Journal entries for July, 2004

I was just thinking the other day how much I love The Daily Show, and how it's great to have a show that not only shares my sense of humor but also agrees with my budding political beliefs. And then on Tuesday's episode, they had Senator Joe Biden on the show (who, based on that little 5-minute exposure, I like a lot) and he mentioned something about hoping to convey his message to "people aged 18-31, such as those in your audience". And I realized, dammit, of course the show appeals to me so much. It's aimed exactly at people in my age range, who, as they say, tend to hold more liberal viewpoints than those in older age ranges.

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Rollo is... watching you.

I believe I will insidiously become JSM's friend in order to maneuver myself into a position of confidence and then make off with Rollo. I must have him.

All of this work on the website is a perfect example of that. I feel technically proficient, but for the last year or two I've felt very uncreative. I can write code to do pretty cool things, but I can't come up with a website design that looks good (I'm happy with this one but I have basically borrowed the ideas I liked from the websites I've seen lately that looked good). Sit me down in front of Photoshop and I can't come up with anything.

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Toyota inventors have patented the designs for a car with facial expressions. It reacts automatically to the driving environment, showing anger when someone cuts you off, and surprise when the driver has to brake suddenly to avoid something. I'd love to see that car on an autocross course. (via)

"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

-Hermann Goering. Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials.

One thing that makes me happy: The Spanish name for "I, Robot".

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the landing on the Moon, NASA has taken all of the film taken during the Apollo space program out of the freezer, thawed them out and scanned them at high resolution. Awesome. Some of my favorites:

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A man plans to cross America on a Segway, with a film crew, and release a documentary about it. Sad, attention-starved man.

I just realized how awesome it is when Van Damme cries out, "I'm the best! I'm the best!!" in No Retreat, No Surrender.

Current contents of that little pocket at the top of my bookbag:

• An electronic Japanese-English dictionary
• A USB 2.0 PCMCIA card
• A CompactFlash PCMCIA adapter
• My cheap sunglasses that our roofers left here over christmas break
• A compass

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Maybe they were just on vacation.

I was trying to decide on a name for the site. That "One part per million" thing was just a Bad Religion song that was playing when I redid the header. It's a good song, but the site has nothing to do with that :) Then I started realizing that the actual original Binary Rock website hasn't been updated in something like two years.

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I'm definitely obsessed. Yesterday morning when I got home from work around 5am, I should have gone to bed, but first I watched some episodes of the Daily Show. Around 7, I decided, "OK I need to get to bed."

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New hearing aid uses Artificial Intelligence

This is a pretty interesting use of AI technology. It doesn't always have to be about robots mimicking conversation, etc.

WTF?

Well, after working on the site for about three days straight (that's more literal than you know) I finally feel it's complete enough to launch. There's still a few small things that need to be done, and your comments and suggestions are definitely appreciated if there's anything you'd like to see. But this will do for now.

I wonder if it's obvious that what is displayed on the front page is only a summary of each post? I should probably indicate that in some way. For now this will have to serve :)

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Warning: We Brake For Number Theory

I think I can safely say that Google is the company I'd most like to work for. But I'm scared to imagine the heights to which my nerdiness would soar in that kind of environment.

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If you're reading this, then you know that I'm redesigning my website and writing my own simple CMS. I find it hard to believe that people pay money for this - it doesn't really seem that hard.

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Apparently, "thank you" in Swedish sounds like "f**k off" in English, which makes for good times while listening to the new live acoustic Pain Of Salvation album.

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Today I was considering color and about how you could just look at a photo and decide that it was a "red" photo, or "green", or whatever you felt the main color was. And I started wondering if it'd be possible to algorithmically calculate that "main" color of an image, and thus categorize the photos in the photo gallery based on their perceptive colors.

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I never thought I'd miss that semi-fine, purple serif type. I guess it's an equal combination of "the grass is always greener" and "you don't know what you have till it's gone".

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I feel like Takumi. Every drive home is another chance to better learn the limits of my car (haven't found them yet) and how to get around a corner the fastest and/or most interesting way possible. The one good thing about getting off work at 4am.

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It's interesting that everything I do seems to be for the purpose of sharing it with others. That seems to be a central aspect of my personality - I love sharing my experiences with others, and in fact that seems to be my primary goal in most activities.

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an addendum to the last entry. it's not really that i'm concerned about looking like your typical blogger, complaining about how his parents don't understand him and he doesn't want to do his homework today and maybe he will cut himself to show them all.

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so i figure i'll start writing in this again. i feel like writing somewhere, and LJ makes it very convenient. i couldnt decide if i should make my journal private or not, because while i don't particularly mind people reading it, and in fact would certainly like to read people's comments if they have any, i don't what what i write to be read with the impression that i WANTED people to read it.

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