Monday, June 30, 2014

Monday: Fucking Mondays

And Tony Scalia.  I think the day he finally dies will be a day that lots of people will be very happy.  Beyond that, my only two comments on the absolute fuckery of today are statistics, and Wrath Hover Ginsbot.

I went to the wing place to get not-wings for lunch.  I ordered 4-pieces, and ended up with like seven.  And yes, I'm eating them with chopsticks, because I don't want to have to wash my hands up to the elbow to get all the wing sauce off.  Chopsticks are food-hands for when you don't want your regular hands dirty.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Sunday: Sandwich day

I did go to that sandwich place.  Earl Sandwich.

French dip.
It's good.  The FD has the standard beef, with Gruyere, mustard, fennel/onion "marmalade", and I added the bacon jam as well.  The bacon jam just got lost, so it's probably not worth adding in the future.  I would have liked more cheese, but I pretty much always want more cheese on things.  Definitely a place I'll have to go back to.


Saturday, June 28, 2014

Saturday: I spent a large chunk of the day just working through my RSS backlog.

This is the balloon festival from eight years ago.  See first link.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Friday Addendum: Basically just travel food

Dunkin Doughnuts:
Why do these not exist in Hawaii?
 I really liked the font on the "stairs" sign.


Because I was magically upgraded on the nine hour flight from Chicago to Honolulu, there was lots of food.
Dry undercooked penne with far too much zucchini and far too little sauce.

But then there was ice cream for dessert.  I got mine with chocolate and caramel sauces, with a few walnuts.
 A bunch of hours later, and it was time for second lunch.
I never even knew "airplane cheeseburger" was a thing.  Mine wasn't really properly reheated, so the center was cool, which isn't a good thing.  It matches the criterion for "burger," although it comes off as a really bland and huge White Castle burger.

Friday: Home

But I'm so sleepy, I'm going to bed now.

Better posts tomorrow.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Thursday Addendum: Baltimore

The Aquarium (and yes, I know I have more non-fish pictures than fish pictures):
Turtles need to breathe, too.

"Hey."

Tamarin.

I don't think I saw any squirrelfish.

Shark!

Bats!
 The rest of the harbor:
Fort McHenry.

USS Constellation.
 And then it was dinner time:
Crab cake, some shrimp, some scallops, a slab of fish in a (fairly weak) beurre blanc.


Thursday: Can you get fish sweats?

Like meat sweats, but from fish?  In any case, I ate a lot of fish and fish-like-products, and that precipitated a lot of sweat.

Also it was hot there, so maybe it's just that.

I had hoped to get Fogo de Chao while I was in Baltimore.  That didn't happen.

I had also hoped to get Pizzaria Uno while I was here.  Also didn't happen.

I did not expect to hear that story from a well-respected UK scientist.  I'm going to share:  a long time ago, in a country far, far away, where none of the following was illegal or odd, some of his friends found a large patch of "special" mushrooms.  They harvested them, and quickly realized that they could not possibly consume them all in a reasonable time.  They had a serious problem.

A problem they solved by creating a mushroom jam, or relish, or whatever you call preserved mushrooms in a jar that you can spread onto toast.

I have pictures (of fish, mostly), but I have to be on a plane in nine hours, so sometime over the weekend I'll post-date a bunch of posts to fit in with the pictures when they should have been.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Wednesday Addendum: Conference dinner

The Glass Pavilion is pretty much made of glass.

Wednesday: Almost done

I was just woken up by this thunderstorm.
I'll have to do a bunch of posts after I get back home.  I'm just too tired and jetlagged to do them live.


Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Tuesday: 5:30 is better than 4:30, I guess

But now I'm just yawning all the time, so I'm skipping today's stuff.



Monday, June 23, 2014

Monday: Let's try to not wake up at 4:30 tomorrow.

Because it wasn't a lot of fun today.  Even with a very generous "get ready" budget, it was just way too much time.  Although I did have the issue that after reading the internets for today, I fell asleep for an hour (or two?).  So here's just the four link I put into tabs, and not the filtered set of the 22 items I starred for later reading.

And it turns out "no, you won't give a talk" that led to "well, maybe just make some slides" has taken the obvious transformation to "you can present those on Thursday."  I knew this was going to happen.


  • Ovenized.
  • I also enjoy repurposing cards for things the card was not originally designed for.
  • This makes more sense when it's explained than it was at the end of that soccer game.  There it just looked like they threw more time on at the end to give the losing team a chance to tie.
  • Anger bunny.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Sunday Addendum: Apparently everyone knows about the cookies.

Doubletree gives out free cookies when you check in.  Because why not, I guess.

Tastes like soap.

And then I was lazy due to being super jetlagged, and had room service deliver crab and artichoke ravioli.

Sunday: It is officially Who the Fuck Knows O'Clock.

Fucking jetlag.

Hotel wifi is capped at 1Mb/s.

It has direct tv, but there seems to be nothing on direct tv.

Wifi now seems capped at 0.5Mb/s.  This makes reading the internet nearly impossible.  It's like this hotel is stuck in 2003.  This and the no-refrigerator thing are kind of unacceptable now.  My hotel in Tokyo was like  a quarter the space of this one, and it had a fridge.  The dorm in Taiwan had a fridge.  I literally cannot think of the last hotel I stayed in that didn't have one.


Saturday, June 21, 2014

Saturday Addendum: First class "snack"


On the redeye from Honolulu to Denver, they don't serve a proper meal service.  Instead I got a "Mediterranean Snack."  Couscous, some cold roasted veggies, a couple of mozzarella balls, and some salami.  The bowl in the background is some mixed fruit, and the "Italian Crackers" are basically just extra salty regular crackers.  I don't think anyone else had this, as they were too busy sleeping.

That means they also missed the scone that served as "almost breakfast."

Saturday: i got a boat seat

This is Howe flying should be. Also i had Ramen. And saw this tiny elephant.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Friday: Laundry and packing

I don't leave until late tomorrow, but I hate getting ready for travel.  I can't pretend a travel day is a normal day, even if it is until 10pm.  And now I'm checked in, and I've switched my crap travel agent seats for less crap window seats in the slightly less shitty class that I now have to rush to get at check-in time.

MT54 was a bit odd today.  Guy gets framed for murder and theft, and is executed leaving his wife and baby all alone.  She hires MT5, and they go after the real criminals: the thief who killed the kid that got killed, chief constable A, chief constable B, and the fucking magistrate of the town.  Murder Cop says he'll take two of the kills, since YMG died last episode.  However, when he's going to kill the thief while the credits roll, the thief takes off, and MC finds him slumped over in an alley, with a strangulation mark around his neck.  A shadow in the background runs off, indicating that New Murder Guy will be here next episode, and that he can figure out crimes and kill the instigator without even needing the rest of the Murder Team.  I'm guessing he's going to be kind of a jerk, but everyone will warm up to him by his second or third episode.

In related news, I remembered this week that Japan gets the internet too, and that they have a wikipedia, and they almost certainly have people who obsessively edit wikipedia articles about useless topics.  å¿…殺仕事人2009.  Blammo.  Combined with the wonder that is chrome's auto-translate function, I can figure out what's going on better.  Today's episode was titled "False Accusation."  Important information.



And I'm not mistaken.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Thursday: Is it all odds, or just primes?

Considering the problem from yesterday, assume you have N boxes and an infinite number of sets of M objects that you must insert into boxes in sequence.  Box 1 gets item 1, when you reach box N, you move back to box 1.  When you get to item M, you continue to the second set of M objects, and insert item 1 of that set into your box.  When does this method preferentially sort item m into box n?

This is basically just a modulus, so you can tell that if item m fell into box n last time, it will fall into the box (M-N) next time it comes around.  Therefore, N=M has a shift of zero, so it's the case that's maximally sorted: item m always falls into box n.

For both N and M even, (M-N) = 2K, so an even m can only fall into an even n, and an odd m can only fall into an odd n.  Therefore, the concentration of m should be something like 0.5 * (1/N).

The odd cases are where I start having problems.  N,M both odd also has a shift equivalent to 2K, so that should have concentrations of 0.5 * (1/(N -1)), 0.5 * (1 / (N + 1).  I think.

The odd/even cases should be symmetric, and should also have a maximal sorting.  However, I'm not entirely convinced that it's fully random (1/N) unless the odd number is prime, or at least has no factors that are also factors of the even number.  My number theory isn't all that strong to argue this with logic, and I'm too lazy to search for counter-examples numerically tonight.



Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Wednesday: 8 = 8

One of the things for the stupid supercomputer project is supposed to break data transfer in a set of threads, and then iterate over a file list to assign files to each thread.  This way, we can saturate the network connection better than a single thread can.  I chose to use eight threads, assuming this would be fine.

Except if the files come in sets of eight, and some files are significantly larger than other files.  Then you assign all the hard stuff to one thread, and ruin that saturation concept.  Fuckity fuck fuck.



Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Tuesday: Now I really want croquettes

Today's "not having a DVR for nearly a month means I've started watching this Japanese reality/documentary/news show where they travel around the country talking to people who have some connection to the topic of the day and it usually gets super depressing, plus it's nearly twenty years old, so all of those old people are dead now, and I'm not kidding, that's not even the most depressing bits" show was about croquettes.  Which are delicious, and which I haven't had in ages.

Plus they showed a wonderful looking croquette sandwich.

There were a number of depressing segments, but this one was just odd.  Sato Croquettes is the name of the store.  It's run by the Mr. & Mrs. Ishii and their daughter.  Mrs. Ishii used to work for Old Mr. Sato, who founded the store (which is why his name is on it).  Mr. Sato is married, but they never had kids, so they adopted M&M Ishii's two daughters.  That way, the next generation will again be Satos running Sato Croquettes.

What?



Monday, June 16, 2014

Monday: Because some questions deserve answers.

I saw this episode of Bob's Burgers last night.  Basically, Bob is nearing his 100000 burger, and some jerk shows up with a cow to protest animal cruelty and asks "how many cows had to die for your burgers?"

First, let's take the National Cattlemen's Beef Association beef research guide, and accept their calculations for a standard 1300-pound steer.  Summing their numbers and then noting after-the-fact that they do it themselves on page 7, this results in a cow containing 638.2 pounds of meat, of which 265.1 pounds are ground beef.  This is where you have to decide if Bob can offset future ground beef with the other cuts contained in the cow or not (is he charged .41 cows or 1 cow per cow).  Assuming he's making standard quarter pound burgers, this results in either 39.173 cows (assuming he's allowed to offset) or 94.304 (if all cows that contribute count).

That's way lower than I would have guessed beforehand.


  • Japan.
  • Powerpuff Girls.
  • Ditto.
  • The Maxx.  I can't see why a live-action version would be necessary.  The cartoon was basically the definitive version, especially since it cut out the final volume's stuff, which really wasn't very good.

Because, see, if you do it three times, it's a joke.





I totally didn't schedule all of these all at once to make a point.  Not at all.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Sunday: another wonderfully lazy day

I did fix the DVR finally, which was good.  I'd forgotten how much I use the web interface.  Plus, now it'll be in place to catch all the stuff I'll probably miss next week.

Telegraph cables.

  • She-Hulk.  With awful art.
  • I've heard of, but never actually read this comic.
  • That is an awful product name.  "Pizookie."  Good job successfully making a name that reminds both of "piss" and "dookie."  Cook-izza.  There.  -izza immediately brings to mind pizza, so you get the concept far better.  Or just call it a fucking cookie-pie, you dummies.
  • This is a good thing.
  • Blah.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Saturday: Crap, I have to fly out in one week.

I probably should have spent today doing something more productive than "nothing."


  • Like playing this game again.  It has some issues (there's a point where you have to grind for a few hours picking up the one item that makes the dragon boss weak, killing the dragon boss, and repeating to get enough xp to beat the next level), but they're not really a big problem as the game is generally easy to work with.  It was also fun to play four-player, although there was the perpetual problem of other people running directly into the enemies instead of using ranged attacks.  You don't have to kiss the bad guys to kill them if you can shoot.
  • Just for the pun in panel one.
  • Koalas.
  • Squirrel.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Friday: WTF, Murder Team Five?

Mission to Kill.  Murder Team Five.  The wacky Japanese drama where two cops and three other "normal" people murder the shit out of bad guys.

Two weeks ago, they murdered all the teachers at a school.  Because they were all corrupt except for the one clean teacher that the other teachers had killed.  Corrupt teachers.  Apparently you can be corrupt in inventive ways in Japan.

Last week, Young Murder Guy fucked up his kill, had to smash the target's head in with a rock, and totally got caught by a cop.  But not one of his fellow Murder Cops, a proper "let's solve crimes and track down bad guys before sending them to some kind of trial" kind of cop.

I assumed YMG was going to get sentenced to death or something.  Because that would make sense.

Nope.

MT5 doesn't bother with "making sense" when it can stretch things out.

This week, they recapped the end from last week, but then suddenly Murder Guy throws a sharp needle at the regular cop to make it look like YMG is innocent, and then Old Murder Cop wanders over complaining about he was just nearly knocked over by someone running away.  And then OMC tells RC that he knows YMG, and how he's a real cool and totally not a criminal.

And with that, it's like last week's cliffhanger never happened.

Except when RC stops by YMG's place to say that they're still investigating things, because everyone in that house was dead when they went inside, and that's really odd.  Oh, and by the way, YMG, this lady I just met was asking about you because she's your mom.

YMG was an orphan, and blah blah blah, this lady is not at all his mom.  We know this because she goes and gambles and has some sort of plan to do something to fool somebody to money something whatever no one cares.

But it's somehow essential to have YMG go talk to the guy they're trying to fool and talk to him as her son.

YMG's son thinks things are weird, and doesn't trust Not-Mom at all, especially when he sees her talking to people.  He tries to convince YMG, but YMG is dumb.  So, the kid takes his money to go hire Murder Team Five to murder everyone to protect his dad.  The kid knows to do this because he's the real son of a victim from an earlier episode that YMG adopted, so he knows how MT5 works.  I'm not entirely sure that he knows his dad is part of MT5 or what.  I don't think so, because you would probably just ask your dad's murder friends to help if you thought he was in trouble, and not hire them.

Anyway.

The kid's right, and NM and her gang somehow can't wait any longer, so instead of whatever money something whatever they were going to do, they just send in thugs to kill that guy and steal all his money.  Why they didn't start with that instead of going this YMG-scam route is an excellent question.

MT5 meets up to plan the murders of the bad guys, and YMG shows up and says that he'll take NM.  Because he really wants her to be his mom.  Even though Murder Woman did her research and has some proof that she's a crook.  MT5 agrees, and murder murder murder, and then we go watch YMG.

YMG tells NM that he knows she's not his mom, and that he wants her to turn herself in.  She agrees, and then falls over and claims to have hurt her leg, so she can't walk anymore.  YMG agrees to carry her to the police station.  Can you guess what happens?

"He gets his stupid ass stabbed by the knife she's hiding?"

He gets his stupid ass stabbed by the knife she's hiding.  I'd already ranked you the worst member of MT5, YMG, but this is just ridiculous.

The ranking is of course (low to high):

  • Young Murder Guy.  For shit like this.
  • Murder Cop.  He's just a bit too "let's go murder people" about things.
  • Murder Woman and Old Murder Cop.  It's a tie.  They sit back and comment on everyone else, and are just wonderful to watch.  OMC probably edges things out just because he's actually the same guy who was in the original 1979 show of the same title, so he's been doing the MT5 thing for thirty years.
  • Murder Guy.  He has the best way to kill people, he justifies his actions by claiming it's justice, and he's basically just Batman.  A murder-y Batman.  So kind of like Batman.
Anyway, NM totally taunts YMG about how stupid he is, and that she'd never turn herself in because she's a master criminal, and now he's dead and the only thing worse than being stupid is to be dead and stupid.

Except he's not dead, he has the strength to pull out his murder string, shoot it up and through a cherry tree, and then back down around her neck.  He pulls her up into the tree, using his last strength to pose with the string around his hands, so her weight on the string balances his corpse.  Then MC arrives to cut the string, and they both fall down.


The credits scene is MT54 and YMG's son around YMG's funeral pyre, where they cremate him with his murder string.  So maybe the kid does know they're MT4?  In any case, this kid has lost two dads in this series already, so I'm thinking he's cursed.  The scene ends with YMG's eyes opening, before the pyre collapses and MC says something about "you can never escape hell."

WTF, MT5?

And while I'm thinking about eyes, NM's actress could not keep her eyes still when she was "dead."  It was kind of funny to watch.  "Excellent, I've fooled them into thinking I'm dead!  I am the best con artist ever!"


  • Snorlax.
  • Wendy's.  Also: Pokemon.
  • I had a similar reaction to this story.  I can't imagine that anyone would try to make a Captain Marvel movie.  Ever, pretty much.  

Have I posted this yet?


Because this is important to watch.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Thursday: I just spent like an hour driving around in street view

I should get a better video game.

Cats are dumb.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Wednesday: Kamehameha Day!

He conquered and unified the Hawaiian islands, and I get a day off because of him.
So I had a burger.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Tuesday: It's like Friday, but in the middle of the week.

Because tomorrow's a holiday.  Which of course means that the bank will be closed and I have two checks to deposit.  I wonder if the app allows magic camera depositing.

Horse.  No.  Just no, horse.  That's not your apartment, and everyone can see you with the lights on.  You're going to horse jail, horse.  Horse jail.

I laughed, but then I was sad, because what if chair isn't able to be fixed ok?


Sometimes things are weird, but you just have to accept that, and push on to see the beauty inside.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Monday: Fucking mondays

I heard this song yesterday, and then forgot to post it.  It's pretty good.


Sunday, June 8, 2014

Sunday: Even though this is only a 4-day week, I'm still not looking forward to it.

It's also one of the holidays that doesn't get shifted around, so this week is a weird "001101100" kind of thing.
This is almost certainly a photoshop, and by someone who actually took the time to do actual research.  The real Chigi vase has a piece missing where "panic soldier" is standing, but the scene depicted does show that the left army (shown here) is basically in the process of being surprised by their foes.  Actual research to understand the scene and then draw in something to fit.
  • This is the best thing on twitter.
  • This is cool.
  • This first comic is crazy.
  • This looks delicious.


Saturday, June 7, 2014

Saturday: That's a good way to do things

I was in the area, so I decided to go get Nico's for lunch.  However, while walking past Uncle's (which is right next door), I saw "lobster bisque" on their special menu chalkboard outside.  That was when I decided to go to Uncle's instead.

Uncle's.
It's a far more "proper" restaurant than Nico's.  Cloth napkins, table service, suggested wine pairings, etc.

The bisque.
 It wasn't bad, but it didn't really fit my ideal.  Good spices, but a bit light on the lobster flavor.  Almost no hints of sherry.  Where was the sherry?

Uncle's...something.  Variety pack.  Let's call it that.  This might have been a limited time menu option.
 Grilled onaga, scallops, and shrimp, in a mushroom-dill sauce.  With rice because the options were rice, other rice, fries.  A good garlic mashed potato would have worked wonderfully here.  This is also the answer to the question "where was the sherry?"  This sauce.  I could have eaten a bowl of this sauce.  Admittedly, that bowl would be like 50-50 sherry and butter, but I'm willing to take that risk.  Very tasty.  The shrimp were maybe marginally overcooked, but everything else was just wonderful.

This was good, but it was also close to four times what I usually pay at Nico's.  This means it's not likely to become a go-to Saturday lunch spot.  Good food, though.

Because I was near the boats, and they were moving things.

Friday, June 6, 2014

Friday: I guess there was an earthquake today.

I didn't feel it.

I did not use my train-kitty-binoculars.  I'm not sure how that would have helped.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Thursday: Fucking supercomputers

It's so close to fucking mostly working.  And the thing that I was attempting to tweak broke because I have a step where it's basically: x1 = int(k/y0) + d; y1 = int(k/x1) + f, and I kept trying to scale x1 by changing d, but that just reflexively changes y1 to compensate.  Fuck.

This guy.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Wednesday: It's so close to fucking working, why won't it just do it?

Potato cat.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Tuesday: blarg

This is the reason I hate modern architecture.  "Let's add a fake outside staircase to be edgy and artistic!"  No.  You're a moron, and that's stupid, and you're a stupid moron.  Just build a fucking building that doesn't look like shit.  Oh.  You failed at that too, didn't you?   

Monday, June 2, 2014

Monday: Huh. I never titled yesterday's post.

And I don't have anything here except links.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Sunday:

I saw this video a few weeks ago:
The point of the video is they have an American go around and present his list of the top three Japanese chain restaurants.  His number one is Curryhouse Coco Ichiban.  Which is also a Playstation game.  And we have them in Hawaii.

I haven't had curry since this day, and I apparently didn't take any pictures of the curry place in Akhiabara I went to.  That one was a bit odd, as you don't order normally.  You buy a meal ticket from a vending machine, and then give the ticket to the waitress, who then passes it to the kitchen.  I really wish I'd taken a picture of that.
While checking to see if I had a picture I'd forgotten about, I discovered this one.  I like the tiny aviator  mascot.  "It's delicious water even if it is not cold."
So I figured it would be a good idea to check it out.  Except the first one I went to is closed on Sunday.  Oops.  But again, we do have them in Hawaii, so I just went to the next closest one.  It turns out that the McCully area has a pretty high density of curry houses.

I sat at the counter.  Deep fryer on left, katsu chopping station off camera to the left, curry bubbling on the stove on right.  Rice cookers very far off to the left.
The menu in Hawaii is slightly different than the Japanese one, but the setup is the same: you choose an amount of rice, a spiciness of the curry, your main topping, and an assortment of other toppings.  There are fewer options here than in the global menu book, but that's how it goes.
And spoons come in spoon condoms.  Because you eat curry with a spoon, and only a spoon, and Japan really likes wrapping things in wrappers.
 I attempted to reconstruct the American's favorite meal.  Scrambled egg isn't an option here, so I just did chicken katsu and cheese:
And it was weird.
It's not bad, it's just not...right.  The katsu is good, and even though I went with "spicy" this really wasn't.  I really like curry to have stuff in it, but I guess that isn't standard.  I think next time I try it, I'll skip the cheese and get something else extra.  Maybe beef chunks, so the curry has stuff in it.

There is one major issue that pushes this down on my list of places to go to: cash only.  Which, of course, I only noticed when I was paying and had $9 of the $9.63 I owed.  Fuck.  Luckily, they're cool with you running to the 7-11 next door to get cash, even if they give you dirty looks and sigh when you ask.  It's 2014.  Take credit cards.  It's far easier for everyone.