June 26, 2006
So sudoku is slowly taking over for crossword puzzles. [Warning: link includes Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton acting intelligent.] I wonder if sudoku becomes less enjoyable after noticing this paper: Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle, which describes a comprehensive (and fast) solver in about 100 lines of code.
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June 25, 2006
Aha! Something to complain about: we awoke this morning to zero water pressure. I eventually took a walk down to where we'd heard all sorts of crazy mechanical noises and discovered a backhoe and several very large trucks all manned by City of Quincy workers, one of whom was busily digging with what I presume was an unseen shovel in a seven-foot-deep pit in the middle of Bryant Avenue, which was, of course, closed to traffic. I chatted for a bit with a few of the other gawkers, who included several neighbors I'd never met, and ended up talking to one of the city guys, who reported that it was about a 10- or 12-inch main that had broken, "because of old age or something." Apparently only about fifty houses are still without water—going on 10 hours, now. I guess we got lucky.
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Like every other sufficiently nerdly person, this space has spent a decent fraction of the last several days going over Edward Tufte's new book, Beautiful Evidence. Astonishingly, I've seen a decent fraction of this material before, including Peter Norvig's PowerPoint Gettysburg Address (check out his accounting of its creation) and the two or three chapters that he pre-published in public on his web site). Sitting here with a pile of jelly beans and chocolates and cookies it's hard to find much to complain about.
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June 16, 2006
June 15, 2006
June 12, 2006
The agony of not being able to watch the World Cup because we went and cancelled extended cable is only somewhat compensated for by the fact that I didn't watch the US team get crushed by the Czechs. It's probably not worth complaining about, since I'm apparently the only American in the entire universe who likes soccer more than the Home Shopping Network, which is the only possible explanation for why the World Cup games aren't on regular TV.
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June 11, 2006
This kid graduated from high school, leaving me with no siblings in high school. Nicely done, Lib.
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We have no CSS files on this site anymore. Pure, unformatted text: you know you love it. (Update: Fixed.)
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June 05, 2006
This space has an unreasonably soft place in its heart for Slayer, the heaviest metal band ever. Strangest combination of excellent music and bizarre satanic themes your money can buy! (Later albums are more about generic war and violence than satanism; go ahead and explain a significant difference.) At any rate, tomorrow is the National Day of Slayer. My fellow commuters on I-93 will share in the fun. You are not allowed to take offense, under penalty of sloppy, super loud guitar solo duels.
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June 02, 2006
Do exit polls lie? I wish that after the last round of elections I had suggested here, in this space, that everyone write down three things they liked about the president (him in particular, but it works with anyone you might vote for) and put that paper in an envelope, promising to open the envelope in two years' time, read the list, and throw it away, never having shown it to anyone else. Just to keep yourself honest. I completely regret not having written that idea down until now.
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June 01, 2006
Minor amusement: I found a link to MacSaber, which makes computers containing motion sensors (like mine) make lightsaber noises when you wield them around. The readme for this program states: "Don't hurt your laptop! You don't have to swing it so hard, you know," which was funny until I started the program and realized just how badassed it was to be swinging a laptop around like a lightsaber and have it make the same noises, and of course I started swinging it waaaay more casually than anyone should swing a thousand-odd-dollar computer, which is when the disclaimer kicked in. To protect my machine, I have, of course, deleted the program. Alas.
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