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Below are the 25 most recent friends journal entries:

May 9th, 2008
08:39 pm ioerror [Link]	6,666,666,666 According to the US Census population clock, we've hit a remarkable number: (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
07:10 pm bramcohen [Link]	Horse Genetics A horse recently died after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby. This kind of thing happens a lot. How is it that horses are so fragile that they die just from stumbling while running? They're overbred for racing, making them fast but not really very healthy. I have a simple solution to the horse overbreeding problem: Have races consisting of all genetically identical horses. Don't laugh. It's gonna happen. (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 8th, 2008
11:33 pm bramcohen [Link]	The American School Religion Credit scores in the United States are used as the end all and be all of one's credit score, nonsensically used for approving credit cards, mortgages, and rentals, as if those all had the same risk profile. Moody's ratings are being criticized now for being taken as gospel, as if 'AAA rated' was the only useful thing which could be said about an investment. And my cursory research indicates that the same thing is starting to happen with Zillow estimates. It appears to be that as soon as any official rating appears, americans will cease to apply any judgement of their own and simply accept the official number as gospel. It occurred to me today what's going on here. It's the religion of the Grade Point Average. Americans are so completely indoctrinated from a young age that a single official number is the sum total of all that can be said of a person's moral worth that they're psychologically incapable of evaluating people or investments in any other way, even when it's their job to do so. Hooray for US education, teaching those important lessons about life. (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
02:06 pm warlord_mit [Link]	Wow! What service! I sent off my passport renewal on April 30th. My new passport arrived today. That's literally 1 week turnaround time. Sweet. I like my new passport photo, too. :-D Current Location: Home Current Mood: surprised (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
05:37 am bramcohen [Link]	Chess with Fewer Draws An article on chess variants with fewer draws. The most obvious modification of eliminating stalemate is proposed by several people, including me. Beyond that, by far the best suggestion is to allow a king to capture the opposing king if it's a knight's move away. Someone should do an analysis of some basic endgames with that rule, for example knight versus bishop. (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 7th, 2008
04:58 pm twitch124 [Link]	Upcoming Shows (5/7/2008) I like live music and I like going to shows with friends. I'm willing to be the person who buys tickets in advance and drives the mob to shows. So I make a post every Wednesday to get people to go to upcoming shows I want to see. I don't go to all the shows I list in these posts, but if people commit to going I go. Bold means I already have tickets to that show. Italic means I don't have tickets but I'm 95% sure I'm going to that show. This week: Thu May 8 KRS-One @ harper's ferry. $25 Sat May 10 WFNX Best Music Poll @ BOA Pavillion (harborlights). I'm going to be in NJ, but the lineup is really good this year. ( Read more... ) (Leave a comment)
May 6th, 2008
06:20 pm jessiehl [Link]	Oh well I did not get elected to the MIT Corporation. Congrats to Marta. I still think their election procedures are ridiculous. Such is life. I would love to know what the actual vote tallies were, but I bet they won't show that. Oh well, I have one more year of eligibility. Post on my vacation/the Kentucky Derby later, probably. Current Mood: disappointed (5 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:39 am maradydd [Link]	And now, your comedy break Tonight's Wikipedia bingo led me to the MySpace home of Scared Weird Little Guys, a musical comedy duo out of Melbourne, Australia. Notable tracks: "Cleaning Out My Tuckerbag," an increasingly Eminem-flavoured parody of "Waltzing Matilda", and "Christmas Day (The Bawdy Song)," 1:59 of fun for anyone who still giggles at "Sweet Violets" or "Miss Susie Had a Steamboat". My favourite, though, is the innocuously-titled "1985", the video for which you should totally watch: I like this video because it works on so many levels -- lyrical, musical, and visual. (Oh, and it goes without saying that this could never have existed without fair use provisions.) I'm a big fan of structural gimmicks like the ones they're employing, and the tune is, dare I say, one of the best riffs on '80s melody and instrumentation that I've ever heard. If they had a CD I could buy, I'd buy it. Tags: the man who likes strawberries (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 4th, 2008
06:30 pm twitch124 [Link]	NIN show, 8/8/2008 Anyone want to go to the NIN show on 8/8/2008 in Worcester? I can get fan club presale tickets. (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
02:58 pm ioerror [Link]	A good friend traveling to the UK One of my best friends that I've known for my entire life is traveling to the UK for the first time. He's perhaps a little worried about not knowing anyone. I'd like to help introduce him to some friends and perhaps even some strangers. He's a really stylish graphic designer, he's a wildly brilliant artist, a solid human on every front and humorous at the right times. He'll be in London around the 24th of May and he's planning to travel to Scotland sometime during his trip. I believe he'll fly out of London on the 8th of June to return to California. If anyone reading this has an interest in meeting a great guy, I'd really appreciate it. I'm certain he would too. Drop a note here and I'll give you proper introductions... (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 3rd, 2008
11:49 pm twitch124 [Link]	Nick Cave Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are touring again. The Oct 4 show in NYC isn't sold out yet. I bought 2 tickets for it. If you're interested in one, email me ($65). (Leave a comment)
May 2nd, 2008
07:12 pm ioerror [Link]	2piR at Maker Faire I'm sitting on top of the sensor board for 2piR at the Maker Faire in San Mateo. I just finished putting the final touches on the Debian machine that controls everything. We're in the process of hooking up the ignition system and the sensors to the controller board. Soon we'll do a leak test and then we'll burn some fuel off! If you're in the San Francisco bay area this weekend, I highly suggest you come down to the Maker Faire on Saturday evening (find us in the fire area of the map) to play with our interactive fire project! (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:31 am ioerror [Link]	On feeling free from a burden Sometimes there are moments so great that it can only be accurately described with a euphemism from another century. "It's the bee's knees" "The cat's whiskers" "The cat's pajamas" "The eel's ankle" "The elephant's instep" "The snake's hip" (11 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 1st, 2008
05:05 pm ioerror [Link]	Japan and learning Japanese I've decided that this is the year that I will go to Japan. This is a big deal for me. I've wanted to do this for a very very long time. I have lots of things in my head and I'm sure I won't be able to accomplish all of them. I will visit with some of my friends who live in Japan. I'm going to see about staying long enough to study Aikido at the first Aikido dojo. I want to try to meet and possibly photograph my very favorite Japanese artists. I also want to start studying Japanese in both written and verbal form far before I even land. This is the obligatory post stating that this has begun. If you have advice about Japan, Japanese culture, learning to read and write Japanese (such as things that are useful, schools you'd suggest, etc) or anything Japan or Asian culture related (even specific history books) - Please let me know! (40 comments \| Leave a comment)
05:06 pm allonymist [Link]	The best chili I can make. So first off, I eat dead things. If you don't, then forget about this recipe and go get a copy of the Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero and make their Manzana Chile Verde recipe, which is the best vegan chili you'll ever eat, and if you find a better one please let me know. It's for, um, a friend. But anyway, this recipe isn't for you. Similarly, if you come from insert chili region here and you think that my use of insert ingredient here is anathema, then before you tell me so, please realize that as a Massachusetts resident I will only listen intently and learn from your lecture until I think I've gleaned all the chili lore from you that I can, at which point I will start extolling the virtues of chili diversity and gushing about what a wonderful world we'll live in once we all learn to celebrate our chili differences, and nobody wants that. Ok? Ok. Here's what you will need for ingredients: About 2 pounds of beef. Anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 will do. You could use ground beef if you want, but what I usually do is go to the store and get the cheapest steak or roast or whatever that they have. 2-4 peppers. Bell peppers of different colors will do, as will poblano chiles if you want a more balanced heat. 2-3 onions. 3 little ones or 2 big ones. Use your judgment. Beer. If you have no taste, I guess you could use a cheap beer, but lately I like using a domestic Belgian-style ale, like Ommegang. 4 medium cloves or so of garlic. You can even use garlic powder if you're feeling lame or lazy. 1 tablespoon or so of cumin seeds. Get them in bulk; they seem to keep forever. Half a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Skip this if you don't want to invest in fennel seeds. Do not skip the cumin seeds. 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon, optionally. 1 1/2 teaspoon or so oregano 1 teaspoon or so basil. 1-2 teaspoons of chocolate. 2 teaspoons of corn flour. This is (for the purposes of this recipe) the same as masa harina, but not the same as polenta (which is more coarse). A bay leaf. A 28-oz can (give or take) of whole tomatoes 2 16-oz cans of beans. These would be optional, but I hear I can irritate Texans [†] by saying they're required, so there you go. Salt and pepper to taste Chiles. It's chile con carne, right? You will need at least: One dried big mild chile, like an ancho or a new mexico chile. More chiles for heat. They can be fresh or dried. I like to use 2 fresh jalapeños, 1 dried chipotle, and 1 dried habanero, but do whatever you want, ok? If you don't like spicy stuff, just use 2 mild chiles instead of 1, and forget the hot ones. Here's what you'll need for pots: A big dutch oven (a.k.a. a cast iron pot, a.k.a. a pot with really big thermal mass and even heating) A small pan of any kind but nonstick. Here's what you do: Prepare the fresh ingredients. To do this: Chop the mild peppers into pieces about 1-2 cm square. Chop the fresh chiles into pieces about 5-10 mm square, first discarding seeds and ribs. (Be careful, okay?) Cut the onions into pieces about 5 mm square if you hate big onion pieces, or about 2 cm square if you love big onion pieces. If you're using fresh garlic, mince it or put it through a garlic press. If you're using not-ground beef, then trim it and grind it, or (as I prefer) trim it and cut it into cubes about 1.5 cm on a side. (You know the drill, right? Stick the meat in your freezer for about 20 minutes so it firms up, then cut off the big pieces of fat[], then slice what's left along the longest dimension. Then slice each of those pieces, so you wind up with a bunch of long thin strips. Then bunch them all up and slice them into cubes.) Make some chili powder. To do this: You start by getting your little pan out and toast the cumin seeds, the fennel seeds, the mild chiles, and the hot chiles. I recommend that you toast each of these separately, since none of them takes more than 20-60 seconds, and they all seem to go at their own speed. For big stuff (like chiles), chop or crunch them up a little before you toast them, and discard the seeds if you don't want super-spicy. You'll know something is toasted when you just start to smell it or it just starts to change color, whatever comes first... but be careful about inhaling stuff from chiles, for obvious reasons, ok? Take all that stuff you just toasted and grind it. You do this by taking your backup spices-only coffee grinder and grinding them for a 10-20 seconds or so until they make a coarse flaky powder. (What, you don't have an extra coffee grinder for spices? Get one. They cost what, $5? $10? You can afford that. It costs less than a pizza.) Put the chili powder in a cup. Add other dry spices, including cinnamon (if you're using that), garlic powder (if you're using that), basil, oregano, and pepper. Cover with beer and stir gently. It will want to overflow, so add the beer slowly and don't fill the cup all the way at first. Start heating up your big pot over medium-high heat. Brown[] the beef in batches[], and put it all in a bowl or something as it gets finished. Put a little oil[] in the pot, and add the onions, and stir a bit for a minute or two so they don't burn. Then add the mild fresh peppers and keep stirring. Once the onions and peppers start to soften (like, 6-10 minutes) add the fresh chiles and stir some more. Cook them till they're a little softened, like 2-3 minutes. Dump the beef back in. Stir it in, and let it heat back up for a minute or two. Give the beer-spice mixture another stir, and dump it in. Stir the pot again, scraping the bottom well, and then turn the heat down to medium. Open up your canned tomatoes and crush them. It might help to use your hands. It might help to use a bowl. Maybe you should have used diced tomatoes if you didn't know how to crush tomatoes. I hope you weren't wearing a white shirt! Anyway, dump the newly crushed tomatoes and their juice into the pot. Stir again. Add the bay leaf. Add more liquid (water or beer) if stuff isn't pretty much covered by liquid. At this point, check your refrigerator. If you have any mostly-empty jars of salsa that you need to get rid of, and they haven't gone bad yet (taste them to be sure!) then dump them into the chili. Turn heat down to a simmer and cover. Cook. How long? At least an hour; 2 or 3 hours would be better. If liquid levels gets low, add more water or beer. Stir periodically, so it doesn't stick. Uncover and turn heat back up a little so it simmers again. Add beans, if you're using beans.[**] Keep stirring. After 30-60 minutes, when the stuff still seems a little soupier than you'd like, add the chocolate and the corn flour. At this point you'll need to stir more than you did before: the corn flour will thicken it, but it will also want to burn more than it did before. Stir for another 15-20 minutes. Take out the bay leaf. Taste for seasoning, and season as appropriate. Now it's chili. Serve with whatever you want: i like rice and cheese. If you like tortilla chips, that's good too, but you should've used ground beef. If you want it over spaghetti, then congratulations: you've won the weird contest.[††] Refrigerate or freeze your leftovers. If anybody tells you you made chili wrong, then act real apologetic and ask them to bring you some of their* chili so you can understand what real chili is supposed to taste like. *Score!* Now you have two kinds of chili! [†] I've got nothing against Texans per se... it's just that those "Don't mess with Texas" bumper stickers have made me want to mess with Texas for years. I hope you understand. [] If you're totally crazy, then brown up the big pieces of fat along with the beef, and throw them into the stew while it's cooking. You'll wind up with a fattier chili, but there'll be more beefy goodness.[‡] [] To brown stuff, throw it in the pot in an even layer then leave it alone. When it's brown on the bottom (and "brown" doesn't mean "gray"), turn it over. [] If you throw all the beef into the pot at once, it'll release too much liquid, and that liquid will steam the beef. You don't want steamed beef. You want browned beef. [*] How much oil? You know, enough. Enough so the onions and peppers won't stick, but not too much more than that. Maybe like a tablespoon, tops? You should know: you're cooking things off LJ! [**] Pintos or kidneys are good. [††] Not to say that "weird" is bad. "Weird" sometimes is another word for "yummy." I hear this is how people have chili in parts of Ohio. [‡] Yes, "beefy goodness" is indeed another term for fat. It can also mean fond, but in this case it doesn't. Thanks for asking! Tags:** chili, passive-aggressive, recipe (Leave a comment)
04:13 pm jessiehl [Link]	Non-spoilery Final Fantasy: Yielding Stone was an awesome game (and you don't have to be an FF geek to enjoy it - I have never played an FF game and I loved it). Thank you to the GMs for running it! If you did not play this time around, you should totally app for the next run! I was sad that my being sick made the game somewhat harder to play, mostly on day 2. The night before day 2, I was coughing a whole bunch, and I was exhausted from being sick for more than a week and having spent the evening in a high action game, so I wanted to sleep, and I wanted to make sure that inari0 would sleep and not be kept awake by my coughing. So I took some cough syrup. After half an hour, it wasn't working, so I took some more cough syrup. I had not taken into account that I had eaten very little that day and was significantly dehydrated. Big mistake. Instead of sleeping, I spent the entire night either being awake and violently nauseous in bed, or sitting by the toilet trying to induce vomiting in the hope that it would make me feel better. Then I went to play eight hours of game for day 2. In total, I spent 42.5 straight hours awake. But despite that, I had a lot of fun! And while I could have had better results, I don't think I completely sucked. People's costumes were great. laura47's roleplaying was great. The plots and characters were interesting. It was a good game. Current Mood: cheerful (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
01:01 pm ioerror [Link]	Whistler (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
01:00 pm ioerror [Link]	Jen and Souls overlooking German hills (Leave a comment)
11:50 am ioerror [Link]	Theo from OpenBSD (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
11:49 am ioerror [Link]	Audrey and Nancy in Vienna (6 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 30th, 2008
01:57 pm twitch124 [Link]	Upcoming shows (4/30/2008) I like live music and I like going to shows with friends. I'm willing to be the person who buys tickets in advance and drives the mob to shows. So I make a post every Wednesday to get people to go to upcoming shows I want to see. I don't go to all the shows I list in these posts, but if people commit to going I go. Bold means I already have tickets to that show. Italic means I don't have tickets but I'm 95% sure I'm going to that show. Free tickets: I have 4 free tickets to see Wyclef Jean from the Fugees at UMass Boston this Sunday. Anyone want one? $46- I have an extra ticket for the 5/6 My Chemical Romance show in Philly. We're daytripping down from Boston. This week: Thu May 1, Fri May 2 If you're in North Carolina, Arcade Fire is campaigning for Barack Obama and doing free shows. (I am personally a Hilary Clinton supporter, but will vote for any Democrat in the presidential election.) Sun May 4 Wyclef Jean @Umass Boston 3pm. I have 4 free tickets. Anyone want one? Tue May 6 My Chemical Romance roadtrip to see them in Philadelphia. $46+ a share of the gas and tolls. Leave Boston early Tuesday morning, back in Boston Wed. before 9 am. (mob: me, farwing, faerieboots, 1 extra ticket) ( Upcoming shows ) (Leave a comment)
April 29th, 2008
07:03 pm ebenezer [Link]	declaring victory and going home, again! Dear friends, I have returned to Boston! I have accepted a research fellowship at Harvard University. It is exciting to return to an exciting research space after a brief hiatus -- so much has changed in the world in the past year and a half, and I have yet to make sense of it all. For those of you in Boston, we should get together if we have not already. For those of you in New York, I will return frequently to visit friends and family. As usual, I chose a walking commute that takes less than five minutes -- which means that I live near Harvard Square, 02138. My new mailing address is: PO Box 380812 Cambridge, MA 02238-0812 Note that I replaced the "42" from my old PO Box number with "81", so the product of the digits is unchanged. (21 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:10 pm maradydd [Link]	[Orphan Works] Keeping y'all updated; radio semi-silence As promised: The House version of the Orphan Works Act of 2008 The Senate version of the Orphan Works Act of 2008 As some readers have observed, there are slightly different provisions in the two bills, and only one or the other of them (possibly amended) can be signed into law; either the House version will pass the House and be voted on in the Senate, or the Senate version will pass the Senate and be voted on in the House, or neither version will pass its own chamber and it won't be an issue. I intend to post a point-by-point comparison of the two bills, but it may be a while in coming. My friend Eric's death is hitting me pretty hard, and I'm not really up for doing a lot of blogging at the moment. In the meantime, Alex Curtis over at Public Knowledge has some good commentary; feel free to collect other useful links in the comments to this post, if you like. Current Mood: blank (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 28th, 2008
11:00 pm laura47 [Link]	Dragoncon So, who is going to dragoncon? i will probably go if enough awesome people will be there. http://www.dragoncon.org/ (20 comments \| Leave a comment)
02:46 pm ioerror [Link]	Leaving Kink I gave notice today at Kink. I have two weeks left and hopefully I'll be able to hire someone to replace me. I have a lot to say about why I left, where I'm going, what I'm doing with my time, about the experiences I've had here and how I feel about leaving. I imagine that they'll replace me, if anyone is looking for a Senior Unix Administrator position with a focus on security, drop me a line. (27 comments \| Leave a comment)

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