in a small home in an “RV resort” in Florida.
In 2010, I was active on MetaFilter, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Now, I still visit those websites but of them I’m really only active on Twitter. In 2010 I had a personal website, and despite reports to the contrary I still do.
Back in 2013, I had a conversation with cmatta about what I thought was the scary inevitable future of streaming companies vertically integrating into content producers. I kept meaning to write up a blog entry. Here we are, now, 6 years later, and the future I saw is now the present, so I will just copy and paste some excerpts from the conversation, and you’ll just have to believe I was as prescient as I claim I was.
I need to write a post about why House of Cards and Arrested Development scare meAnd the punchline:Picture a world where Comcast made some shows and RCN made other shows and each one of a dozen cable companies each made their own shows
And none of them carried each others shows
That world would be really terrible
Instead of actual openness, it’s just a different kind of closedness, and it’s about the same amount of money but a lot more annoying
It’s only Netflix and Hulu right now
I’m extrapolating out a decade
There’ll be dozens of these providers all with mutually exclusive shows and streaming mechanisms
It’ll be a nightmare for the user
And you’ll be saving like 10%
It depends on what I think Netflix and Hulu and Amazon are going to do as these things get more popular, and I don’t think it is “cooperate”
And then I’ll have to have 20 different accounts to watch the one good show on each of the 20 distributors
You’ll be paying about the same – $40-80 a month, but it’ll be harder because you’re paying a bunch of different places
cmatta: write this up, i'd be happy to have a longer-form discussion on thisI post this now, because there’s now not just Netflix and Hulu and Amazon, all with great exclusive originals, but also CBS All Access if you want to watch Star Trek Discovery and the upcoming Picard show. And HBO Now for Game of Thrones. And soon you’ll need Disney+ if you want to watch anything Marvel or Star Wars or Fox (like The Simpsons or Futurama). And Apple is getting into the original content business, too.me: I will, you’re ON, MATTA
That’s potentially 7 different monthly bills where just 10 years ago you’d pay one company and be done with it. Forget the days when all your TV would just work, today there’s a question if the world’s biggest content producer’s new service will work on the world’s biggest tech company’s streaming device. The content is better than it was then, without a doubt, and the ability to watch whenever (I’m old enough to have programmed a VCR in my life) but the experience as a consumer is worse.
I’ve been using my old Nexus One (running Android 2.3) for the past week, while a replacement Nexus 5X has been in transit. Observations:
My #FirstSevenLanguages:
In 2008, when my parents sold the house I grew up in and started cruising the world in an RV, they gave me their flatscreen television for safe keeping. The expectation was that they’d do the On The Road thing for a couple of years and then take it back when they settled down. They’re still doing it, and the TV is now hilariously out of date. And a couple of weeks ago, the antenna connection stopped working, meaning it was time to upgrade.
The main requirements were: about 40 inches, wide viewing angle, at least 3 HDMI inputs, and never ever ever a Samsung. I was hoping I could also purchase it from a local brick-and-mortar store (instead of online) for an insignificant premium. We don’t need a 4k screen (at that size, and with our couch 11ft away from the screen, it wasn’t necessary. I spent lots of time reading Wirecutter, Rtings, and 4k.com.
The Wirecutter recommended TV (Vizio M43-C1) was very very close to what I needed, but it didn’t have a great viewing angle. I ended up deciding on a 43-inch Sony X830C. Great viewing angle and plenty of HDMI. Rtings felt the contrast wasn’t great and the surface was too reflective, but 4k.com didn’t really agree and general picture quality wasn’t super high on our list – I was sure it would be better than our old free screen.
Anyhow, it’s on the wall now. Six inches larger than the old screen, but covers up less wall. Definitely good. More detailed thoughts coming after I get more time to watch it.
UPDATE: After using the TV for the past two months, I’m definitely a fan. The reflectivity is not a problem, and the colors and viewing angle are excellent. We almost never use our Roku box anymore, which isn’t its fault, it’s just that our TV does everything we used it for. Android TV is pretty good, I think our TV has only crash-rebooted a couple of times (which is a weird concept). The UI could be a bit faster, but whatever. It’s nice having the Guide be accurate even though we only use an antenna (however our old TV used to get its guide had stopped working years ago). The biggest complaint I have is that the remote is sort of a disaster.
Ever since my parents have been living within spitting distance of Fort Myers, I’ve sent them a quick list of Red Sox storylines going into Spring Training. Seeing as pitchers and catchers report today, I figured today would be a good day to do it. 2016 is going to be an important year for the Red Sox.
Most statistical projections have us favored to win the division or be in the running for a wildcard, both of which depend on some luck and few injuries. Hopefully it’ll be an exciting year.
Go Sox!
The number 2016 is 11111100000 in binary. Years whose binary representations are just 1s followed by 0s have been rare for a thousand years, but we’re going to get more and more in the next few decades:
| 2016 | 11111100000 |
| 2032 | 11111110000 |
| 2040 | 11111111000 |
| 2044 | 11111111100 |
| 2046 | 11111111110 |
| 2047 | 11111111111 |
| 2048 | 100000000000 |
And then no more until the 31st century. So enjoy them while they last!
Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a pretty big opening weekend. It broke the records for domestic opening weekend ($247.9M, over Jurassic World’s 208.8M) and worldwide ($529M, also breaking Jurassic World’s 524.9M). But that’s not all.
There are more, too, but they’re all implied by the above ones (largest PG-13 opening weekend! Largest holiday weekend!).
And for the record, my review:
Short spoiler-free #TheForceAwakens review: Wow.
Longer spoiler-free #TheForceAwakens review: Woooooooooooooooooooooooow.
— xXx_logan_xXx (@Plutor) December 21, 2015Our Sign With Stars On ItIt’s morning now. That thing we saw last evening – can you see it? It was on the other side of that wall. We could see its colors even though there was a fight happening. In fact, the fighting gave off light that let us see it all night! So, is it still there?
(Inspired by XKCD’s Up-goer Five and repeated singing of The Starspangled Banner to my infant daughter.)
Stats from a week’s worth of paternity leave with a 3.5 month old:
My wife and I made something a couple of weeks ago, and her name is Simone. Our families and some friends want to see lots of pictures, but most people don’t want us to flood their Facebook feeds with baby photos (nor do we want to). So we’ve been uploading them to Flickr mostly, but I wanted a slightly simpler page where people could just see a carousel slideshow of photos of our daughter. There was no good immediately-integrated-with-Flickr JavaScript carousel I could find, but I was pretty easily able to integrate it with Fotorama.
Here is the final product (and beautiful pictures of my girl). Here are the easy steps to do it yourself:
<div class="carousel" data-auto="false"></div>There's a lot of configuration options you can add besides that. Here's the full list.
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
var AddPhotosToCarousel = function(data) {
var imgs = [];
$.each(data.photoset.photo, function(index, photo) {
imgs.push({img: photo['url_m'],
thumb: photo['url_sq'],
caption: photo['title']});
});
$('.carousel').fotorama({ data: imgs });
};
$.getJSON('[api.flickr.com/services/...](https://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photosets.getPhotos&api_key=XXXXXXXXXX&photoset_id=YYYYYYYYYY&format=json&extras=url_sq,url_m&jsoncallback=?',) AddPhotosToCarousel);
});
</script>
You must put your API key and your photoset’s id into that big URL you pass to $.getJSON(). If you want the photos to show up in reverse order (as I did), change imgs.push() to imgs.unshift(). You can display things other than photosets (search results and such), but you’ll need to dig into the Flickr API docs to build those queries yourself.
There’s a running joke that Bill Belichick likes to trade out of the first round of the NFL Draft, acquiring a larger number of late-round picks. This joke depends on his identity as something of a passionless rogue thinker. So after he used his first round draft pick last night to draft an actual football player, I decided to look back at his history as Head Coach (and de facto General Manager) of the New England Patriots. Here’s the full list of what he did with first round picks:
So in the past fifteen drafts, he’s drafted 13 players in the first round (including 2 after trading downward within the round and 4 after trading upward) and got out of the first round entirely 5 times. Draw whatever conclusion you like, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly strong trend to me. From 2007-2011, however, he traded down or out with 5 of their 6 picks – I wonder if that’s where this reputation originated.
There is a short poem titled “Gloss” by David McCord, written to draw attention to English words that appear to be antonyms of words that don’t exist. It goes like this:
I know a little man both ept and ert. An intro-? extro-? No, he's just a vert. Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane, His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.When life turns sipid and the mind is traught, The spirit soars as I would sist it ought. Chalantly then, like any gainly goof, My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.
Which of those root words have been simply lost to history, and which never existed? You can have a word that starts with dis- and isn’t an antonym, e.g. “distance”, is that the case with any of these words?
Final count: 11 negations, 5 prefixes with non-negation meanings, and 3 words not constructed with a prefix.
We’ve all seen the bouncing screensaver. And we’ve all watched, hoping it would fall into the corner. Oh, you haven’t? Well, watch this documentary footage of the adventure you’ve been missing.
The screensaver isn’t mysterious. It moves in predictable ways, meaning we can calculate how often it’ll hit the corner (and if it will hit a corner). So let’s start with some assumptions.
From this, we can make a few quick observations. The total distance it has traveled left and right is always equal to the total distance it has traveled up and down. And in order to land in a corner, it must have traveled a whole multiple of the both the width and the height of the screen. Or to put it mathematically:
We can find the lowest possible values for both m and n (which must be integers) fairly easily. The definition of the greatest common divisor of W and H implies that:
You can follow the same logic to calculate the value of m.
So now we know how many times the bouncing object travels the width of the screen (m) and the height of the screen (n). Each of those traversals will be followed by a bounce. We’ll need to subtract 1, because the last bounce – the impossible dream, the bounce in the corner – is counted as a horizontal and a vertical bounce. So the number of bounces necessary is:
Let’s find out how many times Jim and Pam and the others would have to watch the screen saver bounce to see it go into a corner. The DVD was most likely running at an effective resolution of 640x480 (equivalent to 480p). It’s hard to tell the size of the bouncing object, but it’s definitely smaller than a quarter of the height, plus it appears to have an non-bouncing border. Let’s eyeball it at 50x50. So:
Left as an exercise for the reader: Which corner will the object bounce in? Is it possible for the object to only bounce in the upper-left hand corner (where it starts)?
I just finished creating and presenting a Computing trivia MiniLeague for LearnedLeague. It went really really well, and I wanted to share the questions to a wider audience. Beware: it’s HARD.
Assumptions:
Therefore, if we took a list of all of the colleges in the NCAA college basketball bracket, established the August (start of the school year, usually warmest month of the year) and March (during March Madness and close to the coldest month of the year) average temperatures, we’d be able to fill in a bracket that would be as accurate (to a close approximation) as if we actually knew anything about college basketball. (As a tie-breaker, I’m using the school with the colder temperatures. If I need another tie-breaker, I’m picking arbitrarily.)
So that’s what I’ve done. Here is the raw data, and here is my bracket. (Yes, this is almost completely tongue-in-cheek.)
For the past two years, I’ve subscribed to MLB.TV. It allowed me to stream baseball games to my computer and my TV, and was a way better value proposition than getting the expensive cable package that would have provided me with NESN (the Red Sox’s local network). But I will not be subscribing for the 2013 season. It’s not because I’m no longer a Red Sox fan. It’s not because I’m not interested in watching their games. It’s because I’m sick of jumping through hoops to avoid their stupid blackout restrictions. If I was a Phillies fan, I could watch all of their games (except when they were playing the Red Sox). If I was a Red Sox fan from California, I’d be fine, too (unless the Sox were visiting the Giants or some such).
But because I live in the Red Sox’s “home television territory”, I’m unable to watch any of their games, both at home and away, without resorting to using proxies. Paying nearly a hundred dollars a year for the right to not get to watch any of the games I care about is very stupid. These are based on ancient cable contracts, I’m certain, but MLB has the upper hand in these negotiations. Are the networks really going to say “nevermind, we won’t show your games” if MLB insists on allowing paying customers to watch even local games online?
Until Major League Baseball joins us in the 21st century with their blackout restrictions, I’m not going to be paying for MLB.TV anymore. I’ll just have to enjoy the game at a bar, where Major League Baseball will get none of my dollars.
For the past six months or so, I’ve been wrestling with where to put all of my Internet content. I create various things from time to time, and I like them being available and visible (and in many cases, open for modification and redistribution, a la MIT license or Creative Commons). But I’m at the point where many of the services I’ve used for a long time are no longer doing it for me.
I’m no longer at the point in my life where I want to reinvent the wheel for any of these things. I want a simple solution that allows me to do what I’m interested in doing. (That’s apparently: taking pictures, writing small bits of code, complaining, and moving on.) Simplifying my blog back in the fall was one part of this struggle, but it was really just a tiny step.
Whenever I’m trying to get back into the swing of building and optimizing and evaluating algorithms, my first step is always to write a whole bunch of sorting implementations. I’m also trying to improve my knowledge of the core syntax of python. So here are four sorts in python: insertion, merge, heap, and quick. (The insertion and heap sort implementations are both in-place. The other two are not.)
The second step is probably going to be to implement a data structure I’ve never done before. Last time, it was a min-max heap in PHP. I’m thinking maybe a B-tree?
Update 3 Sept: Here is my implementation of a splay tree. Far simpler than I remembered, so I challenged myself to do it without parent links in the node objects.
When Matt Cain threw a Perfect Game for the San Francisco Giants on Thursday, he became the fifth pitcher in the last four years to do so (no, Galarraga’s game doesn’t count). Perfect Games are also No-Hitters, and there have been a startling 22 no-hitters in the past six seasons (here I am including Halladay’s post-season no-hitter two years ago).
Since the end of the Steroid Era in baseball, pitching has been under a resurgence. Last year was called The Year Of The Strikeout by some, and this year is, so far, exceeding last year’s number. In addition, runs per game and hits per inning have been in decline for the past decade, too. But this isn’t just because batters aren’t hitting as hard or fielding has improved. Walks per inning, too, are at their lowest point in 20 years.
Improved pitching means a better chance of No-Hitters and Perfect Games. Does that explain it completely? Is the recent surge in pitching gems a coincidence – in which case we can expect the frequency to revert to the mean – or a result of improving pitching? I started collecting data to answer this question myself (which you can see after the break), but during the course of my research I found an article by Rebecca Sichel, Uri Carl and Bruce Bukiet titled Modeling Perfect Games and No-Hitters in Baseball.
Expected No-Hitters on Google Docs
