F*cking with Clusters

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:16:23 GMT

Who wants a Christmas card? Comments screened :-)

[Lazyweb][Local] Accountants

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:10:01 GMT

Do any of you have a Bay Area CPA you really like? My accountant is in PA and retired to new clients a few years ago, and I need to find someone local he can talk to before he leaves the business altogether.

I need someone who:

Can handle complex files: my tax return is over an inch thick.
Has experience with k-1s
Is strongly anti-tax, ideally moreso than me :-)

If you know anyone, I'd love to hear about them. Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

[Local] Rusted Root.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:39:54 GMT

Anyone want 2 free tickets to see Rusted Root at the Fillmore tomorrow? It breaks my heart, but I don't want to go with a fever. E-mail or reply here.

[local] Getting Rid of Stuff

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:22:37 GMT

In a similar vein as patrissimo, I'm also getting rid of a ton of stuff in the process of consolidating 3 apartments and moving.

Less crappy stuff up for grabs (list will get much longer as I go through boxes):

Large Escaflowne movie poster, basically pristine.
Large Star Ocean 3 poster, less pristine.
Some never-worn t-shirts from E3s of yore: FF11 XL (claimed), Quake 4 XL, a game I don't recognize XL, Google XXL.
Books: Beginning Java (claimed), Software Requirements, a new java coffee table book (seriously)
Yamaha keyboard (a slightly older version of this: http://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-YPT210-Full-Sized-Keyboard-tones/dp/B000UUA9P6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1251407618&sr=1-7). It works great, I love it to death, but we're buying an upright (100+ yr old!) piano for the new place and Chris has a nicer keyboard, so it's superfluous. Would like a bit of money for this one.

These and the rest of the random things we're getting rid of will be out at the Tortuga garage sale this Saturday afternoon. If you want anything on the list, claim it :)

Airlines (This post may self-destruct)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:50:54 GMT

Have any of you ever flown Sun Country air? Did their staff seemed happy? We just got 2 roundtrip tickets from SFO to MSP for ~$350, *total*. Southwest charges $200 at the cheapest for one person, one way. It doesn't seem like a sustainable price difference.

[Lazyweb] Question for the Engineers

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:11:08 GMT

I'm working on a project that probably needs a PID controller. I'm naïvely guessing that's not so bad, but I'm trying to figure out if that's really the best tool for the job, knowing nothing at all about control theory. Can anyone recommend a good reference? Code/math-focused (instead of mechanically focused) is a definite plus.

Thanks!

[Local or Hardcore] Lacuna Coil

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:13:27 GMT

inferno0069 and I are thinking of checking out Lacuna Coil (Warning: Flash) at Slim's in SF (roughly at 11th and Folsom). We are wavering a little, and were wondering if there was any interest in LJ land for going as a group.

Time: Monday, July 27th, doors @ 7, show @ 7:30(!)
Place: Slim's (333 11th St., SF, CA, 94103)
Bands: Kill Hannah, Seventh Void, Dommin, Lacuna Coil
Tickets: Link
After: Potentially some delicious Thai food at Lers Rose. They're my current favorite Thai place: open late, authentic, not bland, and reminiscent of Big Bowl.

Tequila Party! (From the Shamelessly Stolen LJ Post Department)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:39:55 GMT

"From an email we (hopefully) sent to all those who already responded:

Survey says...

Party in Mountain View!

The party will be held at Tortuga, Mountain View, CA. Saturday 6/27, 7pm till whenever you're done with good booze and better company.

Bring some tequila, appetizers, and, most importantly, a discerning palate.

See you soon!
-- Chris (inferno0069) and Avani

In case anyone wants to come who didn't really want to commit when there wasn't a date, now's your chance!

Most of you know where Tortuga is and how to contact one of us, but if not please comment here. There's also a wiki page with tequilas (and potentially other stuff) that people will bring; I can IM or email you the address but I can't publicly post it here.

Previous posts are here and here. "

[RLP] Is Science as Important as Football?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:38:31 GMT

I find this article very insightful. He makes the case that as a culture we expect children to learn by doing in sports (which we understand), and yet are terrified of the smaller risks involved in hands-on science education (since we don't understand why chemicals go "Boom!", or even what that means).:

[...]
But no one who has heard an oxy-hydrogen soap bubble explode in a lecture hall can ever doubt the value of stoichiometric calculations. Do you believe that the Apollo moon rocket ran on diesel fuel, just like a truck? I can show you an experiment that will make you believe it could as easily have run on bacon.

Teachers should be able to do this kind of science, and many would love to, but cannot because of the fear of what would happen if there were ever an accident. A student suffering even a relatively minor injury from a dangerous chemical would be front page news anywhere in the U.S., even if the same student spending a week in the hospital due to a sports injury would go completely unnoticed (unless perhaps he's the star quarterback).

The science teacher would likely lose their job, while the coach would be offered condolences on the loss of their star player.

http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=6721

Rambly Update

Fri, 29 May 2009 02:57:41 GMT

Apparently I only post these days when I have a lot of work to do. There are so many awesome adventures that I need to write up and haven't yet. We've tasted so many wines, gone hiking in beautiful places, gone on a long drive chasing the sunset and ended up on an elk preserve where the water looked frozen in place, watched some great (and some terrible) movies, seen Opeth, hung out with lots of very awesome people, and generally been having a great time. I also got in to my first systems conference as first author (MASCOTS), so I'm going to London for a week in September, which I'm pretty stoked about. In the process, I acquired an Erdös number of 3.

Those are all the times I don't think to post, though. Too much happening, making the rare moments I'm alone too precious to spend at a computer. Right now, I'm in finals crunch and feeling lonely, so I post to LJ :P I'm taking a break to go visit mtbg Saturday, but otherwise I'm stuck at my apartment until next Thursday when this is all turned in and I get my 3 whole days of summer vacation (that I need to spend doing the camera ready copy of my conference paper and taking my *1 week, 3 question* security final. The first question is "a) Outline the steps to create a web site that is completely untraceable to you by an omnipotent, suspicious adversary, b) Collect money off this site while maintaining anonymity, and Extra Credit: Frame someone else convincingly for your site.") before starting at Google on Monday, where I'm there for a week before heading to San Diego for another conference (USENIX).

So, there's an update for all ya'll. I'm going to go back to making pretty pictures to toss onto this poster.

[Local] Tequila Party!

Thu, 14 May 2009 23:10:27 GMT

Chris and I are throwing a tequila-tasting party sometime in the next
few months and we're trying to gauge interest and pick a date.

The idea is to try some quality tequilas and share our
findings without anyone having to buy all the bottles themselves. We'll buy a few bottles off this funwiki list. If you find anything on there interesting (or have a favorite tequila outside that), please bring some to share! We'll also try to have some thematically appropriate appetizers on hand and are looking for more ideas there.

Party will likely be in El Cerrito and there is some crash space
available for South Bay folks.

View Poll: #1400089

For more information, see:
http://inferno0069.livejournal.com/85769.html

[Rant] Dirty Words

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:51:19 GMT

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision supporting the FCC ban on ``fleeting expletives'' seems unreal to me. I have trouble believing that 5 mature, blindingly intelligent adults really believe there exist magic words that zap away little pieces of children's brains and fill them with butter (it's surprisingly hard to think of something to put into kids brains that isn't delicious). Their argument is essentially "kids mimic what they hear, and so they'll be harmed by hearing bad words and saying them to each other". I will admit that every coarse English word I know I learned on the school bus, but I'll also point out that kids are just as excited to call each other 'boogers' as 'shitheads'. The sentiment doesn't go away if you change the words they say to words you were brainwashed into thinking are less dirty^[*]. If you don't want your kid to be comparing items to excrement, you tell them what it means, and you discipline them if they continue using it. This protects children so much more than blanket regulations. For example, I'd much prefer my future children swear like sailors but never hear them say ``that's gay'' or even ``meh'' or ``I dunno''.

It's like a hard to believe science fiction society where you're allowed to talk about anything except exploding hippopotami, because the king's mother finds them gross and would rather everyone just talk about beheadings like good little children.

This is degenerating quickly. I may expand this into a real essay when I have time.

^[*]
I make a slight exception for swear words with a religious background. At least they honestly believe that their children will go to hell if they ``take the lord's name in vain'' (in quotes because I'm not 100% sure what actually constitutes in vain). This is inconsistent of me and I haven't quite resolved it in my head yet.

OS X Happiness

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:32:04 GMT

My favorite thing in the world today is this command:

defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool TRUE

This simple little command turns this:

into this:

After learning this, I finally stopped swearing at the gods of bad design decisions and proceeded to happily download papers and save them to where I wanted in a single step, just as nature intended.

While I'm at it, here some of my other favorite OS X modifications. Most of them are just little settings tweaks:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE # Show hidden files defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png # Screenshots to PNG defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse TRUE # Sloppy Focus in Terminal defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool TRUE # Show POSIX path in title defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean TRUE; killall Dock # Make Leopard dock non-hideous.

I also found this one today that sets your screensaver as your background. I tried it out, but it doesn't work as well as I'd like. For one, the clock stays sticky over all your windows, and the transparent menuar shows your old desktop. Still, it was kind of cute.:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/\
Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

I suppose I should get back to real work now.

Rules

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:13:20 GMT

Avani's rules of life #1: There is very little wrong in life that a good, painful massage and facial can't cure.

Avani's rules of life #2: Reading research papers can be interesting, inspiring, even riveting. Reading research papers with a Baileys and coffee magnifies these effects.

To be continued...

[Silly] Buns

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:48:16 GMT

This is just unfair. We've got countless Mexican grocers in the area, but somehow not a single Asian grocer of any stripe closer than Watsonville. I am craving steam buns so hard right now, and the local restaurant only has vegetarian, and I had them yesterday, and they're really not that good.

A Place on the Internet

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:47:02 GMT

I'm in the process of moving my Speakeasy DSL to my new apartment. In doing so, I went over the other options, and realized that if I let go of my static IP (along with competent techs, network maps, etc.), I can save $60/month by going to AT&T.

As a poor college student who has the ability to go in to lab whenever there is an outage at home, this should be a no-brainer... yet, I feel pretty attached to having my own IP that I can know and trust to be there. I've used DynDNS in the past and have no real complaints with their service, but it's not quite enough for some reason.

Is this common? Am I just weird?

Restaurant Recap: Chapeau!

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:05:23 GMT

Last night, Chris and I went with my sister A- to Chapeau! in the Outer Richmond. For a restaurant with this quality of ingredients, it was an amazing value (4 course menu for $45/person with wines starting at $15/bottle). The Yelp reviews imply that there may even be a special happy hour pricing. They are better than many places I've been to that have Michelin stars.

Also, they put out a hat with the check in it ^_^

Amusé: Asparagus soup with a tall cylindrical cracker. We all liked this, even though I don't particularly like asparagus.

Course 1:
Avani: Foie gras with apples. There were 3 large pieces of foie over a small piece of bread. The sprouts in the corner had a lot of flavor in them and went amazingly well with the foie and apples. I could eat that all day every day for the rest of my life.
Chris: Escargot. This was also delicious: the escargot came speared on rosemary!. It also had a humungous, surprisingly good head of garlic on the plate.
A-: Smoked salmon surrounding a salmon mousse and speckled with bits of salmon caviar. Delicious. It's a good sign when that was my least favorite of the first course dishes.

Course 2: Mussels with a flavored mayo-based dipping sauce and french fries: The mussels were fantastically, perfectly cooked, and very likely the best I've ever had. I thought the french fries were forgettable, but A- really liked them.

Course 3:
Avani: Duck breast with grapes and pears. Mmm. The grapes and pears were stewed in what looked like a sweet red wine sauce. There was also spectacular, creamy, not at all grainy polenta. The duck was delicious, though not extraordinary.
Chris: Duck confit, cassoulet sausage. I liked the skin on the duck here a lot: it was crusted with herbs while being thin and not too fatty. So tasty. The sausage was fine, as was the white-bean broth everything was in. A- liked the bean stuff much more than Chris and I did.
A-: Salmon with herbs and peas. Yum. A little blander than the other two and very heavy. I could still eat it all day and be happy :)

Dessert:
Avani: Warm chocolate cake with raisin ice cream: The chocolate cake was warm and gooey in the middle, but the sides held up even once I started eating. I liked the ice cream with it, though Chris didn't.
Chris: Apple torte with caramel-y ice cream and delicious caramel goop. This was probably my favorite dessert here, and reminded me of the wonderful torte I had at the now defunct Le Chiminee in Palo Alto.
A-: Creme bruleé. Another one that I liked even though I typically don't like this dish. Even the cream was delicious.

EDIT:
The biggest downside was that they were very slow. We got there for a 7:45 reservation and didn't make it out until after 10:30, which resulted in us being a half hour late to Watchmen. They are also a little on the loud side.

I'm certainly up for coming back here. It is great to be able to think of a place that serves foie gras and is still borderline affordable.

Tortuga Party Time!

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:00:54 GMT

Saturday February 28 starting at 4pm:

Mountain View, CA (map)

Do you have a snazzy formal suit or dress that you'd love an excuse to wear? Do you need an excuse to buy one?

Now is your chance! Please come to our Tortuga Winter Formal and show off your best.

There will be:
- Drink Luge!
- Ice Slip-n-Slide!
- Frozen drinks!
- Hot drinks!
- Warm, fuzzy blankets to share with a friend!
- Rock Band!

Elegant attire admired but not required.

Link to the invite: http://www.mypunchbowl.com/partypage/de8b6e394bf2ebca

Music and Posting!

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:08:59 GMT

inferno0069 and I went to go see JoCo at Great American last Saturday. It was a fun show, even though I can't for the life of me get some of the songs out of my head. In particular,

The openers, Paul and Storm, were fantastic as always, including handing a thong to a little boy in the front row...

Also, this makes two entries in one day. Watch out, inferno0069!

Sleepy Inauguration Ramble

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:58:36 GMT

I felt tingly several times during Obama's speech, most of all when we said that America was a friend to all nations. Also, he said we should "put science back in it's rightful place" and included non-believers in his litany of groups of citizens. My favorite quote of the night was "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

I'm thrilled Bush is gone. I'm separately, and more surprisingly, thrilled that we have someone in office whom I respect intellectually, and whom I truly believe has the presence and the persistence to shape history around him.

I'm proud to be an American under President Barack Hussein Obama.

Moving Help?

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:56:56 GMT

Are any of you free this weekend to help inferno0069 move / help me distract him from moving? He's in El Cerrito and moving downstairs(!) in the same complex he's currently in. So, there are stairs, but there isn't much stuff or much distance, and we don't need to be done this weekend.

Here is a link to his post: http://inferno0069.livejournal.com/84956.html

Thanks!

Victory!

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:30:25 GMT

The protesters whimpered away (thanks in no small part to the 20+ police officers monitoring the construction site), the birds sang, and now we have some beautiful logs on Science Hill.

From the "You've got to be kidding me" Department.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:49:10 GMT

December 10, 2008

To: UCSC Community
Fr: Campus Provost David Kliger
Re: Mediated discussions about tree-sit on Biomedical building site

I am disappointed to report that the parties involved in mediated talks
seeking a voluntary end to the year-long "tree-sit" have mutually agreed to
end the talks without resolution. While we were unable to reach agreement
during these talks, I am appreciative of the efforts made by all parties to
bridge our differences.

Further information on the university's position with regard to the issues
raised by the protest can be found at:
http://www.ucsc.edu/biomedical_building/

With our agreement with the city, county, and citizen groups over our
Long-Range Development Plan now in place, we will continue with our plans
to construct the Biomedical Sciences Building. This is a state-funded
building that is needed by programs such as Molecular, Cell, and
Developmental Biology; our Health Sciences major; Biomolecular Engineering;
and Environmental Toxicology.

My thanks to the many of you who provided assistance and advice throughout
the mediation process. My thanks also for the patience shown during the
past 13 months by the faculty, staff, and students on our campus who have
been most impacted by this protest.

I fail to understand why these negotiations are even taking place. We've got dirty hippies (quite literally.. you should see the mess they leave in the bathrooms) trespassing in our trees. In any sane place, they'd be arrested and barred from campus. For the most part, they aren't even students! They are townies who have decided they have nothing better to do than prevent the university from opening up a bio-medical sciences building.

I consider myself a reasonable person. I would even support pitching in for the trampoline after we cut the tree out from under them. Maybe, just maybe, if I was feeling really nice, it could be there before.

Killers?

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:19:15 GMT

inferno0069 and I are considering going to go see The Killers (and Death Cab for Cutie, Bloc Party, Franz Fernidad, and Jack's Mannequin) at the Oracle Arena on 12/11 (concert link).

Cheap tickets are roughly $45 ($70 for good ones). We're not completely sold on it yet, given that it's a big venue and, while I'm a Killers fan, we're pretty much lukewarm on the rest.

Reply with either:
A.) How awesome the other bands are in concert, and we should really go!
B.) You want to go to the concert, and we should come with you!
C.) Dude, don't waste your time.
ETA: D.) Monkeys!

Much obliged,
-- Avani

Love

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:35:39 GMT

A very well spoken plea for gay marriage.