One Sane Cop
Yet another cop tasering a kid for no justifiable reason, then cleared of wrongdoing while the kid won $40,000 in a civil suit. What struck me most was a fellow cop's verdict: this tape should be shown in academies as what NOT to do.
Curtis Jones
The Four Most Prolific Things in NYC
The four most prolific things in New York City: cockroaches, rats, people, and (you didn't see this coming) water towers. I noticed while eating my 3pm orange and circled all of them in a photo from the roof.
Resistentialism
I learned a new word today. Resistentialism: a jocular theory in which inanimate objects display hostile desires toward human beings.
Tracey is Wrong
An oldie but goodie. Click for the bigger image.
Rubik's Cube Update
I've taken the simple layer-by-layer method about as far as it goes; my best was seventy-eight seconds. Time to learn the Fridrich method, which means memorizing at least fifty-three algorithms instead of half a dozen.
TODO for 2008 - Revisited
Revisiting my 2008 to-do list: amateur radio license and Mt. Rainier are done, the Rubik's cube is down to 78 seconds, and McKinley, Half Dome, the balloon project, and a back flip are still ahead.
Mt. Rainier Photos
My Rainier photos are online. I still haven't pulled the video off the memory cards. I ordered Final Cut Express, so I'm sure I'll love that learning curve. That's me on the left.
Factorial
I added factorial support to BigMath on a flight, trying to count the permutations of a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube. I got 19.313 trillion; Wikipedia says 43 quintillion. Turns out I was forgetting the orientations of the pieces.
How to Lose Seven Pounds in Seven Days While Eating Candy Bars
I'm back from Rainier, and I've taken several showers. I think the smell is almost gone. We all smelled a lot nasty at the end of the week. A lot. Pictures later.
BigMath
More candidates than I'd expect show up to interviews with no sample code to share; it was all proprietary. The code I gave for my own interview was BigMath, now 4th on Google. Here are the randomized arithmetic tests and timings.