The Blogg

April 24, 2009

The $100 Boxes

Filed under: Personal — chadhogg @ 11:33 am

We are finding that we do not have nearly enough boxes to pack our books and other things in for our move on Tuesday, so I did some searching this morning for sources of them. I was disappointed to find none on the local freecycle (and disappointed that you had to become a member of a Yahoo! Group in order to see the offers. I have heard that liquor stores quite often have boxes they would like to get rid of, and there is one that can be made to be on my way to work. Also, it happens to be across the street from a business that I will sorely miss when no longer living in Bethlehem (Sunrise Valley Donuts).

As I was parking along Adams Street in South Bethlehem I was pleased to see a number of boxes with other broken-down boxes stuffed in them at the side of the liquor store. Apparently I was concentrating too hard on them, because I could feel and hear my front passenger-side tire blowing. Upon further inspection, there is a metal grate with drainage underneath it sticking about half an inch out from the sidewalk, and I must have clipped it with my tire.

As I got to work to replace it I discovered that when I purchased the car it had come with a spare tire as expected but the jack and lug wrench had been removed. I have a small toolkit in my trunk that includes an appropriately sized socket for the lug nuts, and fortunately my friend Keith was willing to postpone a meeting he was supposed to attend to bring me a jack from his vehicle. Once I had the tire off the ground I discovered that my $10 tool set was not going to work. As you increased the force on the socket wrench it would reach a point of the internal ratchet gear slipping before the lug could be loosened.

I walked the 6 blocks or so to Cantelmi’s Hardware, where I purchased a 4-in-one lug wrench and a jack to keep in the vehicle for the future, for a total of $40. With these tools in hand it was a relatively simple job to remove the blown tire and replace it with the spare. I packed up my tools, washed my hands in the bathroom at Sunrise, and came back to collect the boxes. At this point I realized that either while I was at the hardware store or concentrating on my work someone had taken them. I was almost frustrated enough to give up, but went inside to inquire about availability and found that there was quite a stack of them in the back room.

I drove to a place off of Steel Ave. and Mechanic St. that had been suggested by the Cantelmi’s clerk as someone who repaired blown tires. They took a quick look, determined that the gash in the side was beyond hope, and sold me a replacement for about $60. With his specialized tools and training, he was able to remove the spare and insert the new tire in about 2 minutes compared to the nearly 1 hour ordeal that getting the spare on had turned out to be.

Not the morning I was hoping for, but I have boxes!

April 23, 2009

California Dreaming

Filed under: Personal — chadhogg @ 2:43 pm

From July 11-17 I will be in Pasadena, California to present some of my research at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Since I’ve never before been further west than Chicago and the cost of trans-continental transportation dwarfs the cost of staying an extra day or two, I think I should explore the West Coast a bit. I need to purchase tickets and whatnot soon, so I should get an idea of what I want to do. The trouble is, I have very little idea what that might be.

I would love to see the redwoods, but there is no way I will be traveling that far north. At a maximum I might go as far north as San Francisco or south as San Diego if there was something really worth seeing there. Death Valley and Yosemite parks might be manageable. It appears that the Jet Propulsion Lab and Mount Wilson observatory are visitable and could be interesting. I enjoy history and especially industrial history, and after reading “The Grapes Of Wrath” I would love to find a museum with artifacts from the Okies’ migration. I might try to take in a concert at the legendary Whiskey A Go-Go or try to find some specific part of Orange County with significance to the punk and ska movements.

If you have any other suggestions I would love to hear them. I really do not care about visual art, films, or (most) celebrities, so I think the majority of L. A.’s attractions would not be for me.

Also, when I was in Chicago I had the opportunity to sample a local delicacy, the Italian beef sandwich, and ended up eating one each day for lunch because they were so tasty. Are there any California-only foods that I simply must try?

Wisdom Fail

Filed under: Uncategorized — chadhogg @ 2:03 pm

UPDATE: See comments that clarify that my understanding of this was not quite accurate.

I saw on the news this morning that someone had released a small game for the iPhone platform in which the player would calm down a crying and screaming baby by shaking it. Apple pulled the game from its application store when they realized the abject stupidity of it. Don’t take me to be a Jack Thompson fan, nothing could be further from the truth!, but this is simply irresponsible. There are (apparently) lots of people who are somehow unaware that shaking an infant can easily result in severe trauma or death. There are not people who are unaware that the actions taken by the protagonist of GTA4 are less than wise or virtuous.

Perhaps this could be a new opportunity for serial killers: convincing large numbers of other people to take actions that they believe to be safe but are actually quite dangerous.

April 22, 2009

Brain Drain

Filed under: Politics — chadhogg @ 1:47 pm

You’ve probably heard at some point that few of the students in American graduate schools are from the U. S. or intend to have a career in the U. S. afterwards, with associated hand-wringing about how the country will never again be competitive in engineering and invention, and extensions to the economy, military, etc. Although there are many international students here at Lehigh, I have never put much stock in this. We should be much more concerned about the quality of our primary and secondary schools slipping than terminal degrees, and our universities gain great benefit from having some of the best students from around the world visit for a few years. Nevertheless, I saw an interested data point the other day.

Last year I was inducted to what was a new program at Lehigh, the Rossin Doctoral Fellows. This organization requires nomination and seeks to honor and assist exceptional doctoral students in the college of engineering who are strongly considering an academic career post-graduation. As a member, I attended the induction ceremony for this year’s class. The home nation of each inductee was announced with some other generic information about them, and all 8 of the new inductees were international students (7 from Southeast Asia). I have no such hard-and-fast data on the returning members, but based on names and accents I would place at least 12 of 19 scholars as being most likely in the U. S. only for the course of their education.

The majority of grad students here may or may not be international, but it seems that the most qualified ones certainly are.

April 21, 2009

Puzzle Solution

Filed under: Personal — chadhogg @ 4:43 pm

Matt’s Waste Of Your Time pointed to a puzzle from Wired today. He warned people not to visit the wired page because it gave too strong of a hint, but I did so anyway. I was not really planning to solve the puzzle myself since I was trying to fall back to sleep after waking far too early this morning, but ended up doing so (for the most part). The puzzle appears below, followed by the path I took toward a solution. If you decide to work on it yourself, I would be interested to see how our approaches differed. By the way, it took me about an hour and a half while quite tired.

Yrexe whirred ni tohairs heargarap possesses gormelein nndnrgnnn sum punatr.

Woolrad pbybe edetmrnise witch coins oui hnvn read deilapa.

Theirs nlsn niidog na frill owdr detresti nntn eratcth penalty.

Ebofer nrnngn existence genafsbezrq, teheeisee snvnn strow fnrmnd na seemly garbolump.

Bount nawyya eye fhccbfr ynn wood similar two avlos ivbyrg tahoe upzzel abj.

Right feathers gur suoulfrepos jbeqf ads htye euob pheeragyl paepra.

Floor yore respond erda cowardly ght guveq epistle off nnch won.

Spoilers Ahead

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The Wired page gives us two useful pieces of information. First, that the red words should be replaced with their homophones, and second, that every word of a color can be decoded in the same manner. (And as a lemma, that decoding does not require shifting letters from the end of one word to the beginning of the next.) After making the homonym replacements I arrived at the following:

Yrexe word ni tohairs heargarap possesses gormelein nndnrgnnn some punatr.

Woolrad pbybe edetmrnise which coins we hnvn red deilapa.

There’s nlsn niidog na frill owdr detresti nntn eratcth penalty.

Ebofer nrnngn existence genafsbezrq, teheeisee snvnn strow fnrmnd na seemly garbolump.

Bount nawyya I fhccbfr ynn would similar (too|to) avlos ivbyrg tahoe upzzel abj.

Write feathers gur suoulfrepos jbeqf ads htye euob pheeragyl paepra.

Floor (your|you’re) respond erda cowardly ght guveq epistle off nnch one.

After noticing that all yellow words were valid English I thought it likely that they should be replaced by near synonyms. However, I delayed this action because there would be so many options for each one. If I needed to come up with seven different ways to encrypt text, one would certainly be a substitution cipher. The relative lack of text for any given color would make a general substitution cipher very difficult to manual solve, so I restricted myself to ones based on a simple shift. I analyzed each of the possible 25 shifts based on the longest word of each color and found one that matched on the last color I tried — violet. It turned out that the shift was exactly 13 characters, the (in)famous ROT-13 encoding.

Yrexe word ni tohairs heargarap possesses gormelein nndnrgnnn some change.

Woolrad color edetmrnise which coins we hnvn red deilapa.

There’s nlsn niidog an frill owdr detresti nntn eratcth penalty.

Ebofer nrnngn existence transformed, teheeisee snvnn strow fnrmnd na seemly garbolump.

Bount nawyya I suppose ynn would similar (too|to) avlos violet tahoe upzzel now.

Write feathers the suoulfrepos words ads htye euob currently paepra.

Floor (your|you’re) respond erda cowardly ght third epistle off nnch one.

Several of the dark blue words looked like they could be unscrambled, so I began doing so. Eventually I realized that they had in fact been scrambled according to a specific pattern, inverting the order of each pair of characters.

Yrexe word in tohairs heargarap possesses gormelein nndnrgnnn some change.

Woolrad color determines which coins we hnvn red deilapa.

There’s nlsn indigo an frill word detresti nntn eratcth penalty.

Before nrnngn existence transformed, teheeisee snvnn strow fnrmnd an seemly garbolump.

Bount anyway I suppose ynn would similar (too|to) avlos violet tahoe puzzle now.

Write feathers the suoulfrepos words ads they euob currently appear.

Floor (your|you’re) respond read cowardly ght third epistle off nnch one.

Next I suspected that the green words had some extraneous words inserted into them. As I explored, I discovered that specifically the letter at each even place (1-based indexing) was salt.

Yrexe word in this heargarap possesses green nndnrgnnn some change.

Word color determines which coins we hnvn red deilapa.

There’s nlsn indigo an frill word detresti nntn each penalty.

Before nrnngn existence transformed, these snvnn strow fnrmnd an seemly group.

But anyway I suppose ynn would similar (too|to) avlos violet the puzzle now.

Write feathers the suoulfrepos words as they euob currently appear.

For (your|you’re) respond read cowardly ght third epistle of nnch one.

Some of the light blue words looked like they could be appropriate spelled backwards, but with one letter replaced.

Every word in this paragraph possesses green nndnrgnnn some change.

Word color determines which coins we hnvn red applied.

There’s nlsn indigo an frill word inserted nntn each penalty.

Before nrnngn existence transformed, these snvnn words fnrmnd an seemly group.

But anyway I suppose ynn would similar (too|to) solve violet the puzzle now.

Write feathers the superfluous words as they blue currently appear.

For (your|you’re) respond read cowardly the third epistle of nnch one.

Now I had enough context to feel confident doing most of the yellow synonym replacements.

Every word in this paragraph has green nndnrgnnn some change.

Word color determines which coins we hnvn red applied.

There’s nlsn indigo an extra word inserted nntn each sentence.

Before nrnngn existence transformed, these snvnn words fnrmnd an seemly group.

But anyway I suppose ynn would like to solve violet the puzzle now.

Write down the superfluous words as they blue currently appear.

For your answer read yellow the third letter of nnch one.

I had noticed much earlier that the orange words had a dearth of vowels and an excess of ‘n’s, but could not find any suitable translation for the second word of the third sentence. At this point I looked at it again and realized that this was because I had transposed an “i” for an “l” when copying from the source.

Every word in this paragraph has green undergone some change.

Word color determines which coins we have red applied.

There’s also indigo an extra word inserted into each sentence.

Before orange existence transformed, these seven words formed an seemly group.

But anyway I suppose you would like to solve violet the puzzle now.

Write down the superfluous words as they blue currently appear.

For your answer read yellow the third letter of each one.

Despite the missing synonyms, I could now read the instructions that the third letter of each color name was the key — ‘eddaoul’. Since this made no sense, I eventually tried those words before translation and found ‘rainbow’, which seemed more likely. I have now spent more time explaining this than I did solving it.

April 18, 2009

Concert Review: The Roots

Filed under: Music — chadhogg @ 7:45 pm

I’ve never found much to appreciate in the world of rap and hip-hop music. It has often been based on pieces ripped from great funk and soul tunes, but to me has been a poor imitation of the music it cribbed at best. I was thus disappointed to hear that a rap act was going to be replacing the great Max Weinberg 7 (who will actually be following Conan to the 11:30 time slot, thankfully). Listening to The Roots on Jimmy Fallon’s show, however, has been quite enjoyable. Unlike the typical rap group they actually, you know, play instruments. When I found out that they would be playing a free concert at Lehigh this weekend, I had to check it out.

The organization sponsoring the concert revealed only that there would be 4 acts starting at noon and playing at Sayre Field. I was only interested in the headliners and needed an early afternoon nap, so I did not go until 3:00. I could find no specific information about the location of Sayre Field, but assumed that I could just go to the sports complex at Goodman Campus and find the field full of people. It is not legal to turn left from route 378 South onto Mountain Drive (for no discernible reason), so I drove up through the main campus. When I arrived at the exit from University property from Lower Sayre Park Drive onto Mountain Drive a gate was chained shut across the road. Not to be deterred, I went to the other exit from Upper Sayre Park Drive onto Mountain Drive. This too was inexplicably closed off. Several dozen other motorists had discovered this and decided to park along the road and walk the rest of the way. I was in a line of cars that had been trying to get through, and with the parked vehicles at the side only the front car was able to make an 11-point turn to get out. Twenty minutes later I parked where I normally do for work and waited at a nearby bus station. I could not get on the first bus because they refused to allow standing passengers, even though this is common in all non-school based mass transit systems. A second one came 15 minutes later, and I eventually got to the site of the concert a bit after 4:00 to find The Roots already playing. I found that Sayre is not an athletic field at all, and had I known where it was I could have walked there much more quickly.

Although my delay was partially my own fault, I cannot fathom why the Lehigh police would cut off vehicular access to campus. Perhaps this is some misguided attempt at preventing drunk driving, but we cannot outlaw automobiles completely for the sake of a few bad actors. Even if you were going to do this, could you not at least have the decency to put up signs at the last intersection before the blockage to prevent the kind of jam we were in.

The current touring version of The Roots consists of an emcee, a keyboardist, a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, an auxiliary percussionist and a sousaphonist. (Yes, you read that last one correctly.) There have been plenty of bands that try to incorporate rap vocals with rock music in the last decade, but it always seems to be the, for lack of a more politically correct word, “whitest” music in the world. The Roots incorporated many of the most important genres of the last 50 years: rock & roll, rhythm & blues, funk, jazz fusion, and reggae at least. If I had to compare their accompaniment to someone else I would probably go with Santana or Hendrix’s Gypsy Sun And Rainbows. I probably would have preferred tonal vocals, but “Black Thought”, though I could not understand more than 10% of his lyrics, was quite entertaining.

I have no baseline to compare against, but the band seemed to be very energetic. I would guess that this was one of few opportunities to fit a full gig in between their Late Night obligations, and that they were enjoying themselves. The sound was mixed well, with different instruments prominent at different times but the two percussionists always at the forefront. They also played an extended duet, the guitarist had a long feature (including holding his instrument to the sky and playing only with hammer-ons and pull-offs for a while), and the bassist played a rousing fuzz-drenched solo.

There was no encore, but to the band’s credit they played at least 20 minutes beyond the first time they said “thank you and goodnight”. I was there for just over an hour of music, but am not sure how long they had been playing when I arrived. After the show they did something I have never seen before. Both the drummer and percussionist threw several pairs of sticks into the audience (not unusual), but signed them with a Sharpie first. Then they removed the heads from the toms on the kit, signed those, and flung them out like frisbees.

I am not sure that I am going to run out and buy one of their albums, nor give another chance to Ludacris or 50 Cent. I will say, however, that this was one of the best live acts I have ever seen.

April 16, 2009

Williamsport Internet Access Conclusion

Filed under: Computing,Personal — chadhogg @ 2:17 pm

(Updating The Blogg on Williamsport Internet Access)

I really wanted to like Chilitech, but they were unable to provide me with the results of their site survey other than that it passed, and would or could not divulge their upstream provider or other information. The answers to those sorts of question were not all that relevant, but the inability or unwillingness to share technical information with customers led me to realize they were not the kind of company I was hoping for. Since my wife was already firmly set on Comcast, the decision was fairly easy.

I intended to log in to comcast.com, fill up my shopping cart, and then call a representative on the phone. That way I could make sure I got the proper pricing while hopefully arguing my way out of a pointless $99 installation fee for someone to plug in my cable modem. Unlike when I checked last week, however, the comcast website was stating that neither digital cable nor Internet access were available in my area. Not wanting to wait around, I decided to make the call anyway.

The woman that I spoke to was quite adamant that the installation fee could not be waived under any circumstance, so I relented. She also tried very hard to sell me on a “triple-play” package with telephone service (which actually would have cut my bill by about $2/month, but I refused to order a service I would never use) and HD channels (which could not be effectively viewed on any television we own or are likely to own in the next several years). I was not offered a choice between multiple services, and simply got the default cable and Internet packages that she assumed I wanted. The total was $116/month, significantly higher than I remembered. I mentioned that I had seen better prices on the website and she told me that there was no way she could see or match those prices.

Once I got off the phone I tried the website again, and it was working. Through the web interface I could buy Digital Starter cable television at a 6-month promotional rate of $29.99 and Performance cable Internet access at a 6-month promotional rate of $19.99, a total of less than half what I had been quoted. I called back and talked to another representative who was extremely helpful. When I explained what had happened he told me it would not be a problem to match those prices, although I would be downgrading from the Digital Classic television service I had been sold (which includes an extra 100 channels that we would have doubtless ignored). Given the price reduction and his helpfulness, I also ordered a DVR (yeah, I should just be using MythTV, but the wife does not want a computer sitting in the living room) and the Sports Entertainment Pack (mostly for the NFL Network).

Thank goodness I reached a good representative on the second try. If call center jockeys are supposed to never deviate from a script, how can they have such different information? We shall see how well the service works out.

April 9, 2009

Shared Deliciosity

Filed under: Personal — chadhogg @ 10:25 pm

Whether you call it a potluck dinner, a covered dish, or something else, I call it delicious. I am guessing that people who are not involved in a church or other community organization are probably unaware of this phenomenon, which is quite sad. Where else can you inexpensively get a meal of baked ham, barbecued pulled pork sandwiches, pierogies, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, scalloped potatoes, fruit, chocolate cake, and home-made candies?

That was my dinner this evening. I was supposed to bring a dish from my ethnic heritage, but because I neither know nor care from where my ancestors set sail I went with a very traditional Lancaster County dish: based pineapple. For your reference, it is made by combining a stick of butter, 3/4 cups of sugar, 4 eggs, 20oz of crushed pineapple with juices, and 6 slices of bread cubed and cooking it for 45 minutes at 375F.

After stuffing myself silly I traded some of the leftovers of my dish with those of others and, when I could not find the owner, just took some. Was it tacky? Probably, but now I’ll have a delicious variety of foods for tomorrow’s dinner as well. The wise graduate student does not pass up an opportunity to hoard free food.

April 8, 2009

Williamsport Internet Access

Filed under: Computing,Personal — chadhogg @ 4:48 pm

One of my hopes for some time is that when we moved and had a jump in income we would replace the generic RCN cable Internet access with something better. Given that I am going to be telecommuting at least 4 days each week, it is important that data access not get in my way. Unfortunately, Williamsport is much more rural than anywhere else I have lived and there appears to be only two choices beyond dial-up.

Comcast offers cable-based broadband at either 6M / 768k or 8M / 1M for either $62.95 or $72.95/month respectively, with a $99 installation fee. That would be quite a bit better than our current 1.5M / 384k service, but it is not possible to get a static IP address without buying the unreasonably more expensive business-class service. I was pleasantly surprised that the initial salesperson that I talked to was able to more or less immediately escalate me to someone who could tell me that the only ports blocked are 25, 68, 135-139, 445, 520, and 1080. That they would allow port 80 is also a pleasant surprise, though not as nice as if I could get a static IP. Unfortunately, they have a reputation as the scummiest ISP on the planet, overselling their infrastructure, shaping traffic and enforcing unwritten and arbitrary caps below their advertised rate, and employing the worst technical support imaginable. While they might mean “Comcastic” as a positive slogan, the Urban Dictionary disagrees.

A local company called Chilitech offers wifi-based broadband at 3M / 512k for $29.95/month and a $49 installation fee. Every account gets a static IP and there are no ports blocked. My concern here is that there is little information available about the company (no reviews on DSL Reports for example), and the unknown might be worse than the known devil. Furthermore, I am a bit leery of depending on wireless transmission seeing how poorly 802.11b works at times.

If we were to go with Comcast we would get a substantial discount by purchasing cable television as well, which brings the prices about in line. We could buy DirecTV through Chilitech but I do not find satellite television an appetizing proposition either. We will not be using a landline or VOIP, so the availability of those services is irrelevant.

What would you go with?

April 7, 2009

Super Mario Galaxy

Filed under: Computing — chadhogg @ 5:41 pm

After about a year of playing 2-3 hours each week, I have finally achieved 118 out of 120 goals. I found “Dreadnought’s Garbage Dump”, essentially a small mini-game in which you must quickly throw explosives to clean up trash, impossible but was able to have a friend complete it for me. Even he could not beat “Luigi’s Purple Coins”, in which you need to collect 100 coins from platform that begin disappearing as soon as you step on them. I would like to see the all-goals ending, but not badly enough to put in the time that that would require.

I had never before played a 3-D version of the platformer, and expected it to be quite difficult. For the most part, my fears were allayed. It does take some time to get used to controlling your character while the camera is rotating around you and it is often necessary to take manual control of the camera to see certain things. Those areas of the game where you are not allowed to rotate the camera are quite annoying. If I were still a child I am sure these things would have been quite natural, but I no longer have the same ability to pick up on subtle clues and find any interface natural.

The game’s gravitational premise is brilliant, but I wish they would have been consistent. Even at the end of the game, it was not always clear whether you could walk onto and around the edge of something or would simply fall to your death. Testing this when you have already accomplished much and finding that the latter is the case can be quite depressing. The story has almost no depth, and the dialogue tends to get in the way if they wanted to create a pure action game.

In spite of the game’s flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The range of different ideas that the developers came up and managed to, for the most part, integrate is astounding. In addition to the expected moving, jumping, and shooting there is swimming, manipulating screws and other mechanisms, flying as a bee, riding on top of a ball, floating in a bubble, and much more. Parts of the game were quite difficult, but this is mostly the “good” kind of difficulty, in which a level might require many tries to pass but it contains a fairly easy way to earn an extra life before dying. I may even try buying Super Mario 64 in the Wii store if I find myself with some time.

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