Wednesday, April 16, 2008

How to make a new best friend.

It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens nearly all the time. When 2 guys fight physically or just on the brink of exchanging punches, after they resolve the issue, they seem to become best friends instantly. Haven't really thought about how or why this happens, but I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for this.

There are exceptions. The fight can't be about anything else but dominance. It can't be about money, religion, political views, girls, etc. It needs to be about one guy thinking he could beat the other guy up, because he thinks he is stronger, faster, or a superior mark of a man.

So if you want a new best friend, get into a fist fight because you think he's a badass, but you think you can kick his ass. Of course, when the fight never materializes because the other party is non-confrontational you may become enemies.

Lastly, no I am not recommending you actually do this, but just take note that there is something there. And if you can harness the why and the how, you are just one step closer to understanding the underlying science of how to get some strong players on while building a solid team.

Monday, April 14, 2008

2008 summer olympics marathon disaster

I won't be saying anything that hasn't already been said, but I think it will be funny if the marathon becomes a spectacle if all foreign marathon runners fail to complete the race, and have to be carried away on a stretcher. If pollution in china is anything like smoking your first cigarette for the first time, the effects on a healthy body will be very intense. Marathon runners are usually well tuned machines for pumping in air. If someone goes from never having smoked, to smoking a whole carton of cigarettes in one day, its very possible that they might even drop dead. Even if they push through and finish the race, we're talking about life altering permanent damage to the body. Does a marathon runner want that? No, that's the last thing they are looking for. No medal is worth harm to your health. Its like a chess champion who knows that he can be #1 this year if he's willing to walk away with brain damage. Gee...no thanks.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Top Chef Season 4

They made a big point about sous-vide salmon and how its not good cooked sous-vide. Well, I beg to differ. I trust that Richard knows his stuff, and what could have been better for that dish was if they made the cut of salmon no bigger than 2" x 2", and maybe layered with something like diced rosted bell peppers with a dressing that complemented the peppers and the salmon. That just big hunk of salmon was a bit too much. The point is that they had many dishes to go, and you let them just have a taste that will want them wanting more.

And the vacuum sealed bag checkered pattern it left on the fish is never appetizing. The vacuum sealed bags has a smooth side and a patterned side. When you're sous viding anything, use the checkered pattern on the side that's not going to be facing up on the dish. The problem was they did not decide if they were going to present skin side down or up until it was cooked. I think the wild salmon's color is beautiful on a white dish. Definitely should have decided skin side down from the beginning. Maybe Richard thought since their team is water, the skin would be more with the theme, but where would you put the tapioca roe? And do you expect people to flip their fish (or skin it) as they eat it? Maybe a lesson to take away when plating the dish is to visualize the plating, then visualize how they would eat it.

I'm not really rooting for anyone on this season just yet. I think Andrew is a funny guy, but definitely don't see him winning it. The girls...I still can't believe that girl that made a Chicago style pizza look more like a round sourdough bread with toppings on it is still there. One-dimensional is a word that comes to my mind. Dale seems like he is just too happy to be talking to the camera and causing attention to himself. He talks a big game. Sometimes he delivers, sometimes he doesn't. His conflicting message is cancelling out any kind of judgement I have on him. Spike's leadership level is like 2 out of 10, and I think you need to be at 6 out of 10 with room to improve to get to the top 4. The lesbian couple....blah. There is the butch one, and then there is the butchier one. Why can't we have 2 hot lesbians instead? And that New Zealander with his Marmite.....has potential, learns quickly, but also sounds like he lacks a lot of experience. His choices sound like they are often way too experimental, not refined or sophisticated. Richard, is definitely in it to win it. Showing some leadership skills. Just a tad boring. But then again, did Harold (Season 1 Winner) and Ilan (Season 2 Winner) have anything interesting about them? No. Everyone else is forgettable I guess. Are there more women on this show this season? Seems that way. They all seem to be short light brown haired girls with a orangish complexion (almost ginger). Where is the token black guy this season and the loud and proud black woman? Oh, and the 50 something blonde basketcase is missing too. Variety is the spice of Top Chef.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Tetris on the PSP

And by that I mean the lack of. I've been playing Tetris here and there lately, and it is due to the Tetris DS that is really an awesome evolution of Tetris. Little tweaks really make the game so much more than what it was more than 15 years ago when I played it on my NES. The ability to store blocks using the left trigger, instant drop using the up button, and the ability to continue to rotate after already touching the ground really does a lot to the gameplay. Its Tetris reborn, refined and really...redefined.




The best Tetris that you can play right now on the PSP is by hacking your PSP to run a SNES emulator and run a rehash of the Nintendo version of it. Unfortunately, after having sampled Tetris DS, the Tetris of 15 years ago feels just like....well, the Tetris of 15 years ago. Sluggish, outdated, primitive, and lacking of bells and whistles.




There is a homebrew version of Tetris but, its nothing I want to even try because it reminds me of a CSE weekly homework assignment at best.




Mario, Metroid, and Link make cameo appearance in the game. And that is a bit of information that explains why there is no Tetris on the PSP. And doing a quick wikipedia search, it looks like they probably do. Bummer.

Monday, April 7, 2008

vmware 6.0 vs. 5.5

Too bad I waited so long to upgrade. vmware 6.0 is such an awesome upgrade in performance compared to vmware 5.5. I run a pretty intensive development enviornment (many virtual servers with many intensive services). And at the very minimum, my xeon 2.66 ghz processor is being used 12-30% all the time. That was the case with vmware 5.5.

vmware 6.0 on the other hand, it runs at 0 to 3%. That is pretty shocking to me.

Other differences:
-vmware 5.5 only supported up to 4GB of ram. Whereas 6.0 supports all of my 8 gigs of ram provided you run a x64 OS.
-wmware 5.5 would bluescreen half the time when I started vmware after I installed 8 gigs of ram (from 4 gigs of ram) and would give a page fault error. 6.0 no longer has this problem.
-vmware supports 1920 x 1200 without any tweaks. The new standard these days for a high resolution monitor.
-64bit OS virtualization works perfect with 6.0. With 5.5, it seemed like for some reason, the 64bit OS would run really sluggish. I would literally launch the 64bit OS, then shut it down because my host computer would run too sluggish when I had more than one vmware guest OS's running.
-And again, I want to mention the performance difference. Since I need to run a dev evnironment all the time, my computer always seemed a little laggy to respond, a lot of disc access, sound would be choppy, but now it feels like my computer is running load free. Its simply amazing. My computer feels new.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The leap second

The earth rotation is gradually slowing due to drag caused by tides so scientist came up with a crafty solution. Every few years they adjust UTC by adding an extra second to either June 30th, or December 31st. Ever since the atomic clock has been used to coordinate world time, a total of 33 leap seconds have been added.

Haha! April fools. This actually happens.

link