Tommy Sullivan

my euro travels

2010-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

I ended up sleeping on several East Coast couches before heading off to England, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. This was my first trip across the Atlantic so it was a serious introduction to European culture. It's hard to understand what a monarchy is before seeing palaces firsthand. Government buildings in the states simply aren't gilded.

As far as planning goes my journey began with little more direction than a round trip ticket from New York City to London. What was I going to do?

First stop, England...

I stayed at Oxford with Geoffrey Lim, an Exeter friend busy finishing his Master's of English at New College. With the undergraduate semester wrapping up, I was able to observe the Union's final debate: "Is extreme poverty a justifiable defense for thievery?" (such a meaty subject) – A notable point brought up, the offenders may be subject to vigilante justice.

Ireland...

I took a ferry from Wales to catch a rugby game in Ireland and to celebrate St. Paddy's Day! A local informed me people go to Dublin (from Wales) for two reasons: crack and rugby. Ireland won the match, perhaps all the crack contributed to their success? I headed south for the holiday and managed to see the Blarney Castle on the way. I couldn't help but think how much the castle must weigh as I was spelunking the caves underneath.

the Netherlands...

I had to visit Amsterdam for the museums, canals, and coffee shops. I stayed at the Flying Pig Hostel. Of all the cities I visited, this would have been the best one to splurge and get a small, quiet room; however, I mistakenly booked a night in a 16+ person room... with a club downstairs. I had the room for four nights and slept two. Walking into the train station (that was filthy because of a strike), I couldn't help but think there was more to see in the Dutch capital, so I went to AirBnB.com and found a bed. They were incredibly hospitable and let me tag along on a private canal tour.

Belgium...

Brussels is in between Amsterdam and Paris. Belgium has lots of beer and a few dilapidated building, the end.

France...

Communication wasn't an issue in France, but I could tell knowing the language would have been rewarding – I'm sure the art and culinary scene is much richer when explored through the native tongue. I can strongly recommend the walking tours of Versailles and Paris, but I'm a sucker for stories of royalty and empires so milage will vary. I plan on going back, with skis.

Spain...

Barcelona was the highlight of my trip – it was the warmest and most scooter-friendly! I was determined to rent a Vespa and alquilar I did. When I wasn't busy biking or motoring around I was looking at Gaudi's work. If you're visiting I would encourage you to rent an *automatic* scooter and go to Catalonia for the great Dali collection.

I headed to London for my return flight and, to my surprise, ran into Geoffrey Lim in the lobby of my hostel! He was in town for the theatre; I too was seeing a show (Oliver). The next day we visited the National Gallery and afterward I flew home...

backpacking

2010-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

ttyl sfo, i’m headed across the states and then to do some exploring in europe. the purpose of the trip is simply to visit friends and see sights. should be fun, i’ll let you know how it goes when i get back.

betting

2010-01-27T00:00:00-08:00

Oh look, I'm *almost* gambling. I just finished making a widget for Bet Tracker that lets people monitor their wagers on popular sports events. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I did impress myself by making a system that has realtime (within 5 seconds) price updates.

floating

2009-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

Yesterday, for roughly 2 hours, I went into a sensory deprivation, and almost turned into a monkey. The experience was somewhere inbetween therapy and torture in the same way that a deep tissue massage hurts a bit, but you feel better afterwards. I enjoyed floating, but closing one’s eyes in a salt bath and you’ve got 80% of the experience.. . for 1/50th the price.

Civil Rights

2009-05-26T00:00:00-07:00

Today the California Supreme Court upheld a proposition that restricted the definition of marriage to be strictly between a Man and a Woman. This made a lot of people upset and rightfully so… who owns the definition of a marriage?! Certainly not the state.

This photo is of the protest that became a march that ended up in the Yerba Buena market. I wish I had a wider lens to capture more of the ambience.

summer drive

2009-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

While Jason was driving around town I spotted two hot asses.

Exeter reunion

2009-05-17T00:00:00-07:00

I went to my high school reunion this weekend and I had a great time. It was inconvenient to travel to New England, but definitely worth it. I hadn’t seen some of my classmates since graduation… and my how we’ve grown. I’m pleased to say that all of my friends are studying worthwhile topics or engaging in exciting ventures ~~and all of my adversaries are ridiculous~~.

I was most excited to see how my dormitory had changed. This past year Main Street had only 2 preps and 5 of their seniors were kicked out. It’s disappointing to hear of seniors getting kicked out, hopefully they didn’t cause anyone great harm and learned from their mistakes.

Lastly, I heard dorm grill was in the. Perhaps they should offer more appealing combo meals?! Here’s what I sold my senior year and it seemed to work out:

The Singaporean	1 Hot Pocket, 1 Soda	$1.75
The Fatass	3 Slices of Cheese, 1 IBC, 1 Gusher	$4.15
The Tiankai Liu	1 Power Bar, 1 Soda	$1.75
The Sampler	1 Slice Cheese, 1 Slice 'Roni, 1 IBC	$3.00
The All-Nighter	1 Snickers, 1 Twix, 1 Hershey's	$1.75
The Flip (very fruity)	1 Gusher, 1 Fruit Snack, 1 Juicy Fruit, and 1 Soda	$1.50

pea farm

2009-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

I just had a bowl of snap peas that were delicious. In roughly 3 weeks I will have grown a strawberry! I made this collage with Panolab, an iPhone application Tom made.

Hulu

2009-04-06T00:00:00-07:00

I’m on Hulu, are ulu? Nova is adding all of it’s content to Hulu and that includes Red Team Racing which includes yours truly. My scruffy mug is only on the screen for a few seconds, but it’s there nonetheless. Watching that video will explain what Red Team Racing was about and put the photos of me tooling around in a Hummer in context.

garden of eden

2009-03-10T00:00:00-07:00

Building a safe bridge was a prerequisite to gardening on my neighbor’s roof. This project is constantly improving without any effort of my own… these things I bought just grow all on their own! As such, this page is always out of date. If you’re wondering what my ‘garden’ looks like now just think this times TEN!

So these are the seeds that I started with. After two weeks only the peas and cucumbers sprouted. What does that tell me? 1. American seeds are superior to all other seeds. 2. Foreign seeds are full lies and empty promises…

All I did was throw the peas in the rectangular potter and the herbs in the round potters. The peas popped without any effort of my own, the (foreign seed) herbs on the other hand are going to take a bit more coercion to grow. Drake (the cat) was leery of these foreign invaders.

I used some small plastic pots to start the cucumbers. I attribute the quick growth of these cucumbers to the ‘just add water’ half dollar sized soil that came with the small pots.

The cucumbers were ready for their new home… the roots were getting cramped in those small pots. Note the soon-to-be scar on my hand :-(

This may not be the roof garden of one’s dreams, but Rome wasn’t built in a day! This is just the start of my garden. I’m going to continue adding plants until the roof caves in.

The cucumbers and peas both grew well. But! One day a ferocious animal came along and destroyed the peas. I’m suspecting either my roommate or the cat.

This is an old army trick. Putting seeds in a moist towel inside a zip lock bag creates a super humid environment that could pop petrified seeds. It only took 2 days for these seeds to germinate.

It only took 2 days for the seeds to pop, but I had to leave for Texas that afternoon. I left the seeds in the paper towels (should have reapplied water) for 8 days. When I came back they looked like this.

I had two sheets of sprouting seeds that needed to be planted in shallow soil.

These things are supposed to be sturdy, they should be able to grow through a single sheet of towel, right?

One way to find out! So far the basil is growing well, but the stringy parsley is petering out. I couldn’t care less parsley is a useless herb… no one eats it. Decorations for the sake of decorating are stupid except on birthdays.

After 3 weeks of pampering these plants, watering them every other day, this is what they look like. The parsley died and what replaced it is either chives (awesome, seeds left in the soil from a few weeks earlier, I thought they didn’t sprout) or grass.

functional testing

2009-02-04T00:00:00-08:00

Are you using Selenium for functional testing and need an input value with whitespace? Try this:

    selenium.getEval("getInputValue(this.browserbot.findElement('"+locator+"'))");

smartphone analysis

2008-12-16T00:00:00-08:00

While chirping my boo, my mind drifted: What’s the smartphone market going to look like in a year? Is the iPhone going to take over the market as the iPod did? What type of impact will Android make? I tried to answer those questions in Mobile Analysis.

moon conjunction

2008-11-30T00:00:00-08:00

Eye spy with my little eye, a conjunction of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter. They form a 3 degree triangle. Thanks for telling me about it mom!

hidden taxes

2008-11-29T00:00:00-08:00

After reading a book I was inspired and empowered. I made a tax calculator to show the hidden taxes that are behind everyone’s earnings. You’re getting hit with social security & medicare twice and inflation is a *****. I’ll revisit this project because it doesn’t look the greatest in the ie’s (boo hiss). Hopefully you use a real browser… check it out!

talkin' bout a revolution

2008-11-26T00:00:00-08:00

I just read The Revolution: A Manifesto. I try to underline a bit so I can review and to give the next owner of the book a piece of my mind! Here are two excerpts:

Until the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq had never had a suicide terrorist attack in its entire history. (p20)
Saddam Hussein missed every single airplane for 12 years as tens of thousands of sorties were being flown indicates the utter weakness of our enemy: an impoverished Third World nation that hacked an air force, antiaircraft weapons, and a navy. This was supposed to be the great threat that required urgent action. (p24) -Iran, incidentally, may have noticed a pattern: if countries do have a nuclear wepon, they tend to be left alone, or possibly even given a subsidy. (…) With that kind of foreign policy, what country wouldn’t want to pursue a nuclear weapon? (p28)
For heaven’s sake, what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries? (p38)
Racism is a particularly odious form of collectivism whereby individuals are treated not by their merits but on the basis of group identity. (…) Government exacerbates racial thinking and undermines individualism because its very existance encourages people to organize along racial lines in order to lobby for benefits for their group. (p64)
(…) the military draft, an institution based on the idea that the government owns its citizens and may direct their destinies against their will. The income tax implies the same thing: the government owns you, and graciously allows you to keep whatever percentage of the fruits of your labor it chooses. Such an idea is incompatible with the principles of a free society. (p78)
The tax code excludes health insurance from taxation when purchased by an employer, but not when purchased by an individual. In addition, the HMO Act of 1973 forced all but the smallest employers to offer HMOs to their employees. The combined result was the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance. (p88)
Failure of the federal war on drugs should be clear enough from one simple fact: our government has been unable to keep drugs even out of prisons, which are surrounded by armed guards. (p131)
Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been found more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. (p144)
In order to meet our long-term entitlement obligations we would need double-digit growth rates for 75 consecutive years. When was the last time we had double digit growth for even one year? (p159)

garden planning

2008-11-24T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve gotten a lot better at gardening recently. I figured out what my problem was. Time. I’ve been hesitant to invest in this hobby because our roof is going to be inspected soon, but bold thoughs are brewing. My peas are really picking up and I learned that cucumbers are vines… who knew?!

internet exploring

2008-10-30T00:00:00-07:00

I had to IE-ify a site for work, which is something I haven’t spent too much time on before. I used this site as a testing ground to see how I’m going to have to customize basic layout for IE. It wasn’t too difficult, but it has shown me what a crappy browser Internet Explorer is. Please, if you’re using Internet Explorer you should get a better browser. Firefox is free, pages will load noticeably faster, and layout will be cleaner. Firefox is gaining in the browser wars, but catering to the half of users that run IE is unpleasant and unnecessary.

chest manifest

2008-10-19T00:00:00-07:00

I participated in the Bike Kitchen Tour de Cupcakes and had a blast. I didn’t have my race manifest so I had to use my manly chest… slashhh I’m really skinny. There are more pictures of the race at BikeForums.net

champions breakfast

2008-10-11T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve been growing a lot of sprouts. They’re easy to grow, cheap, and quite nutritious. I can grown 2 bowls of sprouts every 4 days for roughly 25¢. I’ll write a project lauding the benifits of sprouts soon.

bike accident

2008-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

So I’m biking along minding my own business and out of NOWHERE comes this curb. Here’s the damage, note: it’s a bit gory. I was bleeding pretty badly, but I kept biking all the way home. I didn’t go to the hospital because I thought I knew what I needed to do… and it turns out I was pretty close. It didn’t heal without a scar, but at least I didn’t have to pay for universal healthcare.

playing with javascript

2008-09-21T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve been learning a ton of javascript and jQuery for work and I’m hooked. JavaScript is a client-side programming language, it lets me write code that runs when your browser loads my pages. A recent JavaScripty addtion is the lightbox that executes when you click on almost any of the images on this site. Hopefully you think lightboxes are attractive.

I’ve written a little about the roof garden I’m working on and the bridge that was necessary to get on the roof safely.

There is a new category for the collection of websites I’ve amassed. If you’re interested in a website that is similar to anything I’ve created, let me know. I could probably could have hooked you up.

bridge

2008-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

You already know that I’m an engineer, I recently graduated with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, but did you know that I’m a Civil Engineer as well? Yeah I build bridges in my spare time. Building a safe bridge is a prerequisite to gardening on my neighbor’s roof.

bridge to somewhere, the roof

As you may know from speaking with me, I live on the third floor of my apartment building, located here, and the three buildings to the south of mine are only two stories. This means the windows of my apartment open up to a huge roof, like so:

Walking over this gap wasn’t the safest thing in the world, especially when you’re drunk. One day, shortly after losing a friend to the abyss, I decided to fix the problem. A 2" x 4" x 8’ from the local Ace hardware store would serve as the structural base to my beam bridge. Biking home with a 8 foot long board was the most difficult part of this project.

After a few hours of chewing through a 1 inch thick board with my leatherman I stole my jigsaw to finish cutting through the cover of my bridge. Note the red-racer in the background. That bike is so fast I’m surprised it’s not blurry in the photo.

Our basement is pretty filthy in general, the sewer has backup down there a few times. But it’s been tagged / beautified in a few places.

It’s beautiful AND sturdy! I’ll have to replace this photo with one of a sumo wrestler standing on my creation.

I’m grateful that I took the time to build this bridge every time I look over the edge. I might build a railing in the future, but it’s a billion times sturdier than what we were using before…

Thank god I’m pretty light.

grab your helmet.

2008-03-10T00:00:00-07:00

Last fall I took a data mining course and learned a basic element of problem solving, building a mathematical model out of data. It’s not too hard of a task, it can be accomplished with one key in Matlab, but the lack of basic tutorials on principle component analysis> are what drove me to etch out this little space on the internets. I’m by no means an expert on PCA, I simply want to show you how to use it to build a model in Matlab… and as long as I’m doing that I might at well show you the other way I made other models.

While I provide you with the source code for my project I hope this tutorial is helpful without having to dig through those files. Feel free to provide feedback positive or negative.

This plot is really unnecessary. This is just a normalized boxplot of my input variables. I’m doing this to show you I’m working with real data and to remind you to normalize your input variables.

Linear Regression

Linear regression is a way to develop a best fit solution to an over constrained set of equations. Performing least squares regression, a type of regression that minimizes the error, is such a common problem in Matlab that its function has been assigned to the backslash operator. Calculating a least squares regression model can be performed like so:

X = [ones([size(training_data,1),1]) training_data(:,inputs)];
a = X \ training_data(:,result_column);
X = [ones([size(actual_data,1),1]) actual_data(:,inputs)];
Prediction = X*a;

Where inputs could be a single input column or an array of inputs. Adding inputs to the model increases its fit to the training data while increasing complexity. It’s important to find a balance between the number of variables used in regression and the quality of fit. Fortunately a few statistical criterion have been established to alleviate this dilemma. The wiki and wiki information criterion are tools for model selection.

Here is a list of my inputs arranged according to their correlation with the training data:

Column,  Correlation,    P Value,   Description:
11,      -0.2934,    0.0047,      BU: Bitterness units. 
27,       0.2760,    0.0080,      2-Methyl-1-Butanol
15,      -0.2380,    0.0230,      FTU: Formazin turbidity units.
14,      -0.2089,    0.0468,      C02: Carbon dioxide.
20,      -0.2018,    0.0550,      N-Propanol
33,       0.1939,    0.0655,      Ethyl Octanoate
35,       0.1867,    0.0763,      Ethyl Decanoate
21,       0.1617,    0.1256,      Ethyl Acetate

Here is a list of the MaxError, RSS, BIC, and AIC as a function of the number of inputs in my model. The eight numbers correspond to the eight most highly correlated inputs in my data. The first number in each column corresponds to a model with only one input, the second corresponds to a model with two inputs…

MaxError:
0.970, 0.805, 0.759, 0.764, 0.764, 0.707, 0.719, 0.729
Residual sum of squares:
9.366, 8.543, 8.279, 7.967, 7.967, 7.606, 7.405, 7.400
Bayesian information criterion:
6.748, 11.16, 15.64, 20.11, 24.62, 29.09, 33.57, 38.08
Akaike information criterion:
49.39, 48.19, 49.14, 49.88, 51.88, 52.41, 53.58, 55.56

While the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) suggests I build my linear regression model with only one input, the bitterness units, BIC is well known for over penalizing the number of variables used in a model. The Akaike information criterion suggests I use a model with two inputs, bitterness units and 2-Methyl-1-Butanol; I agree. Adding additional inputs to this model would improve its fit to the training data but not necessarily other sets of data. As such, my linear regression model is based upon the two inputs most strongly correlated to the output of my training data, which lie in column 11 and 27:

a = [ 5.9215; -0.0496; 0.0367]
y = 5.9215 - 0.0496*C11 + 0.0367*C27;

L1Linear Regression

I didn’t use L1Linear Regression in this course, but it’s another modeling system I can use to compare with my results. There’s a great explanation of how to perform L1 regression in Matlab here: Matlab Data Mining

X = [ones([size(training_data,1),1]) training_data(:,inputs)];
a = L1LinearRegression(X, training_data(:,end))
X = [ones([size(actual_data,1),1]) actual_data(:,inputs)];
Prediction = X*a;

MaxError:
0.945, 0.829, 0.741, 0.754, 0.753, 0.720, 0.731, 0.728
Residual sum of squares:
9.431, 8.742, 8.435, 8.082, 8.086, 7.822, 7.662, 7.684
Bayesian information criterion:
6.754, 11.18, 15.66, 20.13, 24.64, 29.12, 33.61, 38.12
Akaike information criterion:
49.63, 48.97, 49.76, 50.35, 52.36, 53.30, 54.64, 56.73

The results are quite similar to that of standard linear regression. I’m really just putting it here for perspective… the L1LinearRegression model is:

a = [ 5.6242; -0.0267; 0.0345]
y = 5.6242 - 0.0267*C11 + 0.0345*C27;

Principle Component Analysis

Amazing! Someone actually read this far. As PCA was the impetus of this little article, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m still working on my understanding PCA. I really don’t want to lead anyone astray. Once I make sure I did everything properly I’ll finish this up. Until then, you can view my working directory here.

Finally the last technique I used was principle component analysis. PCA is best defined as “an orthogonal linear transformation that transforms the data to a new coordinate system such that the greatest variance by any projection of the data comes to lie on the first coordinate.”

The Matlab function princomp is helpful for PCA as it automatically computes the principle component coefficients, the scores (the data translated to the new coordinate system), and the variance of each principle component. Like the other models, I recorded the accuracy of each PC model as a function of the number of principle components used. While there is a negative linear relationship between the number of PC used and the RSS, that slope is shallow compared to that of the regressions.

pssssh... don't tell.

2007-05-30T00:00:00-07:00

Update…

I had a bit of spare time today and I thought I’d revisit an old project I worked on. My new computer has a far more powerful processor than the one I originally used, 1.66GHz PowerPC 32bit vs. 2.4GHz Intel dual core 64bit.

I modified the Java and C program to print out the passes/second when they finish. This time I remembered to test with various levels of optimization.

code - optimization	million pass/sec
old - javac	1.63
old - gcc -O0	2.43
gcc -O0	4.50
gcc -O1	5.29
javac	6.05
gcc -O2	7.57
gcc -O3	7.84
gcc -fast (APPLE ONLY)	8.07

And out of no where the Apple specific optimization sweeps. I was looking through the optimizations portion of gcc’s man and found this:

-fast
	Optimize for maximum performance. -fast changes the overall optimization strategy of GCC in order to produce the fastest possible running code for PPC7450 and G5 architectures. By default, -fast optimizes for G5. Programs optimized for G5 will not run on PPC7450. To optimize for PPC7450, add -mcpu=7450 on command line.
	
	On Intel target, -fast currently enables the following optimization flags:
	-O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fstrict-aliasing -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -fno-tree-pre -falign-loops
	
	All choices of flags enabled by -fast are subject to change without notice.

It was a bit longer, I abbreviated it, you don’t need all the nerdy stuff. Just remember you want your code to be -fast!

Old project, still a good read…

Of all the projects I’ve posted this one is probably the most erratic. Usually I think of something interesting (or at least I think so), do it, and then post it. That hasn’t been the case with this project for two reasons. One, it’s really hard to program something that’s subjective, like a password that’s easy to type. Two, if you have an idea while you’re programming you usually have a bunch of code already written that will help you accomplish that idea… which leads to a cycle of taking tangents and pursuing random ideas. That said here was my thought process on this project:

Hey, my Andrew ID is one handed!…
I should make a one handed password…

Well this is easy. Here are some examples of what that program produced. That’s cool… but…

Those one handed passwords are hard to type…
I should make one that’s easy to type…

So… I set out to somehow evaluate ease of input. I thought about repetition, proximity, increasing pinky->index, and some other metrics. All this sounds good on paper, but it didn’t really pan out in the output. I ran around in circles trying to balance out those qualities without overpowering randomness. I started over so many times… idk. Passwords are such a personal item that I was never happy with the top result. I felt like it would be better to craft my one handed password. There’s got to be something to help me do this…

How about some one handed words…

I just grabbed a really big dictionary (172,822 words long!) and started looking through words… I started with aardvark. Nope. Here are the results: Left Hand, Right Hand. My current password is, and will continue to be, a derivative of one of these.

I wonder how long it would take to brute force a password!?!…
I wonder how much faster C is than Java…

Now I was all fired up. I thought it would be fun to make a program that would brute force crack a password. Of course I know there are better ways to crack passwords… people have put TONS of research into this. You can read about all that here: Wiki. I’m not attempting to do that, or even build a smart password cracker. I just wanted something that went brute force.

Answer:

A really long time, depending upon password length. The number of passwords it needs to check is charset^length. I’m just doing alphanumeric so the charset is 62… but that’s still growing pretty quick. I tested speeds by checking to see how long it took to crack "99999"… the last password checked for length 5. That said, my computer averaged 1.633 million passwords/second in Java and 2.438 million p/s in C. Seabass.ics.cs.cmu.edu averaged 8.462 million p/s on the same test. I made a spreadsheet with the exact times… but they are roughly as follows:

Pass Length	Time
4	Seconds.
5	Minutes.
6	Hours.
7	Week.
8…	Year.
12…	Several centuries!

Well that was fun… Fortunately (for my hacking of NASA) a third of the passwords on government computers are "password" or some variant thereof.

if great artist steal... why aren't you stealing more?!?

2006-07-30T00:00:00-07:00

Almost every Mac user I know hates Windows and they exploit it’s weaknesses (pun not intended) in arguments to make it seems as though it has no redeeming qualities. Clearly that’s not true. I have decided to compile a list of some of those redeeming qualities that I would like to see Apple ~~steal~~ integrate into OS X. The most important thing note that all of these features can be integrated passively i.e. not require anyone to change the way they currently use OS X… so there’s no real reason not to have them.

These items are in no particular order. Sidenote: You may notice that I have Uno installed… that’s because it’s a no-brainer that Apple needs to unify its GUI. That should be the first thing on Apple's To Do List. For the curious... [this](/images/posts/2006/07/30/desktop.jpg) is my desktop…

Finder

Why doesn’t OS X seamlessly connect with ftp, sftp, afs…? When I "switched" I was truly disappointed. Who’s idea was it to include "Connect to Server" that can’t write to a server? I’m sure there is some excuse for writing being disabled, but finding that out at 2 am while trying to submit my homework left a sour taste in my mouth.

Cutting and pasting… has become so natural a function on the computer that I was flabbergasted to find it disabled in finder. Apple just didn’t want this enabled… for no apparent reason.

There’s no way to rename multiple files. Select all of them then Enter… no go. Select all of them then Option + Apple + I… no go. (Sidenote: You should also be able to modify the Spotlight Comments of multiple files…)

The fact that folders don’t retain the state that you exited them in has driven me CRAZY. Every time I open my Applications folder it opens with the Dictionary in the top left and I have no idea why… If the window opened scrolled to a random position it would have a more likely chance of being handy because now it is CONSISTENTLY wrong. The .DS_Store is in place… but it only saves the windows state if the scrollbar is above where it is pictured…

One of the features I miss most are to cut and paste an address of a folder into a finder window… - Digg’s bluerpk

I know about the "Go to Folder" in Finder, but it is nowhere as easy and smoothly integrated as the folders path is in Windows. Even just having the option of displaying the entire folder path at the top of the finder window would be helpful.

The ability to copy/cut/paste/delete/rename files from Open and Save dialogs… - Digg’s WiseWeasel

Safari

One innovation that I was really pleased to see in IE back in the day was the ability to save 1-5 links deep when saving webpages. I find saving webpages handy to read when I don’t have access to the internet. .Webarchive on the other hand doesn’t even save all the images in a site… is it really that hard to make this feature useful?

Things that should be enabled by default:

Why anyone would only want to tab between text fields is beyond me… in order to be able to tab between all input fields on a form you must check the radio box "All controls." Everyone uses the web so much that tabbing between all forms of input is becoming intuitive… and Windows knows this. Furthermore using the arrow keys between inputs is intuitive as well… why not enable that too?

In order to be able to shift the focus between windows of the same application you must enable that in Keyboard Navigation… it’s understandable that they don’t want to show several instances of programs in the Apple + Tab dialog, but maybe they should visually represent the unique instances; otherwise, I think it’s too hard for the average user to discover how to perform this simple function.

There are other suggestions I have for the improvement of the overall OS X experience but those aren’t directly from Windows sooooo… I’ll put those in another page.

I have 365 pairs of underwear...

2006-02-10T00:00:00-08:00

I’ll admit it… I was laundrily spoiled. At Exeter I had to pay to do laundry, 1.25 wash & 1.00 dry. Being the sly cunning character that I am, I found out how to use the program that added money to the SmartCards that rand the washers and dryers. When the guy who added money to the cards got up, I got down on his computer and added $999.99 to my card. BOOM! What up now?!?! Free laundry for the rest of my Exeter career.

Then I went to Carnegie Mellon. There’s this system called eSuds at CMU that monitors all the washing machines across campus. This system is really great… not because you can check and see when the washing machines aren’t in use… but because they include the price for the average number of loads by students in your tuition sooooo it’s basically free on my end. I would liberally wash my sheets, shirts, panties… whatever.

Then I moved to the stinking, rotten, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Webster Apartments. It is more expensive to wash laundry here than it is for me to ship it overnight to Mexico and have it washed there, 1.25 wash & 1.00 dry. Sure the price was the same as it was at Exeter, but with my SmartCard the machines could have run on diamonds for all I cared… Soooo the first thing I did was look and see if I could hack my new SmartCard. Turns out that’s hard. Second thing I did was give up and look for another way to wash my clothes. This is what I found:

My dishwasher.

Using my dishwasher to clean my clothes made perfect sense because the half of the time I’m washing food out of my clothes… and for the following reasons: 1. It’s free. I realized this when I woke up one morning with my room looking like a bottle return depot and coke spilled all over the white polo and white tshirt I was wearing the night before. It looked pretty awful.

I didn’t want to use the bottom rack because there’s a heat coil on the bottom that gets so hot it’s measured in kelvin… so I try not to mess with it. It melts everything plastic in it’s domain!

The moral of this story right here is when in Rome do as the Romans. When using a dishwasher use dishwasher fluid… not laundry detergent. Oops.

Yeah. So suds started coming out… I turned the machine off and on as though that would do something… it didn’t. A much better decision was just to mop the floor with the suds that were continually coming out… Kill two birds with one stone.

I wish I had a photo of the shirt to show what it looked like after the dishwasher was done with it, but I don’t. Use your imagination. Anything could have happened to it!! It could have been ripped, torn, twisted, burnt, tie dyed, disintegrated…

Most of my projects are motivated by my abject poverty.

brilliant

2005-12-30T00:00:00-08:00

I remember looking for quotes as a kid and finding several pages by CS professors at different universities, perhaps that influenced my philosophical views. If that helped me find the positive lense through which I view the world, I can only return the favor.

Here are few of the quotes that I have found inspirational. I embedded a video for Milton Friedman because the whole thing is worth quoting. I strongly suggest you watch it, understand it, and question the world around you.

Stephen William Hawking (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist.

During the inflationary period the universe borrowed heavily from its gravitational energy to finance the creation of more matter. The result was a triumph for Keynesian economics: a vigorous and expanding universe, filled with material objects. The debt of the gravitational field will not have to be paid until the end of the universe.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 : 24 January 1965) was an English statesman and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War.

A diabolical way to ruin what would otherwise be a walk in pleasant surroundings. (On golf.)
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
Lady Astor: Mr. Churchill, You’re drunk!
Winston Churchill: Yes, and you Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober…
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 : April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist widely known as one of the greatest physicists of all time.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 : April 12, 1945) often referred to by his initials FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States.

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
It isn’t sufficient just to want - you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 : April 21, 1910) better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer.

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Franaois-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 : 30 May 1778) better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher.

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. (On his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.)
The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Lost & Found:

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
I’ve had a wonderful time, but this wasn’t it.
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
The average person thinks he isn’t.
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

moonshWine!

2005-11-10T00:00:00-08:00

What you are about to read is probably the most amazing thing you will ever see ever. I didn’t do this because it’s illegal and I don’t condone illegal things, BUT I met someone on the bus who DID do this and they told me their entire story and showed me pictures! Their project started off making with a simple recipe:

&lt;recipe found online&gt; 
2 - 12 oz. cans frozen grape juice 
3 1/2 cups of white granulated sugar 
1/3 cake of yeast (Fleishmann's is best) 
A large Balloon and some string 
One Gallon Jug 
&lt;/recipe found online&gt;

Well I looked at that and said there is no way I’m waiting a month for a gallon of wine. Sooooo I looked around and found a Five gallon jug (you know the type they fill water coolers with). I just multiplied everything in the recipe by five… except one thing. I couldn’t find a XXXXXL balloon. Unlike all of my throwback jerseys they don’t make balloons in five X’L. That wasn’t going to stop me. So I decided to grab one of my magnums.

The only purpose of the balloon is to make sure nothing can get into the wine to spoil it, and the balloon can expand as the fermentation process produces carbon dioxide. A magnum was the perfect balloon to use as it can expand to enormous sizes (for my needs) and Nonoxynol-9 (to kill all those bacteria that would come in and spoil my wine). How perfect! I just can’t believe more wine makers haven’t discovered this.

Unfortunately the condom just wouldn’t hold after a certain point… note the three broken condoms by the light bulb. Sooo I subbed in a garbage bag. I don’t know what type of balloon they were talking about in the recipe… must have been a frigging hot air balloon cause this garbage bag filled up in like 5 hours. I wasn’t going to bother with anything bigger. I just ended up emptying the air out of it every day or so.

Fast forward about a month. Me doing tons of work… learning tons of useless stuff and then all the sudden the bag stopped filling up. That meant one thing: the fermentation process was over. Now fast forward another week or so and I finally figured out how to get the wine out of the jug. You see you can’t just pour it out cause that’ll mix the crap yeast at the bottom with the wine… and I didn’t have a hose to siphon it out. Finally while a few of my friends and I were sitting around my place drinking Travis came up with the idea of cutting an ethernet cable apart and pulling the wires out. AMAZINGLY it worked… everyone rejoiced and celebrated.

Now the story could end there. Make a bit of wine, drink a bit, and everyone is happy, but 5 gallons of pretty shitty wine doesn’t get drunk in one night. People do on the other hand get excited about MOONsh-wine. Sooo I headed to same place I did when I had the idea of making wine… the internets and found this: http://www.matchrockets.com/water/still.html. This is what I did with the leftovers. I’ll save you the bore of the entire process… just a few clips…

One of the casualties. My fingers were NUMB from trying to scoop the ice out of the blender… turns out those blades are sharp. Good thing I didn’t feel it or this would be a picture of me crying.

AHHHH My EYeS BURRRRnn1!1!! This wine boiler put out steam for ~25 minutes and when it was done: liquid gold. I did this whole process twice to fill my Exeter nalgene halfway. For some reason it felt right putting a volatile drink in there. To think of all the times I found nalgenes full of vodka on the floor at dances… good times.

It was fun distilling the wine… put a pot on the stove… cup in the center… got it. Right. But you know what you can do with the resulting brandy (I don’t know if you can call what I had… brandy)? Burn it. And believe me you could burn it. This stuff was like rocket fuel. Straight from distilling if you put a match near it, it would light the fumes. For some reason it lost it’s volatility pretty quickly, but I took some pictures of it right out of the still:

What I really thought was interesting was burning MOONsh-wine. The red in the flame is the methanol burning. The blue flame is the ethanol burning. Sooo from what I can see (the left most picture was the first one taken) there was a decent amount of methanol in what I distilled, furthermore it looks like the methanol burns off first as there is only a glint of red in the last picture.

Don’t drink if your under 21… when you commit a victimless crime the government loses.

Vacationland...

2005-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

UPDATE

Holy hell! I was just dicking around on CollegeHumor.com and I saw this. Apparently I wasn’t seeing things. That kid rules!!!

The other day my parents entertained the idea of getting me a car next year. Next summer I’m probably going to get a job somewhere other than Maine, so a car would be pretty helpful. Deciding what car I’m going to cop was pretty easy… I wanted a car with gull-wing doors, which was my only requirement. Turns out there are only two cars with gull-wing doors, and one of them cost around $250,000. That narrowed my options down to one car: The DeLorean. I think the DeLorean is a sweet car for three reasons: 1. It has gull-wing doors. 2. I can do donuts with one foot on the ground like in the Cash Money Millionaires video Get Your Roll On. 2. Whenever I’m bored I can strap a whole bunch of random shit to it and pretend I’m from the future – something I plan to do on a daily basis.

Now that I had figured out what type of car I wanted I needed to decide something equally important… the license plate. I kind of want something that will say something about how frigging awesome it is…

I’m positive that’s the license plate for me, but I found some other pretty sweet license plates that are available…

I’m definitely getting this once I have two sweet cars… like two matching Subaru Foresters… something like that.

For people with road rage:

Or…

I have some really gangster friends; I think they would like these:

Finally this is one of the most ridiculous plate I can think of. I swear I saw someone with the license plate the other day. BUT since it’s available they must have spelled it differently, or I was hallucinating. For all of those who don’t know what BUKKAKE means they can look it up here

Well, yeah that’s it for license plate fun… if you want to make some Maine license plates you can do so here

iParody...

2005-08-10T00:00:00-07:00

So a few weeks ago I was visiting Alice, Jin, Buddha, and my sisters in Boston. I’ve been to Boston a lot cause I live close by and I have family there. This time in Boston I saw iPod ads EVERYWHERE. I sincerely doubt there is a place in Boston where you cannot find an iPod ad, aside from a FEW bathrooms. Here’s a picture of a few iPod ads by in the Prudential T-stop. What bothered me even more than the signs is the fact that I was listening to my iPod half the times I saw them. Damn it their ad campaign is good. Or is it?

Once I got back to Maine, I hopped on my brand new overpriced 15" Powerbook (signed by Woz) and decided to BECOME an iPod ad. Becoming an iPod ad isn’t difficult at all, but in this process I hear it is nearly impossible to resist the following:

flailing arms
spiking hair
wearing a beret
dancing
becoming U2
wearing chunky plastic-framed glasses

I knew it was going to be hard, but I was ready.

I had a few photos of myself lying around, because I’m incredibly vain, so I removed their backgrounds in Photoshop.

Then I made nifty silhouette things for them, and I added holes to emphasize things like my hands.

After the silhouette I made the token iPod headphones, leading into my hoodie pocket because I am way too lazy to actually draw an iPod.

Then came the iPod ad colors…

I only came up with one that was funny. My mom disapproves… advertisement.

One of the things I like most about my iPod is that I can pretend I don’t hear bums asking for money while I’m walking down the street.

art gallery

2005-07-30T00:00:00-07:00

One thing that’s really great about my house is that it’s full artwork. I have to thank my mom for that as she’s the one with the passion for art. I’m trying to get all the original paintings that we have in our house up here on this page, but it’s taking a lot of time… so I only do it when I’ve got time. These are a few of them, I’ll put up more later. The paintings pop to larger versions.

Well that’s it for now for the paintings… we have a ton more which I’ll put up later.

up UP and AWAY!.

2005-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

Ok this is straight up the sweetest thing I’ve ever done. I got the idea from a Jeep commercial over 5 years ago in which there were 3 Jeeps parked in front of some canyon. It was dusk-ish and people were lying down on the hoods of the Jeeps (which would be amazingly uncomfortable) and the people had glowing balloons floating high above them. They looked like little hot air balloons made of pillow covers and candles that were tied down with string (mmm should have taken that advise to heart). I thought it was an awesome idea and really wanted to make one.

5 years later… that little boy’s dream was about to come true.

I had a few ideas as to how to make this thing… I could use a garbage bag for the balloon, birthday candles for the heat, straws to frame it, and pins to hold everything together.

I stuck the straws in one another to make two straws 1.5x the length of one straw, then I attached those together with pins. I poked pins through the straws so they could hold candles.

I used the same clothing pins to hold the garbage bag to the straw frame.

Once I added the candles and attached the rest of the bag it was ready to go. Note: There are only 8 candles in this picture, but I added a 9th candle when I went to fly this outside for a little more lift.

Test Flight #2, thrusters at 8 year old birthday party power.

The first time I tried this I used a heavy duty garbage bag, something like 1mil. It worked out pretty well, the balloon just hovered around 5 feet off the ground. Someone wanted to go higher… much higher… I took construction photos the second time around.

V2… It’s really easy to ruin the bag while lighting it – if you don’t hold the bag properly you’ll melt a huge hole. Sooooo my dad helped me out.

Not too much explanation here… the launch…

and AWAY !!!

The pictures are really poor quality because it was just a disposable camera and at night… oh well. The digital wouldn’t have been any better. Within 20 seconds the baloon was nothing more than a glowing spot in the sky. The kids in the neighborhood were FLIPPING out! They seriously thought it was a UFO… you can’t really blame them.