Thursday, February 12, 2009

Horked

Is "horked" really not a commonly used word? I just used it to describe a mess I'd created baking, and my mom had no idea what the word meant. What really amuses me is that her dad is an electrical engineer, and I'm fairly certain I've heard him use it a few times! Anyway, if you use the wrong type of baking chocolate in a flourless chocolate cake for a family Valentine's dinner, well, you just horked dessert and it's a runny mess. Not the elegant chocolate dessert that should have landed on the table! Anyone want fruit salad for dessert instead?

I've been surrounded by nerds for so long that I think that there are a lot of geeky words that I just use. "Horked", definitely. "Punted" which I picked up at MIT. There's the famous "foo" and "bar" and "baz" and then in security land "Alice" and "Bob." Munged. That's another favorite of mine, especially since perl is affectionally called "a data munging language."

Thomas

taking a playground break

taking a playground break

taking a playground break

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Making a toaster from scratch

On Boing Boing today, an article about making a toaster from scratch. Pretty funny. Also made me glad that I farm and I sew... I mean, those are easy ways to "reconnect" in comparison. ;) Really, people think I'm nuts for making bread and applesauce from scratch and growing a few tomatoes and eggplants? There's no microwave smelting involved at least. This guy really needs to start a blog to document this adventure...

Saturday, January 24, 2009

seagull


seagull
Originally uploaded by wck

on the elizabeth river in virginia

Thursday, January 22, 2009

braindump

* I wish I could write a shell script to schedule haircuts. What's with this having to pick a phone thing? ;-)
* Currently addicted to Rancid's Olympia WA song. Deeply, deeply addicted.
* I've had a partially written post on We'll Find a Way by the Ducky Boys floating around in my head for a few weeks, and I'm never going to finish it, so here it is in pieces

I never go up to midtown without a lot of grumbling, but I ended up spending the night in a hotel up on 50 something and 7th ave, just on the north edge of Times Square, on Dec 30. I was sitting at the desk, watching the sun go down and turn the skyscrapers a fantastic bright orange color, though the brown tinted hotel windows. It felt so 80s in some very weird way. I was listening to We'll Find a Way and a few other songs on a small playlist that kept looping and looping. Later in the evening I walked my way south down 7th, though the bitter cold, and after midnight back north up Broadway, still with the same mix. This song fit in with the crystal cold, with the blazing orangish lights so well that I now can't listen to it without the "hey nanana"s sounding like a setting sun and sharp cold air. And stumbling past crowds of tourists- walking Times Square a night early- some sense of dislocation, rooted by the chorus coming up and up all evening.

Friday, January 09, 2009

The "Harry Potter" problem in recommendations

Greg Linden covered the Harry Potter problem in a blog post on recommendation technologies a few years ago:
A very sharp and experienced developer named Eric wrote the first version of similarities that made it out to the Amazon website. It was great working with Eric. I learned much from him over the years.

The first version of similarities was quite popular. But it had a problem, the Harry Potter problem.

Oh, yes, Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a runaway bestseller. Kids buy it. Adults buy it. Everyone buys it.

So, take a book, any book. If you look at all the customers who bought that book, then look at what other books they bought, rest assured, most of them have bought Harry Potter.


-http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/03/early-amazon-similarities.html


When I worked on the personalization team we were still struggling with the problem- there are definite ways to identify a Harry Potter problem, but you have to remember to apply them. Adding to that, within certain genres there are Harry Potter books/music albums that are only runaway successes within those genres. If you compared those books to the general list of books that amazon sells, they wouldn't look like books that everyone has bought. Taking it a step further, if then if you narrow the scope to only related books you'll find that they are crazy popular.

The biggest side effect of the Harry Potter problem is that it weakens recommendations. For instance, I've bought the O'Reilly regex pocket book and the O'Reilly Python Cookbook and Ruby Cookbook. From those three books, you can pretty easily peg me as a web nerd and safely recommend a Steve Souder's website performance book. Those are very strongly correlated purchases in a narrow band of interest. However, because I'm a geek, I've also bought Neal Stephenson's latest book, Anathem. As have a few hundred thousand OTHER geeks. We could say that Anathem is a nerd's Harry Potter.

So I received an email today from amazon with a list of recommended books, most of which were based off Anathem and Daniel Silva's latest book, Moscow Rules (great book but also a bit of a Harry Potter widely-bought book). As you might guess, the recommendations were really bad. I wish that email had a link that I could click that would say "never recommend any of these books to me again please" -I could go to each detail page and mark that, but it would take a massive amount of time.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

stagger

I'm still working on that "blackberry flip vs ipod" blog post. I will still write it some day and I am still using the flip for my music player. I recently discovered that the flip has another minus against it, in that it has no "repeat 1" unless you make a playlist containing a single song and put that on repeat.

I've been kind of hooked on Stagger from the Street Dogs (it's on Back to the World) for a few days. This is the first song on the mix CD I have in my car at the moment, and I've listened to it every morning at the start of my ride to the train station. I don't know why in particular I've gotten so hung up on this song, although the opening is especially beautiful. It's not even my all time favorite Street Dogs song, so... who knows. Taste is weird.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

christmas card photo shoot


christmas card photo shoot
Originally uploaded by wck

Today was the one day that comes only once, each November. Yes, the annual "take a cute picture of my sister's kids for her christmas card" day. Dresses are pulled out. Squeeky toys to attract their attention are gathered. Lights are clipped to doorframes. And then it's total chaos. This was the first year I shot this in digital, which I suppose made it marginally more workable, although I do miss the black and white photos I usually take.

Anyway, we all sort of survived, and I'm sure next year's photo shoot day will be here in the blink of an eye.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

more music!

I think's possibly been over a year since I've posted anything about music to this blog. Which is insane, because I started it to write about music I listen to, and I certainly still listen, constantly. Probably more now that I have that looooong train ride to sit and enjoy an album.

Here's the mix that I listened to this morning. I've FINALLY got one device that does phone calls and plays music... and it's not an iphone. It's a blackberry flip, and in a week or so I'll write a review of it- I'm still figuring a few things out. I originally wrote about my desire for this kind of gadget in March 2005. Hello progress, nice to see you three and a half years later.

town pants So gadget snark aside, this could almost be a St Patricks day mix. I've been a bit heavier than usual into the Celtic punk/folk thing since our trip to the virginia beach irish festival 4 weeks ago.
  1. Phoenix Park - The Tossers
    A new album to me, which was stupid because they're a wonderful band and it's been out since forever. I love the beautiful melody. I want to wake up to this song every morning

  2. Smokin' Bowl - The Real McKenzies
    Two summers ago, walking down 8th ave in NYC, I remember a few weeks where I played this song over and over and over and over several more times.

  3. Rise Above - Black Flag
    see above comment, sans the hook

  4. A Rainy Night In Soho - The Pogues
    Rum, Sodomy and the Lash... is, I don't know... perfect. I adore this album. I know this is considered an "important" album, but I have such a deep personal connection with it. Walking in the evening, listening to this- I love most of the songs on here too much.

  5. Upstarts and Broken Hearts - Drop Kick Murphys
    One of my favorite songs ever

  6. Blue Period - Smithereens
    amazing use of strings. I listen to this one over and over and over.

  7. Galway Girl - Town Pants
    they played this at the festival, and wow- the hook from this one got stuck in my head for a few days


i voted



This is my 4th presidential election I've voted in. I was 19 in 1996, so I campaigned for Clinton in New Hampshire and voted for him, and I've voted Democratic in every election since. It's been exciting to see so many other people my age who never bothered to register or vote to actually follow through and do both of those this year.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Dust

I have finally- thanks to a 5 year old who was too inquisitive with my point and shoot digital camera and the rising costs of film development- broken down and gotten a DSLR. Yes, I'm the last photo nerd on the planet to get one, I know. I still adore film, but Kate's doing in of the lens on my little digital elph pushed me to just get a DSLR.

My new camera has one of the built in dust sensors, so over lunch today with another former art major (like me now slumming as a software person) we discussed how you used to deal with dust with film developing and printing. If you had a speck of dust on a print that you just couldn't get rid of, you had to manually paint it out. With a real paintbrush and ink. I'm serious! I spent so many hours hunched over my black and white prints before a show, with a teensy paintbrush, making tiny dots with a bit of ink to simulate film grain over dust spots. My eyes ache just thinking about it. And really... talk about an arcane skill! This is one of those spots where I guess digital technology really has a massive advantage over film.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

macarons

Until the trip to Seattle this summer, I had been perfectly content to think of pistachio macaroons as a Paris thing. However, when I was out poking around Pike Place Market, I discovered that Le Panier now carries macarons. Hmmm... and they're delicious.

I just stumbled over a blog post on macaron reviews in NYC: In Search of the French Macaron in NYC…. Now I forsee a side trip to Rockefeller Center at some point.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

food and security

Via emergent chaos, a blog post on foodies and security nerds.

I find it interesting that security people and foodies are strongly correlated. Or at least are strongly correlated among the ones I know.


Too funny. So here's my list. Bold is food that you have eaten.

  1. Venison
  2. Nettle tea
  3. Huevos rancheros
  4. Steak tartare
  5. Crocodile
  6. Black pudding
  7. Cheese fondue
  8. Carp
  9. Borscht
  10. Baba ghanoush
  11. Calamari
  12. Pho
  13. PB&J sandwich
  14. Aloo gobi
  15. Hot dog from a street cart
  16. Epoisses
  17. Black truffle
  18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
  19. Steamed pork buns
  20. Pistachio ice cream
  21. Heirloom tomatoes
  22. Fresh wild berries
  23. Foie gras
  24. Rice and beans
  25. Brawn, or head cheese
  26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
  27. Dulce de leche
  28. Oysters
  29. Baklava
  30. Bagna cauda
  31. Wasabi peas
  32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
  33. Salted lassi
  34. Sauerkraut
  35. Root beer float
  36. Cognac with a fat cigar
  37. Clotted cream tea
  38. Vodka jelly
  39. Gumbo
  40. Oxtail
  41. Curried goat
  42. Whole insects
  43. Phaal
  44. Goat's milk
  45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
  46. Fugu
  47. Chicken tikka masala
  48. Eel
  49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
  50. Sea urchin
  51. Prickly pear
  52. Umeboshi
  53. Abalone
  54. Paneer
  55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
  56. Spaetzle
  57. Dirty gin martini
  58. Beer above 8% ABV
  59. Poutine
  60. Carob chips
  61. S'mores
  62. Sweetbreads
  63. Kaolin
  64. Currywurst
  65. Durian
  66. Frog's Legs
  67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
  68. Haggis
  69. Fried plantain
  70. Chitterlings or andouillette
  71. Gazpacho
  72. Caviar and blini
  73. Louche absinthe
  74. Gjetost or brunost
  75. Roadkill
  76. Baijiu
  77. Hostess Fruit Pie
  78. Snail
  79. Lapsang souchong
  80. Bellini
  81. Tom yum
  82. Eggs Benedict
  83. Pocky
  84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
  85. Kobe beef
  86. Hare
  87. Goulash
  88. Flowers
  89. Horse
  90. Criollo chocolate
  91. Spam
  92. Soft shell crab
  93. Rose harissa
  94. Catfish
  95. Mole poblano
  96. Bagel and lox
  97. Lobster Thermidor
  98. Polenta
  99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
  100. Snake


-the HTML is via a handy form that will generate the html for you. http://reddywhip.org/lj/foods/