Voder-Vocoder

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if an algorithm is patented, and you develop an application that uses it, you can be sued for infringement, even if you never sell that application to anyone else.

Someone with free time on their hands should make me a mix tape. I havn’t gotten one of those in a while.

Of course a cd full of mp3s would be even better.

“Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

Was reading a discussion about an article, and one comment (from someone who disagreed with the article) was simply that quote from The Big Lebowski. I laughed out loud. I should use that one more often.

WARNING: Metablogging is always stupid. Do not continue reading this post.

Reasons to contiue using movable type:

1. Already installed and working
2. Does everything I want it to.
3. Like its template system.

Reasons to dump movable type:

1. Free as in beer (v2.64), not as in speech.
2. Version 2.x no longer supported. Version 3.x not free. (I fell for the BitKeeper Trap!)
3. Comment Spam issue.
4. Do I really need a forsaken database? It complicates backup. I’d rather have a load of flat files tied together with php scripts.

Story:

Some units of time (18 months? Four years? Does it matter?) ago I was in Virginia visiting relatives. I got to hang with my cousin’s three kids. They were playing the card game bullshit–which they called something else, because they were very proper children. (I still yelled “BULLSHIT!” when appropriate. They were shocked.)

After they switched to war—the worst card game ever—I refused to play. Instead, I taught them to play hearts. The youngest (maybe seven at the time) never developed any strategy for the game, and the middle child’s meds wore off halfway through the game, but I enjoyed playing a real game.

Why am I thinking about card games recently?

Last month, I wandered through the Westside GenericMegaBookstore and I saw a book, The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Texas Hold’em (Should be The Idiot’s Pocket Guide to …). I bought it and enjoyed it a lot. It stressed the mathematics behind the game of poker. (Do not ever play a betting game if you are unfamiliar with the concept of expectation value.)

Last semester, we played Set in my methods class.

My boss at the pizza place quit smoking recently. He immediately took the money he saved and bought lotto tickets. I almost explained the notion of expectation value to him. Instead, I just told him that if I am going to gamble, I prefer to play games where skill can make a difference.

This all got me thinking about invented games, like William Shroyer’s Clubs. (All games are invented. I just was friends with Wes in High school.) Webb reminded me of his game Sparts. We didn’t like Sparts because it was to baroque.

So I’ve been thinking about game theory, game design, gambling, and mathematics.

Background:

The trustees of the Social Security Administration have traditionally used demographic, economic, and fiscal models that end after 75 years. The idea is that there simply is no way to accurately predict the future beyond that. (Aside: can’t we fix the long-term problems of SocSec by making _demographic_ changes? Exempli gratia: increase immigration.) The current administration made waves this year by integrating these numbers out to infinity to overstate the crisis.

Notion:

We (society as a whole) would be irresponsible if we did NOT plan for the future—at least 75 years out. On the other hand it would be a waste of time to plan beyond 75 years.

Discuss.

#!/bin/sh
## VISUAL TEST CGI THING
## (C) Hal Canary 2005
## This is free software; you can redistribute
## it and modify it under the terms of version
## 2 of the GNU GPL.
TEMP=tempfile.txt
# 'random_word' grabs N rand words
# from the dictionary file.
random_word 200 > ${TEMP}
for word in $(cat ${TEMP}) ; do
    hash=$(echo ${word} | sha1sum - ) ;
    # remeber that s oe versions of
    # cnvert are broken.
    convert -background "#d0d0d0" \
        -fill black -pointsize 20 \
        label:${word} "${hash}.png";
done
rename "  -" "" *.png
rm $TEMP

The other side of it will be finished as soon as I get to it. Yes, I know that this one is (quite literally) succeptable to a dictionary attack.

UPDATE 4pm: Go here for an example.

Memphis Clubs, a card game by Wes.

Last week I had no work Monday to Wednesday. My original plan was to drive into he woods and camp by myself. I ended up staying in Madison and hanging out with Sebastien and pretending to be an artist.

My sketchpad is now full of crappy drawings.

Sebastien is moving away end of summer. Entropy, you know.

My internet was out last week. That helped me spend more time
outside.

I am kinda depressed over school. I’m not a very good student anymore. Positive Hal says that there is little to no correlation between being a good education student and being a good educator. Negative Hal would like to point out that the Department of Public Instruction disagrees.

I rented Saved and Solaris last night. Those were both movies that I had missed because life seemed more important than watching movies at the time. I give them each a B.

There was a point in time when I watched almost every new movie that hit the theaters. I went to the $3 5pm matinee+stale popcorn+flat coke deal at the Cinema Showcase Twelve at least once a week. And if midnight rolled around and we wanted to see a movie, they always had midnight shows.

That was twelfth grade for me. A lot of poker. A lot of spades/hearts/clubs. A lot of console gaming. A lot of 5pm movies. A lot of eight ball. A lot of hanging out in the school parking lot. A lot of watching the sunset on a city of trees from Noble’s eighth-floor balcony. A lot of the god-forsaken Imperial Society of Stapleremovers. A lot of wonderfully wasted time.

Stupid memory lane.

I’m taking a couple of summer classes. In series, not parallel. The first one is “Principles of Career and Vocational Education”. There are 10.5 hours total classroom hours. A two credit class normally spends three times that long in class. I might grow to love summer classes.

The delivery job goes well. If my mind continues to deteriorate, I think I would like to do deliveries or drive a cab as a career. Probably not food for the rest of my life.

I now have Sundays off. Not this weekend, but maybe next, I’ll organize a poker night. This time, I promise not to cancel, even if no one shows up.

Sara left town this week, taking away access to her canoe. She said we were going to go canoeing. Liar.

I will be visiting faily and backpacking in East Tennessee the first two weeks of August. That will be fun. Except maybe for the family part.

This evening will be spent deleting trash off of the hard drive, cleaning the house, laundry, and cleaning the beer out of my good clickity keyboard. Maybe I’ll leave the house, too.

I would dismiss Kunstler as a quack, but for one thing.

I know the history of Easter Island.

[hal@ups(pts/1) ~]$ uptime
 09:23:09  up 133 days, 12:35, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00

I stopped reading my mail a while back. If something is important, like a letter from family or a bill that MUST be paid, I might dig through the pile of spam for it. But most bills go a few months without payment. I have unopened bank statements from last year.

I used to be so responsible. Eight years ago I BALANCED MY CHECKBOOK.

Poll: Should I start being responsible with money again?