ed costello: comments and links

Links for 2008-05-15 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-16T00:00:00-05:00

Gamers teach search engines how to see - tech - 14 May 2008 - New Scientist Tech
Buddhist Teachers Make Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership - New York Times
The January Effect - Mark Haugh and Mark Hirschey
How the January Effect presents a challenge to the efficient markets hypothesis

Links for 2008-05-12 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-13T00:00:00-05:00

How do I track e-commerce transactions?
ACM Queue - Scalable Parallel Programming with CUDA: Is CUDA the parallel programming model that application developers have been waiting for?

Links for 2008-05-11 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-12T00:00:00-05:00

Music Issue: Cultured Traveler - An Indie Scene That Comes With a Texas Twang in Denton - Travel - New York Times
DENTON! IN THE NY TIMES! WOOT

Links for 2008-05-07 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-08T00:00:00-05:00

This is going to be BIG! - When is New York City going to become bike friendly?

Incoming

2008-05-08T00:04:23Z

DSC01567
Originally uploaded by epc

Links for 2008-05-06 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-07T00:00:00-05:00

Some Diabetics Don’t Have What They Thought They Had - New York Times
Turns out there's multiple types of diabetes in addition to type1/type 2, and the other types don't necessarily require insulin

Links for 2008-05-02 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-03T00:00:00-05:00

Social Analytics and Understanding the User | CenterNetworks

Links for 2008-05-01 [del.icio.us]

2008-05-02T00:00:00-05:00

Building a Startup You Love is Hard (BaSYLiH) - Final Draft » oneafrikan.com

Little Fort of Rest

2008-04-30T23:29:23Z

Little Fort of Rest
Originally uploaded by epc

The Talking of Telham 123

2008-04-27T16:51:05Z

The Talking of Telham 123
Originally uploaded by epc

I guess its about conversational terrorists

St Paul's Chapel

2008-04-23T21:10:54Z

St Paul's Chapel
Originally uploaded by epc

T-Mobile

Feed Housekeeping

2008-04-22T18:33:00Z

The only feed I support for this site is http://feeds.epcostello.net/epcostello, which is served via FeedBurner. I’ve tried to redirect as many old feeds to that but am still getting requests for feeds I haven’t had in years. So if you get this site through a newsreader, please verify that you have the correct feed URL.

If you have no idea what I am talking about you can just look at pretty pictures of dogs instead:

Sorry…

2008-04-21T21:50:00Z

I’ve had nothing interesting to write here. Most of the silly pithy stupid things I’d post here are ending up on twitter. Occasionally I’ll add something separately to tumblr but that site is mostly a regurgitation of whatever is here or on twitter (or del.icio.us).

We have no major travel plans. I would like to head to Illinois in May or June but haven’t picked a date range to shoot for.

We keep talking about buying a new car but nothing on the market is really moving us. We want something with the space of our MDX and mid-20s mileage. Our 2002 MDX tends to get (still) 22mpg highway, and averaged 25mpg on the way to/from Miami in December. It’s possible that the onboard computer is lying.

I need a new cell phone. I had this notion I’d write up a blistering critique of both the Motorola RAZR I bought a couple of years ago as well as the Nokia e70 I got at the end of 2006. My critiques can boil down to:

The software on the RAZR looks and feels like it was developed by engineers who had never actually tried to use a cell phone before. Or the Microsoft Vista team (the RAZR seems to want a lot of confirmation, perhaps it had a difficult childhood).
The Nokia e70 started out well but its performance degraded over time, and now I think the antenna is hosed since it barely gets signal (though this could also be T–mobile’s way of telling me to find another carrier).
The camera quality of both phones is fine, however I constantly find myself losing pictures I’ve taken because both phones require you to decide what you want to do with the picture you’ve taken. If I snap a picture and then close the phone without confirming that I want to store the picture then I lose it. On the RAZR I think it’s three steps to store a picture after taking it, on the Nokia it may only be one step, but still annoying.

I suppose I should wait for the 3G Apple iPhone in June but I think I’m quickly annoying those around me with my utter lack of care about my current phone situation. The worst thing that’s happened is about a week ago I received five phone calls (including two from my apparently concerned Grandmother), which I had no idea about. For three days. I’ve since returned the calls, well the ones that needed returning.

I continue my quest to rid my life of detritus, both physical and digital. In the run–up to Seder, I pitched five boxes of books (pitched ≡ donated to charity). I finished going through a pile of family photos and am now packaging them together for their flight to Austin. I also ran a series of scripts on the home fileserver to analyze the photos we have. I allegedly have 20,000+ photos on the Mac (counting JPEG images). By computing a sha1 sum on each image I discovered that there are 30+ copies of the top 1000 images. I haven’t actually done anything with this yet, but I think what I’ll end up doing is eliminate all duplicates and rename the images in a Year/Month/Day directory structure (unfortunately there’s many filename collisions because Sony only numbers images to 9999).

Frisket just had her yearly physical. She is in perfectly fine shape. The medical assistant and I will take a few days to recover.

Both Frisket and Sailor were happy to see so many people Saturday night, but upset that they could not join us for the reading of the haggadah.

We forgot an orange for the seder plate this year, and almost forgot a cup for Elijah.

I did not see the Pope. I had no interest in seeing the Pope. The Pope did fly over me, twice. Somehow I did not feel the presence of grace.

Lisa started her new job last week. So far so good. I’ve posted a couple of pictures of her after her first day for friends and family only on my flickr account. You can get a sense of her new attire from this picture of Sailor: .

15-04-08_2110.jpg

2008-04-16T02:12:18Z

15-04-08_2110.jpg
Originally uploaded by epc

T-Mobile

On the beach 2008-04-05

2008-04-05T21:31:23Z

I took far too many photos of the dogs romping at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett this afternoon.

The game (there's always a game, I just don't necessarily understand the rules) was that I would throw a bumper out into the water. Frisket would retrieve it (she never retrieves at home!). As she got to the dry part of the sand, Sailor would swoop in and take the bumper. Both dogs would then approach me (usually in a line resembling a french curve). I'd offer each a treat and then throw the bumper back out into the water.

We played this game until my shoulder started to ache. We then spent half an hour just vegging on the beach watching the ocean flow in and out. Click the image to play the video.

Click to play if video did not appear

Unfortunately the cameraman mis–timed the waves:

Click to play if video did not appear

Too slow with the shutter…

2008-03-29T01:40:47Z

Too slow with the shutter…
Originally uploaded by epc

Week 12, 2008

2008-03-28T13:28:56Z

Had a bit of a photo–blogger trifecta earlier this week. I've been taking photos of the demolition of the piers which will be used for the Brooklyn Bridge Park and stashing them in this flickr photo set. Some of the photos got picked up by three NYC area blogs:

I'm going to parlay my fame into… What? Oh, my 0.00015µsec of fame are over?.

In other news… I’ve been sick for the last couple of days with a nice little combination of stomach flu of some sort and now bronchitis. I think that I’ll walk the dogs to the nearest pharmacy and invest in NyQuil for the day.

Lisa is enjoying the interregnum between jobs by spending this weekend in Miami and next weekend at Miraval in Tucson.

New Dock Street Landing

2008-03-24T01:16:14Z

DSC00949
Originally uploaded by epc

Saturday Morning with the New York Times and a Dog

2008-03-22T16:17:17Z

Saturday Morning with the New York Times and a Dog
Originally uploaded by epc

Frisket was peeved about the attention Sailor received yesterday and chose to sit in my lap while I read the paper this morning.

Sailor & epc

2008-03-22T02:10:33Z

Sailor & epc
Originally uploaded by epc

That's one way to solve the problem

2008-03-21T17:42:00Z

I find it bizarre that I remember very few specific classes from my college or grad-school daze, but one seminar I vividly remember and still recall occasionally was a presentation by a now-forgotten candidate for the math department at Allegheny College on the Travelling Salesman Problem, Directed, Acyclic Graphs and various theories about networks (not computer networks, but networks of connections of things, regardless of the media).

I think it forever changed (not sure if for the better) my approach to looking at lists of things to be done, whether programming, travelling, project management, etc. The intuitively most direct path is not always the best path to take.

Awareness Test

2008-03-19T02:41:41Z

Via Seth Godin’s Blog comes this awareness test from the UK:

I’ll just answer the question posed in the video for myself: no, I did not.

Frisket's Cat Pt. II

2008-03-18T01:43:36Z

Frisket's Cat Pt. II
Originally uploaded by epc

Frisket met / re-met this cat at Grenadier Golden Retrievers over the weekend. They were pretty cordial with each other (I know the cat's backing away here but the two were sniffing each other and generally not scratching each other's eyes out).

Thursday

2008-03-13T15:05:14Z

Thursday
Originally uploaded by epc

Helping some friends with the Avon Walk For Breast Cancer

2008-03-12T22:18:42Z

Way back in the ancient days, circa 1990, a co-op was slated to join the Information Development group at IBM's Myers Corners Lab (oh god, he's going to tell IBM stories again). The co-op was nicknamed The Boy Named Sue in order to fit into the gang of Sues who made up the core of the RACF I/D team (Sue, Susan, and Susie). He put up with the nickname (and much more) as his brain went retrograde in learning how to use BookMaster and XEDIT to write books (from Microsoft Word and PageMaker).

Along the way he amde great friends in Eileen (his first officemate, 2P31 MCL represent!), Anne (who took hiim in under her wings on the infamous Case/390 internal library) and Mary (who to his recollection never had to put up with either his loud music or Diet Coke shenanigans).

Eileen, Mary, and Anne are walking in the Washington, DC Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and are trying to raise funds (they each need to raise US$1800 or they have to walk barefoot, backwards, carrying the MVS 4.3 Library).

Eileen has reached her goal, but Mary and Anne could use some help. If you support this cause, please consider donating through their Avon pages:

And if you want you can also donate through Eileen's page.

12-03-08_0929.jpg

2008-03-12T14:33:19Z

12-03-08_0929.jpg
Originally uploaded by epc

T-Mobile

AUS

2008-03-08T13:52:00Z

Made it to Austin on Thursday after rerouting my flights at the last minute, again. I'd woken up Thursday morning and heard that it may snow in Dallas midday and while I was eating breakfast had the idea: Skip the rest of ETech and geto to Austin some other way. So, I checked out, went to the airport (where I discovered my original SAN-DFW flight had been cancelled as well as all others) and got on a flight to Austin via LAX. Mostly uneventful, though American's MD80 to Austin looked like it could use a refurb and cleaning.

We're here for SXSW. I am going to go light on the sessions because I'm already feeling wiped out. We're going to go to a couple of the parties tonight (Google and the Frog party). Basically I'm only here today and tomorrow, my flight on Monday is at 10:00 which is just enough time to contemplate going to a session but not getting there and heading to the airport instead.

As an aside, I'm playing with Tumblr. You can see my site here: tumblr. It merges a bunch of posts and feeds from the other services like del.icio.us and twitter.

Wow, blogging really works

2008-03-05T15:07:28Z

Mere hours after posting this, my bag showed up at the hotel here in San Diego. I realize that it was likely onboard a plane before I wrote anything but that fact doesn't feed a blogger's need to having blogging be the greatest thing in the world. Besides, facts are not necessary for blogging.

American Airlines Lost My Luggage And All I Got Was a Lousy Entry Title

2008-03-05T07:24:23Z

So, last fall I decided to return to San Diego for ETech again. I booked some tickets, reserved a hotel room, and set everything aside.

Then in December or January we were invited to a wedding reception in Orlando, FL the weekend before ETech, so I changed the tickets around to fly LGA–MCO–SAN–LGA.

Then in mid–January I added in a few days in Austin for SXSW.

On landing in Orlando on Saturday we learned that my grandmother was in the hospital. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to make a side trip to Chicago Sunday to check–in on her.

Sunday morning Lisa and I arrived at Orlando (MCO) and checked–in for our respective flights, me to Chicago (ORD), her to New York (LGA). Other than the insanely long security line (~45 minutes in line, though it kept moving, mostly), and a ten-fifteen minute delay with boarding, my flight was uneventful.

Let's take a look at my twitter feed from Sunday:

Waiting for AA789 to depart 12:31 PM March 02, 2008 from txt
Stuck at american's baggage at ohare. The worst in the US. 03:57 PM March 02, 2008 from txt
Don't check your bags to ORD if you want them in less than an hour. 04:00 PM March 02, 2008 from txt
WTF? American's lost my bag again! 04:10 PM March 02, 2008 from txt
Grumble, grumble, American Airlines has totally lost my bag. Should make a week of conference travel "interesting". 10:38 PM March 02, 2008 from web
Contemplating a week with 1 pair of jeans, 1 grungy dress shirt, a pair of socks and a pair of boots thanks to American Airlines 08:08 AM March 03, 2008 from web

Ok, that spread into Monday. The story thus far:

Initially I was told that the bag was in Orlando and had been held over from the flight because there were too many bags, and that it would definitely be on the next flight.
Then I was told they couldn't locate it in Orlando.
Then I was told it wasn't in the system.
I was told to be patient and that it might take a shift to locate the bag
Initially I left the address of my relatives who put me up for the night for delivery. As it got later into Sunday night I called American to ask for the bag to be held at O'Hare so it could be checked onto my San Diego flight on Monday.
When I checked–in Monday morning there was no bag, nor any sightings of the bag. I gave the baggage staff my address in San Diego and was told I'd be called when the bag was located.
I flew on to San Diego. On arrival I checked the baggage status page and there was no update. At this point it was mid–afternoon in San Diego, I'd been in the same clothes for two days, and so I headed into the Horton Plaza mall for a quick top–up of, well, everything.
I bought a pair of pants, a couple of t–shirts, a couple of dress shirts, a very minimal set of toiletries, Kiehl's shaving cream (carried by Nordstrom's —handy to remember), a cell phone charger and miscellaneous other items. Also shopped for a replacement bag but held off buying one.
On getting back to the room (maybe two hours later) I again checked the baggage status —of course it had been updated to say the bag had been found. After I'd bought a bunch of clothes.
Investigating, the story gets rewritten. American alleges that someone mistakely took the bag as his own off the belt and drove home with it. This person has offered to return the bag on Tuesday morning.
So, best case scenario is that the bag arrives Tuesday afternoon, so I did need at least one day's clothes.
I spent today at ETech sessions. I returned to my room at 6:00 and called American Airlines to ask for status on the bag, sort of hoping it was at least en route to San Diego.
The bag was allegedly returned, but due to snow they were not allowed to fly to San Diego.
I've been told it will arrive some time Wednesday afternoon. Maybe.
On Thursday afternoon I leave San Diego and head to Austin via Dallas.
American may or may not be able to redirect the bag to Austin.

Initially I joked with Lisa that the bag overheard my complaints about it and that it had scurried off to a lonely conveyor belt, riding around and 'round with the other lonely, rejected bags.

Now I'm just really pissed at American.

Surprisingly not for losing the bag. When I made this trip last year I flew LGA–ORD-LAS-SAN. In Las Vegas (LAS) both of my bags were delayed because they apparently took a leisurely stroll from the end of the K gates at O'Hare to the end of the H gates. I'd run from K15 to H13 and just barely made that flight.

No, I'm not surprised about the lost bag, it happens. But I'm disappointed in American (I keep wanting to change that to "United'). I don't know whether to believe that they didn't/don't/can't scan the bags as they enter the system, ir if they really had no idea where the bag was. In a complaint I wrote to the AA staff and said that it was Ok to say "I don't know" but not to keep creating stories about where the bag was.

Furthermore, oddly, I was standing in the baggage area right where the bags came out and never saw my bag, yet this guy allegedly walked off with it.

If you're stuck in San Diego without clothes I recommend the Nordstrom store in the Horton Plaza mall. My biggest disappointment in the frenzied shopping was discovering that San Diegan men are apparently shorter than "New York Men" as it was all but impossible to buy a shirt with anything more than an 18" collar.

So, no baggage, and two of three days of ETech are done.

ETech so far is perfectly fine, though it feels more low–key than lsat year. I'm heading to Austin on Thursday for SXSW Interactive, returning home to NYC on Monday. Most interesting pitch today was Saul Griffith on computing your personal energy use and challenging that use to get down to 2000 Watts per day (which is oddly close to what I'm suppose to be eating daily in calories).

Buddies

2008-02-29T20:25:18Z

DSC00776
Originally uploaded by epc

From last weekend's snow, the dogs playing at the dog run under the Manhattan Bridge.

Eastern Pier

2008-02-29T05:08:20Z

Eastern Pier
Originally uploaded by epc

This is the eastern pier of the Manhattan Bridge. You don't hear or read too much about the Manhattan Bridge unless you live in NYC, it's the ugly step-sister (brother? what's the gender of a bridge?) of the Brooklyn Bridge which is maybe 1000 feet to the south.

Lately I've come around to marvelling at the Manhattan Bridge, it's elegant in its own way. It carries four subway lines on its four tracks (two inbound, two outbound). Its upper decks have two lanes of traffic in and outbound, and it has a middle lower deck which is reversed depending on the time of day.

It doesn't have the elegant cable pattern of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it's not quite as storied as the Williamsburgh bridge which is maybe a mile north.

Yet it's quite impressive. I think it's longer than the Brooklyn Bridge. It seems bulkier. It's in the midst of a 30 year upgrade project (in the late 1990s this included shutting down the subway lines over the bridge for a period of time. In retrospect it was not the brightest idea to place the subway tracks on the outside of the bridge, leading to interesting torquing problems).

ESB

2008-02-26T04:50:43Z

ESB
Originally uploaded by epc

It’s blue-green-blue, not that you can tell in this shot

March 2008 Travel Advisory

2008-02-23T21:26:39Z

I've got a lot of travel coming up, just a warning to those readers in the following cities:

1 March 2008: LGA–MCO
2 March 2008: MCO-DFW-SAN
2–6 March 2008: in San Diego for the O’Reilly etech conference
6 March 2008: SAN–DFW–AUS
6–10 March 2008: In Austin, TX for SXSW
10 March 2008: AUS–RDU–LGA
13 March 2008: Brooklyn–Cambridge via I–95/I–395/I–90
13–16 March 2008: Cambridge, MA for no particular reason

I’m also looking at driving out to Chicago, IL some time in April or May but haven’t really planned anything yet.

nextNY @ 2.0: Tomorrow 21/2/08 @ Antarctica Bar

2008-02-20T16:13:14Z

The anarcho-syndicalist digital networking group NextNY is throwing a birthday party for itself tomorrow night at the Antarctica Bar (287 Hudson, x-street Spring). If you're in NYC and want to meet/greet people doing cutting edge digital activities in NYC, come!

I have nothing else interesting to say.

Well, except that I mean anarcho-syndicalist in the Monty Python sense of the phrase.

Did you see that?

2008-02-13T21:52:30Z

Did you see that?
Originally uploaded by epc

Patiently waiting for the photographer to get his "shot".

All you need to know about FOX News

2008-02-09T05:00:00Z

… is right here:

John McCain …too liberal for FOX News.

SB XLII Sunday

2008-02-03T22:39:23Z

Lisa's great Great-Uncle Jimmy Heller passed away Thursday at the age of 96. We spent the morning at the funeral and burial. He was a nice guy and made me feel very welcome as a member in the family.
Sailor was sick Thursday night. In between walks outside I rewrote my ibm.com homepage history in screen shots page to add a little more "history" around each version of www.ibm.com.
Ten years ago was Superbowl XXXII, here's my recap of my sole Superbowl experience: Superbowl XXXII.
If you have an x.509 key and use OpenID (or know what OpenID is), drop me a note. I am building a simple service that ties the two together and want to get some feedback.
Frisket and Sailor's sixth birthday was yesterday. We threw a party in their honor Friday night (ok, the party was for other reasons, but their birthday was the cover story). They have spent the weekend lounging around.
My guess: NYG by 9, 26–17 (3TDs, 1FG, 1 Safety).

In honor of the impending end of the Shrub Administration, I blog this message

2008-01-22T00:12:46Z

I apparently have had nothing of interest to write up since leaving Savannah, GA in December. I apologize, the rest of this is likely to be just as dreadfully boring as well.

The dogs and I successfully returned from our Miami Beach sojourn on New Year's Eve. Almost nothing of interest occurred on the drive back other than the car gently rolling over 60,000 miles somewhere near the Pentagon on the night of the 30th.
We discovered a neat magazine⁄journal while in Melbourne last year called dumbo feather, pass it on. I found our copy tonight and went to look up the web site to subscribe and …it’s expired (well, the domain has).
I am planning on attending etech 2008 in San Diego the first week of March followed immediately by three, perhaps four days at SXSW interactive in Austin (March 7th-10th).
Barack Obama has made my vote in the primary pretty easy by his admiration of the Reagan years. I don't have such a fond memory of the Reagan era.
I added an ActBlue bug to a bunch of my personal pages, this will link to candidates I'm supporting in primaries and general elections this year.
I have yet to see any movies in 2008. I kind of wanted to see I Am Legend but I understand that the monster(s) in Cloverfield destroyed what remained of NYC after the plague of I Am Legend. My Dear Hollywood: Please pick another town or city to destroy. How about Downers Grove, IL or Poughkeepsie, NY?
The economy is tanking. I think this will be a nasty, brutal recession since billions of dollars have just evaporated as people lived on the margins of the assumed increase in property values. The dot com implosion in 2000-2001 was nothing compared to what is happening or will happen as the economy restructures to account for the disappearance of the artificial wealth many people thought they had and quickly spent.
The dogs are fine. We had a minor crisis last week when we thought Sailor had swallowed a part of a toy. $300 in x–rays later I discovered the missing part buried deep under a chair.
The renovations to our apartment are almost complete. I am hoping to actually have use of a closet and dresser in my bedroom again later this week.
I thought last night’s football game between the Giants and Packers was a good "real" football game (as Todd alludes to here). All that was missing were the Chicago Bears and about six inches of snow.

Just listening to the BBC World News America show and it occurred to me, coming at the end of the GHW Bush administration we had troops in Iraq, the financial industry was trying to get U.S. taxpayers to bailout the collapsed Savings and Loan industry, and the economy slid into recession. Eighteen years later and we have another shrub, we're back in Iraq, and the financial industry is looking to tap U.S. taxpayers again to get bailed out. And we want to continue this administrations policies why?

Frisket and Sailor Take Their Positions

2007-12-30T13:32:46Z

Frisket and Sailor Take Their Positions
Originally uploaded by epc

In Savannah, GA, getting ready for the drive to Washington, DC. Almost 600 miles, took about 12 hours including 3 hours of rest breaks along the way. Sailor has adapted the space behind the passenger seat as her in-car den (in this shot the seat is all the way forward since Lisa flew back separately).

Deity Antiquity

2007-12-30T03:01:01Z

Deity Antiquity
Originally uploaded by epc

Bench'd

2007-12-27T23:15:58Z

Bench'd
Originally uploaded by epc

Walked with the dogs north along the beach to about 28^th Street and then back to the hotel, about 2 miles. Not a very long walk but in 80F/30C+ degree heat I think I was pushing it with them. Our stay in Miami Beach is coming to a close, we're here through tomorrow and then the road trip back home starts Saturday a.m.

On the beach

2007-12-27T04:12:26Z

On the beach
Originally uploaded by epc

Not waiting for the shutter

2007-12-22T03:53:33Z

Not waiting for the shutter
Originally uploaded by epc

Frisket just couldn't sit still for another picture.
Here they are at the southern end of Miami Beach, getting ready to hit the clubs.

More pictures here: SoBe 2007.

The Famous Cinder Block Creche of Michigan Avenue

2007-12-14T15:22:11Z

The Famous Cinder Block Creche of Michigan Avenue
Originally uploaded by epc

Taken in front of the Wrigley Building at 410 N Michigan Ave.