Thursday: Q20/Extra productive today.

Until I broke the code base because things are weird.  :(

Temple of Hapshepsut.

Temple of Karnak.

Inside.  There's secret stuff behind here.

• Hopefully this will make people vote differently.
• As they slowly realize how awful they've been.

Saturday: That was the first time I've ever had a pan catch fire.

It wasn't that bad, and a quick clamp with a lid stopped it.  Whoops.

The steak came out ok, though.

 But earlier in the day I went and got groceries and had late breakfast.

Yum yum late breakfast!

• Really?  This is a problem?
• Moderately interesting.

Thursday: I discovered this morning that my A/C was still on.

My windows were only open since yesterday.

This weirdo.

• This was a good scene.
• I am now even more excited to see this movie.
• Conservatives are trash.

Saturday: The good news is, I didn't die in a nuclear explosion.

Which, you know, is a good thing.  I woke up, visited with my favorite tsundere squirrel:

He was fine.

 We made tarts:

They were delish.

And then I checked Twitter to discover that they accidentally issued an incoming missile warning, and a bunch of people freaked out, and then they cancelled it because it was a mistake, and a lot of people were angry, and I slept through the whole thing.

So if I don't send out a "Guess I'm dying in a huge nuclear explosion. #fml" tweet with the sad Pikachu gif, then I slept through being blown up.

This one.

Anyway, then I went to Punchbowl.

See?  Not blown up.

I just wanted to make a fancy fisheye thing.

And then pizza time.

Because pizza time is always good.

• The news story about how we didn't die.
• A cool Japanese memo pad thing.
• Squirrel surprise!

Thursday: Except oops, it does work.

I called, and the guy on the phone said it was "weird" that my old sim worked fine in the new phone.  He suggested I go to the store and get a new one.  So I did, and the guy there told me that he couldn't make the system accept it for my phone, because it's incompatible with my plan.  Because I have the infinite plan from years ago.  I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I think it might be a good idea to bring my old phone with me on this trip.  Just to be safe.

Anyway, new phone:

New phone taken with old phone.

I went with the Moto X4.  The Pixel looked cool, but it sounds like they have quality issues with them, and they're expensive, and they don't have a headphone jack.  This phone is basically identical to my old one, with the following exceptions:

1. It is more square.
2. It is like a half centimeter longer.
3. It doesn't have the dimple on the back that I used to spin the old phone around with.
4. The camera sticks out as a little round bump.
5. It is all new with a fresh battery and everything.

I think it's going to work out ok.  It was also $400, which is a far better price point than $1000.  Now to order accessories and have them shipped where I'll be.

Old phone taken with new phone.

• A new way to evaluate the Faddeyeva function?  Cool!
• No, seriously, this is cool.  This is the complex form of the Voight function, and I spent a long time trying to find a good differentiable form for that.  I still am not happy with what I ended with, so this gives a new starting point.
• Random witches from the tumblr queue.
• A random good dog from the tumblr queue.

Tuesday: I will always be tired.

I'm also starting to think that my legs will never not hurt, and that I've walked too much with them.  It would probably help if I had brought comfy shoes, as that probably would have stopped a lot of the extra pain.  I guess it's kind of a good thing, since it's all "exercise, I guess".

Today's science stuff was pretty interesting.  I asked at least two questions.  That breaks my long lasting "not asking questions" streak, but I wanted to know stuff.  Mostly scale information, but still.

I toured a data center, too.  It's like ours, but bigger.

Tuesday: Ugh.

The fun of having a cut on your arm somewhere that you can't see.

And because of schedule shenanigans, the one TV show I was looking forward to watching tonight (Legends of Crazytown Tomorrow) was on an hour earlier than I thought.  So I missed it.  And it sounds like it was suitably crazytown, and that next season will be more of the same.

Now I'm watching the TV show I was generally not looking forward to hatewatching (Agents of Who Even Cares Anymore This is Fucking Stupid Shield).  They're doing this dumb "it's all mixed up in this computer simulation" story, and it's dumb.  Just traceroute back to the bad guy base, cut off the power, and you're done.

• I was thinking of this post today, so I had to track it down.
• This guy who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court also doesn't write his own shit.
• Interesting story I saw today.
• Hippo + tortoise.
• If I could turn into a swarm of rats in the middle of a conversation, I would do that so much.
• This shouldn't be how it is.
• J. Jonah Fucking Jameson said this?

Sunday: Hiking is tricky.

The plan for today was to climb Diamond Head.  This is not as simple as it should be.  There really isn't sufficient parking there, so they just stop admitting people to the park.  We tried to get in, but were turned around.  We decided to try and kill some time by driving around the outside.

Where we stopped to take some pictures at a nice overlook, and where some jackass got upset because we were standing in a location that blocked his view of "the surfers," all of which were little more than tiny dots on the ocean below.  Get a better hobby than "spying on people from my car like some kind of freak" jackass.

Anyway, the second attempt was no more successful, so the real advice isn't "get there early so you can hike before the sun rises too much and makes it hot" it's "get there early because otherwise you won't be able to hike at all."  I don't remember this much trouble the last time I tried to hike it, but maybe that was a weekday.

Alternate plan: Makapu'u Point Lighthouse Trail.  It was also crazy busy with no place to park.  Except for the one open space that suddenly appeared after we skipped around a Nissan that was stalking some imaginary space.  It seemed like this would work out, even though the breeze is a bit inconsistent on the trail.

But there is a nice view that I should make a mosaic of.

However, there are no restrooms anywhere, so when that became an issue, we decided to cut the hike short (apparently it's only 1.5 miles roundtrip, but since it's mostly all uphill, it seems worse).  The next stop: Costco.

Which really is a good place to stop while on vacation.  They sell local stuff at Costco prices, and although the checkout is always busy, they have pretty decent pizza you can have for lunch.  Solves many problems at once.

Then more beach time in the afternoon, most of which I didn't take pictures of, not even when Ramona met three Japanese grandmothers in the ocean, and began to talk and splash with them, despite not knowing a mutual language.

The sun was a bit excessive today, as there were no mitigating clouds.  One result of this was a desire to be lazy and not drive very far for dinner.  Since there's an Eggs and Things on the next block over from the hotel, this wasn't too hard to do.

Kalbi and eggs.  I still don't really like eggs.  The kalbi was good, though.

And a nice sunset.

 Followed by a bit more Pokemon.

I found a Pineco.

And hatched a Larvitar.

Stuck my on-brand Cloyster into the gym we defeated.

And then fought a Xatu that wouldn't give up and stay in the ball.

Unfortunately this is their last night here, and after the hectic days before, it was good to have one that was somewhat more focused on relaxing.  Let's see how much we can stick into the last few hours tomorrow.






Since we had planned on hiking today, I froze four bottles of water overnight, and planned to use them as after-hike drinks, as well as keeping other things that shouldn't be frozen cold.  I took one of my canvas shopping bags, lined the bottom with a towel, put in all the stuff to keep cold, and then covered it with a second towel.  I assumed this would stay cool for the hike, but didn't think it'd last much longer than that.

When I got home tonight, three of the bottles still had significant chunks of ice in them.  That means that over the course of about 13 hours, there wasn't enough energy transfer from the outside to my trunk and then into the "cooler" I'd made.  A bottle of water contains 500 ml, so 500g, which requires 166500 J of energy to melt (ignoring temperature changes within a given state).  This works out to an energy transfer of about 3.5 W.  I was unable to find a useful table to compare this to before giving up on writing more of this post. 

Thursday: The daystar will kill me.

Pearl Harbor.

I earned a medal.

What was lunch?  Oh yeah.  Burgers.  It wasn't that bad, and was more filling than expected.

Then more beach.  You can see the rain coming.

 I could not figure out how to fold the beach chair I borrowed from the hotel, and then transposed room numbers when returning it.  The sun is a space demon, who steals reason and sense with near blackbody radiation.

The sunset was rather nice after the bulk of the rain passed.

We then ordered way too much food for dinner in Hawaii Kai.

Tasty food, but far too much of it.

And I stole another sock when I did laundry yesterday.

Sunday: Nothing sounded good.

Until I smelled someone grilling in the neighborhood.  That made me want chicken.

Even though that meant driving back to Kailua.

I got a half chicken this time, but only ate half of it.  I'm probably going to finish it off after this blog post.  It was better than last time, but they were also not rushed as much today.  It was super rainy on the other side of the island, and the tunnel on the Pali was inside a cloud, making it super foggy.  I had planned on going to the lookout to see if there are any cool Pokemon there, but due to the rain and general crappy conditions, I missed the exit.  Oops.

I'm also happy that they updated Pokemon Go.  I don't have any major issues with the changes, and it was nice to see what options there are in the trainer customization (since somebody else designed my trainer and clicked to finalize it before I could see any of the details).  I also discovered that if you switch styles, it totally resets everything, so I had to put it all back the way it was (since I'm used to my trainer now).  

• Pokemon.
• But, of course, some assholes aren't happy if they don't drain all the fun out of the game by mechanizing it.  So you don't know where certain Pokemon are.  Move around.  See new things.  Explore.  It's not Ash had a radar to tell him where all the Pokemon were.  You want a Clefairy?  Better put on those shoes and walk your ass to Mount Moon.
• Ash was never very smart.
• Snorlax.
• Jerk.
• Pikachu.  I kind of assume that Pikachu got thin by travelling around with Ash.  They walk everywhere.  
• Not Pokemon.
• Dog.
• Adventure Time bees.
• The Sweet.
• Panda babies are jerks.
• Necromancy.

Thursday: I need to learn not to trust my tablet for the time.

Mostly because the tablet doesn't auto-adjust to different time zones, so if I forget that the tablet is 2+ hours behind, I'm very likely to get up late.

In other news: I kind of got up late today.  I still got a decent amount of my paper edited, although I think I'm going to spend days next week getting the figures arranged, since I think this paper is going to be like 75% figure.

I did take pictures at dinner, though.

Cafe Jolie.

Oysters are not as bad as I remember.  They tasted less of the angry ocean this time.

French onion soup.  This was a bit weird.  My initial thought was that it was made with tomato, but after the suggestion of "wine," I decided that was probably the case.  It's not bad, just a bit weird.

Braised short ribs, potatoes, sauteed kale.  I enjoyed this, although the kale was still a bit bitter to my taste.

Today's links are mostly about Agent Carter, so I can have the finale reviews in one place.

• But the first link is me reminding future me that you can just buy everything bagel topping.
• The io9 one.
• The avclub one.

Thursday: It was rainy today.

See?

And then I discovered that the code I'd based that talk on last week had a massive error, which I didn't notice because even though it was a massive error, it didn't actually have that bad of an effect on the fits it made.  However, on porting the algorithm to the slightly more complicated fit model, it blew up such that the fits diverged.  Scanning through the code revealed that I had had r = t * p0 + p1, instead of r = t * p1 + p0.  Oops.

Now I'm waiting for the thirteen minutes left before I can check in for my flight and try to get good seats.  Travel shouldn't be this stressful.

What also shouldn't be so stressful is getting a letter from my apartment management.  It turns out that they're raising my rent $25.  This after the owner did that appraisal thing because he was refinancing.  I guess it's marginally close to the inflation rate.

• Patsy Walker, Hellcat.
• Backstory for a gif.
• Things like this are why I have a "culinary aminal" label.

Friday: This is totally on Friday.

• The end of World War II.

Wednesday: The best thing to do before leaving on a trip.

Finding surprise bits of glass.  With your foot.  In a place that never stops bleeding.

The good news is that having proper insurance means I can drive miles to the hospital, get it glued shut, and go home after sitting around for three hours.  Why are people fighting against affordable health care for everyone?

• I guess there's a new burrito place.  I should try it out.
• I didn't notice this guy, but that's kind of cool.

Only two links because I'm tired and don't feel like finding more.

Friday: Three day weekend!

How many tenders do you see here?  Did you count four?  That's what I ordered.  Four.  "But there are six there."  That's where you're wrong.  There are seven, with one hiding below the top three.  I really can't tell if the wing/burrito place run by the Mexican place by work just weighs out some amount, or if they like me because I have lunch there fairly regularly.

And then I looked up shoes for part of the evening, because I refuse to believe that products are only sold in one place.  They're not, but there's clearly some sort of region based control system in place on certain brands.  Still, this is the future, and there are places that sell online with shipping anywhere in the world.  This should be the standard.  I have money, you have a product, we have an extensive logistics system connecting us.  There shouldn't be anything standing in the way.

Also I'm not entirely sure google shopping correctly understands the departments.

• I'm curious to try this recipe.
• A new burrito place?  I think I'm taking a trip to Kailua this weekend.
• Bird sweaters.
• Winnie the Pooh.
• This is part of the reason I don't play Pokemon.  If I were to play, I'd want to use Pokemon I like or think are cute.  So that means I'm going to have Jigglypuff and Snorlax.
• So I can do things like this.  This is possible in the games, right?

Tuesday: Stupid supercomputers.

So there's this supercomputer we use.  When I was setting things up, I had to chose a place to put the data.  I chose the partition that had 1.1 petabytes, assuming that would probably be just fine.  I know that things make lots of files, but we transfer everything back from the SC, and have been relying on the fact that there's a kind of "quota" system that deletes old files.  A large part of the set up was engineering a solution to that quota deleting files we weren't done with.

Then today I got an email telling me that I'm using 25% of that partition, and although that's in principle fine, the partition is getting full, so maybe I should knock it off a bit.

It turns out that I can make enough output data products fast enough to overwhelm the thing that's there to stop people from filling up the disks.  Oops.  Sorry, government supercomputer.  I'll clean things up.

And this was in the free pile at work today.  A German language poster for Princess Mononoke.

And no, I didn't take it, because I'm already super cool.

• I thought about formally declaring I was going to boycott Adam Baldwin's stuff, but then I remembered that I don't watch any of his shit anyway.  So.  Yeah.  Still an asshole, though.
• WTF, Wendy's?  Why can't we have things like this here?
• Useful use of statistics.
• I think I've posted this before, but squirrel.
• Hmm...I think if I move my desk a bit, I could put one of these in my office.

Thursday: Whoops.

It turns out that if I use my work mouse in a certain way, the left button does this.

• Pikachu.
• Vacation.
• So old people are going to get their student loans forgiven, aren't they, and then when people ask about the other 96% of people with student loans, the answer is going to be "nope," right?
• Machida Squirrel Park.
• It's basically just an hour train ride from Shinjuku.

Friday: Let's pretend I had a good title here.

Oops.

• Still not opening near me.
• That's unfortunate.
• The main four.
• No matter what the new X-Men movie is like, it has already allowed this to happen.
• Squirrels.
• Squirrels.
• Squirrels.
• Fuck you, Tony Scalia.  Just die already, so someone who isn't full of shit can interpret the law.
• It's unfortunate that even with this data showing that "cut taxes and magically everything is fixed" simply doesn't work, dumb people are still going to claim that it's the only solution to everything.

Monday: Back to work

Sigh.

At least on the good side, I took "problem I didn't know about, but I guess I caused it, and sorry Maui," and fixed it, and discovered that "continuing stats bug" is basically caused by bad histogramming causing bullshit solutions.  I don't think that'll be super hard to fix, but it's still kind of annoying.

Then I came home, fell asleep on the couch, only to be woken up by a really annoying sound.

Turns out that it's the fire alarm for the building next door.

• I was going to post the picture, but then I discovered an actual news story about it, so here's that instead.
• Image 2.  That was basically all my pockets last week and the week before.
• I saw this, and then had to go hunt down a source myself, because fuck you tumblr.  Learn to put sources on your shit.  Also: squirrel.

I also discovered this image today.  "Huh, Tokyo," I said to myself before going to verify that it really was.  Kind of in the center, you can see a dark spot. That's where the Meiji shrine is.  The group of skyscrapers to the left is Shinjuku.  To the upper right is Chiyoda, where the other skyscrapers are.  You can barely see the Imperial Palace grounds there as well.  The stupid Skytree is there in the distance beyond Chiyoda, but you'll have to look at the full view.  Basically, everywhere I went in Japan is contained in the middle third or so of this image.

Monday: Tokyo Day 3

Yesterday started with an earthquake, and still wasn't as problematic as today.  The weather claimed it was likely to rain, so I figured today wouldn't be the best day for the Tokyo Skytree, and instead set out to look at the Imperial Palace grounds.

Tokyo station.

Part of the palace from the other side of the moat.

Which has fish.

Unfortunately, I made the big mistake of visiting Tokyo: assuming things are open on Mondays.

 I don't know why Monday is the day that everything is closed, but like everything is closed.  All the museums in the area, all the other stuff I thought of doing, everything.

There's a guard on the palace side of this bridge.  He's there to tell you that everything is closed.  Everything.

 So, backup plan.

Yasukuni shrine.

You can go read news stories if you're not familiar, but I kind of wanted to visit to see for myself what it's like.

Basically, "we know you're angry, but try not to be a dick about it on the grounds of the shrine."

Really a nice looking place.

The outside is largely the same as Meiji, with the torii and gates and traditional looking buildings and all.  This was pretty much what I had expected, and thought this would be a quick trip. However, there's also a museum there that took about two hours to go through.

I'll be the first to admit that my east Asian history isn't that great for the period of about "all of history, except maybe the conquests of Genghis Khan, but not even that much there, I guess."  Still, the history presented at the shrine didn't seem overwhelmingly revisionist.  I'm pretty sure that the "Korea and Manchuria invited us, and we kind of stayed a while" bits are a stretch, and the "we totally had to go to war because the US stopped trading with us," is also really only a fully valid argument if you accept that taking colonies is the best way to run an economy.  In any case, having a large sample of translated first-hand documents (mostly letters home) adds an aspect to the history that isn't really visible in most books.

The signs all over said not to take pictures, but this is a tank, and I don't think a quick photo is going to hurt it.  Plus, I wanted to have something to show from inside.

Anyway, after wandering around trying to find a train station (due to my mistaken thought that my new train pass only worked on JR lines, and not all Tokyo trains), I took a train originally heading back for Tokyo station, so I could find a bus to the Skytree (since it was clear and sunny at Yasukuni).

That's how I stumbled on Akihabara.

But then the sky opened up and dumped a bunch of rain on everything.

 So, plan rewrite number four, back to Skytree.

Skytree!

Skytree!

Ok, so here's the secret: The Skytree is a scam, don't bother.  

First, if you didn't plan ahead and buy tickets online, you're pretty much out of luck.  I showed up, expecting it'd be like the CN tower, or Taipei 101, or pretty much any tower I've been to before.  You show up, buy a ticket, elevator up, look around, realize it's pretty much like a regular building, but higher, and then go home.  Here's how I understood the Skytree system for people who show up:

1. You're given a color coded time-card, that tells you when you'll be allowed to go up to the top.  Ok, sure.  My time was two hours in the future from when I arrived.  Crap.
2. After that time elapses, you take your color coded card and stand in a line.  This line organizes people for the trip at that time.
3. Once you've made it through that line, you enter the ticket area, where you stand in a different line to buy a ticket to the top.
4. You then stand in the elevator line to wait to go up to the top.

So I had two hours to kill.  Time for dinner, I guess.

Cabbage salad with yuzu or sesame dressings (off frame to the right).

Miso soup.  Akai miso instead of the standard shiro miso.  Instead of tofu, this had tiny mushrooms (nameko?) in it.

Katsu combination.  Tonkatsu, giant shrimp, crab/cream cheese croquette.

 That's almost an hour down, I guess I can look around the thousand stores they had there.  Here is where you realize things are a scam.  By setting the trip times two hours advanced from the current time, they guarantee you have nothing to do but wander around and shop.  Luckily, a lot of stores sold things I have no interest in (women's clothes) or things I have no reason to buy here (kitchen stuff).

Or were run by demon bears.

"ComE! Byuy! GoRge ON pRicES!"

I think I've mentioned that it's Christmas season here.

Complete with Angry Eye Snowman as Statue of Liberty Christmas.  I have no idea what you're trying to do here, Japan.  I'm pretty sure it isn't working, though.

Lights.

 This is where you're probably expecting pictures from the top of the Skytree, right?  Nope.  I played the Item 1 part correctly, even though that line was outside in the ~45 degree air, with strong winds (~20 mph).  That second fact was the problem.  They don't run the elevators when the wind is that high, so they were handing out notes to allow people to come back within 30 days to try again.  I didn't grab one, as I don't think that's going to fit into my schedule for tomorrow.

That schedule: Palace museums and Akihabara.

I went home at this point, as my feet really hurt.  There's a Skytree station on the subway line, and after looking appropriately confused for a minute or so, an English speaking station info worker came over and helped me find my way home.  She was the one who told me my Suica worked everywhere, not just on JR lines.

Transit card.  And yes, that is a Hello Kitty chapstick thing.  It was the same price as the no-name ones, and since this is the 99th trip in a row I've gone on without chapstick, only to be forced to buy one when my lips catch fire, I figured I might as well get the fancy one.  It's not much of a deal, as it has a tiny thing inside the cake outer case.

This is not lemonade.  If you're buying drinks, and think "oh, lemonade would be great," don't get this.  After investigating when I discovered "wtf, this isn't lemonade," I came to the conclusion it's some sort of malt/fake-beer/lemon flavored thing.  The 6% should have tipped me off in the store.