Public Data Sets in the Amazon Cloud

January 6, 2009 – 1:12 am

Amazon’s now offering genomic, chemical, and economic data sets for use in their elastic storage service. You only pay for the compute resources you use to process them. If you have a public data set, you can submit it for inclusion.

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Papercube

January 5, 2009 – 9:40 pm

I’m happy to see my friend and former coworker Peter Bergström getting some nice press for his work. He’s using the Sproutcore framework, SVG and Canvas.

It’s a visualization of academic citation networks, extending on work he did as an undergraduate at UCSC, for his Masters thesis at Santa Clara University: Demo Movie and Demo App

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They only want to help

December 23, 2008 – 1:03 am

I figured that brains would get us out of our current mess, just not this way.

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Planet Alyx’s Sweet Potato Tofu Hash

December 19, 2008 – 12:16 am

It’s cold out, and you want filling, comfortable food, but something somewhat healthy. It’s fall and there are root vegetables in abundance.

I like planetalyx’s recipe, with some modifications (the addition of carrots improves many things, not all, but many):

Take a couple of small sweet potatoes or yams, or one big one, peel and grate them. I cheat and use a food processor.

Grate a large, peeled carrot.

Take a large skillet, put in enough oil to substantially coat the bottom, start it heating.

Grate a good sized hunk of ginger root. You’ll want the hand grater for this.

Toss the grated ginger in the oil and stir, wait for it to get fragrant and golden, then toss in the grated sweet potatoes and carrot. That will soak up the oil, so stir it all up again to keep it from sticking and burning. Let it cook for a couple of minutes, then add a half cup of grated firm tofu.

Let it cook down some more, heating everything through.

Dump the hash onto a plate, turn off the burner. Now pour some soy sauce into the pan to deglaze it and pull off the crunchy bits. Pour that over the hash.

Serves 2 to 3 people. Or one hungry one.

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AI Strategies, the iPhone, and Go

December 5, 2008 – 11:28 pm

iGo on iPhone

We’ve been playing Go during lunch at work lately. Mark Lentczner, one of our engineering directors, is a long-time Go enthusiast, runs the Go center in Second Life, and has been teaching us.

So when Jens mentioned iGo for the iPhone, I bought a copy, and stayed up late one night this week working on beating the AI on a 7 x 7 board without a handicap.

I showed this the next day to Mark, who reminded me of an earlier conversation about the trouble with playing Go against an AI. Most modern Go AIs use monte carlo methods to determine their play, and the resulting style of play is nothing like a human opponent.

Instead, he suggested getting Smartgo touch. It’s a collection of a couple of thousand Go ‘problems’ to work through to improve your game.

You don’t need an AI to play Go if you’re alone, get on the KGS Go Server, and you’ll find an opponent.

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Mark’s Tarte Tatin

December 1, 2008 – 9:27 pm

Mark Bernstein described how he makes tarte tatine yesterday. And that prompted me to get some apples and puff pastry from the market.

Simple to make, and delicious. Leftover tart for breakfast, I think.

Next time I’ll remember to puncture the pastry with a fork so all the caramelized apple, sugar, and butter can soak into the crust.

For the more ambitious, there’s another recipe where you make carmel, stack up some apple slices in that, and bake the assembly with a sheet of pastry on top. [Thanks, Todd]

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Lively Petition

December 1, 2008 – 2:08 am

In the wake of Google’s planned shutdown of the Lively 3D chatroom product, the users started a site and a petition to demand that Google keep it running.

The group cites Lively’s ease of use, the ability to embed a room in a web page, and Google’s vigilance in policing content, as some of the things they’ll miss.

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The Stolen Air of Mars!

November 20, 2008 – 11:04 pm

Data from the now defunct Mars Global Surveyor suggest that instead of protecting Mars’ thin atmosphere, the Red Planet’s spotty magnetic field may have helped the solar wind strip it, one piece at a time.

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Google Lively Ends

November 20, 2008 – 12:52 am

Google announced they were discontinuing their 3D world Lively at the end of the year. My condolences to the Lively team. I would had loved it if you all had gotten to do the Mac and Linux versions.

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I’m certain that NASA would like to have a word with you in that case.

November 16, 2008 – 1:05 am

From a report on a No on Eight Rally in Denver, posted at Sullivan’s Blog:

A black man yelled out to the crowd as they entered the grassy front to Denver’s grand city and county building, “What about me, what if I married a Martian? Would that be OK? Someone talk to me. Come on, talk to me.” No one yelled back, no one paid attention.

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A Better Tomorrow

November 12, 2008 – 12:39 am

You and 2,000 of your friends buy a 27 Kw reactor, use it to run the steam plant for your retro-anacrhonistic re-enactor village, and sell airship rides to tourists.

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Wonks

November 9, 2008 – 12:38 am

20081105_Chicago_IL_ElectionNight1888

Photo: David Katz/Obama for America

As a long time Mac partisan, I’m amused by this photo from election night in Chicago.

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John Leonard is Dead, and I am Angry

November 7, 2008 – 11:52 pm

John Leonard, a critic and writer whose work I loved, died on Wednesday. I don’t know if it was the joy and shock of a country voting overwhelmingly for Senator Obama that finally did him in. Most likely it was the cancer he had been fighting.

He wrote prolifically. But let him explain:

For a living, I chase the ambulances of popular culture. I review television every Monday for New York magazine; and books every Tuesday for National Public Radio; and politics and other cultures every Thursday for New York Newsday; and media of several sorts every Sunday morning on CBS; and I will be found otherwise, four or five times a year, in The Nation, where I am encouraged to rhapsodize about new novels at whatever length I think I need–with the understanding that I will be underpaid.

As you can see, he understood the power of the list, and used it as an expert, sending the prose into a controlled four wheel drift, like James Joyce or Ian McDonald. But the main thing was he was scarily well-read, across genres and media. He was Henry Jenkins, turned up to eleven, with fangs and claws.

Since Leonard was unafraid of genre and pop culture, he was happy willing to sing the praises of Pat Cadigan and Twin Peaks alongside paeans to Toni Morrison.

Along with Katha Pollit’s columns, he was the reason to pick up a copy of The Nation, every week.

Damn the Universe, you take away Mr. Leonard and my friends’ right to marry on the same day, when we could had used his words to take down those culture warriors down a few pegs.

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Awe, Anger and Wonder

November 5, 2008 – 12:27 am

Awe over Senator Obama’s overwhelming victory. He ran the map. 538.com’s projections were nearly spot on. I lost the pool at work with my much more conservative guess that spotted McCain Florida and Ohio, but I don’t care.

Anger over my fellow Californians’ willingness to enshrine bigotry in the constitution. (However, that is not a done deal, even if Proposition Eight passes.)

And wondering if the Republicans will reform their coalition, shedding the anti-immigrant, evangelical, and Cold War wings.

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California Ballot Propositions

November 3, 2008 – 9:44 pm

I’m guessing that most of you have voted by mail already, however, if you’re still staring at that ballot, my opinions.

Most importantly, an emphatic No on 8: it is discriminatory, it hurts my friends and co-workers, and it’s the most mean-spirited thing I’ve seen since, well, the Knight Initiative.

On some of the others:

Prop 1A: I’m torn over this. I want the private sector to build High Speed Rail. I was in Japan last year, and loved how easy it was to get around on the Shinkansen. And like Telstar Logistics, I want that here. Coin Toss, ask your inner libertarian.

Prop 2: Regardless of if you think regulating cage conditions is important, the state is the wrong level of governance to rule on this. This is a NAFTA matter. No.

Prop 4: Another attempt by religious conservatives to control womens’ bodies. Emphatic No.

Prop 7: No.

Prop 8: Let me repeat. Emphatic No.

Prop 10: No.

Prop 11: Bipartisan redistricting is a good start. Yes.

And if you’re in San Francisco, please vote no on ‘R’. It’s an insult to the people who work at the sewage plant.

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