BlueJ's LiveJournal

Read 4 Notes -Make Notes

Read 3 Notes -Make Notes

Brain teaser. I was fiddling with the grid pegs (unit legos, essentially) down in 'Brozy's mom's preschool the other day. I built a vertical line of three red pegs, then added an horizontal line of three green pegs on top of it. Adding a diagonal line of three yellow pegs to get the following arrangement, I frowned.

"I'd like counter-clockwise to correspond to up," I thought, and switched the green and yellow pegs on the center post. "Huh," I realized, "*any* switch on the center post would change the correspondence from incorrect to correct or vice-versa, assuming that we wrap around the ends of both sequences. There are only two ways to traverse a three-item series when starting point isn't considered. I wonder how many ways there are to traverse an n-item series."

Can you answer my question? Basically, I'm asking how many distinct Hamiltonian cycles there are for n arbitrary points. (In layman's terms, how many ways can you beatI've found both recursive and non-recursive perspectives on the problem. I'll give a few hints in the rest of the entry, so stop reading if you're still working on it.

If you haven't heard, Ambrosia and I are engaged. We'll probably tie the knot in October or November, though there are no firm plans yet. You should read Ambrosia's account of my proposal(s).

Hint 1: The number of distinct cycles where you ignore starting point is equal to the number of distinct cycles with the same starting point.

We ran a 5k last weekend for the 'Brozyville County Fair. I got a medal, because there were only three men in my age group. The announcer did a double-take when reading my time as he announced the medal; I was the slowest male runner, at over 31 minutes. The second-slowest runner came in at around 28 minutes. He was over sixty years old. And I'm really, really sore. Perhaps I will train for the next one.

The rest of the fair was a cornucopia of equine delights as usual, though. (I'm fairly sure that the recent 'Brozyville stake Pioneer Pageant involved more horses than did, for example, the actual Mormon pioneer movement.)

Hint 2: You may find the problem easier to visualize if you think of it as arranging points on a circle or items in a list.

House-hunting by car is the most frustrating thing ever. We drove around the neighborhoods between Freedom and State for about an hour the other night looking for signs. (I'm not sure how anonymous my blog should be, so I will neither confirm nor deny that I live in Provo.) We found forty or so advertising singles' housing and ten married or ambiguous, which we called. One of them called back. It was a five-bedroom for a couple thousand a month. The next day, I was delighted to notice a sign just across the street from 'Brozy advertising a married apartment. I called the owner and set up an appointment for last Tuesday.

"He sounds really old," I told Ambrosia. "He probably will be a nice manager." We sat in the yard for a while until he showed up and asked if 'Brozy was my friend. "Yup," I confirmed. The apartment was reasonably nice: spacious living room, bedroom, and kitchen pantry, at least. We thought about it a little more, and I called him back the next day to apply. I met him at the apartment and filled out my name, social security number, driver's license number, date of birth, license plate number. I then called 'Brozy for her social security number and driver's license number, I filled out my current landlord's contact details, my employer's details, and my parent's phone numbers.

"I'm not sure who else to put on the references section, sir," I said. "What are you looking for other than landlord and employer?" He suggested I put my bishop's information down and asked if I'd lived in Helaman Halls freshman year with any of his friends who are bishops there. I called my roommate for my bishop's cell phone number, wrote it down, and added my manager's information, crossing out the office phone number I'd written in the address field for work and putting it next to my manager. He took the application. "We do keep BYU standards here," he noted, "so you can't be living with anyone who's not a man."

Hint 3 (non-recursive): The starting point doesn't matter. How many ways are there to arrange the rest of the points along the path?

I called my landlord and told her that I'd like to move out soon. She reminded me that I am legally obligated to give her a month's notice, but relaxed when I told her I'd be out in time for a new tenant fall semester.

With housing worries out of the way, I relaxed for the weekend. Monday evening, I called the landlord back. "Hi, this is bawb," I said. "Just checking up on my application."

"Oh, mumblerblemum."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I rejected your application."

{pause}

"And why would that be, sir?"

"Well, there was just too much inconsistent information."

"For example?"

"You didn't provide a phone number for your employer."

"You didn't provide a field to write it in."

"I looked your bishop's name up in the phone book, and the number didn't match."

Welcome to the twenty-first friggin' century, old man. Is this your first time here? Let me show you these magic boxes called cell phones. "My roommate is the ward clerk, so I called him and wrote down the number he gave me. I figured it would be more convenient for you and my bishop if you called his cell phone."

"Well, I've rejected the application."

"I see. Thank you, sir."

Douchebag. At least 'Brozy now believes that I am capable of anger.

Hint 3 (recursive): The base case will be H(2) = 1. Given H(n), how many solutions will there be for H(n+1)? Consider how many solutions are possible each time you add an additional point to a given cycle.

Last night, we went to Craigslist.org. Utah. Click. Provo/Orem. Click. Housing. Click. First listing. Click.

This is a recently remodeled and updated apartment with one very large bedroom, and nice large bathroom. Living room and kitchen are covered with hardwood laminate flooring. New fridge, oven range and microwave, dishwasher, partly furnished with love seat, chair and ottoman, kitchen table and chairs, and coffee and end tables.(see pics) Rent is $600 and includes all utilities including cable and high speed internet. Laundry room is shared with upstairs but there are 2 sets of washer and dryers. Apartment has large oversized windows that let plenty of light in and faux wood levelor blinds, wood beam ceiling in living room, plenty of storage with 3 large closets, fenced back yard, off street parking, and is located in a quiet culdisac.

We called, we came, we saw. We'll call back and commit tonight.

Best of all? They live upstairs with a wonderful golden Labrador. And they say 'Brozy can have cats.

I've never been more grateful to have worked with a crochety old fart. And I'm never looking for houses in person again. The end.

Hint 4: Just think !

ESP game. Collaborative image recognition and labelling.

Slate: growing meat. (See Wikipedia: Quorn.)

DHTML Lemmings

XKCD is fantastic. My triumvirate of yellow webcomics--XKCD, Qwantz, and Toothpaste for Dinner--is complete.

Hitachi perpendicular memory--Schoolhouse Rock style

Wikibooks: Angels and Demons divergences from reality. So satisfying to see them all bullet-pointed.

I think if I weren't Mormon, I'd sincerely consider Singularitarianism.

Holy flying mobulas, Batman

XKCD: vote on the best possible date

Tame silver fox videos

LA Times special: Man vs. Earth's oceans

Donald Rumsfeld fighting technique and BBC quotes

Was the Hamiltonian cycle problem too easy? Try this URL-based brain-teaser, courtesy of Lunkwill.

Make Notes

'Brozy got me wonderful CDs: Amber Pacific's The Possibility and The Promise and the All-American Rejects' Move Along. I actually discovered Amber Pacific through Pandora, so it would have been polite to buy it at Amazon through them, but 'Brozy and I decided when we bought two Simpsons collections at FHE...er, EFY...er, FYE that we were getting their Backstage Pass and buying all our music and movies there. (They have a better movie selection than Blockbuster anyway, and Hollywood Video is of the devil.) (Huh. Apparently they have video games too. Rock on.)

You really should look at Pandora; my coworker was hooked within ten minutes of setting up his station. You enter a few songs and artists you like, and it plays musically similar songs, including, occasionally, the songs you originally entered. It claims to find musical qualities transcending genre, and I'm convinced; it does a really good job mixing Ben Folds, Queen, Jimmy Eat World, Everclear, and Eve 6 on my Pandora station. (Apparently I like vocal harmony, vamping, hard rock roots, punk influences, pop rock qualities, dynamic male vocalists, electric rythym guitars, electric guitar riffs, major key tonality, and a vocal-centric aesthetic.)

You should also try out Amber Pacific, if you haven't heard their stuff yet. (You likely have, I suppose; I'm generally out of the loop, and they were on Vans' Warped Tour.) In the Amber Pacific bios page, they list as influences Fall Out Boy, All-American Rejects, Newfound Glory, Simple Plan, Death Cab for Cutie, MxPx, and Green Day, to give you a rough idea. Save Me From Me is the specific song Pandora recommended for me, and they were right; I'm pretty sure it's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard, though I'd like a little more overt, Jimmy-Eat-World-style harmony.

Another really cool thing about Amber Pacific: they're not, to my knowledge, categorized as Christian music (except insofar as "Christian" means "awesome"), but the band members are individually explicitly and emphatically Christian. Perhaps that seems like selling out, but I think Christian music makes the specious assumption that Christians should only do Christian things, where I think it's more reasonable to do all good things as a Christian. Not like worshipfulness is the only emotion we're allowed to feel. And besides, I think it's a much more effective witnessing technique making music all people can relate to and then doing cool things like Dango, the Amber Pacific drummer, sponsoring Rebel Brand Clothiers.

I'm at work, and I really need to get on the clock, so I'm going to call this an entry. Not terribly much is new. Going to Arizona this weekend for Geneva's reception. My office bumped me up to full-time (and hired 'Brozy, if you don't read 'Brozy's blog). I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that a dollar's raise is not small. I wish they'd tell me it's a $2,000/year raise instead. But yeah, life is basically amazing. I love this work. It's ideal: I have fast Internet, a salesman going and getting money for what I make and giving me lots of it, a boss smart enough to properly appreciate my work and humble enough to often follow my recommendations, and my girlfriend working beside me. Also a very pretty potted plant on my desk, which is beside a window. Hurrah, hurrah. (In fact, the only sad part is that I can no longer empathize with noble Theric's view on work: I now plan my next day's project as I drift off to sleep. The philosopher in me, rather than fighting for his fair share, seems to be atrophying with each passing day.)

Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations

Spore Gameplay Video

How to Do What You Love

Javascript includes

The InnerHTML dilemma--one of the few things I doubt my boss and I will ever agree on. His AJAX uses PUT and DELETE and XML; mine uses query string commands, HTML snippets, and JSON data. I rarely think it's semantically appropriate to return a document for an RPC, and I hate using DOM methods to access my returned data. (See Quirksmode: The AJAX Response for more thoughts.)

Wikipedia: Time Travel

Bridges, Bridg-It, or Gale. I'm considering making a Python, two-player AJAX version of this, similar to WEBoggle. (My boss is considering making an improved Web Sudoku, which sounds really cool.)

So apparently wardriving is named after the movie WarGames. Huh. Neat.

Wow, this is hilarious. Wow. Over 85% of your thoughts are coming from your subconscious mind and controlling your reality.

The Daily WTF. (Hope I'm not betraying the brotherhood of programmers by sharing this.)

"We'd be lucky if we were as sterile and disease-free as an ant."

Naming variables for unmaintainable code. Riotous.

The Benefits of a Fixed-Width Design

Sand game, from oudeis. Amazing.

Read 4 Notes -Make Notes

Many wonderful books.

The Good, the Bad, and the Furry, breaking from the "every dog is special" tradition of breed guides, calls pit bulls a "no-good, half-breed cousin" to the American Staffordshire Terrier, which it notes enjoys playing with bowling balls.

Everything Giant Sudoku was the best puzzles/dollar value in the BYU bookstore. 'Brozy and I have come to quite enjoy them after seeing them in the in-flight magazine on the way to Arizona. Try your hand on Web Sudoku.

Grant got me Godel's masterpiece, surely the most depressing piece of all time, for Christmas. I expect suicide after reading this book is the leading cause of death among logicians. Also for Christmas, three Lewis works (Great Divorce from Smurfer, other two from k_t). Thanks, all of you. Started Great Divorce last night.

Picked up Savior and the Serpent, which is aggressively thought-provoking. I'll probably devote half an entry to this when I finish it. One point, though: it makes me desperately long for the day when we routinely read hypernovels. Flipping ten pages to read a footnote is not worth any nostalgic tactile or olfactory experience. Nostalgia's a disease anyway.

Am grateful that strawberry lemonade, barbecue chicken pizza, and barbecue sauce hamburgers seem to be in fashion at restaurants. Oh, also, you should try Sonic's chicken toaster sandwich. Really fantastic. And Muenster cheese, which editor "rocking" girl, the second-best hostess ever, gave me.

Have finally moved past the blasphemy in Track 6 of Eve 6's eponymous album. (Man, I really was a little Pharisee.) There's a Face is amazing; it's the kind of melody that sounds familiar the first time you hear it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I promised to find that song in the pre-existence.

Totally excited that 'Brozy and I aren't the only Board-inspired couple anymore. Perhaps not even the awesomest. Hurrah, hurrah.

Went home teaching Sunday with Sharkbite/Murple. He said my lesson was wonderful and incredible, which may have been merely relief at having a tolerable lesson from the inactive guy he expected to drag along, but I liked it, so I'm going to tell you about it.

President Monson's message this month was sort of Last-Trumpet-esquedly transition-free (my own home teachers won mad points admitting this--oh, as has Theric, among policies on hair styling, work, and diamonds) (I WILL DIE OF TYPING LINKS), so I overviewed his bullet points and then primarily focused on the introduction.

Our bishop's second counselor gave our elder's quorum lesson the other week, focusing on his experiences as a parent and what they've suggested to him about our Heavenly Father. He tries to read stories to his young daughters every night, but one week, they'd been so rebellious he hadn't had time for several days. He stressed to the older that she needed to hurry, but she continued to dawdle, and when he told her that she'd run out of time, she burst into tears, pleading, "I just want you to read me a story." (Have I mentioned that I suspect storytelling will be the focal reason to keep humans around in the face of mechanical superiority? (That kind of killed the mood. Sorry.)) He realized that he, too, wanted nothing more than to read her a story, but it was more important to teach her how to get a story than to mercifully give her one, so he just put her to bed, heart-broken. This, he asserted, is our echo of God's tears: He weeps because our actions compel Him to either wrong us in the short term or wrong us in the long term.

As another illustration, the second counselor continued, when he was younger, he'd been irritated that Laman and Lemuel had come to the Americas; had they just stayed home, Nephi's children would not have lived in such pitiable misery, continually beseiged by their cousins. He's since realized, though, that had they done so, the Nephites would have remained ever wicked after their first fall into pride; while Alma disagreed, often it seems that nothing but military conquest shook them to humility.

In my lesson, I postulated that opening the windows of heaven is not some millionth-customer promotion, but rather God's default course of action, that He does not immediately bless us with all He has only because it's more important to teach us how to earn and keep it. In the picture accompanying the message, a family constructing their house, I saw a type not merely of our own efforts as families to strengthen our homes, but of our course as individuals, as toddling, utility-belt-clad toddlers laboring not for the sake of the work but for the sake of the lesson.

It's a thoroughly kitschy worldview, one I doubted myself immediately after giving it--there's very little blue, little law and justice, and a surfeit of yellow comfort and red effectiveness in this God's offerings. I'm always a little uncomfortable allying myself with the "Everyone will get what he really wants in the end" theological school. Upon further reflection, though, I wonder whether it's not tenable; is not charity the greatest of the virtues? Could not purest benevolence be that great and godly qualification by which he commands and every element obeys, the principle which, were it compromised, God would cease to be God? I firmly believe that "opposition in all things" means not that we must have a bunch of trashy experiences in order to appreciate the pleasant ones, but that we must inhabit a universe with evil and sorrow in order to find satisfaction, for as in Smurfer's thoughts on the fairness of hurting others (paragraph beginning "Anyway, it was interesting"), the great blessing of agency is that we can choose to build or tear down; if indeed God read us a story whether we got ready for bed or no, we would find no fulfillment in a dreary Eden. Perhaps justice and consequence really are in place just to bring joy.

It's kind of funny how I have to approach so many concepts backward. A conversation with myself the other day, for example:
You know, you should start balancing your checkbook.
Blech, that's no fun at all.
Well, you have to check for mistakes; you caught one on an IHOP receipt once.
A bank computer, friend, is a far cry from an IHOP register.
Of course, but someone could find your credit card number and make fake purchases online.
Such a person would probably be wanting, and I would wish only that his purchases might give him a leg up.
Unlikely; credit card fraud is white-collar crime, and you should never encourage someone to sin by removing risk.
Fine, I'll check my statements.

Likewise, I've recently pursuaded myself that guilt is reasonable, though I've truthfully only pushed it up a meta-level to where the question of free will is less obtrusive, by noting that we are not, as I had before supposed, either misinformed blue beings or wicked by nature orange beings, but unsteady creatures ever vacillating between the two, and we are most culpable when while blue, we fail to prepare for the coming orangeness by building fences to slow the beast down until we regain control.

By the way, Smurfer, from Great Divorce: "I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries.' In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at the end of the road must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven." Your hesitance was sensible.

Read 5 Notes -Make Notes

Apparently I'm becoming all grown up. Even Valerie's scale says so--I just passed 200 lbs. Granted, with my body's history, I wouldn't be surprised if it's 180 next week, but I'd prefer my health not rely on dei ex machina. (One idea: stop eating in one sitting the bags of delicious steak fries 'Brozy got me. Thank mercy we don't shop at Costco yet.)

Been a while, I know. I'm now using Google Reader, rather than Sage, actually; it's nice being able to access it from any computer. As an incentive to get anyone who's still clicking through each link in his or her sidebar, I've even uploaded an OPML file of feeds in the 100 Hour Board circle. Download it, go to Google Reader, click Your Subscriptions->More Actions->Import Subscriptions, upload it. Enjoy.

Accessing my feeds from any computer is especially wonderful because I'm now dual-booting MEPIS Linux. Surprisingly, it hasn't taught me to scorn Windows, except perhaps for being so expensive. On the contrary, asking me to choose between them is like asking me whether I love more a professionally trained, purebred German shepherd or a mutt I picked up at the pound that comes hunting with me. Sure, the mutt, while less nice-looking, is more interesting, less offish, more useful for work, and easier to teach new tricks, but boy it's nice to just point to the door and have the shepherd go fetch the paper sometimes. (It looks like they're fixing the wireless WEP encryption, though, which was my major complaint.)

I'm kind of befuddled by the distro wars, actually; I haven't seen a good explanation of which distributions are better for what users, so it doesn't make sense to me that they don't focus their efforts on a few clearly filling different niches. I went with MEPIS just because it's so easy to make a LiveCD, partition part of your hard disk, and install. My partition table right now has 15 GB for Windows, 1 GB for Linux swap, 4 GB for Linux root, 7.5 GB for Linux home, and 9.5 GB in a shared fat32, which is quite comfortable. (Yeah, too generous to Windows. But the stupid thing won't defrag all the way, and Age of Empires III alone is 2 GB.)

The leave of absence has been because of my new job, which is basically the funnest thing ever. I'm writing PHP for Proton Communications, which makes software to help people administer online courses. (Or "makes websites," I suppose, since it's all LAMP, but I'm an huge fan of web applications.) The pay is good, the boss is great, working my own hours from home is delightful; actually, the only unpleasant thing is struggling to get enough hours in. This morning, for example, I fixed four issues and only clocked an hour and twenty minutes. Kind of frustrating. Hopefully I'll be doing more building and less fixing so I don't feel time sitting and planning what I'm going to do should be clocked to incompetence.

Oh, my mom got me a 6-slice toasteroven for Christmas. It's marvelous. I also got this new laptop, a new cell phone, and an M-W combined dictionary-thesaurus. Oooh, and my grandparents got me Blockus, Tripoley, and a framed Empire of Light. (Or so I'll inform them in the thank-you notes for the cash.)

I'll post a more ruminant entry soon.

Read 3 Notes -Make Notes

A few appendices:

I am also grateful that my bishop inexplicably adores me. Even if he called me a sweet spirit.

Halo Zero's a delightful hour of 2-d platform adventure combat.

It was sort of dumb of me to suggest that the crucial question in accepting the Atonement is "whether we can reform ourselves or need the guiding and refining influence of the Holy Ghost"; clearly the more important point is whether a redeeming divine influence factually exists. However, they're functionally equivalent to me, because if the Gospel is true, logical humanism is insufficient to save humanity, and the idea that there is no God and humanity cannot save itself is too depressing for me to consider.

I wish Covey addressed the concept of meta-centers in Divine Center, it seems to me that he assumes the reader will make the changes he recommends because of a purple meta-center, a desire to do justly and effectively. However, this is not the only way to approach a divine center; any meta-center other than will to destroy can lead to a divine center, because God offers us the deepest understanding of truth, the greatest power, the most loving relationships, the most enduring happiness. Having read your most recent entry, I would that you would consider this, Asmond: as Dr. Manning put it, the object of his counseling with me was not to root out my laziness, but to help me find a sustainable lifestyle in which I can be lazy. Even if indeed you care only for yourself, you will best achieve your aims by focusing on God.

Read 3 Notes -Make Notes

I am grateful that the following statements evaluate true:

• After staying up late with me baking and exchanging gifts, my intended walked over to my house Tuesday morning, woke me up, made me breakfast, and washed our pots and pans so I got on the road and made it home by midnight.
• The secret sheriff was following me on my way home while I was deliberately going 95, not while I was accidentally going 120. My "Merry Christmas" was not sarcastic, officer; it'll be a delight paying $150 that could have been $1,200.
• I'm going to be making good money doing what I love for someone who respects me and whom I respect.
• I don't have to support legacy browsers.
• Whatever made such an horrible smashing noise when I veered toward the barrier on the way home from Ambrosiaville apparently did absolutely no damage to my car. Or to us.
• I recently paid about five cents per mile for gas.
• The holidays for which I come home are during Arizona's winter.
• Though at one of the busiest times of his career, my father continued checking my journal regularly over its three-month hiatus. That's love, ladies and gents.
• Helaman 5:34-43 deeply touched me as one of the few examples (see also Alma 10:5-11 and 19:15-17) in which one who has strayed from the fold becomes an instrument in God's hands. I was forced to stop reading, overwhelmed at the implication that God values my attempts to counsel my believing friends with "Assuming that the Gospel is true" reasoning, rather than considering me one of a fallen people, hard of heart.
• Our German Shepherd still recognizes me.
• I can listen to vocal harmony. And participate sometimes.

I am antigrateful that the following statements evaluate true:

• 'Brozy still makes way better omelettes than I do, and probably will if I practice for five years and make her use the rusty spatula.
• Jones cream soda is not part of a nutritious breakfast.
• The road from Las Vegas to Phoenix includes such helpful hints as "FREEWAY ENDS 1 MILE" and, in Boulder City, winds through not only a commercial plaza but an upper-class neighborhood. Count the stop signs, kids!
• Most church meetings include a piece by the choir. May as well tell us that people who can't sing well shouldn't pray. Or come to church at all. Grrrr.

Make Notes

Yesterday's schedule:

7:00--Alarm goes off.
8:10--Murple opens my door and asks, "Are you awake? 'Brozy's here." "Yes, sir," I reply in my sleep, then panic and jump out of bed.
8:20--'Brozy buys me many wonderful baked goods, including custard-filled doughnuts and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
8:30--'Brozy arrives to work half an hour late.
9:00--I make my Internet rounds.
11:00--I make myself five slices of pizza on toasted whole wheat bread.
11:30--I toss a few more lines into my pseudocode for the next Peircean personality test expansion.
12:00--I hop in the shower.
1:00--I realize that every one of my formal shirts is stained. I grab one with a stain covered by my suit jacket.
1:45--I grab my laptop bag and get in the car.
1:55--I pull out my laptop to look up my interviewer's name.
2:00--I answer such questions as "What are the major security concerns in PHP?", "What are the advantages and disadvantages of table-based layout?", and "What is your experience with usability?"
2:20--My interviewer asks what wage I would expect. I suggest 150% of my last job's wage. He offers a dollar/hour higher.
2:30--My interviewer begins explaining the non-monetary benefits he offers to retain programmers, such as mentoring, says that he hopes they'll eventually be able to bring me on full-time, and notes that useful business suggestions may earn bonuses.
3:00--I sign away my code's freedom. (Sorry, Lunkwill.)
4:15--I pick up 'Brozy.
4:30--'Brozy tries to ignore me in the BYU bookstore as she looks for a present for her father. I try not to continually poke her with excitement.
6:00--We eat at Sweet Tomatoes.
8:30--We buy tickets for Chronicles of Narnia.
8:40--I buy an N64 expansion pack. 'Brozy buys some movies.
9:30--My loud complaining about the cost of men's gloves draws an helpful Dillard's salesperson.
9:55--We see Chronicles. It is very good.
12:30--I fall asleep holding 'Brozy on the couch.
1:35--A roommate staggering into the bathroom wakes us up. I take her home.

That may have been the best day of my life thusfar. Wish someone had told me a year ago that I was headed for dating Ambrosia and working for a fellow Jakob Nielsen disciple.

Make Notes

Enough philosophy for now. Time to clean out nearly three months' worth of favorites.

Many people wrote fun things about me, including 'Brozy, Asmond, Smurfer, and Master Fob.

I was pleased to remember that my relationship with Ambrosia began with an apology.

ytmnd.com, courtesy of Caitlin:
Bush and Hurricane Katrina
Kerry and Hurricane Katrina
just watch the balls

Test your etymology knowledge.

I've seen evolution's power and atheist demographics, but lobster eyes are really cool.

Grab some popcorn and watch the Great Vowel Shift.

Face transformer, courtesy of k_t.

Christmas MIDIs, brought to you by the Mountain View Chess Club.

Illegal primes. Cute.

Jakob Nielsen's weblog usability recommendations.

Zombie simulator.

If my sons fear God, I'll have them read A Tragic Evil Among Us. If not, I'll have them read The Porn Myth (and maybe even if they do).

Survey about modern attitudes toward polygamy.

Nuklear Power's a fun comic, and Brian's artificial intelligence speculation is fantastic. (Scroll down.)

Yay, grammar. Performatives.

Make Notes