Friday: I'm super sleepy today.

It was also rainy today.  Tiny Bird kept trying to go out, and kept getting rained on.

The moon was a tiny crescent.

And I colored all the colors so I'll have a guide to choose colors better next time I color.

• Well that's convenient.
• This is an interesting story, because you start it reading about how incompetent the Bush administration was, and you end it thinking about how horrible of a person George Tenet is.
• I didn't know until seeing this that today was Friday the 13th.
• Marnie.
• I'm beginning to suspect that there are enough gifs I've linked to to tell the entire story.
• This story was one day too late for it to tell me about the English mode of Neko Atsume.
• Flat owl.  Fowl.
• Fucks.

Thursday: Totally the kind of thing grown ups do.

Me, opening up the door to the elevator lobby: ""
Dog, standing there, pulling on her leash from behind the corner: ""
Me: "Oh! Hello, doggy!"
Dog: ""
Dog's owner: "Yeah, she's in a hurry today."

Whatever.  It was a surprise dog.  That happens.

Part 2: Solving problems with Fourier transforms because Fourier transforms are fun.

The other thing that happened today is Julie mentioned something about how to measure the orientation of text.  I found a few references online, and then while eating lunch, came to the conclusion that this is something that can probably be done with Fourier transforms, and that the algorithm I had in my head was effectively a Fourier method done on a irregularly binned version of the image.

The idea behind my algorithm is that text is basically a long sequence of characters, and those characters are typeset into rows that are non-overlapping.  This means that a block of text is vaguely defined as a periodic sequence of lines.  If you need to know the orientation of text (with the complication that you can't distinguish between mirror reflections and 180-degree rotations), then you should look for the angle of the tilt of linear features in the Fourier power spectrum.

So, since I have access to programs that can both rotate things and calculate Fourier power spectra, I gave it a try.

Sequence of text images and zero-frequency-in-center power spectra.

Yep, that looks like it works correctly.  Looking at the top left, the linear features in the spectrum are aligned vertically.  This is due to the fact that the lines of text are largely unconstrained in their length, but they are always close to the same distance apart.  Skipping the zero-x-frequency line, the lines to the right (higher frequency) correspond to increasingly closer lines.  These are separated by some f_spacing value, which is directly related to the font size/line separation.

Great, but what happens if there's an additional term to the distortion?  What if it's not just a rotation but some kind of scaling issue.  Gimp has a convenient "stretch the image based on a curve you can shift around," so I made a kind of "Star Wars opening credits" thing.  Does the Fourier solution still work?

Yep.  Since lines are no longer cleanly confined to a simple box shape, the power spectrum drops off much faster in the "along lines" direction.  Still, the axis corresponding to the "text page up/down" (which is the zero-frequency in "along text lines") is still much stronger, and the f_spacing peaks are still visible.

Part 3: Fuck, really?

Earlier today, I saw this buzzfeed article, and was calmly thinking, "yeah, I know, I've been playing it for months."  Then I got to #10 and thought, "wait, there's an English version?"

It turns out that last month when they had the update that added the train and other things that I've already bought, they added an English option in the menu.  I assume that since I've been playing for so long in Japanese, they didn't bother pointing this out to me.

The most important thing about this is that it means I don't have to make up names for the cats because I'm too lazy to translate them all.

So's he's not "Super Pretentious Cat Prince"?

Conductor Whiskers is pretty good.  "Train Cat" is probably a bit simple.  "Fucking Alpine Cat" is better than Bob, though.

And Sassy Fran is far better than "Maid Cat."

Part 4: Links.

• Dog cosplaying death.  I wanted to make sure I had a dog link to go with my dog story.
• Marnie.
• Birb.

No, google calendar. I don't think that's necessary.

"Huh, why does the calendar thingy have that red dot?"

Wednesday: Today is a holiday.

Which I spent doing basically nothing.  I decided I wanted a burrito, and started to drive over the Pali to the place in Kailua.  Unfortunately, there was an accident on the Pali, and it was crazy backed up.  "No problem, I'll go to the other, not quite as good burrito place in Kaimuki."  Double unfortunately, I saw earlier that the Pali on-ramp onto H-1 was gridlock, so I decided to do the trip on surface streets.  This was probably a mistake since it took a half hour.

Also it wasn't that great and the queso was super separated.

• Steven Universe.
• Marnie.
• Red panda.
• Star Wars.
• This is definitely a problem, and the only actual solution is more funding for education and research, which isn't going to happen as long as people are dumb.  Alternatively, we could have a national guaranteed income, which also isn't going to happen as long as people are dumb.
• In related news, Kansas is going to continue to be screwed because they vote for dumb people.  Or, alternatively, people who aren't dumb, but are actively malicious.
• In more related news, Kentucky is also going to be screwed because they did vote for someone who is actively malicious.  To the point where people are likely to die because they voted for someone who campaigned on letting them die.  People should stop being dumb.
• In terms of me being dumb, I should give up the notion that Agents of Shield is ever going to be the good show I want it to be.  They're always going to keep wasting time with Hydra, because Hydra is made of people, and people are cheap to put on TV.  A monster-of-the-week show with fun team action would require lots of special effects, and that would be expensive.  It also sucks that they keep trying to make everyone overcome tragic challenges, which is pretty much the exact opposite of "fun team action."  It doesn't help that there are like eight ten (colson, lab-guy, lab-girl, shaky-mutant, big guy, super spy, mockingbird, british guy.  No, eight, had it right the first time) main characters, so they have to split time on characters I don't care about (I'm looking at you, British guy).
• And this is probably part of why I liked Agent Carter more.  Fewer characters.  Carter, British guy (but cool and funny), Stark (who's mostly there in name only), cop guy, other cop guy, boss cop guy.  See?  All the cop guys blend together.  Sure, one is limpy cop guy and the other one is supposed-to-be-love-interest cop guy, but there's a much tighter focus on the characters that are actually interesting.

Tuesday: Tomorrow is a holiday.

So I'll need to figure out what I'm doing.  I'm thinking I may just clean my apartment some.

I had cherry drink today for lunch.

What's that Bear?  "こども 文庫 プロジェクト"?  Children's book collection project?  Yes, yes it is.

• Marnie.
• Old books.
• Monopolies should be busted, because they are always bad for consumers.
• Just like this comic, which has monopoly power on humor, such that each time I see it, I laugh again.  So I'm posting it again.  Clap clap clap clap.

Monday: My talk wasn't quite as awful as I feared.

The new pizza people are still overcooking things.

I'm also not sure that hibernate is working correctly on my new laptop.  I also am not looking forward to debugging it, either, since the fail case requires a reboot.

That works.

• Marvel Tsum Tsum.
• Spider-Man.
• Tumblr.

Sunday: I should have worked on my talk yesterday, because now it's awful.

Ramen wasn't as spicy as usual.

• Lions.
• Pikachu.

Saturday: I probably should have worked on my talk today. Instead I things on the internet and TV. Simultaneously. Because multitasking.

And had cheesy tots.

• This is old, but I saw it again while eating my burger, and it made me laugh.  Apple juice hater.
• I linked to this yesterday, but I also saw it while eating my burger, and I laughed again.  Clap clap clap clap.
• Balto.
• I don't understand why this isn't obvious to everyone.

Friday: Things are still awful, but at least I probably have enough results to give this talk on Monday.

It turns out my robust statistics are very robust, and I can kind of just willy-nilly throw things at them and get good results.  Which, of course, is how I like to do things.

The Tiny Gecko Friend I first saw yesterday was back, and was running across my wall.

I was going to try and rescue him, but he crawled into the tiny gap between the wall and the door frame, way up near the ceiling, and I couldn't think of any way to get him out safely.  So, I'm probably going to find a Tiny Gecko Friend Corpse on Monday.

My CC Lemon was again Yokai Watch-ed.  Here is a review of YW that appeared on my twitter feed today.

And because I wasn't feel well on Tuesday, I had to have an extra cup of Last Chance Cider.

• I wonder if this actually works.
• Clap clap clap clap.
• Ghibli dump:
• Catbus.
• Jiji.
• Nausicaa and Teto.
• Makkurokurosuke and konpeito.
• Red panda.
• This is a good Chewbacca story.
• Don't be a jerk, Tony Stark.

Thursday: Everything is awful.

Not even including the fact that Yokai Watch is on my CC Lemon.

• Whatever.
• The fact that half the country is even considering people this stupid is terrifying.
• I wonder if this will be translated.

Adventures in NFC.

My Clipper Card arrived this week, and after getting it out of the envelope today, I realized that it probably uses the same NFC tech that my phone has.  After checking this with a simple reader, I found an app designed to decode information from fare cards.

So, with card ids blacked out:

Yep.  I have to collect the money on one of their machines.  This makes sense that they don't mail active cards.

No, card, I haven't taken any trips.

Except, I have a Suica card from when I went to Tokyo too:

Although I should probably throw out the HK chapstick by now.

How much does that have on it?

About $2.  $1.81 with the yen's continuing slide against the dollar.

But this has a history.  I think it's limited by when I recharged it?

In any case, this covers Monday and Tuesday of that trip.

Cool.


Also, because I was curious, what has the yen done since then?

So I paid about $2.25 for the 220¥ that are now worth about $1.81.  Clearly, investing in Suica fare cards has been a poor investment strategy.

Wednesday: Not only do I have too much to do, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get a lot of it done.

Part of the problem is that I have this stupid seminar series where I have to give a research talk.  The problem with that is that I've done basically no research because I constantly have to fix things in the processing.  It's nice to know that the 40% research time has been so consistently a lie, but having to give a presentation that's basically, "yeah, I have some ideas I'd like to do, but since I had to spend the last month doing someone else's job because they don't, I haven't been able to try them out."

I mean, it's not like I have a nice side project that I have firmly mapped out in my head but also no time to do as well.  The good thing about that side project is that even though it actually sounds interesting, it'd be offtopic for this stupid seminar series.

Maybe I should just put together a two slide talk.  Slide one: Things I did.  Slide two: Nothing Applicable to this Seminar.

And I got pizza from the newly managed pizza place and felt sick all afternoon and eventually went home early.  So that helped my productivity a lot, too.

Not even coloring helped.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do a background fill color.  I may just leave it blank.  I'm not sure what color would work best.

• She also sings all the songs for Silent Hill.
• I still like everything about this.
• Ok, but also: The Star Wars Storybook.  I had that when I was a kid, and although I probably saw the movie before reading it, I could read the book infinity times.  This made Biggs an important part of the story in my mind.  Image three of the amazon link shows the Biggs backstory page.  Second also: yeah, I'm ok with spending $7 to have a copy of that again, Thanks Amazon.
• I want grilled cheese.
• I was wondering why the burgers needed healing as well.

Tuesday: I have too much crap to do.

Pastrami.

I literally just bought a pencil sharpener yesterday.  Had I known I could have gotten an animal one, I would have seriously considered paying $16 for a pencil sharpener.

• This is about Squirrel Girl.
• This is about David Sedaris.
• This is about tiaras, because I needed a third link.

Monday: This is the end of cider season, I guess.

Because I bought the last bottle at Safeway.  I'm not terribly concerned that it's technically past it's date, but I will have to finish it this week.

I decided to try the Safeway sandwiches since I was there.  Given that I kind of wanted a ham and Havarti on wheat, and that was an option, it worked out well.  I also have decided that no one knows how to put onions on a sandwich.  I want the red onions, but I don't want a complete layer of onions on the sandwich.  If it's the half-circle arcs, then there should be like seven on there, none of which are from the region in the inner half radius.

I did the pinks today.  There are three different colors in there, but it's not entirely clear.  Maybe when the other colors are added, the rose and pink colors will be clearer.

• I looked since the book claims that PDFs are available, so I looked at their webpage.  It's not free, but I guess that makes sense.
• I think this is my current favorite KIKU show.  It's the third season that follows the very simple show format:
• New doctor shows up, bragging how he's the greatest ever.
• Doctor X is all, "Whatever.  I don't fucking care.  Fuck off."
• New doctor does a surgery and fucks it up because he's lazy/incompetent/in a hurry.
• Doctor X notices it's wrong, and she redoes the surgery to fix everything, because she actually is the greatest ever.
• Doctor X's business guy bills the hospital a gajillion dollars yen, and then goes and has dinner.
• Snorlax.
• That's cool, but not $370 cool.
• The important fact to take away from this is that about half of everyone are jerks.

Sunday: I know when there's sunlight on my bedroom wall, that it's probably something like 7:30am.

Unfortunately, my fan was squeaking, so I had to oil it.  Since the trades are broken, it's been uncomfortable.

When I did finally get up, I didn't know what I wanted for lunch, and after scanning my blog to see that I didn't go get ramen last week, it was the week before, I decided I hadn't had sushi recently.

So I did that.

I then got a few groceries, including some far-too-expensive-for-not-being-that-great watermelon juice.  And then I saw a horse.

It was a small horse.  I kicked it out of the way onto one of the lines in the parking lot so it didn't get run over.

Then, I started Art Nouvember:

I don't think I'm going to do a whole one each day.  This took about an hour, and I don't think I can do that everyday.  I'm thinking of doing a color or two each day.

Finally, I chatted with "Elsa's Mom" for an hour.

• I remember this.  Of all the obituaries in the news today, this is the most important.
• Jobs.
• Ever read something and immediately come to the conclusion that the author is a self-important asshole?
• Comic book characters.
• Spider-Man.

Saturday: Halloween

I decided to get the spookiest of foods for lunch:

Curry.  Why is it the spookiest?  Because I wanted curry, and today's Halloween.  QED.

The guy who sat down at the curry counter before me clearly didn't understand how sitting at a counter works.  The filled-seat array was [1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, Dirty].  He sat down, making it [1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, Dirty].  This is obviously an inferior arrangement, as when I sit down, this becomes [1, 1, 0, 0, 1, Me, Dirty], since I'm not going to stand around while there are open seats until they can clean the seat.  It's not like he didn't see me coming, as we entered at the same time.

Today's the last day of Drawlloween, with the theme of "Dragon."  I went with the Trogdor method.

• That asteroid.
• New team member.
• Frog and bug. 

Friday: Thank fuck it's Friday.

The pizza place by work is open again.  It's being run by the people who run the Mexican place and the wing place that are in the same building.  I wonder if the change in management means that the pizza people who used to work there are gone.

The pizza is pretty much the same, although they're using super thick corrugated boxes now.  They also overcooked the pepperoni/mushroom pizza they had today.

And I spent most of the day fixing code that I'm fairly sure has never worked, based on the number of typos I had to fix.

Today was the last of the cider.  I still have a bunch of cups, so depending on if they have cider next week, I may make an extension of cider/doughnut week.

And then I did Drawlloween:

The theme of which was "spider."

But when I went to take the standard picture of it, I couldn't find my phone.  Not on top of the couch like it usually is, not in any of the cracks of the couch, not dropped on the floor.  So I go to the android phone finder thing, and tell it to ring my phone.  Which, despite the claim of "this will loudly ring your phone for five minutes," I get one lame "doodly doodly doo" which I can confidently place to "around the couch somewhere."  It doesn't help that the trades are gone, so it's a million degrees in my apartment without my fan on.  Which, of course, I can't run while listening for my phone.  So after clicking the ring button a thousand times, I finally narrow it down to "my phone has to have slipped through the effectively zero size gap between the couch and the wall and is now under the couch.  Pull the stupid thing out, and yes, there's my phone sitting there.  It's not hurt any from falling, which is good.

• Here's the thing, most content on the internet is commoditized: one unit of content is effectively equivalent to another unit of content.  There is also effectively an infinite amount of internet content.  Therefore, the nominal price for a unit of internet content is zero.  Claiming "ad-blocking hurts people, so that's why we need a subscription service" isn't really accurate.  Ads are annoying, and after watching an unskippable 30-second ad that played before a 15-second youtube video, blocking all ads indiscriminately seems like the best solution.  If ad tech hadn't ruined any chance of being seen as anything but time leeches, they might have a point.  They don't though.  "But what about people who make their living making youtube videos?"  A lot of those people probably shouldn't be doing that.  A number of the people I watch have real jobs, and the youtube thing is a side project.  I bought a subscription to one group who consistently makes good content.  When I get around to doing so, I plan on organizing patreon subscriptions for a number of others, which I think is the kind of scheme youtube should have pioneered for their creators:  buy a subscription at the $X/month level, and then allocate those funds to the channels you like.  However, given that with this red service, yt plans to take (as they do with advertising) something like 40% off the top, eight times larger than the 5% quoted for patreon.  This seems like a far better use of money.
• This is technically an expansion of the commodity point:  after discovering the feature, I now watch almost all of my youtube videos on double speed.
• I was thinking something similar to this while driving home when Marketplace mentioned that something like six billion dollars will be spent on Halloween this year.
• However, this costume is brilliant.
• "But the company said that on that front, the “just” pertains to how it manufactures its products, reducing land use, water use, and carbon emissions while creating an allergy-free product."  Can the FDA fine a company for being insufferable douchebags?
• Hayley Atwell.
• This bird sings the Tototo theme.

Thursday: I don't have much to talk about today.

It was a boring day, I guess.

I set up my new UPS.  This one has a more detailed display.  I'm also nowhere near the maximum capacity, so I have a decent amount of time to shut things down.  Last time we had a real power outage, I think I had something like five minutes.

Cider/doughnut time was normal.

Today's Drawlloween was "scarecrow", or "all the browns and oranges."

• Reality vs. Republicans.
• I kind of hope this show gets picked up on KIKU.
• Now I have to watch this movie about delis.
• Squirrel.
• Time travelling.
• Song of the Sea.
• Ducks.
• Huh.  So when people use things like Uber to replace a real job, they don't magically work more based on an increase in prices?   

Wednesday: Fuck Best Buy, too.

I spent part of the day today learning that no one ships UPSes to Hawaii.  Amazon doesn't, Dell doesn't, I gave up, but checking now it seems that Newegg does, but it costs $60 in shipping alone.

Since I came in to find my computer off again this morning, it seemed like wasting more time haggling over shipping could be better spent just buying a new UPS locally.  BB had a reasonable replacement in stock, so I went there after work, and after spiraling through their poorly designed store, located the UPS and surge protector section (oddly enough located in the center of the store, and went to checkout with the goal of price-matching it against their webpage.

I don't know why they don't just match the prices automatically, since the only implication is that they knowingly charge more when they think they can, because people are unlikely to do the price matching.  This seems like a corollary to my previous retail management rant.

I also have a complaint about the staffing at BB this evening.  Based on people I encountered spiraling the store, BB is staffed by:

• That big guy at the door who's there to stop you from stealing.
• Customer service has two people.
• Geek Squad has three.
• Generic service has one.
• The Apple section has one.
• There are three roving agents in computer and parts.
• There is no one in the movies/music section.  No employees, no customers.  It is a barren waste.
• Appliances has one guy leaning against large appliances.
• Cell phones have four people who were constantly setting up phones for people.  Do people do that?  Go to BB to get new cell phone service?
• One person running the register.

Looking at this, as I'm standing in line with a 25 pound UPS in my arms, the only conclusions I can make are:

1. Best Buy is not currently in the business of selling things.
2. Except maybe phones.
3. They will attempt to fix the tech things you bring in, but they're fully aware that you probably bought that laptop online.
4. Based on the sampling of people in line with me, most people really just need a USB thumb drive or a slightly odd battery.

Kind of a fall from the time back in undergrad where a trip to BB signaled that new movies and music were soon to arrive, or that a computer would obtain upgrades to make it effectively twice as good.

Anyway, this all started about UPS, so the UPS cartoon:

Now, Drawlloweens.

Yesterday's:

Witch.

I thought about coloring it, but I'm concerned it'd ruin it.  Maybe once Drawlloween is over, and I switch over to Art-Nouvember and my coloring book, I'll try some colored pencils instead of crayons.  I had originally thought about drawing Hermione (who was born ten days before I was), but decided that would be hard to get all the proportions right.  Instead, I went with McGonagal, with this image as the reference.  I wanted to get that green color, but crayons would make it too messy.

For today's:

"Black Cat"

This one I went through two sketch attempts before giving up and going with the stick-figure solution.  The joke was to be a drawing of Black Cat, the Marvel comic character who is sometimes a bad guy, and sometimes dates Spider-Man.  She's got a ridiculous costume, but when I went to get a reference shot, it turns out 99% of her art is a bit more porn-y than I'm willing to badly copy.  There's a cartoon version of her (from the recent, not 1990s S-M cartoon), which is better costumed and proportioned, but I couldn't find a decent reference image. 

Then I thought about her appearance in the Howard the Duck trade I got recently, but the flashback image:

Is going to look bad after I attempt it.

So maybe go with her other appearance in that issue?

But then it would have been confusing, because she's wearing a green coat that almost makes her look like McGonagall.  Also this isn't the silly costume with the white fringe everywhere which was the point.

So scribble scribble crayon black cat.

In other news:

Afternoon cider and doughnuts is the best idea I've ever had.

My pizza place is going to be under new management.  With an "expanded menu."  Can I hope for calzones?  I also hope that the pizza-teers who worked there will still be there.  I like them.

I did get my windshield wipers installed.  The solution was:

1. Wedge a screwdriver into the gap to pry a plastic clip up and out.
2. Jam the old wiper down while holding the clip down.
3. Repeat until the wiper comes off and the stupid clip thing jumps out of your hands onto the floor.
4. Do the same for the other wiper.
5. Call the old wipers "fucking bullshit rain monkeys" in frustration.
6. Get out new wipers.  Ignore all instructions suggesting needing to slide off outside fairing.
7. Open snap clip at the front of the new wiper.
8. Slide J wiper bar into the gap opened by the snap-clip.
9. Snap-clip closed, and remove the wiper condom.
10. Repeat for other wiper.
11. Call new wipers "more fucking bullshit."
12. Get in the car, and realize that the old passenger wiper was a 24 inch, and the new one is a 22 inch.
13. Declare "fuck it" and decide that losing that one inch isn't worth the hassle, although it does make me question wiper manufacturers even more if their online widget isn't consistent.

Finally, linkstorm:

• I'd never heard of Patrick Nagel, but his style has shown up in other places.  Unfortunately NSFW, as seeing a wider range of topics done in the style would be interesting.
• Tax policy.
• Ukraine while Reagan was president. -or- History is hard!
• This is stupid, and I thought people were smarter.  The thing that got me, other than the obvious "Who the fuck bullies over fanart they don't like?" was the "you cheated and copy pasted Rose's hair."  Lindsay Small-Butera at the Small-Butera illustration and animation compound puts out a bunch of super high symmetry character drawings, and I don't know if she just draws one half, copies it over and then finishes with final details or just naturally makes perfectly symmetric characters.  It doesn't matter to me, because the final product is cool looking.
• I was watching NOVA and the phrase "8 million dog mummies" came up.  SO I'm sharing that story.
• These all look tasty.  I'm a bit sad they didn't use the egg gif from Marnie.

Tuesday: Arg.

I am way behind on my evening internets, but earlier today Julie reminded me about cider, and I decided to take a trip during lunch to see if I could get cider at the Safeway by work.

I could.  Also: doughnuts go with cider.

But first I had to eat lunch.  Don't worry, though.  I had cider with lunch.

 And then wait until it was reasonable for a snack.

Powdered and nut?  Cinnamon sugar would be the right choice, but this was the closest I could get.

Then after work I decided to go to Target so I could get new windshield wipers and headlight fluid:

I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but it was like then when I got there.

That's also an accurate representation of me after trying to replace my wipers.  In any case, I still have the old ones on my car, because fuck the assholes who decided you need to squeeze, pull, and twist shit in just the right way to both install and prepare wipers.  I'll sort it out tomorrow when I'm not trying to sort it out in poorly lit parking garages.

And I'll do today's Drawlloween tomorrow.  Which sucks, because I was planning on tomorrow's being difficult to draw.

• Today's Agents of Shield wasn't bad, since they did clear up a lot of the cryptic bullshit.  Not all of it, what with "random ghost baddie" and all.  Also, next week's episode is going to be stupid, since it's another Shield vs. Shit-Hydra thing.
• I saw this while looking up the av club AoS review.  I disagree with their assessment of Silent Hill 2, and Harry's boringness is explicitly parodied in the UFO ending.  But Heather is the best character, and SH3 is probably the best, and not just for this.
• Dog joke.
• This is the cider place I think we went in grad school.  This completes the cider theme for today.