All the Alex Bain you can handle!

We find out the gender tomorrow. I’d love to hear some...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:44:00 -0800

We find out the gender tomorrow. I’d love to hear some guesses.

If you’re wrong, no one will ever hold it against you. If you’re right, you get to pretend forever that you knew what would happen.

Boy or girl?

"Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial..."

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:37:00 -0800

“

Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial intelligence. For decades, computer scientists tried using a rules-based approach — teaching the computer the linguistic rules of two languages and giving it the necessary dictionaries.

But in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts.

”

- Cool article about Google’s Translation Tool. The list of projects that might be easier to takle with billions of data points instead of rules is endless, & probably includes fields like healthcare, meteorology, calling football plays, etc.

via Andy McAfee

This site creates a cool heat map of one’s foursquare...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:26:59 -0800

This site creates a cool heat map of one’s foursquare check-ins. As I’m big on walking, it’s no surprise that most of mine are near my apartment. I was surprised to see so much “heat” on Fillmore Street, though.

OK Go is so good at this stuff. It’s funny that you...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:33:00 -0800

OK Go is so good at this stuff. It’s funny that you don’t see more up and coming bands try to do this. I guess the video and music both have to be good, or it wouldn’t “go viral”, and most bands have a hard enough time getting the music part right.

How to Become an Insta-Expert

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:04:36 -0800

How to Become an Insta-Expert:

The author nailed every Oscar pick just by watching prediction markets.

I’ve been doing this with American Idol so far this year. I’ve watched ~30 total minutes of the season, but because I’ve been watching the futures market for the contestants, I actually have opinions about how things will turn out.

My friends, the Barneses (sp?), put together this fantastic 20...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:06:00 -0800

My friends, the Barneses (sp?), put together this fantastic 20 second video of their son Jack’s first experience with crawling.

Time to update my 3 year-old tradition of documenting how...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:06:00 -0800

Time to update my 3 year-old tradition of documenting how I’m wished happy birthday by medium.

Here’s 2009 & 2008.

Some thoughts:

Some friends sent along well-wishes via more than one medium. I double-counted them. I thought about only counting the first, or counting each one as a half, but figured that this exercise isn’t intended to gauge my own popularity so much as the popularity of each medium.
Similarly, I thought about plotting it on a 100% axis, but liked that the absolute axis made two points:
1. Facebook appears to be stealing “share” from email, but not other mediums.
2. There seems to be a static amount of kindness generated by the combination of email, Facebook, and in-person greetings, and the other platforms are additive.
This year was the first year that IM and Tumblr appeared on the list. IM may have been bigger in the past, but I was never signed on. Now I’m attached to IM almost all day long. Tumblr just recently turned on a “replies” feature sort of like comments, and my cousin-in-law, Sarah, took quick advantage.
I wish there were an easy way to control for things like day-of-the-week and social media connections. I’ve got way more Facebook and Twitter friends now than in 2008, but I don’t have a great record of the historical counts. Oh well.

The whole thing is also a fun reminder of how lucky I am to have such great friends/family.

Got a mysterious phone call this AM: “Brunch....

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:30:00 -0800

Got a mysterious phone call this AM:

“Brunch. Ella’s. 20 minutes.”

We took a risk, & showed up.

We were relieved to discover it was the Easons :-)

Looks like the matched the wall paint to a mango lassi.

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:14:09 -0800

Looks like the matched the wall paint to a mango lassi.

Indian b-day buffet. I’m in curry-flavored heaven.

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:10:08 -0800

Indian b-day buffet. I’m in curry-flavored heaven.

The birthday plan

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:19:32 -0800

I don’t usually make a big deal of my birthday (especially a funny number like 31), but Lisa very kindly does. She suggested an itinerary for the day, that we tweaked a bit together. Here it is:

Jog along the water (while she catches some extra Z’s)
Chai lattés from Coffee Bean
Hitting the neighborhood indian buffet for lunch
Practicing the piano together (she’s normally resistant, because she doesn’t like playing on my unnaturally weighted keyboard)
Reading together at a nearby café
A nice walk along the water
Head out to the East Bay for dinner with Lisa’s fam, where there’s a rumor that her mother’s famous applesauce cake may make an appearance.

This is a great way to usher in my 32nd year.

"The “Notes” app on the iPhone will forever be a simulation of a legal pad; the similar app on the..."

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:35:00 -0800

“The “Notes” app on the iPhone will forever be a simulation of a legal pad; the similar app on the iPad is a legal pad.”

- This quote from an article on
iPad Application Design stuck out. I hope a lot of the best apps we’ll see for the iPad will have real life metaphors that will feel natural. Reading this made me wish I knew how to write software.

Via Gruber

We hit 5A5 in SF for some pre-b-day steak. That’s GOOD...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:08:33 -0800

We hit 5A5 in SF for some pre-b-day steak. That’s GOOD meat.

Turns out, Lisa wasn’t joking this whole time about being...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:17:34 -0800

Turns out, Lisa wasn’t joking this whole time about being a doctor. Her board certification just arrived.

Just received an email from Tumblr today reminding me that this...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:27:00 -0800

Just received an email from Tumblr today reminding me that this site just turned 3!

I’m a bit surprised, actually, because my first post here was in July of ‘07.

Back then, I thought Tumblr would be a complement to my Typepad site, but I quickly discovered it was just so much easier to use, and that the Tumblr team was just so much stronger than anyone else out there working in social media, so I wanted to hitch my wagon to their horse. Today’s email from them is a perfect example of the little things Tumblr nails.

The fantastic app 1Password has posted pics of their upcoming...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:22:24 -0800

The fantastic app 1Password has posted pics of their upcoming iPad version.

I was just thinking this morning how it was weird that I hadn’t seen any screenshots yet of iPhone app getting ported over. I hope more of these come out in the next few weeks.

The Barretts had us over for a great dirty risotto dinner, then...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:56:34 -0800

The Barretts had us over for a great dirty risotto dinner, then a jam session. Great hosts!

My Roger Ebert Story

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:26:00 -0800

My Roger Ebert Story:

Moving piece by Will Leitch about his unique opportunity to befriend (and disappoint) his hero.

"We’re not allowed to discuss RBI anymore - the stat nazis have declared that they no longer matter."

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:37:37 -0800

“We’re not allowed to discuss RBI anymore - the stat nazis have declared that they no longer matter.”

- From Bill Simmons’ chat last Friday.

I’d say about 80% of Simmons content is directly related to sports, and none of it is enjoyable for me to consume anymore, because of his attitude that was perfectly captured in the above quote: He has a vague sense that quantitative analysis has advanced recently in sports, but rather than seeing the movement as progress, he openly resents it.

While RBI are dependent on many factors out of a hitter’s control in baseball, we do have access to stats that can isolate a player’s performance. Why would we long for the days when fans focused on a stat we now know to be largely meaningless? I don’t know of many fans that claim they miss watching sports on small, black-and-white screens. This is no different.

I still love listening to Simmons’ podcasts about The Real World, or columns with his take on movies, but he’s lost me when it comes to sports. He’s a really funny guy. He’s both a great writer and interviewer. He’s amazing on Twitter. But Moneyball taught me (with the example of scouts) to be wary of anyone that’s both bad at math and claims “there’s so much more to sports than numbers.”

Scunthorpe problem

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:41:35 -0800

Scunthorpe problem:

I’d never heard of this issue before, and the 10-year-old in me finds the examples hysterical.