Welcome to my blog.

A lot of changes have been made recently. A lot of pages have been moved so I apologize if you have bookmarked something that is no longer where it used to be. I assure you that this new system will be better once I get it all up and running. However, I'm afraid more pages will be doing a bit of moving around. Thank you for your understanding.

The Dispossessed Vendetta Club - April 30, 2008, 3:01 pm
Right now I'm amped up on rebellious anarchy and dissatisfaction. Actually, I've been feeling this way for a few weeks now. First I read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. The plot...

We3 - April 14, 2008, 4:49 pm
Homeward Bound meets Ghost in the Shell in the shocking graphic novel We3. By far the most accurate review of this work that I have read is this one: "[A] startling, disturbing and perhaps enl...

Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse - April 10, 2008, 1:18 pm
Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse is a short story by Andy Duncan that is a Nebula award finalist, and for good reason. The story is fascinating, the characters are efficiently and elegantly fleshed out,...

outsourcing our PCs - April 9, 2008, 1:45 pm
So, if most of the internet is supported in large server farms "somewhere out there" where data is stored and scripts are run (and in case you didn't know, it is), then why do we keep cramming fa...

What Would Jesus Do - March 26, 2008, 8:50 am
...if he thought he was getting swindled by an auto mechanic? Jesus probably wouldn't own a car, but work with me here in this hypothetical situation. Maybe it's a sandal mechanic. We...

Flight of the Conchords - March 25, 2008, 2:04 pm
Apparently I have a long lost twin. Here are a few other attempts. The band is called Flight of the Conchords and they are hilarious, not to mention quite talented musicians. Check out...

Dwarf Fortress - March 1, 2008, 8:29 pm
Allow me to introduce you to a computer game called Dwarf Fortress. Imagine a combination of Sim City, The Sims, and Diablo II, and you will have some idea of the flavor of Dwarf Fortress. This is a g...

Ceiling cat - February 29, 2008, 10:42 pm
Knock knock. Has yu herd teh good wurd? If yu beleev in ceiling cat and axsept hiz son, Jeebus, intoo yur hart yu will spendz teh afterlifz hangin wit ceiling cat and you wil has all teh cheezburger...

Fruit preference - February 25, 2008, 5:54 pm
The latest xkcd comic (pictured above) is hilarious, but not half as hilarious as the outcry from readers. Apparently people are really passionate about their fruit. I read the following in the co...

How does that work - February 16, 2008, 9:24 pm
Why do satellites fall out of the sky? Some people may wonder why satellites usually don't fall out of the sky (the moon is a satellite, ya know). The answer to that question is here. But, somet...

A Weather Report - February 1, 2008, 1:00 pm
Let's talk about the weather. Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 An unseasonably warm day with some rain. I was worried about going on a run due to ice, but my concerns were unfounded. All the ice h...

Dont be dense or do - January 6, 2008, 4:11 pm
On average, a person living in the United States consumes more of the planets resources than anyone living anywhere else on the planet. Scripts for calculating one's impact in terms of resource c...

Google: Destroyer of Wonder - December 16, 2007, 9:30 pm
Recently I chided myself for thinking, I wonder how to ... That isn't a solution-oriented thought, I told myself. I must train myself to think, I must remember to Google this question. My trai...

So you want to be a writer - December 1, 2007, 4:12 pm
If you want to be a writer, the most important thing you can do is write. The second most important thing you can do is read. I'm told Stephen King gives this advice in a book he wrote about writ...

Cutting steel and other manly materials part 2 - November 18, 2007, 5:48 pm
The warehouse at Klein Steel is relatively unimpressive to the untrained eye. Certainly, large pieces of steel, big cranes, and loud noises have some inherent impressiveness, but the devices that soun...

Its a trap! (Star Wars nostalgia) - November 14, 2007, 9:21 pm
Cutting Steel part 2 will have to wait. I stumbled upon (sought out) Admiral Ackbar on facebook and came upon the Admiral Ackbar Fan Club. At first glance the group is a lame conglomeration of people ...

Cutting steel and other manly materials part 1 - November 5, 2007, 7:31 am
I've more or less moved in to my new place in Rochester and today will only be my third day of work at Klein Steel. The first two days were a whirlwind of meeting people, filling out paper work, ...

Mortgage - October 23, 2007, 3:15 pm
There is something that you enter after college called the "real world". Many of us put it off for as long as possible, but it finds most of us eventually. If the "real world" has any strict definitio...

Creative Problem Solving in Video Games - October 11, 2007, 4:40 pm
Violent video games take a bad rap, perhaps for a good reason. Relatively few people would come out and say they are a good thing. Though it has been argued that they are teaching kids pattern recogni...

Application of High School level Algebra 2 - October 2, 2007, 4:07 pm
Problem set Consider the following situation. The cartoonist refers to the fact that sound or other types of waves emanating from one focal point will reflect off the inner sides of the elli...

Zumbooruck - September 25, 2007, 1:50 pm
Every once in awhile a coincidence occurs that makes you wonder if Zaphod Beeblebrox didn't just engage the Heart of Gold's improbability drive. On a lazy Sunday this past summer I learne...

Randomness - September 12, 2007, 1:10 pm
I've always been curious about so called random number generators. Briefly my curiosity was transformed into virulent skepticism. I was working on a genetic algorithm and noticed some sub-optimal...

iPhone owners to Apple - We thought you loved us - September 7, 2007, 12:05 pm
Recently Apple slashed the price of its iPhone by 200 dollars. The New York Times reported that Apple fanatics felt betrayed by the way Apple hyped the phone and then raked in an extra $200 profit fro...

Sin City and Arabian Nights and Days - August 30, 2007, 6:17 pm
Frank Miller's Sin City and Naguib Mahfouz's Arabian Nights and Days I recently (finally) saw Sin City and afterwards realized that most of the "good" guys are low-life thugs. Bruce Willi...

Dumpster Diving - August 27, 2007, 6:09 pm
Another school year has come to a close (yes it closed nearly 3 months ago as of the posting of this, sigh). Yet before the caps have even been thrown into the air dumpsters and trash pick-up areas on...

Deep Fried without the Guilt - August 21, 2007, 4:40 pm
This summer some friends of mine were discussing the innumeracy of the set of objects that can be fried and in a separate conversation the unique and stunning cuisine available at state fairs, particu...

Faster than Light - August 21, 2007, 4:13 pm
A recent New York Times article describes the fascinating possibility that some non-things, such as shadows, can travel faster than the speed of light. NY Times Article At least one physicist I ...