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Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

Low Probility Events

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Last Sunday while playing a game of Settlers of Catan with Knights and Cities my friend Post rolled a corner. I went on to win the game of settlers, but we gave Post an honorary win for the dice roll. Which really, will be more memorable than the game. Of course, if it ever happens again I’m going to have to buy some new dice.

I mean, statistically speaking, it should be the most exciting thing that happened all week. This was of course a week in which the Boston Celtics won their 17th NBA Championship, Tiger Woods won the US Open in some sort of playoff sudden death thing, and I went to the beach after having dim sum for the first time. All somewhat unlikely things, but without crunching the numbers I’m going to go with the dice roll as the rarest event of the four.

It’s a good thing all those sporting events happened last week or that list would have been really short. Things with me have been pretty normal, following the familiar patterns of which I have grown tired. My new mantra, of sorts, is that I am moving in September.

I have, however, failed to make friends with enough people to avoid moving in with some more craig’s list randoms. Last week I started looking and I found a seemingly low probability find (aka it sounded awesome). They responded quickly, to say that they were busy and would let me know when they’re free. I’m thinking that was a line since I haven’t heard anything. But I’m not jaded on the housing search yet, hopefully I find a place before that happens.

Posted in Games, Numbers & Statistics, Rants | Comments Closed

First Boston Beach Trip

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Last Sunday I went down to the beach with some of my room mates and some friends of there’s. We went to Quincy on the south shore. As you can see from the panorama it was not very far from Boston, but it took us over an hour to get there. The South Shore Expressway was closed one exit before the one we needed to take so we ended up getting off of it 2 exits before we needed and winding our way through the city. We didn’t have a gps or a detailed map so we tried to stick to the big roads on our non detailed map, but we failed at that. It was quite the adventure. I got see a whole new side of Boston including Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and Hyde Park. This is the route we took on the way there.

View Larger Map

It wasn’t the best beach, but it was perfectly good for kite flying. There was a good bit of clouds moving through the area brining with them enough wind to break my strings, again. But it was a lot of fun. It was my first really successful kite flying near Boston. I’ve taken my kite and attempted to fly it around here before but I failed because there wasn’t enough low to the ground wind to combat my shortened strings. Yesterday I found, after some running around, a local store that sells kite string like items. I picked up 150 yards of 36 lb. nylon string. I’m not sure exactly how strong my old string was, it was what came with the kite, so I’m guessing 30 or 50 lb. The store was closing so I just got what the shopkeeper recommended. I know the old stuff wasn’t nylon. I hope this stuff will be strong enough, at least to get me through till August when I’m going down to the Outer Banks. The $25 fee for a second checked back makes bring a kite down there too expensive, so I’m going to buy a new nice one there and mail it (or pay the $25 to fly it) back home. Here is another view of the beach because I really enjoy playing with making panoramas:

Posted in Fun, Kite, Panoramas, Trips | Comments Closed

Charging for the First Checked Bag

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

American Airlines will start charging $15 for the first checked bag…

Come on! That is a lot ridiculous. You might as well just increase fares by $15 across the board. The only real difference is the marketing angle. People are used to fare increases, they don’t like them, but they expect them. Increases in extraneous fees that you must pay just make people feel like you are ripping them off. The marketing can’t possibly favor the fee, now that it is no longer, hidden having been reported in the press.

I, personally, like to travel light and make a quick getaway from the airport. Until the asinine no liquids TSA rule was made I never checked a bag (when possible). The current, exceedingly annoying liquids rule results in the same behavior. The alternative, of course, is to purchase shampoo and such at your destination. This takes time, but probably only costs on the order of $5. By charging for a checked first bag American makes this option more desirable, probably more desirable than checking the bag. Although, it may be easier to for business travelers to get reimbursed for the fee than for the cheaper incidentals.

Of course, encouraging people not to check a bag does nothing to decrease the weight of the plane (saving fuel), it just makes them carry it on. With the planes packed as full as they are these days, there is already not enough space for everyone to carry on their two bags. This will only make things worse in that area, and further increase the importance of getting seated early in the boarding order. When the space on the plane is exhausted there will be an interesting choice — do you charge for baggage that must be checked at the gate due to over crowding? That is a damned if you do, loophole if you don’t situation.

The only saving grace of all this is that, for now,

Rival Delta has no current plans to match American’s fee for the first checked bag…

But we all know how this oligopoly works, everyone follows suit rather quickly. Of course, given the bone headedness of this idea compared to the easier to implement fare hike, maybe they wont all be lemmings. Come on, the cost to implement charing for a first checked bag has got to cost more than $15 per bag.

Posted in From the Internet, Games, Rants, Technical | Comments Closed

ROFLCon VIP After Party

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

After the panel there I spent some more time hawking shwag, followed by some cleaning. Exciting stuff I know. I did get a chance to apologize to Randall for being a complete creep the previous night. He said he would let Ryan North, who was also there, know, and that was that. I feel much about the whole thing now. We, the ROFLCon team and volunteers did polish a whole cold pizza left from lunch while cleaning. I am normally very opposed to cold pizza, citing prevalence of microwaves in avoiding the normally breakfast food. I can say, with confidence, that a cold slice of pizza has never tasted so good to me. During cleanup we also had some fun, captured in this video that I uploaded from the MIT Media lab while waiting for the shuttle bus to the VIP after party.

The VIP after part was awesome. Definitely the best part of the whole thing for me. It was held in the office space of Barbarian Group, a web advertising company and included an open bar. Everyone I talked to there was either:

A Barbarian Employee
A ROFLCon team member or volunteer
Famous on the Internet

The first group I joined after acquiring a rum and coke were some people, including team members and the Mozilla guy talking to moot about what kind of opportunities he can parlay his current skill set into. This way he doesn’t end up 37 and breaking even on 4chan, a fear he discussed in the panel on “Internet Cult Leaders.”

After grabbing some of the tasty food I came across Diana Kimble and Rachel Popkin who were being told that they had “Won the Internet” with the con by Joe Peacock of Mentally Incontinent. This seemed to be the general consensus, at least among the memes. I also saw Tron Guy telling Diana roughly the same thing earlier in the day. More on how people felt about the con later on.

I sat down at the party with Cheez of icanhascheezburger. Finally a meme I’m familiar with! As many of you know I dislike the predominant name for what he has created and fostered, LOLCats, compared with Cat Macros. Given the chance I decided to get his first hand opinion on why one name is more popular. He feels that “Cat Macros” is more technical than “LOLCats,” citing that the term macro is not widely understood outside tech circles. He also discussed the familiarity even normal people have with the term LOL, and how including that term in the name draws in a wider audience because it makes them more accessible. Given the obvious technical superiority of the Cat Macro’s name I had not considered these arguments. And in the end it was totally sweet to get some kind of resolution of this undercurrent straight from Cheez. I think you won’t be hearing much about this anymore.

Between that VIP after party and the late night after party, while I was again waiting for the shuttle bus, I walked off with some people searching for warmth and coffee in a Starbucks. There was one just a few storefronts away, but someone’s iphone said that it was closing in 10 minutes. Apparently that was unacceptable so we trekked four blocks to the next closest one. Of course that someone turned out to be Justine Ezarik of iJustine and the 300 page iphone bill. On the way there I ended up talking to Joe Mathlete of Marmaduke Explained. Inside none of us could get this cute blond meme to tell us what she’s famous for. Of course, with a picture and a list on the internet nothing stays secret for long, she turned out to be Brookers. On the bus to Great Scott I talked to some more cool people, whom’s names I forget. One of them was a web developer for 4chan, another a marketer for Super Deluxe, and her significant other who “makes things”.

Posted in From the Internet, Fun, ROFLCon, xkcd | Comments Closed

ROFLCon Friday Night

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

I eventually worked out a plan with my room mates to go out for drinks in Davis Square. Something we all rarely do. Sriram and a friend of his were on their way back from downtown on the T, and I managed to leave at the perfect time to catch the same train as them, in the same car, without waiting. I am quite impressed with that, maybe too much. But it took a lot of timing and coordination that I actually didn’t even know that I knew.

When we got to Davis they were hungry so we went to crepe place there. I am not a fan of crepes, although the place did smell good. I ran into one of my coworkers there and had to yet again explain what ROFLCon is. That is rather hard, because people don’t seem to be familiar with the term “Internet Meme” and its hard to tell what, if any memes an individual has heard of. We were soon joined by a friend of Srirams friend, who, is doing a PHD on television and video game culture, but hadn’t heard of ROFLCon in time to register. I took some time to steal some free internet from the Boston IFF that was going on in the theater next door to upload some more pictures to flickr. We also checked out a flash game called Magic Pen.

After crepes and Andreas and Claudia joining us we went to Sagra for drinks. This place was great. It was quiet and fancy. Which is may more my thing than a loud noisy bar where we’ll struggle to hear each other and have to stand all night. I was already pretty tired and as countless discussions upon which I could provide no comment went on I longed to go home.

On the way home I finally ran into Randall Munroe on the street! He lives like within a few blocks of me, but I’ve never seen him in the grocery store or walking to the T, or on his electric skateboard. But tonight, with ROFLCon in town I saw him, and a large posse, including Ryan North on my walk home. Literally crossing my street. I clearly recognized them, and asked were they were heading. To which they replied, “This way.” Which, given the obviousness of the answer, I took as “You’re a creep don’t follow us.” I wasn’t really together enough to follow them anyways having already had a 17 hour day. So I didn’t. But it was clear that he didn’t recognize me — damn it. My ROFLCon staff shirt was by now covered by a coat, so that clue wasn’t visible to tip me off as not just some sketchy dude. But it’s not like I haven’t met Randal like for or five times by now, and even shared a dinner plate. But oh well. In retrospect I felt somewhat bad about how the whole exchange went down.

That was pretty much the day day. I went to bed around 1am.

Posted in Games, Restaurants, ROFLCon, xkcd | Comments Closed

2008 Boston FIRST Robotics – Pictures

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Ok so things are a bit out of order. The Ski trip occurred before the robotics team arrived. I don’t have detailed daily posts, but here are some fun pictures from the event. Pictures appear in chronological order.

3/28/2008 @ 4:36pm

3/28/2008 @ 5:03pm

3/29/2008 @ 12:53pm

3/29/2008 @ 1:10pm

3/29/2008 @ 1:17pm

Posted in Fun, Robotics | Comments Closed

Utah Skiing 2008

Monday, April 7th, 2008

From March 19th through March 24th I was skiing in Utah with my friend from back home, Paul, his dad, his roommate, his roommate’s girlfriend, and his roommate’s girlfriend’s roommate. It was a blast. The second two days were the very best skiing I’ve had in my life, which skiing wise is still rather short mind you; anyways, it was great. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I’m going to tell this story in short form with pictures, be sure to click on them to read the captions.

We spent the first two days at Snow Basin, host to the 2002 Oylmpics Downhill course, and probably others. We however stayed mostly on the green slopes here teaching the girls to ski. I did make it up the gondola at least once the first day, and skiing down from there was really tiring. Much more tiring than anything I did the previous week during my warm-up in New Hampshire. (The warm up post is not forthcoming, its just lost with all the busyness. ) The second day at Snow Basin I got a little more advanced skiing in, and it was not as tiring.

On the third day we switched to Powder Mountain, which is nearby and known (apparently not very widely) for not having crowds ever, even on weekends. I’m pretty sure this view looks into the salt lake basin to the northwest, which is away from the city.

Despite that it snowed only very little, if at all, while we were there Powder Mountain still had untracked powder if you looked in the right place. Of course, learning to ski in Ohio I’ve never skied on such stuff before. It was difficult but I got the hang of it.

On the second day at Powder Mountain (the last day overall) Paul, his dad and I again went in search of some untracked powder. It was harder to find that day and we ended up having to walk up this ridge a bit. In the end we found it too dangerous and skiied down the back side, where it was less steep and had fewer trees. But as we went down we looped around and had some fun darting through the trees.

By the end of the trip my confidence in my skiing abilities was way up. Too bad I didn’t start skiing until the end of the season.

Posted in Fun, Panoramas, Trips | Comments Closed

Family North Carolina Trip

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

I feel like I haven’t updated the blog in a while. I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe a change in formats/coverage is in the works, but I’m not really sure. Anyways, I was checking out our winter vacation spot in North Carolina on google maps when I found something really surprising. Our cabin was only about 3,400 feet away from the Smokey Mountains National Park.

I wish I’d know that when I was there, it would have been cool to drive all the way up the road to the ridge. The trip was otherwise fun. I won 2/4 poker tournaments, none of which were played for money, much to my dismay, but that was really surprising given the crowd, although I’m sure had money been on the line I would have done worse, cause it changes everyones play style. Lets see, what else, I spent at least half a day playing with my cousins who are finally old enough that I feel like I can relate and play fun games with. We played sardines and sharks and minnows and some other stuff. Oh, we also played the Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader board game, I was on a team with my cousins and we as a collective (total grade level totaling ~30 between the 4 of us) were indeed smarter than a fifth grader.

Oh I got connecting to the internet on my laptop via a usb cable to my cell phone working in about an hour in preparation for the trip. I used it a little bit as it was the only connection available, but I tired not to use it too much because I’m unclear as to what the billing repercussions of doing so are. Although from what I can tell, since only the verizion 1x network was available I didn’t violate my terms of service. You only violate the terms of service when you “tether” to the EvDo network (the faster one)without signing up for overly expensive data plan, which I didn’t do, anyways we’ll see in a few days when I get my bill.

The above image is a badly reconstructed panorama from the front porch of the cabin. It was raining then as it was most of the trip, which was no problem, we just played games inside the whole time. It did clear up enough for a night of casual stargazing and a fire complete with smores, yum.

This cabin was not too far from our previous family reunion type thing in the mountains of NC about 12 years ago or something. It is also close to the Nantahala river where I’ve gone white water paddling many times. And of course, I perennially take my summer vacation on the other side of the state, clearly North Carolina is getting more than its fair share of my tourist dollars.

Posted in Games, Maps, Panoramas, Technical, Trips | 2 Comments »

Tennis Pro

Friday, December 7th, 2007

In light of no longer having anything to do tonight I took it upon myself to get some “exercise” or at least fun, making level 2000 pro in wii Tennis:

I expected it to stop me at 2000, but it didn’t. Clearly, it is already off the chart. It appears that the max is expected to be ~2400, and that above ~2220 you only gain points (up to 5) for a 40-Love game. I am going to be satisfied with my 2003, unless I get really bored.

By somewhat popular demand, my wii. Designed in consultation with the room mates to get it just right. All theirs look like them as well, possibly that’ll be a post eventually.

Posted in Games, Numbers & Statistics | 1 Comment »

Sox Sweep in Series!!

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

!!! I picked a good year and a good team to start watching baseball, and I toured Fenway Park for the first time today~~, pictures to come later~~. How exciting. And now college football back in the spotlight, go Buckeyes.