rif

What does Finland look like?

2008-08-08T14:28:27Z

It looks like this. Lots of graphic design yumminess for Anna, lots of architecture, lots of water and islands and boats.

OMG!!

2008-08-06T00:24:32Z

Would definitely visit!

Bay Area, Lightning Round

2008-08-05T00:00:53Z

I flew Boston to San Jose last night. The flight was pretty bad news. First we were delayed by 90 minutes by thunderstorms, then we were delayed for 90 more minutes while they fixed the fuel gauge twice. Then it was pretty turbulent. I was supposed to have lunch with countertorque and company, but my flight got in at 11:00 pm instead of 8:00 pm, so it was straight to the hotel. I had a beautiful walk to work down the Stevens Creek Trail this morning (actually passing within a couple blocks of countertorque's thanks to a detour on the trail, and a productive day of meetings and coding, but I'm pretty tired now. About to head off to Berkeley to see Erica for an evening, then back to Mountain View for another full day of meetings, then redeye home tomorrow night. Whoosh.

OK, I'll say it: The Dark Knight is a disappointingly mediocre film.

2008-07-25T00:38:34Z

I went in wanting to love it, and was underwhelmed. I can't say it was bad. I can't say I didn't enjoy it. But I honestly expected a lot more. It wasn't as good as everyone's saying, and it wasn't as good as it was trying to be, or as good as it thought it was.

Heath Ledger as the Joker was terrific, and was probably the best thing in the film. Christian Bale was great as Bruce Wayne, but his vocals as Batman were pretty laughable. Yes, there was moral complexity, but it was really pretty facile and heavy-handed --- I frequently found myself giggling during the heavy dramatic speeches and voiceovers. The plotting was pretty nonsensical, considering how much of it there was. I honestly still can't figure out the wheels within wheels. It was also way too long for what it was; it was 2 1/2 hours that felt like 3.

Did you love it? Help me understand what I missed.

In the beginning was "The Big U."

2008-07-13T12:47:03Z

Neal Stephenson's first novel, "The Big U" is back in print (I think it's been back in print for a couple years already, but it was out of print for over a decade), and I've finally read it for the first time. I think it is my favorite Neal Stephenson novel, although I have slowly, over many years, come to the conclusion that Neal Stephenson isn't a very good writer. Certainly, many of his themes are already in evidence --- a love of science and geekery, humor, show-offishness, inability to plot. But as we move forwards through his novels (up through "Cryptonomicon," which is the last one I've read), he seems to be moving further from entertainment, and more towards pedagogy, and that is his critical flaw --- by "Cryptonomicon" or "The Diamond Age", he's happy to go into long analogies about topics in math, cryptography, or computer science that are dreadfully dull if you know the topics and don't teach you anything real if you don't.

Also, firstfrost lent me "The Name of the Wind," by Patrick Rothfuss. It was outstanding and if you like fantasy novels at all you should read it. I can't wait for the next one.

In Helsinki with a broken 'H' key

2008-07-13T12:42:52Z

Stupid 'h' key broke off my mac. I started writing IMs with apostrophe's in place of h's. I couldn't really code, so I had to go to the Helsinki Google office and borrow a keyboard and work there sometimes, but that was fine.

I'm back from Finland now. I think Finland is worth a visit if you're in the neighborhood, but I'm not clear I have to go back. It's certainly nice to see a dark sky again --- I'd missed that and was starting to have flashback's to the film Sunshine.

It's good to be home. Tomorrow I'll try to hit the genius bar at the local applestore and get my keyboard replaced, if it's not too clogged up with iphone 3G activators.

Helsinki On Foot

2008-07-07T05:16:10Z

On the third day, the jetlag hit with a vengeance. I'd been mostly sleeping nights before this, with a brief daytime nap, but today my body decided to jump back to Boston time. I tried to go to sleep at 11 p.m. here (4 p.m. Boston) --- no dice. Tossed and turned and read til 1, slept til 2, then was up again and sleep would not return. At 5:30 I gave up and went out for a two hour walk.

This was my first time exploring Helsinki. Just lovely. I took a bunch of pictures, which I'll post when I get home. A beautiful mix of water on most sides, green parks, European architecture, funky old boats, and industrial new boats. It was one of the nicest walks I've had in a long time.

Of course, now I'm exhausted, and the conference is about to start.

The Crazy Tractor Restaurant

2008-07-06T20:24:22Z

Based on a recommendation from merastra, a bunch of us ate at the crazy tractor restaurant tonight. It was the best meal I've had in Finland so far --- not great, but pretty good. The menu is hilarious, it's like a giant communist era newspaper. I kept one to bring home to Anna. I had a reindeer cream soup and a salad with lamb. The lamb was basically raw on the inside, but it was tasty enough. I also took a photo of the crazy tractor.

Tomorrow night we are having a banquet at some crazy fortress we have to take a ferry to, and then I'll check out some more restaurants.

Startide Rising, Redux

2008-07-06T12:05:25Z

I just finished rereading David Brin's Startide Rising. My previous (and first) reading was probably about 20 years ago --- I'm pretty sure I was in high school at the time. NOTE: I can't be bothered lj-cutting this, but if you're bothered by spoilers for a 25 year old book, stop reading now.

I remembered liking it quite well in high school, but this time around, I was pretty underwhelmed.
Primary issues:

1. I'm not convinced David Brin is that good a writer. His dialogue is not especially plausible. His characters are by and large one-dimensional, and a lot of his characters' internal thoughts feel like they come straight out of character sheets.

2. As an adventure action trickery story, it gets maybe 6 out of 10. But you don't know until the very end that you're reading an action adventure --- I really thought (I remembered almost nothing from my first meeting) that I was reading a nature-of-the-universe puzzle story, a la Sherri Tepper. But all the mysteries are just McGuffin's: we never find out why all the Galactics care so much about the human finds, or anything about the mysterious alien corpse, and even the ecology of the planet is pretty ho hum.

I'm not sure I'd classify this as a problem, but I also think it's interesting how I've changed in the intervening times. It feels like Brin's favorite characters are Creidiki and Tom Orley: other characters constantly refer to them as geniuses, everyone's in awe of them, they almost never mistakes, they're the smart but caring ubersentients. And I'm willing to bet that the first time through, I liked them best too. But this time I found them sanctimonious and dull. I thought Takkata-Jim was far and away the most interesting.

Anyways, this wasn't a bad book, but I'd hope for more from a book that won both the Hugo and Nebula.

Update From Helsinki

2008-07-05T16:56:17Z

The flights were pretty bumpy, but I think I'm getting a little better at handling bumpy flights. I still don't like it, but I made it on just sleeping drugs rather than antianxiety, and it was the bumpiest flights I've had in awhile.

The hotel is extremely modern and lovely, and the bed is ridiculously comfortable. I'll post some photos. There's wireless in the hotel, but I can't connect to Google's network from there to do actual work, so I borrowed a key to the tiny little Google Helsinki office (five minute walk from my hotel) and now I control Google Helsinki. At least til Monday when supposedly someone will be here, although they're mostly on vacation.

My sleep schedule is kind of a mess, although I guess it could be worse. I think I managed to sleep about 4ish hours on the plane over, and then I stayed up til 7 pm, and slept on and off til morning. I woke at 3 am and it was twilight out, and by 4:30 it was getting light. I went to conference stuff in the morning, and planned to take the afternoon off to write code, but ended up falling asleep for 3 more hours. I'm hoping I'll have time for a couple of very long walks around Helsinki, but not sure yet when that will be. At least there's a lot of hours I can do it in. The conference seems pretty good so far, but I'm sure I'll need some breaktime.

The food here is a terrifying combination of inordinately expensive and mediocre-to-poor. Forty dollar dinners that taste like cafeteria food are common. Fortunately, breakfast is included in my hotel, so I can get by on my $75 a day for meals --- otherwise it would be tight.

Quickish Hits

2008-07-05T08:57:24Z

"Soon I Will Be Invincible," by Austin Grossman. If you're into superheros at all, you've probably already this, but just in case you haven't, it's terrific. I wish it were longer. Austin Grossman goes in the same mental bucket for me as Adam Cadre or Jonathan Lethem, and I'll read whatever he writes next without thinking twice.

"Hancock," directed by Peter Berg. Well, it was definitely crap, but I didn't think it was entirely unenjoyable. It was deeply flawed, it made no sense, it was horribly cliched, but I still kinda liked it (except for the all heart stuff which made me want to retch). I was it with my friend Ana, who thought it was just crap. I guess the big question from talking about it was whether the director (who had previously direct Friday Night Lights, a film I really liked) was actually trying to make something good, or whether the whole thing was an exercise in crass commerciality. Reading about it on IMDB, it seems like they went through a lot of directors and script treatments, so maybe a bit of both. Definitely not a must see, but there were some interesting things there.

"Wall-E." Another masterpiece from the folks at Pixar. I feel like we're in a new golden age of animation, and that these films will be enduring classics. I love the way Pixar gets the animation and the special effects so much better than anyone else, but throws them off almost casually, focussing so deeply on story and character. This lets them take premises that seem ridiculously weak (A rat who wants to be a French chef? Come on already!) and knock them out of the park. And they let their directors take real risks, tell the stories they want to tell. The movies don't feel commerical at all (although I'm sure we're being deluged with Wall-E toys). This time out, we had another frighteningly risky premise --- a solitary garbarge compactor robot in a devastated future earth with a fondness for 20th century earth culture falls in love with another visiting robot. Oh yeah, and neither of them can really talk. The first hour of the movie has almost no dialog at all. The whole thing is unbelievably well-executed, and heartbreakingly beautiful. I cried and cried. I think it's not just a great animated film, but also a great science fiction film. I liked it as well as any other Pixar film, which is a hell of a lot.

Gender Stereotypes, All Messed Up: Am I A Teenaged Girl At Heart?

2008-07-03T15:10:40Z

This sounds incredibly fun to me. This description is even more disturbing.

223*3

2008-07-03T12:35:11Z

Things I did in the last year that I'm happy about:
- Continued to have a deeper and better relationship with my amazing partner Anna
- Lost ten pounds and kept it off
- Learned a lot about jazz piano
- Had a great experience learning about software engineering, working in teams, and working in a part of a company that's trying to actually make things people use
- Solved man's greatest aesthetic challenge: how to grow an awesome asymmetric beard
- Learned more about myself

Plans for today:
- A little bit of work, a Google table massage (ah, the perks just don't quit), then Anna's coming by for lunch and taking me to see Wall-E. Then it's home to pack for a nine-day trip to Finland to attend some machine learning conferences --- I'm both excited and nervous about the trip.

Plans for the coming year:
- Spend time with Anna
- Lose another ten pounds
- Do a lot more yoga
- Keep on playing piano and dancing as much as possible
- Finally get "reasonably good" at tango
- Finish the project at work I've been working on for seven months
- Keep on figuring out what it is I want from my life and work

Wizard People, Dear Reader!

2008-06-29T15:19:11Z

Based on a recommendation from Adam Cadre, Anna and I experienced "Wizard People, Dear Reader" last night. You rent Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, but watch it with the sound off, with an alternate soundtrack by Brad Neely, who is also "famous" for the "George Washington YouTube video."

The soundtrack is really just Neely narrating for two and a half hours in a funny voice. It's not really poking fun of the movie the way MST3K does --- Neely is (nearly always) just narrating the events in the movie through his own twisted lens. Everyone has stupid names: Ron is usually called "Ron the bear", Hermione is "the wretched Harmony", and the conceit is that she is incredibly ugly and wretched. Also, Snape is constantly referred to as a very ugly woman,Hagrid is Hagar the Horrible, Dumbledore is Dumbledore the Nearly Dead. Surprisingly, these get funnier the more times they are repeated. Slight liberties are taken with the story: Filch and his cat become "the blood-eyed cat of security and his man-servant, Dazzler." The prose is stupidly turgid to the point of hilarity. Somehow, Neely's conviction to carry this through two and a half full hours makes it work. It is bizarre, ludicrous, hilarious, and far more fun than it has any right to be. Strongly recommended.

"Good Calories Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes

2008-06-27T11:53:05Z

Just finished reading this last night. Gary Taubes is a science journalist who spent five years researching both the science and the history of nutrition/diet/chronic disease/obesity studies. I found the book fascinating, well written, and well researched (the references and endnotes feel like nearly 100 pages), and I cannot recall reading something that simultaneously felt so compelling and so completely counterintuitive. Among the many things you will learn about in this book:

* Dietary fat, including saturated fats, may have nothing to do with obesity, diabetes or heart disease.
* All of those things may in fact be caused by carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates.
* Glycemic index is pretty useless, largely because it demonizes glucose while ignoring fructose.
* The number of calories you eat may be much less important than the composition of those calories, for the purposes of both weight loss and disease control, especially over longer timescales.
* A lot of the current dietary recommendations (low-fat low-calorie diets) are actually based on extremely flimsy science.
* A lot of the good science on this issue has been almost willfully ignored.
* Obesity, which has been treated largely as a psychological/willpower/character issue, is almost certainly much more of a hormonal imbalance problem. Put differently, we don't get fat because we overeat, we overeat because we are getting fat.

I find a lot of this very surprising, but I feel like Taubes does a pretty good job of presenting evidence, admitting when that evidence is partial or contradictory, and generally being up on the state of the science.

I strongly recommend this book.

Cobra Brand "Toiler Auger" --- Do Not Buy

2008-06-21T21:56:03Z

Claim: Clears cloged & slow running toilet drains.

We had a slow running toilet drain, so I gave it a try.

Reality: Snakes several feet down your toilet, then comes apart so snake is impossible to remove.
Outcome: We have a slow-running, partially clogged toilet with a the handle end of a snake sticking out of it.
Upside: Not quite as embarrassing as arriving at the hospital emergency room with internal gerbil.

the scottish sleep issues, quick book thoughts

2008-06-13T01:32:43Z

I've been having a lot of sleep trouble the last few months. And I find that whenever I wake up too early, from night sleep or a nap, and try for a few minutes to go back to sleep but cannot, as I rise up, I hear a grumpy, tired voice in my head saying, "MacRif shall sleep no more!"

In other news, "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon is an excellent excellent book. I actually liked it a little better than "Kavalier and Clay," which is also terrific, although if you're way into superheroes and comics but weren't raised Jewish and don't love noir, you'll probably prefer "Kavalier and Clay."

In other other news, one's mid-30's is entirely too late to read the entire Elric saga for the first time. There is something wonderful about them, but they are also crap. The non-thinking man's Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe. I did manage to make it through all six, but I can't really recommend the experience.

Only in China

2008-05-03T01:41:36Z

Excellent.

Long Time No Post

2008-05-02T01:30:33Z

Matt was visiting this weekend, and pointed out I hadn't posted anything in a while. I guess I don't have too much to say publicly right now. Actually I have another post I'll try and write tonight, but for now a brief update on my life.

I am working on developing a software product at Google. We are in crunch mode. So this is the part of my life where I learn what it's like to work really hard as part of a team to write software. Also, I have been at Google nearly one year now. I have a lot of thoughts about this, and I'm still making up my mind about many things, and for now I'm just taking it all in, trying to learn as much as possible and trying to make the most of this experience. I'm not sure that "software product developer" is my truest calling, but it's not horrible. I'm working harder than I like just now, but that should hopefully just be for the next month or so.

My main exercise recently has been yoga. I've started going fairly regular (3-4x/week) to Power Prana Yoga in Central Square. They heat the room to 95ish degrees, which I found very tough at first but now really like. I measured once and during a 90 minute class I sweated our 4 1/2 pounds of water (I drank 2 pounds of water and weighed 2 1/2 pounds less at the end). It's been making me happy and keeping me balanced and unstressed. I've also been doing a moderate amount of swing dancing, thought maybe not as much as I'd like.

Other than that, just going along. Trying to make time for musical activities, and hanging out with Anna, and trying not to flip out. You know, the usual.

Weekend of the Dominated Movies

2008-03-24T03:10:46Z

On the plus side, we had time to watch two movies this weekend. On the downside, neither was much good. I'll try sending Anna to the video store again next time instead of me.

First up was The Darjeeling Limited. The settings were pretty, but it was really really boring. I'm actually a Wes Anderson fan: I lovelovelove The Royal Tenenbaums and I also really liked Rushmore and The Life Aquatic, and I thought this was just terrible. None of the main characters were likable at all.

Last night we watched Fail Safe, a high-falutin' piece starring all kinds of good actors (Clooney, Keitel, Azaria, Wyle, some more) about what happens when there's a malfunction in the nuclear control systems and we accidentally send some bombers towards Moscow. It was made for TV, broadcast live in black and white in 2000. It wasn't terrible, but it was basically not as good as Dr. Strangelove in every relevant aspect.

Still, overall, a great weekend. Activities included going swing dancing with Anna, playing Rock Band, practicing piano, doing a bit of work, dealing with paperwork, eating delicious chile and homemade bread, watching two movies, taking a bunch of naps, having dinner with Jeremy at Ole, and finally making to my first Prana Power Yoga class. I feel pretty recharged and ready to head back to the grind tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Random Hall, and They're All Grownsed Up, and Random! The Gathering

2008-03-01T14:48:45Z

Random Hall is 10 years old. And they had a great big 10th anniversary party and people showed up from all eras of Random. It was amazing and fun.

It was so exciting to see my students all grownsed up. A bunch of the early ones have finished their PhDs, a bunch of the later ones are working on it. They've started companies, designed new robots, been in the Navy, built boats, got married, and have little ones of their own. It's nice to reflect back and think that I was able to be helpful. I definitely miss the place, and walking around brought back the memories. Living with Anna is great, and I guess we've been living just the two of us for almost six years now, but I would also enjoy having more people around. Maybe some day we can live in a coop, or some sort of close knit community where we partially share space with more friends. Or maybe not I guess.

The current residents had put together a truly brilliant Magic ripoff called Random! The Gathering. I'm guessing (as of this morning) that they used the open-source card editor mentioned in algorithmancy's post. I think the five main classes (corresponding to the colors) were cruft (black), randomite, cow, student, and number, although I'm not totally sure they corresponded directly that way. They had a lot of great cards. I think my favorites were the nerdy concept ones. Destructive Interference: Pick a power and a toughness. All creatures in play with that power and toughness are destroyed. Schrodinger's Cat: When Schrodinger's Cat is played, immediately place it in your graveyard, and put a 1/2 Schrodinger's Cat token into play. Recursion: Reveal the top card of your library. If it is a land, place it into play; if not, put it on the bottom of your library and repeat this process. (And then the same text smaller, then smaller...) Anyways, it was quite impressive. It seemed balanced and playable too.

My dream house.

2008-02-22T00:23:19Z

So crazy. So beautiful. Yes, I would live there.

That Movie Meme

2008-02-22T00:17:31Z

Stolen from tirinian and mjperson

If you get stuck, remember, they're from my favorite movies, not
normal people's. Also, I've tried to avoid some of the most obvious,
like just choosing 10 quotes from the first Pirates of the
Caribbean film. Some of them are still pretty easy, but some are
pretty obscure.

Movie meme:

1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Looking them up is cheating, please don't.

1. "All I want is to be happy. And happiness comes from the
achievement of goals!"

2. "I remember coming here, and I remember nothing else."

3. "The US is like an enormous ant farm. A see-through plastic case
enclosing an ant colony. It's a toy sold to children so they can
watch ants build their own society. The US is like an ant farm for
the rest of the world. But, people living in other countries can't
observe the ants. They must rely on journalists and commentators for
a description. The problem is, that these people seem to hate ants.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it to you, but it looks to me
like you could be shaving in the wrong direction."

4. "Something caused all this. But what caused that cause?"

5. "I've been going to this high school for seven and a half
years. I'm no dummy. I know high school girls."

6. "I have hunted you so long, I have become you."

7. "Congratulations. If I had both my hands, I'd applaud you."

8. "Thanks for letting me sit in, Pie-Eye!"

9. "My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody
you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only
a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total
amazement."

10. "All I know is, on the day your plane was to leave, if I had the
power, I would turn the winds around, I would roll in the fog, I would
bring in storms, I would change the polarity of the earth so compasses
couldn't work, so your plane couldn't take off."

UPDATE: I expected people to get 1, 3, 5, 9, 10. The rest vary from pretty obscure but people on this list have probably seen it (4, 6, 7) to extremely obscure (2, 8). Also, 4 and 8 aren't really among my favorites, they're movies where that particular line somehow made an impression on me.

San Francisco Treats, I

2008-02-06T00:25:04Z

On Friday night, I went to The
Slanted Door with Anna and my parents. This was the most
consistently recommended place --- I think I got three separate
independent recommendations to eat here. I guess it's considered
"Vietnamese Californian", sort of Vietnamese but more upscale and with
lots of fresh and organic ingredients.

Appetizers:

Daikon radish cakes, truly outstanding. Get these if you go.

Vegetarian spring rolls. Pretty much exactly what you get at any
other Vietnamese restaurant. Nothing wrong with them, nothing too
special either.

Entrees:

Shaking beef. Eat this. It's hella yummy.
Yellowfin tuna. Very good, but not nearly as outstanding as the beef.

Sides:

Vegetarian glass noodles with tofu skin and mushrooms.
Baby bok choy.

Desserts:

Three sorbets.

Creme brulee. Notable in that it was much "deeper" than a normal
creme brulee, so the ratio of creme to carmelized top seemed low. The
creme was a little less sweet than I'm used to. Delicious.

A chocolate tart. Pretty standard.

Some other stuff I can't remember, because it's already been four days
and I wasn't paying close attention.

Of special note. The view was ridiculously awesome. The Slanted Door
is in the Ferry Building, and from our table, we could look out over
the water from water-level, with the Oakland Bay Bridge maybe a half
mile off to the right towering above us. Just gorgeous. On the other
hand, the restaurant was really much too loud. There's lots of cement
in the design and the tables are densely packed, so it's noisy loud
loud.

Verdict: Everything was very good, and quite a few things were
outstanding. Nothing was bad at all. Service was good, prices were
high but not any higher than you'd expect. I would definitely go again,
but maybe for lunch when it's probably quieter.

The never-ending cycle of violence.

2008-02-05T01:34:04Z

We conclude that a world where mafias operate is inherently turbulent.

rif