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Archived News (The Home section contains the current stuff) 12/7/2007 Apparently, I am 79 years old. I tried picking up a copy of my (free) credit report from TransUnion and Experian last night. Both these agencies have my birth year listed as 1928 instead of 1982. The incompetence of these companies would be entertaining, if there weren't hundred of thousands of dollars potentially at stake. It's hard to believe that people actually trust these clowns for the purpose of making lending and even employment decisions. 12/6/2007 Book list updated. 11/22/2007 Schedule page has been updated. 10/17/2007 "We always hate those we have wronged." 10/14/2007 I have returned from Guatemala. My completed Book list has been updated. 9/24/2007 Things have been busy at work lately. I spent a good chunk of my weekend porting a physics-based temperature prediction model from FORTRAN to C++. Aren't I a party animal? On the bright side, I'm leaving the country for two weeks on Friday. I saw the new Resident Evil movie at the Cinerama on opening night. I liked it. But then I've always had a soft spot in my heart for zombies. Oh... I also contributed a little bit to Citizendium. I was not a happy camper after spending half a day googling for expressions of the Planck Blackbody equation. Half the versions on the web are subtley wrong. Or they fail to mention crucial facts (like the input wavelength is in friggin' meters, the numerator's pi gives radiance/irradiance conversion under lambertian assumptions, etc). So the initial article I put together will hopefully spare somebody my migrane. 8/30/2007 Added an inplace matrix-matrix multiplication routine to the Coding section. Schedule page has been updated. 8/15/2007 I finally figured out how to do a reverse sweep roll (kingumut naatillugu). I'll hopefully have a decent chest scull (palluussineq) and recovery with in a week. 7/29/2007 Book list updated. 7/26/2007 A fellow named Tom mounted a camera to the bow of my kayak and posted some footage of me rolling. 7/12/2007 My apartment building will probably be getting a historic landmark designation. 6/5/2007 Life is good. 5/10/2007 Finished Procopius's Anekdota. Book lists updated accordingly. 4/30/2007 Book list updated. 4/27/2007 A gem from the g++ compiler...   error: declaration does not declare anything 4/20/2007 Finally got around to the Eric Gale album I got for my birthday. Good stuff. 4/17/2007 "Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . ." -- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. As a follow-up to a posting I made to comp.lang.c++.moderated, I'm trying to implement an in-place matrix transpose algorithm. The problem turns out to be a lot tougher than I expected. The square matrix case is trivial, but the rectangular case involes quite a bit of tomfoolery. I'm putting together a C++ implementation of an algorithm given in an ACM paper. Sadly, the paper's demonstration is done in goto-laden FORTRAN. 4/15/2007 Drove from Santa Clara, CA to Seattle, WA in 12.5 hrs. 4/12/2007 Starting in May, I'll be taking a Salsa and an Argentine Tango class. I'll also be carrying on Intermediate Lindy Hop. 4/6/2007 Book list updated. New trips added to schedule. 3/30/2007 April 13th is when my car-lessness streak ends. 3/24/2007 Went on a cleaning binge today. Picked up the garbage strewn across my tiny studio apartment. Did the dishes which had been mocking me from my sink for over a week. Ran loads of laundry. Vacuumed the place. You know the drill. I also decided to attack the bath tub. Like most men who shower, I ignore the the slowly accumulating scum on the bottom and sides of the tub. A few weeks ago, however, weird green shit started growing on the caulking (eww!). A quick call to tech support (aka Mom) identified this crap as mildew. The solution? X14 mildew remover. Spritzed on the crap. Left for fifteen minutes. Came back. What was left? Pure white, unadulterated, virgin caulk! The tub-scum came off easy too, with some Soft Scrub. This post may seem even more boring than my usual "news" blurbs, but for a guy who believed that Windex was the only cleaning agent a house could ever need, tonight has been a bit of a revelation. And yes, it's been an exceptionally slow Saturday. Updated the links page a tiny bit. 3/22/2007 Took my first Intermediate Lindy Hop class today. Much faster paced than the beginner's version. I find it more enjoyable too. Dropped by Tulas on the way home and listened to some live jazz for about an hour and a half. 3/20/2007 Taking an Argentine Tango class starting in May. Taking a beginner's Yoga class starting on March 27th. 3/16/2007 Occassionally, I'm not too lazy to cook dinner: Schedule page updated. 3/7/2007 For no particular reason, my past and upcoming kayaking trips are now available via: Only includes stuff from 3/2/2007 onwards. 3/4/2007 I'm pretty pissed off at Washington Mutual right now. They are incompetent when it comes to doing electronic money transfers (ACH). The earliest I can schedule a transfer is about five days in the future. It then takes them three days to actually pull the money in from my credit union. Once the money is out, they put a hold on it for another five days. (Money that went out on 3/2 won't be available till 3/8). Net result? It takes over two weeks for them to do a friggin' transfer. Two weeks were I can't touch that money. If the entire process is automated, this game shouldn't take more than about 50 seconds. If a human needs to review on one side, two business days is reasonable. If humans on both sides need to review, lets give seven business days. But two fucking weeks? What the hell WaMu? 3/3/2007 Paddled at Deception Pass today with Will, John, and Rand. I met these guys through Seattle Raft and Kayak. I'm going to a Lake Stevens pool session tomorrow. Next Saturday I'll be headed out to the ocean with the same crew. 3/2/2007 I learned how to do a storm roll in my kayak today. 2/28/2007 You know you're doing some hardcore coding when you are working to "Eye of the Tiger". 2/22/2007 Went to Discovery Park with Tony. Here is something I wrote while waiting in a Starbucks today: "You're willing to spend $4 on a cup of coffee, stringing together six adjectives describing just how you want it, but then drink it out of a cheap, tacky paper cup. What the hell are you people thinking?" 2/20/2007 Nothing today. A filler entry. Just three fragments. 2/19/2007 I really enjoy writing with pen and paper. It has a fluidity and freedom to it that typing on a computer can never match. The permanence of what is written on paper helps keep a forward march, trooping past idea after idea. Most of what I write down I never share. Actually, most of it is just pompous and melodramatic crap. It's also private and meaningless to pretty much anybody except me. That said, here is something I wrote in November: "I'm tired now, but I cannot sleep. Waiting for two troubled friends to make their way home. Their strife is meaningless; their argument, stupid. Is this how a mother feels about the despair of her teenage child? An offspring's mountainous troubles seem so mundane from the outside. And even from the inside, with the truth of a little distance." Book lists updated. 2/16/2007 More kayaking. 2/15/2007 "We was making love when you told me that you loved me I thought ol' cupid he was taking aim I was a believer when you told me that you loved me And then you called me someone else's name" -- Falling In Love (Is Hard On Your Knees), Aerosmith 2/14/2007 Lindy Hop class tonight, followed by dancing at the Century Ballroom. Slowly de-suckifying. 2/10/2007 Went kayaking today. 2/9/2007 Book lists updated. 2/8/2007 "For learning is not there to give light to the soul that has none, or to make a blind man see. Her business is not to furnish him with sight but to direct the sight he has, to regulate its steps, provided it has straight and capable feet and legs of its own." -- Montaigne Took another beginning Lindy Hop class last night. Was introduced to the Century Ballroom afterwards. Good stuff. 2/7/2007 I just started using Chicken of the VNC instead of X11 forwarding over SSH. It's a million times more responsive. Applications which are entirely unusable with X11 forwarding (even with broadband) are quite pleasant to use with VNC. Besides its awesome name, it also features one of the snazzier program icons I've ever seen: "And when you resist the growth of an innovation that has come to introduce itself by violence, it is a dangerous obligation and a handicap to keep yourself in check and within the rules, in all matters and places, against those who are free as air, to whom everything is permissible that can advance their plan, who have neither law nor order except to follow their advantage ..." -- Montaigne I'm reading The Complete Essays of Montaigne right now, hence my steady stream of quotes from that source. I find it interesting how a passage written nearly four hundred years ago still applies to the struggle against Islamic extremism today. 2/6/2007 "... what can be stranger than to see a people obliged to obey laws that they never understood, bound in all their domestic affairs, marriages, donations, wills, sales, and purchases, to rules that they cannot know, since they are neither written nor published in their language, and whose interpretation and use they must of necessity purchase?" -- Montaigne 2/5/2007 "Thus ease and indigence depend on each man's opinion; and neither riches, glory, nor health has any more beauty and pleasure than its possessor lends it. Each man is as well or as badly off as he thinks he is. Not the man of whom it is thought, but the one who thinks it of himself, is happy. And by just this fact belief gains reality and truth." -- Montaigne Schedule updated. 1/14/2007 Dave started teaching me fiberglass boat repair. We're working on patching up the old Pintail at Bay Creek. My jacket is still covered in gel coat dust from the dremeling. I might have a chance to help put on a keel strip this week too. Also tried out a Yoga for Paddlers DVD that Morgan bought. I want to improve my flexibility so that I can pull off some of the advanced Greenland-style kayak rolls this summer. I didn't anticipate this Yoga stuff being so strenuous. But come summer time, I'll be as bendy as .... hmmm .... a paperclip? 1/2/2007 Finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. 12/27/2006 Saw Children of Men tonight. 12/23/2006 Book list updated. 12/19/2006 We aren't just animated, walking hunks of meat. There is more to life than that. 12/18/2006 There are many different kinds of peace. Some can only be found with friends. Others with family. A few in the arms of lovers and sex. But the most barren of all is the peace of solitude. Man standing naked before all of creation. 12/7/2006 Salad ala Niek. Featuring tomato, spinach, bellpepper, advocado, feta cheese, pepper, and a tiny dash of extra virgin olive oil. 12/6/2006 Saw Brick last night. Great movie. The ceramic chicken scene is one of those truly great moments in cinema. 12/2/2006 "You've always got something to hide Something you just can't tell And the only time that you're satisfied Is with your feet in the wishing well." -- Wishing Well, Free 12/1/2006 Added documentation on using macros to my Vim tips page. 11/29/2006 The beauty of a blank page is always so intimidating. It's full of promise, the perfect home for brilliant thought. But once defiled with the inane, its splendor vanishes. Then it's just scrap. 11/28/2006 Played around with ccache, a compiler cache for GCC. It seems to store the results of preprocessing but not the actual compile. It uses an MD4 hash to handle an up-to-date check. First time around it actually slows you down. (Went from 11m30s to 12m16s). But when you do a "make clean;make" you get optimal usage of the cache. (Dropped the speed to 1m59s). 11/27/2006 Spent my sunday night learning how to utilize distcc, a front-end for doing distributed code compilation with GCC. With a little bit of qmake massaging, the software I develop at work compiled across our compute cluster. I've played around with and benchmarked various settings enough that I could deploy this in a production environment if needed. 11/26/2006 "I love you, you're a Pepper, but you're only 2.3% of the world, so this article isn't about you." -- Joel, Joel on Software. 11/25/2006 Starting writing out some Vim tips for programmers. There's a lot more stuff that still needs to be added (macros, cindent, vim script packages, command line vim, etc). That will come in time. 11/22/2006 Converted my New York license to a Washington one at the DMW today. 11/21/2006 Might be going to Belize with my brother in March. I have just enough frequent flyer miles left for a free trip. 11/19/2006 Schedule page updated. 11/17/2006 "I'd like to believe we could reconcile the past Resurrect those bridges with an ancient glance But my old stone face can't seem to break her down She remembers bridges, burns them to the ground I have become cumbersome to this world I have become cumbersome to my girl" -- Cumbersome, Seven Mary Three 11/16/2006 I may be buying a car tomorrow. That means I'll be driving back to Seattle (over three days) rather than flying. 11/4/2006 It has finally started raining in Seattle. Finished April Blood. Book list updated accordingly. 11/2/2006 "Don't crap in my shoe and tell me it's pudding." -- Cat, Cat and Girl 11/1/2006 Had my first swing dance class this evening. Tons of fun. I think I've found a new addiction. 10/24/2006 Finished Anna Karenina. 10/22/2006 "That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas." -- Buffy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 10/20/2006 I stick to my opinion that Inyokern has the single greatest airport in the US. There is free wireless. One of the rental companies has a large fridge full of free water and soda. There is a free book exchange program. The staff (even the TSA folk) are all friendly and helpful. Best of all, the airport has two resident cats which have free reign of the terminal. 10/19/2006 My last night in the California desert before heading back to Seattle tomorrow. I'm thinking of doing a week or two of hiking out here some time. Very pretty. I'm just over half way through Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. 10/6/2006 Saw The Bodies exhibition. Would have been pretty helpful back when I was taking Cellular Genetics. Starting this Friday, I'll no longer be homeless. That ends a four month streak. Starting late October, I'm taking Swing dancing classes. I may also be starting Salsa classes with another partner, but I'm not sure if that's going through yet. 9/25/2006 Schedule page updated. Last day in California before Seattle move. 9/14/2006 "This is the supreme folly of man--that he stints himself now so he will not have to stint later, and his life flies away before he can enjoy the good things he has labored so much to acquire..." -- Leonardo da Vinci. 9/12/2006 Book lists and Schedule updated. 8/21/2006 Tomorrow is my last full day in Rochester. 8/18/2006 'nough said. 8/17/2006 Five full days in Rochester remaining. To prove that I have not abandoned the ways of personal hygiene, I've taken yet another exciting self portrait! Maybe I'm just narcissistic. In any event, the posters and the books are all packed up. My office is depressingly bare and office-like again. The reality of moving has hit. 8/15/2006 Seven full days in Rochester remaining. A self portrait taken for no particular reason Pictures from the camping trip have been uploaded to Flickr. Privacy permissions set to friends only. 8/14/2006 I had an awesome time at the Thousand Islands and will probably be doing it again next year. Pictures will be up in a couple of days. Added a new picture to the random image selection for the bio section, taken with my iSight camera. I now have eight full days in Rochester remaining. 8/10/2006 The completed class list has been updated to reflect my just-completed history course. There is a small chance that I'll get to go to a conference in the US Virgin Islands at the beginning of December. 8/9/2006 I've begun my second major wave of posession dumping. Count down till move has begun in earnest. 8/4/2006 "This ain't no tea party, princess. Sooner or later, you're gonna have to fight." -- Xander, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who knew that vampire slaying and Middle Eastern politics had so much in common? 8/3/2006 I've finally joined the dark side and got my first credit card. Are my years of debt-free living over? Do I feel the urge to splurge on consumer goods and bedeck myself with "bling"? Only time will tell. Annoyingly, the credit card company mispelled my name. About one and five Americans develop mysterious dyslexia when writing it; unfortunately for me the credit card company had just such a person in their employ. 8/1/2006 While walking home around 11:30pm, I saw a meteor. In other random news, the East Coast departure date is now set in stone: August 23rd. 7/26/2006 Two days ago my boss lent me one of his old bicycles and I've been biking to work since. My twelve mile commute has been cut down to about an hour and twenty minutes. When I get to Seattle, I'm defintely going to get in to this as my main mode of transport. 7/18/2006 The evil lobster demon creature I came across while walking to work has now been positively identified as a "crawfish". 7/17/2006 Finished reading Herb Sutter's "Exceptional C++ Style" over the weekend. Added it to the book lists. 7/13/2006 The last of the RIT beauocracy has been overcome and everything is finalized for telecommuting (including my healthcare benefits). I have my vacation to Thailand coming up August 25 through September 10. After that, I won't be coming back to the East coast. Right now, it looks like I'll be crashing at my mom's till the end of September. Then I'll officially make the move. 7/10/2006 Yesterday, Dave and I managed to roll a tandem kayak. 7/5/2006 Added Julian Day conversion routines to the Coding Section. I have a nice set of C++ routines for manipulating JPL's DE405 Ephemerides which I'll be posting in a couple of weeks; there is some more cleanup work I want to do first. 7/4/2006 Pictures for Quebec rafting trip will be tossed up on Flickr in a week or two. On Tuesday, I went kayaking with a bunch of folks and watched the Lake Conesus fireworks display from the water. 6/26/2006 Schedule page updated. 6/14/2006 My lentil soup experiment has been pushed back a day due to a resurgence of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer addiction. Speaking of which, I came across this on Amazon today. 6/13/2006 My experiment with making vegetable stock from scratch seems to have been successful. Tonight, I'm making lentil soup out of it. "Repentance alone does not help. Grace cannot be bought with repentance; it cannot be bought at all. A similar thing has already happened to many other people; great and famous men have shared the same fate as this young man. Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again."        -- Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East 6/12/2006 Book list updated. 6/11/2006 Starting today I'm no longer homeless. 6/5/2006 Telecommuting is a go. 6/4/2006 Took a walk in Ellingson Park yesterday after the rain. Very pretty. 6/1/2006 "You trip on your shoelace and fall on your face Your hair is a mess, your clothes a disgrace Your stocks went south and your girlfriend is gay Your dog ate your cat and that was your good day"        -- Alice Cooper, Your Own Worst Enemy 5/29/2006 My cancelled Trona trip may be rescheduled to the end of July. Being outdoors in the desert at that time of year should be ... interesting. There is a week-long work trip to Montana in my near future, probably the first week of July. On the home front, my furniture has now all been sold. Most of my worldly possession are either in my office or on their way there. Tony is trying to convince me to go to Seattle instead of Portland. We'll see how that goes. 5/26/2006 "I'm a theoretical vegetarian. All of the moral superiority, none of the soy!"        -- Cat and Girl 5/17/2006 It looks like I've got a place to stay over the summer. Current plans are to house-sit for another RIT staff member. Taking care of two cats, mowing the lawn, and watering the occasional plant gets me free rent. Purr purr. 5/15/2006 In the category of last minute trips: I'm flying to Trona, California next week. Or main measurements guy just got a job at another firm, so I'll be out there in his stead, managing thermal calibration targets on the ground while our lab's WASP sensor flies overhead. Schedule page has been updated accordingly. In other news, I may be helping out with another data collect near Yellowstone Park in Montana at the begining of July. Hopefully this won't conflict with the rafting trip. 5/11/2006 "Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another."        -- Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East 5/9/2006 There are a lot of famous phallic symbols in the USA. Also added Lesotho to the potential Africa Trip itinerary. 5/7/2006 "It was glorious while it lasted."        -- Into Africa 4/30/2006 "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."        -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden 4/28/2006 "Some nut cases need a kick in the ass, PSW, and not some mewling pussy--excuse me, 'someone working in the mental-health field'--drooling empathy all over their laps."        -- Dan Savage 4/25/2006 Book list (litterbox) and schedule updated. The emergency food supply for my office is pictured below, for no reason in particular. 4/19/2006 "The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain-tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's stuggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten."        -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden 4/17/2006 "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."        -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden 4/11/2006 The 99 cent bagel and coffee special at Pelligrino's is over, much to my dismay. On the upside, I discovered that Pat's Coffee Mug (corner of Averill and Clinton) has a $1.89 breakfast special. Add a cup of coffee and it comes to $2.99 including tax. 4/10/2006 Ithaca was pretty cool. Highlights include playing with an autopiano, visiting an art museum at Cornell, and some neat waterfalls. Last night I caught the end of a funky performance at Spot Coffee by Break of Reality. 4/7/2006 Out of town three weekends in a row. This weekend is Ithaca. Next is Portland. Third is Pennsylvania. 4/3/2006 Schedule page updated. 3/30/2006 Matt's coming too! 3/28/2006 Spent an hour and a half kayaking yesterday, trying to get back in to top form. Learnt the basics of American-style Tango today, which is a heck of a lot of fun. With this dance, if I step on my partner's feet it's her fault, so I don't have to feel bad. 3/23/2006 As a spur of the moment thing, I decided to drop in on tonight's RPO concert. While listening to the music, Haydn's Symphony No. 102 and Mozart's Serenade No. 7, it occurred to me that classical music is one of humanity's redeeming features. For all the brutality and hatred we inflict on one another, we still have a race that can bring forth stunningly beautiful pieces of art. Between the sound and the visual experience of the orchestra, there's a transcendence above the petty concerns of the everyday and the materialistic. 3/17/2006 The litterbox now contains a list of countries I've visited since turning eighteen. 3/16/2006 Had my other dance class today. Learnt the basics of the Merengue. Faster pace and even more fun than the Ballroom class. I'm regretting not having taken these classes six years ago. Good stuff, though obviously I still suck at dancing (for now!). I had a brief chat about furries with somebody today. I propose that a new fetish be started: veggism. Instead of an animal, you pick your favorite vegetable/fruit. The mental image of a Brocolli humping a Tomato causes me no end of amusement. On the ride back from Niagara Falls last saturday I had the ultimate inspiration for a movie script. What are two of the greatest genres around today? Zombie and Kung Fu movies of course. Put them together! "Kung Fu Zombies". Shao Lin monks fighting zombie hordes. Featuring the ancient secret of the Shao Lin Severed Zombie Arm Attack. Bad dubbing is a must. Heck, maybe toss in a little bad eighties music to boot. Oh. Tony suggested that there be rival clans of zombies. He pointed out a related movie could be made from "Kung Fu Lepers". 3/14/2006 Had my first Ballroom dance lesson today, learning the basics of the Foxtrot. I had my doubts about this class initially, but it turned out to be more fun than a box full of kittens. Hopefully, ten weeks from now, I'll actually be semi-passable at dancing (I'm also taking swing/salsa which starts on Thursday). 3/13/2006 Had a fifteen minute chat last night with somebody who spent fourteen years in prison for attempted murder. It was ... interesting. 3/12/2006 I made my portrait image in the bio page flip randomly. Why? Because I could and needed to stay occupied so that I could continue to avoid real work. Right now, there are only two images up. (Perhaps two too many one might say). In tonight's vending machine run, I accidently hit the wrong button combination. Rather than the cold pop tarts on which I anticipated feasting, I got this: In my nearly twenty four years on this earth, this is among the foulest things I've ever had the misfortune of attempting to eat. The "cheese crackers" look like they spent a decade on the floor behind a radiator. The color of the "peanut butter" seems off too. They smell nauseating, somewhat like sweaty socks left in a sealed plastic bag for several weeks. Initially, I thought that looks and smell might be deceiving, and I gave the consumable the benefit of the doubt by taking a bite. Turns out that looks and smell were dead on. Tasted absolutely revolting. There is a special place in hell reserved for the person at Planters that foisted this monstrousity on the world. 3/11/2006 Saw Night Watch at the Little Theatre. It's probably the best movie I've seen since Shawn of the Dead. Kudos to the crazy Russians. 3/10/2006 Went to an RPO concert last night with Gary. The orchestra perfomed excellent versions of Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 and Bruckner's Symphony No 8. 3/6/2006 I ran into a Puerto Rican family while headed to work today. They were looking for East River Rd. Once I started giving directions, they figured out I was headed the same way and gave me a ride in their van. They were very friendly folk. 3/2/2006 Education section updated. 2/26/2006 "The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes."        -- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 2/21/2006 "At night when they were there, this garden seemed a living, sacred place. All the flowers opened around them and offered them their incense; they too opened their souls and poured them out to the flowers: The lusty vigorous vegatation trembled full of sap and intoxication around these two innocent creatures, and they spoke words of love at which the trees thrilled."        -- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 2/17/2006 "Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty strips the material life entirely bare, and makes it hideous; from this arise inexpressible yearnings toward the ideal life. The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and coarse amusements, racing, hunting, dogs, cigars, gambling, banqueting, and the rest; busying the lower portions of the soul at the expense of its higher, more delicate ones. The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls, and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionare of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money."        -- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables 2/13/2006 Updated the Maple LU Decomposition example to include a partial pivoting algorithm. Stolen directly from Golub and Loan's Matrix Computations. All the Maple worksheets in the Coding section now have html outputs available as well. Added an exciting screenshot of the Enigma Simulator to the Coding Section. Two new trips added to the Scedule section. 2/12/2006 I went cross country skiing at the Cumming Nature Center today, my first time on skis. I fell twice, but nothing particularly dramatic. The downhill parts are a lot of fun. Stopped at Hotel America on the way home for soup. 2/10/2006 Added Maple demonstration of the LU Decomposition to the Coding section. Eventually, I will update this code to use partial pivoting. 2/8/2006 Got a lift today from Terri who works in the College of Engineering. 2/7/2006 Taxes have been mailed to Uncle Sam. I also got a postal money order for my American passport renewel, but I haven't mailed the stuff in yet. 2/6/2006 Added an academic link to my staff webpage. First time it's been updated in forever. 2/5/2006 Went to a concert last night at the Hochstein Auditorium. It opened with an Indian woman doing some cool vocal pieces with a drum accompaniment. Following was a Piano and Cello duo. Closing was the Ying String Quartet. Great stuff all around. I also discovered that my US passport is valid till June 2008 and not 2006 like I originally thought. I'll still renew the darn thing before the Africa trip though. Renewing overseas is a pain in the butt. The Litterbox now links to a running update of my Africa trip plans. 2/4/2006 Finally finished both the sequel to Ishmael and Bram Stoker's Dracula. I'm now starting Les Miserables by Victor Hugo--the same guy who wrote Hunchback of Notre Dame. 2/3/2006 Caught a Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra performance at the Eastman Theatre last night. Got picked up while walking to work by a nice woman from RIT's Criminal Justice department. Last week the same thing happened with a Political Science professor. 2/2/2006 Tickets from SFO to Bangkok have been purchased; I'm on the same flights as Branden. 2/1/2006 Built four computers with Paul yesterday. Almost done reading both Dracula and the Ishmael sequel. Once those are done, I'll start on Les Miserables and The Story of V. Buying the Thailand tickets today. Once my next paycheck comes in, I'll renew my American passport by mail (just got my new Dutch one). I was going to do my taxes today, but I forgot my W2 forms at home. New York's new "short form" pissed me off so badly that I put up an immature rant on bahnet. I still get angry when thinking about it. 1/27/2006 Went kayaking with Dave and Maggie this morning. Hiked Grime's Glen in Naples with Gary yesterday. 1/26/2006 I've decided that Brueger's Bagels sucks. Their bagels are mediocre and the coffee is horrible, among the worst I've had. Dunkin Donuts has reasonable coffee and mediocre bagels. Pelligrinos has a 99 cent breakfast special (till 11am) with a yummy bagel and a large good-tasting coffee. At half the price of the competition, I think Pelligronos becomes my sole breakfasting stop on workdays. The litterbox now hosts a running update of the potential Africa trip. And a handy quote to close with: "Omnia vincit amor". 1/25/2006 Peru photos finally uploaded to Flickr. 1/24/2006 Updated the postgres installation notes with some stuff on Redhat 9. 1/22/2006 While playing around with STL iterators, I hacked a tiny program which tokenizes a string. It shoves data in to a vector and then prints the tokens. The vector intermediary isn't required, it's there for experimental purposes. I didn't have time to pick up the Peru photos yesterday. I'll try to grab them on my way in to work tomorrow. Several people have asked me what I plan to do when I leave Rochester. One possibility is spending a year or two in a cheap, mountainous country (e.g. Peru, Pakistan) so I can climb and hike everyday. Another is doing the following route overland. South Africa Zimbabwe (pass through quick as possible) Zambia Malawi Tanzania Kenya Ethiopa (by plane to next country) Egypt Jordan Syria Turkey Greece Bulgaria Romania Ukraine Poland Czech Republic (buy bicycle, pedal rest of way) Germany Netherlands That should keep me busy for a year or two. 1/19/2006 Updated schedule. I have tentative plans for visiting my dad in Thailand this summer, but that is subject to change based on when I leave my current job. Peru photos finally dropped off for development. Should be done Saturday at 4pm. They will be on flickr shortly after that. 1/18/2006 I renewed my Dutch passport yesterday at the consulate in NYC. The staff there are very friendly; everything went smoothly. The AirTran is a frigging scam operation, though. You pay $5 (each-way) for what would be a 10 minute busride from the terminal. Then you still need to pay $2 to get onto the subway system. Worst of all, the scumbags made it so that you can't walk to the subway, even if you're so inclined. 1/16/2006 While walking to work, I saw a cardinal fly between two trees. Didn't know they were around this time of year. 1/15/2006 I've been playing with Doxygen which is a neat code documentation tool similar to Javadoc. Also finished Coding Standards (book list updated). 1/13/2006 Massive cleanups to the getResource() function in the pooled factory. 1/9/2006 Added ugly code demonstrating how to create a concrete object factory with pooled resources. This represents my first time experimenting with shared_ptr and weak_ptr, which are scheduled for inclusion in the TR1 extension to C++. The code compiles under gcc4. 1/6/2006 To save President Bush the effort of spying on me illegally, I now helpfully provide a book list in my litterbox. 1/5/2006 After repeatedly coming across references to it in both books and newgroups, I finally looked up the Expression Templates technique. A quick test of the provided source against a standard implementation with g++3.3 (-O3) gives a 2.5 fold increase for small (10 element) vectors and a 1.2 fold increase for large (100000) element vectors. The templated technique also eliminates temporaries, allowing the code to use significantly larger vectors before I started hitting out of memory errors. Updated schedule. 1/3/2006 One of the gifts I asked for and received this Christmas was Max Barry's Jennifer Government. It was fun and quirky, like I expected. This morning I found an amusing short story on the author's blog. In unrelated news, I read two articles on lock-less programming on CUJ's website (requires a pay subscription, so no links). Its pretty darn cool stuff. Basically, if you have an atomic "compare and swap" operation (available on IA-32) you can build lockless structures for concurrent programs. Readers read without locking at all. Writers deep copy the ptr to the structure, modify it, and then compare and swap if the ptr you copied is equal to the currently existing ptr (indicating nobody else already swapped it from under you). With garbage collection, you can then let the old copy automatically expire when the last readers are done with it. With C++, you need Hazard Pointers for a good solution, since normal reference counting wont do. Added a tutorial on how to make Fedora Core 4's Postgres SQL package work. 12/31/2005 I bowled 161 yesterday, my personal record. 12/26/2005 "Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable."        -- Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 12/24/2005 The Visitor Design Pattern solves all my problems. I started reading the GoF book to solve work related issues; now I'm wishing I read it three years ago. Yesterday, I visited Mark's Texas Hots for the first time. It's an interesting place in comparison to Gitsis. Both are 24 hour, cheap diners. Marks, however, doesn't feel like the kind of place I'd want to hang out for more than the meal. At night, I dropped by Boulder Coffee Co, where there was live music (acoustic guitarist) that was quite good. Ran into Nikki again, who I met several months ago. 12/21/2005 Last night I succeeded in making lentil soup. Better yet, it was actually pretty tastey. I feel special. Seriously. I do. 12/18/2005 Friday evening, I checked out "Standard C++ IOStreams and Locales: Advanced Programmer's Guide and Reference" from RIT's library. I highly recommend this book if you code in C++ for a living. The authors are a little verbose at times, but this book gives excellent comprehensive coverage of the IOStreams part of the Standard C++ Library. One of the most important aspects of the IOStreams framework is that, unlike the STL containers, it is actually designed to be extended by programmers. Yes, I realize that my enjoyment of this book marks me as a complete and utter nerd. The Peru photos still haven't been developed yet, because I need to finish off the last roll of film. I get around to it sooner or later. 12/15/2005 Got a chance to see Bill Clinton talk yesterday. Had a center of the second row seat. When he was doing the politician hand shake thing at the end, he saw my copy of Dashiell Hammett's "Maltese Falcon". Recognized the book and said he loved it and that he's read a bunch of Hammett's books, also making some reference to Faulkner which I didn't fully hear. Asked him if he'd seen the movie and he said yes. My fifteen seconds of chit-chat with Bill. Oh, and I think he talcum powders his hands. There is no way they could be so dry otherwise. He is also probably the best public speaker I've seen, which makes sense considering his former profession. There is a (Realvideo) webstream of the talk available. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, so I'm not sure if I'm visible. I was wearing a long-sleeved yellow shirt. In other news, I took the Red Cross Adult CPR/AED course today, renewing my certification. 12/10/2005 This editorial (link no longer works!) is one of the better short analyses I've seen of the US POW camps in Eastern Europe. Most of the stuff published in the national news (found via news.google.com) is pathetically shallow. 12/07/2005 The Eastman Chamber Orchestra turned out to be pretty damned good. I'll need to go see them more often. 12/06/2005 Off an on, I've been working on a simple blog for the DIRSIG software which I develop for work. I haven't advertised it at all yet; the only person I've even mentioned it to is my boss. At some point, it will become a handy resource for all sorts of DIRSIG tricks and features. It will focus primarily on things which haven't made it into the official documentation. In completely unrelated news, I will be going to the Eastman Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra which is playing at RIT tomorrow. I still haven't gotten my Peru pictures developed yet. Hopefully, I'll be able to drop them off on my way to work tomorrow. They will be posted to flickr when available. 11/28/2005 Updated completed course list under Education. 11/17/2005 Added a link to the C++ FAQ on my staff webpage. Today is my first dentist appointment in several years, so all sorts of funky prodding will happen. Going to Peru tomorrow night. That's about it. 11/13/2005 Uploaded Trona pictures to Flickr. 11/8/2005 Schedule section has been updated to reflect completed trips and firmer dates for future ones. Some Trona pictures may be tossed up on my Flickr page soon. 10/16/2005 Added a simple stack machine implementation in C++ to the coding section. I'll be in Trona, CA from the 19th till the 30th, so few if any updates for a while. 10/11/2005 Costa Rica pictures uploaded to flickr. 10/8/2005 Costa Rica pictures dropped off yesterday. Should be picked up either Monday or Tuesday night. 10/2/2005 Updated Schedule with another California trip I booked today. 9/26/2005 Found the five year reunion webpage for my school via Bahnet. It's rather moot, though, because I'll be in Peru at the time. Added a simple Maple worksheet on Tolerances and Units to the Coding section. 9/23/2005 The "Links" page now has pointers to two local coffee shops. Went to both of them last night with a friend of mine. One was having an open mic night, the other had live music with two really talented musicians (who don't yet have a band name). The photos page has been updated with a link to my flickr account. I'm still playing around with which pictures to make public access and which ones to keep private. In other news, Jeromy just got a job in Buffalo, so he and Lydia are going to be moving out of the house soon, which makes Niek sad. Happy that Jeromy got a job though. In other other news, I went to the Memorial Art Gallery for a couple of hours yesterday (alone), and earlier this week I dropped by Gallery R, where I purchased a tiny print of a kitty. Found a large painting I rather like at Gallery R, but it cost $600, and I'm not quite sure where I could put it (maybe the living room or my office). In other other other news, I will be going to Trona, California for a research collect from October 18 till the 28th. This is my first legimate business trip for work, so I'm pretty excited. Hopefully, I'll have time to sneak off and do a little hiking. Finally, I still haven't dropped off the Costa Rica pictures. I'm a lazy bum. 9/20/2005 Came across a lab assignment on Prolog I wrote the summer after my Freshman year at RIT. It became assigned work for all the other students. Has been added to the Links page as well. 9/13/2005 Been insanely busy since I got back from Costa Rica, haven't even had time to drop the photos off yet. Put up an example of how to use RTTI in C++ on the coding page. 9/5/2005 Back from Costa Rica around 1am this morning. Pictures will be on Flickr in about a week. 8/18/2005 About three minutes ago I booked a roundtrip flight to Peru for November, going Business class just for the heck of it. Used the last of my frequent flyer miles, with security fees and taxes putting the total trip cost at $70. 7/28/2005 Here is a list of countries I've been to since I turned 18. The list would be much longer if I went further back in time. United Kingdom (Scotland, England) Romania Mongolia China Cambodia Thailand Switzerland Spain France Belgium The Netherlands Mexico Canada Japan United States of America Not quite sure why I wrote this. I'm a bit bored at the moment, and looking forward to my Costa Rica trip next month. 7/23/2005 Added (untested) recipe for Apricot Vlaai. I translated it from Dutch to English with help from my mom. 7/18/2005 Scotland and latest Rochester pictures have finally been uploaded to Squick. I'm currently coding up an implementation of Gaussian Elimination with Partial Pivoting, from "Matrix Computations" by Golub and Loan. Putting it together in Maple for now, though I might toss something together in C++ at some point. At some point, I'd like to do an implementation of the Boyer-Moore string matching algorithm in C++. I don't have any use for it at this time, but it's still pretty darn cool. The algorithm is described in "A Fast String Searching Algorithm" by Boyer and Moore, published in the Communications of the ACM. This ACM paper references a SIAM paper which my library only has on Microfiche, so it will be some time before I grab a copy of the later paper. (Update). I did a quick implementation of Moore's simple "Linear Time Majority Vote Algorithm". I've spent the last few hours working on the Boyer-Moore string search algorithm, but I'm having a heck of a time getting the subpattern table right. I'll work on it more tommorow. 7/15/2005 Scotland pictues have been uploaded to Flickr. Will upload to the squick archives soon. 7/12/2005 Dropped off the Scotland pictures at Rowes for processing. Getting a single set of prints and a photo CD. I'm thinking of having my Mongolia negatives put onto photo CD as well, but that can come later. Last Saturday, I acquired a Rosemary plant at the Rochester Public Market. I have plans to nurture it into the ultimate plant of evil and doom. Alternatively, I may just use it to make my bedroom smell nicer and to season the occassional pasta dish. 7/11/2005 A couple of months ago some fundamentalist scumbag murdered dutch artist Theo Van Gogh. Here is the movie that caused all the fuss. Couple of ads that need to be passed by, but the full (10 minute) clip is there. Thanks to some information I pulled from a US Census Bureau webpage, I was able to create a zip code boundary around my sex offender map. I pulled the ASCII version of the file. The header shows which segment entry in the main data file corresponds to 14607. The first lat/long coordinate seems to be the center of the zip code. All the others work together to form a polyline boundary around the zone. 7/3/2005 Created a map of level 3 sex offenders in my area code using the Google Maps API. Ultimately, I want to outline the area of the zipcode using a polyline. It rather disturbs me that there are two child molesters within sight of both the middle and highschools by my house. 6/30/2005 The Scotland pictures aren't up because I never filled the last roll of film. The kayaking trip with Alyssa was aborted because of the rain, so we went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center instead. Weather permitting, tomorrow we are going to try kayaking again. That should fill up the last few pictures so I can get things developed and put up on Squick. 6/20/2005 Updated Schedule with Costa Rica trip. Added "baked potato" recipe. 6/10/2005 Still alive. I will be putting up the Scotland pictures after I fill up my last roll of film. Probably use up the last pictures when I go kayaking with Alyssa on Thursday. 5/12/2005 Added a cheese omelette recipe to the litterbox. Updated training log yet again. 5/10/2005 Put up two new photo galleries (password protected). 5/6/2005 Updated links page. 4/27/2005 Added a Maple program demonstrating affine transformations in homogenous 3d coordinates. 4/23/2005 Small updates to training log (litterbox), tweaked tentative schedule of courses (education). 4/14/2005 Put up photo archives. Ask for password if interested.