My young friends

Dear AdSense: I am not Anti-Gay Marriage

2008-11-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

I stand with Google and Apple on Prop 8. I see this as an issue of equality and discrimination. Let me say for the record:

I OPPOSE PROPOSITION 8

Imagine my disappointment when I visited my blog today and discovered this:

That's right: an ad, right under my title, trying to get you to "Vote Yes on Prop 8." I know this is a risk we all take with targeted advertising, but at the same time I feel very strongly that I do not want my content associated with bigotry.

I can prohibit this by blocking the URL, but I feel that is a futile solution. Some other URL with the same message might crop up. I want to prohibit ads that I think are morally wrong.

So, in the mean time, do me a favor and CLICK ON THE AD. Let's make them lose money needlessly (not to mention earn me money).

Anyhow, I'll use the rest of this post to endorse what I feel strongly about.

OBAMA / BIDEN

Yes on Prop 1A: We need rail systems like France and Japan. How great would it be to link two of the greatest cities in the US: SF and LA

Yes on Prop 2: Animals should always be treated as humanely as possible, especially when they are devoting their lives to us. I don't mind paying more for eggs.

No on Prop 4: Haven't we seen this one before?

No on Prop 8: Don't hate.

Review: Jon Lajoie Live at Spaceland, 10/30/08

2008-10-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

If you're not familiar with Spaceland, it's because you're not hip/indie/emo/alternative/artistic/eccentric/elitist/poor enough.

Jon Lajoie (by the way, it's pronounced "La Jwa" not "Lay Joy-ee") is obviously not your typical Spaceland artist. Nevertheless, it marked the first time I've seen a You Tube star live.

It's easy for a band to take their songs and play them live. But how does a You Tube star transition from the web to a live performance?

I've got to hand it to Lajoie. He pulled it off creatively. He used a video projector to play some of his "commericals" while doing costume changes back-stage. He'd rap with beats in the background. He'd play solo guitar and sing. In addition to small stand-up comedy bits, he also enacted a live infomercial. Essentially, he's converted his web-presence into a one-man variety show.

I'm not going to lie: he definitely has better presence behind a video camera and URL. But, I was still highly entertained. Check him out if he comes to your area. Also, check out his website: it's stunning (i.e. simultaneous references to Ghostdad, He-man, Michael Keaton, 90210, and Shredder from the Ninja Turtles - genius).

A video of Lajoie live in Canada:

Dojo and Rails (Prototype) - The Workaround

2008-10-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine the surprise I felt when I realized that our pretty Dojo applications were breaking as soon as we were putting them into the Ruby on Rails project. Then it became clear, some parts of Dojo don't play well with Prototype. A Google search on Dojo+Prototype will give you muffled and possibly not applicable information.

This provides a huge dilemma:

We need Dojo, especially parts of dojox, for pretty interface and graphics drawing; a lot of work has already been put in.
We need Prototype for RJS and AJAX in an already well-established Rails project.

I know some of you purists out there think we should use one and not the other. My response to you: No.

It came to me in the shower: iframes. The fundamental problem is that we can't load both Dojo and Prototype in the same page without consequences in our Dojo graphics code. But what if we loaded an iframe that only had Dojo references into a Rails page which had Prototype loaded. It works! At least in Safari and Firefox, our main development platforms, the competing javascripts are kept separate. I haven't tested in IE.

I realize this isn't the ideal solution people want to hear. But in the end, communication between pages/iframes with separate javascript technologies is a much easier problem to deal with than getting two complex javascript technologies to function together in the same page.

UPDATE 1 (10/22/08)
Actually, I'm now an advocate of using the object tag as opposed to the iframe tag. It validates as valid xhtml 1.1, strict, with the same effect. It also sounds better than using frames.

Exporting / Printing of figures in MATLAB: solve problems with boundaries

2008-10-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to figure out that if you want to save figures in MATLAB from your script or the command line, you need to use the print command.

I was using the -depsc2 output flag to generate an EPS file. However, boundaries kept getting messed up.

The fix that worked for me, right before your print command:

set(gcf,'PaperPositionMode','auto')

This makes sure what you see on screen and on file are consistent.

AcademicSuperstore: Leaked My Credit Card Info!

2008-10-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine Googling yourself and finding that your email address, phone number, home address, and some credit card information are now all available to the public and linked to your name. That's what happened to me:

If you were ever a customer of AcademicSuperstore.com, it's possible your identity is under threat. How do I know this? Because your contact info was revealed in a clever Google search with about 1600 other people:

I contacted Academic Superstore on September 24th, 2008 and was promptly replied to by their head of Information Technology. Since then, we have exchanged 14 emails. In all of those exchanges they have never apologized for the security breach.

In their privacy policy they make statements like:

"We promise that your information is secure."

"we will not pass your e-mail address to others"

"personal information and credit card details cannot be viewed by outside parties"

After sending their head of IT several irate emails, he promised that someone else in the company would contact me to discuss the damages. That was seven days ago and I still haven't heard from them. I still haven't received an apology. There's no indication that they will take responsibility for permanently damaging my privacy by releasing my private info to the public.

What irritates me the most about this situation, I DIDN'T EVEN PURCHASE ANYTHING FROM THEM. By the time I had jumped all the hurdles of online purchasing, including verification of my academic status, which requires you to send them proof of your academic status, they told me the item I wanted was not in stock. So I canceled my order and purchased elsewhere. Too bad they had already stored my personal information, irresponsibly. If you look at online reviews (many of which are similar to this one) you'll find that others have this same "we'll make you pay for it before we tell you it's out of stock" problem.

Here's hoping that the companies we choose to trust will actually protect our information and take responsibility when they screw up.

Illustrator CS3 and Roland Cut Studio

2008-09-23T13:35:00.001-07:00

The Problem

Have you noticed that ever since you installed Roland Cut Studio in Illustrator CS3, it's running slower?

You probably have a Mac, don't you? It's probably new, isn't it?

Do you remember the step where you had to setup Illustrator CS3 to run using Rosetta so that the Roland Cut Studio plug-in would work? That had major implications.

Roland Cut Studio for Mac predates Apple's switch to Intel chips. It's written and compiled for PowerPC (i.e. G4, G5). Adobe gave you a universal binary for Illustrator, which means you have both the PowerPC and Intel versions.

What does this mean?

You have to run Illustrator in PowerPC mode (i.e. using Rosetta) so that Cut Studio works. This means that every time Illustrator uses a CPU it needs to translate the PowerPC code to Intel code. For some programs this isn't a big deal. For programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, which can be computationally intesive, this is a very big deal. The difference is akin to speaking with someone in your native tongue versus speaking to a non-native speaker via a translator.

Is there a solution?

Not a good one. I recommend doing all of your design work in native mode (without Rosetta) and re-running Illustrator with Rosetta when you have a finished product that you want to plot.

To do this, go to your applications folder, open the Illustrator folder, and Ctrl-click on the Illustrator program. Click "Get info." You should see a check-box for "Open using Rosetta."

Hopefully Roland will get it's act together soon.

Separating colors for silk screening in Illustrator

2008-09-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Dear young friends,

I can't give you a detailed description about why separating colors in Photoshop must to be fundamentally different than separating colors in Illustrator. But the difference can be summarized by pointing out: Photoshop color separation is channel-based. Illustrator color separation is swatch based.

It's much simpler in Illustrator: for each color you use, double click on its swatch. Change the color from a "process color" to a "spot color."

When you want to print the separations, go to "print," select "output," and change the mode from "composite" to "separations." You can control which colors to print by clicking on the print icon next to the swatch/channel.

Don't forget your registration marks (under "Marks & Bleed")!

Viola.

Separating colors for silk screening in Photoshop

2008-09-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Hello my young friends,

I've been struggling with how to separate colors in Photoshop CS3 for the purposes of silk-screening. I've finally got it down, using "spot colors."

Here are some tips, with a video I found that explains it visually:

Make sure you set your image type as CMYK
Use "Select->Color Range" to create a marquee around the colors you want to print in the same color. Hold the shift key down when using this feature to select multiple colors at the same time. The preview will show you in white what is selected.
Once you have the color regions you want selected, copy (Cmd-C).
Look for your layers window. There should be a tab also called "channels." Select it. There should be a little tiny arrow near the top of that small channels/layer window, clicking it should bring up a list of functions, choose "Create new spot channel"
You should be prompted with a dialog to select the color for that channel.
Viola! Repeat for each color.
You can click the "eye" for the CMYK channel, and you'll see the layer you've created.
When you have two channels "eyed" you'll see the composite colors. When you have only one, you'll see the channel in black-and-white, where black will be the ink color you've designated upon printing.
Print using color management options of "separations." This will print each color on a a separate page.
Throwing in registration marks will also be helpful for alignment when it comes to screening.

This video goes into a bit more detail:

Chipotle axes free drinks for students

2008-01-07T19:21:00.001-08:00

As of 2008, both the Burbank and Pasadena locations of Chipotle no longer give free soft drinks with a student ID.

The Burbank location told me that drinks would be free for high school students. I'm imagining this is a new franchise-wide policy, since the free drink seemed to be universal. I even rode that wave in Chicago back in the day.

This baffled me at first. Why would Chipotle do this? Soft drinks cost the establishment next to nothing. College, grad students, educators etc., are generally poor. High school students are more likely to have financial support from their parents, especially when it comes to food.

Then it dawned on me. Alcohol.

Offering 21+ patrons a free soft drink detracts sales from their alcoholic beverage menu. Think about how much more likely the average college/grad student would be to purchase a beer if they couldn't get a free drink.

I doubt Chipotle will lose any customers over this. We're already addicted.

Converting Integers to Hexadecimal in Ruby

2008-01-02T20:46:00.001-08:00

Lots of info out there on how to go the other way. It's quite easy:

my_integer.to_s(base=16)

Substitute different values for whatever base you want (i.e. 2 for binary).

Setting environment variables in PBS scripts

2008-01-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

I find that the easiest way to set an environment variable in a PBS script, is to set it the variable in the shell from which you submit the job to the queue (i.e. with qsub).

Add this line to your PBS script header:

#PBS -V

This will cause the node to inherit the environment variable from your local shell. Should work for typical cluster jobs.

Simple DIY Gift Bow Hack

2007-12-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

I've been fascinated with different uses of LED throwies for quite a while. Yes, I am easily amused. And yes, I have an mild obsession-turned-non-sexual crush on LED's.

This year I decided to incorporate throwies into my Christmas presents. There's just so much you can do with them, without actually needing the magnet:

Put a bunch of them in a box, so when the receiver opens the gift up, there's light coming from inside
Decorate the outside of the box with alternating red and green LED's
Put the LED inside a gift bow, so an interior glow comes from within.

I tried all three options and found that the third idea is the easiest, cheapest, most practical, and receives the best response from the receiver.

All you need is a ~3V 5mm diffused LED, a CR2032 battery, and some tape. And of course, a gift bow. Thanks to the miracle of buying in bulk off eBay and my frugal post-Christmas shopping last January, each bow costs me about 75 cents.

If I have to explain anything more to you, you probably shouldn't be playing with electricity.

Leopard X11 Terminal Focus Problem: Last.FM is the culprit

2007-12-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling with this issue ever since I installed Leopard: I start X11 Terminal. Start typing. Within a second the terminal window loses focus.

The problem was sporadic.

Finally, I started to figure it out. The Last.FM client, which is always running in the background when I work, was the culprit. It was causing the terminal to lose its focus.

Ironically, I discovered the problem when the client was doing a self-update and shut-down. Then, X11 started working again. The new client (1.4) seems to not be conflicting with X11. But I'm not counting on that.

My suspicion is that other programs are having similar effects.

Saving in Firefox Very Slow: Easy Solution

2007-12-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

Clear your Download History. That's right. The "Downloads" window. "Clean-up. "

I started experiencing this after the Leopard install. Who knows if it was triggered somehow by the Leopard installation. The problem also exists on pre-Leopard systems.

An easy fix nonetheless.

UNIX command for getting the size of a directory

2007-12-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in finding the size of a directory and all it's contained subdirectories, use this command:

du -sh directory_name

Overpriced gift cards: a new way to make profit on eBay?

2007-11-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

I totally don't get it. Time and time again I see gift certificates selling for more than their actual value:

$10 Starbucks gift card currently selling for $10.02 + $1.00 shipping.

$25 Wallmart gift card currently selling for $25.33 + $1.00 shipping.

$25 Best Buy gift card sold for $26.26 with free shipping.

This doesn't always happen. And it baffles me when it does. The only explanation I can come up with: the buyer wants to buy a physical gift card without actually leaving their home.

If all gift cards were virtually guaranteed to sell at the given price, I'd say there would be a market here. It would be interesting to see if there is a pattern to why some gift cards sell at above cost. So far the patterns I've noticed:

Small denominations (i.e. $10, $15, $25)
Very large, popular, and widespread chains

Tiki-ti mentioned in a NYTimes article

2007-11-29T13:28:00.000-08:00

I'm glad that Tiki-ti is closed until mid-December. Because of its size, it may not be able to handle any more patrons that may have read this New York Times article.

Yes, I recognize the irony.

Getting LaTeX to work again in Leopard

2007-11-25T20:49:00.000-08:00

LaTeX is essential for the academically right-brained. Leopard broke it. Well, at least indirectly.

Broke? Fonts completely messed up. Simple, yet important, math symbols like asterisk (\ast) and theta (\theta) didn't work anymore.

I tried updating the teTeX distribution with Fink, which is how I originally installed it. That didn't work. Partially because, to my chagrin, teTeX is no longer supported. Also, my Fink seems to be sick thanks to the Leopard upgrade. Fink selfupdate hasn't really worked for me either.

After tinkering a bit more with Fink and Macports (which seemed to require me upgrading to the latest XCode 3.0), I gave up trying to install LaTeX via package manager. I manually installed the latest-and-greatest Mac LaTeX engine: MacTex-2007. That seemed to fix TeXShop for me.

However, it didn't fix LaTeX Equation Editor, which I use for Keynote presentations. The fonts were still all jacked and simple symbols weren't being displayed properly still. What's more, a more complicated version of LaTeX Equation Editor, LaTeXiT wasn't working either. And yes, I changed the location of the executables in the preferences. And yes, I removed the previous installation of TeTeX with Fink.

After some more searching and discovery I figured it out.

According to this page, font caches are being corrupted. Please go ahead and add LaTeX Equation Editor to the list of programs that seem to be screwing up the font cache. Try rebooting. If that doesn't work try running the following commands from the terminal:

sudo rm -rf `lsof | grep com.apple.ATS/annex.aux | grep Finder | cut -c 66-139`

sudo rm -rf /private/var/folders/*/*/-Caches-/com.apple.ATS

Reboot.

LaTeXiT should now work. If you start using LaTeX Equation Editor, LaTeXiT will break again. The key solution: don't run Equation Editor ever again. Use LaTeXiT. Please note that other LaTeX programs which are not widely supported may cause the same font problems.

First Overstock, now Yelp is reporting my activity to Facebook

2007-11-23T16:52:00.000-08:00

Last week I ranted for a bit once I learned that Overstock.com was trying to make posts in my outgoing mini-feed on Facebook about my purchases. Or perhaps Facebook was monitoring my activity on Overstock. I actually find this second option scarier.

I had just begun to calm down about that, and then Yelp did it to me! I accepted an invitation to Yelp and joined today. After my first review, a little slide-up (not really a pop-up, but a window that slides up from the bottom-right of your browser-window) appears. It's not intuitive how to control the slide-up. Anyway, it tells me that my review is being posted to Facebook.

Sure enough, I visit Facebook and the information is waiting for me... I couldn't tell if it had already been posted or if I had to approve it. Either way. I was pissed. Not as pissed as last week. But still pissed.

FACEBOOK, IT IS NOT OK TO COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT ME FROM OTHER SITES. PLEASE STOP.

Tiki-ti Drink #8: Cobra's Fang

2007-11-20T11:49:00.001-08:00

Visited Tiki-ti with my two non-sexual life partners and the new girlfriend.

This drink was strong. But not especially tasty. Better luck next time.

Tiki-ti Drink #7: Planter's Kula

2007-11-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

Mancation.

I'm poor these days. I went to the Ti with the intention of getting a $5 Ray's Mistake. Joe's Mistake: only served until 9.

So instead I had the Planter's Kula. Didn't make leave a lasting impression on me.

My favorite "Thriller" spoofs

2007-11-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

In India:

In the Philippines:

With legos:

Not quite a spoof...the man himself rehearsing before a concert:

My online purchases being reported to Facebook? That's going too far.

2007-11-08T15:40:00.000-08:00

The type of control that Facebook is allowing others to take on my profile is disturbing.

I just purchased a DVD from Overstock.com. I'm doing my holiday shopping early this year. I was already annoyed that Overstock's $1 site-wide shipping doesn't apply to "Books, DVD's, or anything else I might want to buy." Nor did my 7% AAdvantage discount.

At the end of the checkout, a very hidden notification at the bottom-right of my screen said something to the effect of: "Overstock.com is reporting this purchase on your Facebook profile."

Fuck man. I can't take a shit without someone getting a Facebook notification about it. This DVD is not even for me. I don't want the whole world to know about all my purchases.

AND FURTHERMORE, WHEN THE FUCK DID I EVER GIVE OVERSTOCK THE RIGHT TO POST THINGS TO MY FACEBOOK PROFILE? WHEN DID I EVER EVEN SAY IT WAS OK TO CHECK AND SEE IF I HAD ONE?

[I imagine I wavered that right in some form when I agreed to their policies, but they could have still asked.]

Fortunately, because I caught the hidden notification I was able to open a pop-up and say "No Thanks." But the title of the notification made it sound like it was already a done deal. That freaks me out. No more Overstock.com for me.

Do shorter songs lead improved Last.FM popularity?

2007-11-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

I'm a little surprised that The Beatles are my favorite band on Last.FM, according to the number of times I've listened to them. I love them, but in reality, I don't spend all that much time listening to them.

Looking at my iTunes library, the playing times of the first five songs of Help! are:
2:21
2:37
2:11
2:31
2:08

Now, let's look at the first five songs of Coldplay's X&Y:
4:48
4:57
5:28
4:55
5:11

So if an equal number of people decided to listen to Coldplay as those that decided to listen to The Beatles (I'm not claiming this is true), the latter would come out on top because more songs would be played during a given period of time. Thus, Last.FM would show The Beatles as being more popular.

There's obviously a lot more going on here. Not everyone is like me and listens to full albums while they work. It would also be interesting to see what the psychological "repeat-value" of the Beatles is. My hypothesis is: because Beatles ditties are so short, they'll be played more often anyway.

I would also hypothesize that if your band wants better Web 2.0 popularity, make shorter songs.

Last.FM should also add a feature to rank artists by total time listened to. That information is obviously collected since it's the basis of scrobbling.

You will not be attacked by a shark!

2007-11-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

Whenever I talk about surfing in California to the non-surfing-inclined, the first question is always:

"Have you seen a shark? Aren't you afraid of sharks?"

It's kind of a ridiculous question since...

THERE HAVE BEEN ONLY 7 FATAL SHARK ATTACKS IN CALIFORNIA SINCE 1926!

If you don't believe me, check out these statistics on unprovoked shark attacks in California:

You're more likely to die in your commute to the beach.