Merry Christmas, Bitches.

GameCRAWL

So I signed up for GameFly. For all you non-gamers out there, it's like netflix but for videogames. Awesome concept, but I've found it to be a little lacking in execution.
So far, I've received 8 games from gamefly and they've shipped semi-promptly and arrived semi-quickly. These 8 games have all been older titles (Fun but older). Titles that I passed up buying earlier in the year or last year thinking that someday I would get them on the cheap or rent them...as I'm doing now. These games have all been low on my list, with a stack of new releases atop the list. I've had two games in particular at the top of my queue for as long as I've been a member, those two games were Assassin's Creed II and Modern Warfare II. I ended up buying AC II and I'm still waiting to get my hands of MW II. You see, none of the top 5 games in my queue ever ship. So I started putting in games that might be fun, but that I wasn't really interested in. Games like Halo Wars and WET.
When those games arrived, I sighed, feeling as though I've settled. So enough is enough, I deleted all the games I wasn't too thrilled about and left the top 5 creme de la creme.
I returned my last game and it got to GameFly last wednesday. Since then I've been waiting for one my top 5 games to ship. Nothing. I wait. Nothing.
Granted, not all the games are as available as the rest. Everyone wants to play Modern Warfare II, so it has "low" availability. Which means it has a less than 25% chance of shipping. Fine, but.... I have other games in my list with "high" availability or even the oh so falsely labeled "Available Now."
So i waited three days and nothing has shipped. Finally I wrote an email. I was polite. I asked "Where the fuck are my fucking games you puss headed sons-of-whores?"
I get a little intense about my games.

I get this email in return:

Dear Peter,

Our apologies. We have reviewed your account and noted that you currently have only very popular releases in your GameQ. ...[blah...]... Please note the availability statuses on the Web site reflect inventory across all of our shipping centers. While the game may reflect "Available Now” or “High" in your Q, it may only be available in the shipping center that is more distant from your residence. We try to ship games from your primary shipping center to allow you to receive your games faster.

To ensure we ship games in the fairest possible manner, we factor in the length of time that you have been waiting for a game (once a return is received in our facility) and the time the desired available game was placed in your GameQ. ...[blah blah]... We also recommend you add more titles to your GameQ so you do not miss out on receiving games (i.e. don't you want to play viva pinata or Iron Man the game or maybe Halo 2??????).

[blah blah blah]
Sincerely,

The GameFly Team
Email: support@gamefly.com
Online help: http://www.gamefly.com/help

----------------------

I'm going to copy and paste something again for emphasis:

While the game may reflect "Available Now” or “High" in your Q, it may only be available in the shipping center that is more distant from your residence. We try to ship games from your primary shipping center to allow you to receive your games faster.

*ahem* even though the game may reflect AVAILABLE NOW, we're not going to ship it to you. Becaaaaaaause, and this is the great part, we would rather you not have a game at all, than make you wait an extra day or two to get the game.

This is the sound of me blinking in astonishment.

Further-frakking-more...
The top 5 games in my queue have availabilities as follows:

Medium
Low
High
High
Very Low

With these ranks, GameFly associates a probablity of immediate shipping. For Medium games it's 50%-74%, low is 25%-50%, etc... With the percentages given that should mean the probability that 1 of the games ships immediately is... (and here I'm using the most conservative values of their stated percentages, i.e. giving them the benefit of the doubt)
1-.5*.75*.25*.25*.95 = .9777

Given that the ranks stay the same, the probability that I don't get a game for three days is (0.0223)^3 = 0.000011

Something is rotten in the state of Ohio.

come for the abs, stay for the action

Let's get one thing straight, movie adaptations of videogames have thus far been garbage. The king of the genre Uwe Boll, really knows how to such the lifeforce out of a idea and paste its withered corpse on a movie screen.  Except for a few notable exceptions in the immediate past, the same has gone the other way. Take a movie, try to turn it into a videogame, and watch as a ten thousand gamers through their controllers into a wall. Notable exceptions are the newest Batman game, the newest Wolverine game, and the game based on the time life classic My Teenage Pregnancy. 
However, there is a chance that the Prince of Persia movie could be decent. The trailers look like your stereotypical Jerry Bruckheimer film, i.e. all balls and no brains, but there's something about it that makes my thumbs twitch. Take a look.

Oh shirtless Jake Gylenhall, is there no genre of film you can't master.

I can't wait for the romantic comedy based off of Left4Dead 2. In theaters this Spring.

me vs. my subconscious

An open letter to the girl in my dream:

First of all, let me apologize. By the look on your face, it was clear to me that you were upset when you got splashed. I could tell that a significant amount of water got on your book and it was, perhaps, ruined from the experience. Before I ask what you were doing sitting in the water fountain in the middle of the shopping mall, let me remind you that I did, indeed, get up to locate a towel for you. Just because I got lost on the second story (near banana republic), which, subsequently, turned into a medieval dungeon, doesn't mean I wasn't sincere in the undertaking. Although you said nothing, I am certain that you were displeased by the entire engagement.  Had I known someone was sitting under the footbridge that spanned the fountain, I would not have leapt in near that exact spot. I pray that, in hindsight, you find my action irreverent instead of malevolent. If ever I return to your mall, which, as I recall, was almost entirely populated with bipedal lizardfolk, I shall make a point to stay clear of the fountain. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Sprocketplug

Trust

Let's set the mood. To start, fire up iTunes and put on In the House-In A Heartbeat by John Murphy. Go for it. I'll wait...
You got it rolling? Great. Now imagine you're on the roof of an abandoned hotel somewhere outside Atlanta. You're with three people you just met and each of you is carrying a 9mm pistol. You look over the side of the roof and you see a crash of people below. From this distance, the group resembles a mosh pit, or a throng of shoppers waiting for the doors to open on Black Friday. Some sway back and forth as if entranced by some music that sits beyond the range of human sensitivity. Some look around expectantly, as if they are on the lookout for the 16 year old checkout girl to come unlock the gate. But all are silent. If you were to descend towards the group, the first thing you would notice is the smell. It is the smell of raw beef left to spoil. It is the smell of acid soaked fish congealing in the summer sun. It is like a physical blow to your head, and were your eyes not filled with tears you could see that these are not people at all. The ones that still have most of their skin are the color of bleached blue jeans, and their hands open and close, open and close, open and close.
Your next step makes the stair creak and 100 heads turn in unison. One of them opens its mouth and like birds in flight the group turns and launches towards you.



I just finished the final campaign in Left4Dead 2. I like to play the whole game offline with computer controlled teammates before jumping online so I'm a little better at not getting my team killed. The final chapter of the final campaign is a bridge. You have to fight your way across the bridge and into a rescue helicopter. There is no single moment of respite during the entire chapter. You run and you shoot and you keep moving or you die. On the second try I was 50 feet from the chopper when I was taken down by a dozen infected. The hardest part about playing with computer teammates is that they always let you take the lead. You're always the one in front and therefore the one who takes most of the damage from the special infected...like this guy:


So on the fourth try I am getting frustrated. We work our way past the halfway point and the zombies come like grains of rice being poured from a measuring cup. They slide around cars, crawl over the skeletons of 16 wheelers and station wagons. They are uncountable and relentless and I lead the way. Firing, reloading, pushing, punching, struggling for each foot of forward progression. And then I hear it, the sound of helicopter blades. I pull out my adrenaline pen and jam it into my thigh. I sprint, pushing past the mob of infected, killing many, avoiding many more, until I stand before the chopper. I turn around and I am alone. Rochelle is dead. Coach is on the ground yelling for help and Nick, with only a sliver of health, is fighting his way back to Coach. I put in a new clip and take a step forward, and then Nick goes down. Coach and Nick are still alive, incapacitated, but alive. The infected are pummeling them with fists and feet, elbows and knees. I can hear their cries. I hesitate.

I turn and step into the chopper.

As it takes off, I can see the infected below, like spiders crawling from a freshly hatched eggsac. I wonder if there will ever be a day when I don't see this in my dreams.

Zombie Survival

Take a minute to fill out this sheet. Who knows, it might save your life some day.

Here's my take

Oh Joss...

An Open Letter

Dear Sirs/Ma'ams,

I am Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Titan A.E., Parenthood (not the movie) (or the new series) (or the one where 'hood' was capitalized 'cause it was a pun), and myriad other legendary tales. I have heard through the 'grapevine' that the Terminator franchise is for sale, and I am prepared to make a pre-emptive bid RIGHT NOW to wrap this dealio up. This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.

No, you didn't miscount. That's four -- FOUR! -- zeroes after that one. That's to show you I mean business. And I mean show business. Nikki Finke says the Terminator concept is played. Well, here's what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don't ever notice me. The Terminator story is as formative and important in our culture -- and my pretend play -- as any I can think of. It's far from over. And before you Terminator-Owners (I have trouble remembering names) rush to cash that sweet cheque, let me give you a taste of what I could do with that franchise:

1) Terminator... of the Rings! Yeah, what if he time-travelled TOO far... back to when there was dragons and wizards? (I think it was the Dark Ages.) Hasta La Vista, Boramir! Cool, huh? "Now you gonna be Gandalf the Red!" RRRRIP! But then he totally helps, because he's a cyborg and he doesn't give a s#&% about the ring -- it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he's doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it. (I will also offer $10,000 for the Lord of the Rings franchise).

2) More Glau. Hey. There's a reason they're called "Summer" movies.

3) Can you say... musical? Well don't. Even I know that's an awful idea.

4) Christian Bale's John Connor will get a throat lozenge. This will also help his Batwork (ten grand for that franchise too, btw.)

5) More porn. John Connor never told Kyle Reese this, but his main objective in going to the past was to get some. What if there's a lot of future-babies that have to be made? Cue wah-wah pedal guitar -- and dollar signs!

6) The movies will stop getting less cool.

Okay. There's more -- this brain don't quit! (though it has occasionally been fired) -- but I think you get my drift. I really believe the Terminator franchise has only begun to plumb the depths of questioning the human condition during awesome stunts, and I'd like to shepherd it through the next phase. The money is there, but more importantly, the heart is there. But more importantly, money. Think about it. End this bloody bidding war before it begins, and put the Terminator in the hands of someone who watched the first one more than any other movie in college, including "Song of Norway" (no current franchise offer). Sincerely, Joss Whedon.

Stopping Power

A few weeks ago a friend and I went to a Shooting Range in a north eastern suburb of Columbus. He had just bought a new shotgun and I'm always up for perforating paper cutouts. We rented a few guns such as a 9mm Beretta Pistol and a 9mm Carbine rifle. We were having a great time shooting zombie cutouts and what not, and then my buddy decided he wanted something a little bigger. We went out and chatted with the staff for a while and then my buddy said "Let's try that one." I looked up and he was pointing at the largest handgun I had ever seen. Why was it the largest handgun I had ever seen? Because it's the largest handgun made.
It's a Smith and Wesson 500 and it's large enough to be a gag prop on a Quentin Tarantino movie.
The bullets for this thing are 5 dollars a pop and worth every penny.

For those of you familiar with firearms, here's a comparison of bullet size for some common calibers. The .500 is in the middle.



I was first to fire the thing:




Notice that I wasn't quite prepared for the kick. I was wearing earplugs under those earmuffs and the sound was still impressive. The concussion from the blast sent my heart bouncing off my ribcage.
Because of the shotguns and the rifle we were using, they put us on the rifle range, so the people around us were firing some pretty heavy rounds, but when this gun went off, everyone stopped shooting and looked over, asking "What is that??"
At point blank range, the muzzle flare alone could knock over a moose.

When my buddy shot after me, he had much better control. Now the perspective in these videos don't do the gun justice. The size of the thing was immense.




Some Pics:

All-Terrain Attack Transport

Behold the construction of the behemoth AT-AT.

Friday Night

So you may be wondering: "Sprocketplug, what does an incredibly popular, attractive, and interesting person like you do on a Friday night?"

Well, friends lemme tell you. Last Friday I was feeling a little ill. I had been sneezing as though the great dust bowl of the 1930's had lodged itself in my sinuses. I was feeling better after self medicating with various narcotics and low-level hallucinogens lying about the apartment, but I decided to spend a quiet evening at home.

So I decided to start the 7th and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I started around 2:00pm and was still going strong around 9:00. You should never doubt my ability to binge watch television series on DVD. (cf Mr. Gubbins and The West Wing also cf Mr. Gubbins and Psyche). As I watched this delightfully dark and deranged season, I began assembling my Lego™ AT-AT. I had almost finished the walker when I got a text message from my buddy asking me to meet him and his new girlfriend at the Newport to see the Sublime tribute band, Badfish. He asked me what I was doing and I paused for a moment and in one of those rare moments of self-awareness I became a little embarrassed. I was home alone on a Friday night watching Buffy and playing with Legos.
I'm proud to say that after that moment of embarrassment, I thought, this is exactly what I WANT to be doing. So there.
However, I really did want to meet his new girlfriend and I decided it might not be a bad idea to get outside once that day. So I went. It was pretty fun, the Newport is a great venue, and even if I'm not the biggest fan of Sublime, the music was good and my buddy's new girlfriend is pretty rad.
I don't spend a lot of time at these venues so a couple of things struck me:
1) Undergraduate Freshmen look like they're 12
2) I'm kind of a square

The three of us were hanging out by the back, near the exit for the smokers. This guy walks up and asks if I'll watch his beer while he goes out. There's a ledge that runs along the back wall from where we're standing to the exit and no drinks are allowed outside. He says that he left his drink there before, but it got swiped (probably by some 12 year old). I said no problem and I watched his drink. He came back a little while later and thanked me profusely then offered me a "nugget" for my troubles. I said it's not a problem and that I didn't need any payment. I say this because A) it really wasn't any trouble and B) I have no idea what a nugget is. If it's pot, which I'm reasonably sure it is, I probably wouldn't smoke something that this guy was holding. He looked a little sketchy. You know, the kind of guy who's built up such a tolerance that lacing his weed with a little powdered detergent just makes his fingertips tingle.

The show ended, the crowd shuffled out and I declared the night a success. Since then I've watched all but 4 episodes of Season 7. The show is amazing. Maybe later I'll try to describe why I love it so much, but for now, I'm not unable to unpack my heart with words.

the pater familias

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Revivification

Many things are happening in the life of old Sprocketplug.
Yesterday, the Fighting Librarian and I celebrated the anniversary of our first date. Our plans to reenact our first date fell by the wayside due to my upset stomach. That and we couldn't find the cat o' nine tails. Instead we spent a relaxing evening at home, watching Entourage and munching on chinese food.

One of the gifts I received from my sweetheart is pictured below.



Does this girl know me or what?
It's been a fantastic year (broken foot and all) and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

---

With the onset of fall-like weather comes a new school year, and honeycrisp apples!



Most of you have heard this all before, but Honeycrisp apples are one of my absolute favorite foods. The texture and taste are in perfect harmony. Heaven may very well be a Honeycrisp apple.


Lastly, my academic responsibilities start tomorrow.

I'll be taking three classes and for the first time ever I'll be a research assistant for Dr's Lemeshow and Lu. I haven't met with them regarding the project, so I'm not sure what my work will entail, but I am excited to help with some original research! Don't be surprised if I cure childhood leukemia by next Thursday.

Worries

There is a special collection of worries
that I keep in an old mahogany chest
in the attic of my mind

This is not where I keep those simple,
day to day worries
like
Does she think I'm cute?
What if I can't find parking?
What should I get my dad for his birthday?

If you were to open that old mahogany chest
in the attic of my mind,
you would see

What if a cockroach eats one of my toenail clippings
that fell under the bed? Will it absorb my DNA? Will it
become a half-human half-insect juggernaut of destruction?
What if every night I am replaced with a robot that has all my
memories? My voice, my thoughts, my desires all programmed
into its twinkling,
LED covered brain?
What if the only reason I haven’t developed pyrokinetic powers is because
of my disbelief?

And so I sit at my desk, staring at the black wick
of my lavender scented candle,
concentrating,
hands balled up on my knees
seeing,
in my mind’s eye,
an orange flame
blossom on that black, withered finger

at this moment, Lisa walks into my office
and asks
“Hey, Pete, what are you doing?”
“Huh?
Oh
I was just thinking about
what to get my dad
for his birthday.”

a pick me up

So, I just finished an episode of Buffy that had to be some of the saddest 43 minutes of television ever created. Joss sure knows how to tug on those heartstrings.

So let's talk about something happy. When I was in MN this summer I tried a concoction of Sierra Mist and some Falconer Vineyards Rose. It was heavenly. When I got back to Ohio I polished off the two bottles I brought home with me and then found a few good bottles in the wine store that's about 100 meters from my back door. I used 7up instead of Sierra Mist and liked it even better. Then I got to thinking, what else would go well with 7up? The Girlfriend and I tried a bottle of Sangria from local supermarket and that tasted delicious. I found that mixing 7up with orange juice creates a refreshingly zesty morning beverage. And just tonight I mixed some 7up with my Lipton's Green Tea. For all you tea lovers out there, Lipton's Green Tea is more like lemonade than tea, but that's exactly how I like it.

So before you start planning an intervention, I haven't been mixing my citrus soda with cocaine and I'm not planning on turning my apartment into a "sprite house." Does anyone else have any fun drink ideas that involve 7up?

-SP

If you could bottle and sell "badass."

The game that's been dominating my time: Batman Arkham Asylum. I paraphrase Joystiq.com when I say this game is more than a Batman game it's a Batman simulator. You feel as though you've stepped right into the Dark Knight's kevlar reinforced, henchman kicking, Joker stomping boots. You want batarangs? Check. You want the ability to stalk your prey from atop a gargoyle, then swoop down through a skylight, cape outstretched, boots connecting to the back of his head as if you were the very avatar of Justice herself? Done. Do you want to solve crimes and track evidence as the Worlds Greatest Detective? No problem. Do you want to clear a room full of bad guys with moves that would make Chuck Norris urinate in his trousers? You got it.

Few games have brought me such unmitigated glee as Batman Arkham Asylum. True, I'm a huge Batman fanboy, and that might be biasing my perspective, but I'm also a gamer and I know video games and I know production quality and this game just shimmers with polish. The voice acting is done by the cast of Batman: The Animated Series. Kevin Conroy reprises as the voice of Batman, and in my opinion no one does a better job. Mark Hamill (yes THAT Mark Hamill) voices the Joker with the kind of intense insanity that does justice to the mythology. The rest of the cast is also in tip-top form. The cut-scenes are beautiful, the music perfect, and all the pieces fall into place to make this an exceptional game.


Do you see that? That's your call to action.
Pick up the game, I implore you. You can't imagine what havoc the Joker will wreck if left to his devices.

A fight for Independence

Docula had a great comment on my last PSA and I'd like to touch a little on what he said.

Let's talk a little about statistical independence. Loosely speaking, we say two events, A and B, are independent, if knowing that event A occurs does not change the probability that event B occurs.
E.g. Let A = the event that I play Rock Band 2 tomorrow. Let B = the event that Fast Eddie eats a salad for lunch tomorrow. These events are logically independent since my video gaming habits are not going to affect Eddie's lunching habits.

A little more complicated: Suppose you have a standard deck of playing cards. Suppose you're going to draw two cards. Let A be the even that the first card drawn is black. Let B be the event that the second card drawn is black.
Are these events independent?



Well, the probability that A occurs, denoted P(A), is 26/52 = # of black cards / # of cards total = 1/2

What's P(B)?

Well, if you drew a red card on the first draw, then P(B) = 26/51 (26 black cards but only 51 cards left)
If you drew a black card on the first draw, the P(B) = 25/51 (25 black cards (since you got one on the first draw) out of 51 cards left)

So P(B) changed DEPENDING on what you got on the first draw. So P(B) DEPENDS on what happened with A. Hence, these two events are dependent.

So why is this sometimes counter-intuitive? Suppose that I have a fair coin. By fair I mean that on each flip, the coin is as likely to land heads as it is to land tails. P(heads) = .5 = P(tails). Coin flips are independent. If I flip a coin and it lands heads then it's no more or less likely to come down heads on the next flip. Easy to say, but in practice this throws a lot of people off. Let's say I plan to flip a coin 10 times. The first 9 flips all come down heads

H H H H H H H H H

I pause for a moment and say, "what do you think it will land on the next, and last, flip?" We all (including me) have the urge to say "Tails! For the love of Buddha this string of heads is improbable!" This sentiment was dangerously echoed by some gamblers I observed when working at Treasure Island Resort and Casino. These gamblers would sit by the electronic roulette machine with notepads and they would write down the color and number of each outcome of the spin of the virtual roulette wheel. They would then attempt to use this information to help them predict the next outcome. At the most basic level of statistics just discussed, this would be a good strategy if the events were....drum roll please....dependent. If the spins of a roulette wheel were dependent then knowing something about previous outcomes could give you some information about future outcomes.
But...just like a coin flip, the spins of roulette wheel are INdependent. If that weren't true, then you would have to believe that the little wooden ball (or computerized wooden ball) somehow remembers what it has landed on and in the future will act upon that knowledge. If these men saw the ball had landed red 5 times in a row, they would probably bet on black for the next spin. This is FOLLY! Just because I flip 9 heads in a row doesn't mean the last flip is more likely to be tails. The coin doesn't remember that it just landed heads up 9 times in a row.

People have a false intuition about this empirical law called the Law of Averages, which, roughly put, states that thing even out after a while. I might get more into that in a different post, as it deserves it's own clever title.

Some real world applications? If you win the lottery using your favorite 10 digit number, there's no reason why you shouldn't keep playing that number afterwards.



If you haven't already, please, for me, watch (or read) Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It's the funniest, cleverest thing you'll ever put your eyes on. The first ten minutes are a beautiful homage to probability theory.






p.s. something to think about. suppose that people flip coins for fun. you know, for choosing between two movies, dates, desserts, colors of ties, etc. Suppose that the average coin is flipped 100 times in it's lifetime. Meaning someone flips the coin then buys something with it and the next person to get that coin flips it for some reason or another etc. Now, do you think that somewhere out there is a coin that's always landed heads? It's been passed around from person to person and no one single individual would notice, but could there be a coin out there that's been flipped 100 times and every time the coin has come down heads? How many coins would there need to be in circulation for this to have a better than 50% chance of happening? Is this coin magical?

The Ghost in the Machine

I was just typing an email to my Cousin, when Gmail started to lag. I would type in a word and at about 1/4 the speed, the letters would appear on my screen. I paused the think about what I was going to say next, then typed out a whole sentence very quickly. I sat back in my chair and watched as the letters popped up one by one, about a letter a second. It made me feel strange, as though I were in some 1980's movie where the fledgling programmer has created an artificial intelligence program and is reading it's birthing cry. Luckily, the words that appeared on the screen were the words that I typed and not something like [skynet online].


And now for one of my random thoughts:

I just watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Cordelia, heartbroken and furious, lays the blame for all her misfortune on Buffy and in her anger makes a wish. "I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale!" Little did she know that the new girl in school was a wish-granting spirit with a man-hating streak. So spirit girl grants Cordelia's wish and Cordelia is whisked away to...you guessed it...a dystopian parallel present. Lesson learned: the Hellmouth is fraught with spirits wishing to dish up a steaming plate of irony. The parallel "What if?" reality at which Cordelia arrives is pretty much the worst of all possible worlds and she soon finds herself dead. I guess, Giles finds her dead... When dystopian Giles guesses what's happening he sets about to cancel the wish. Sidenote: vampire-cum-goth Xander and Willow make a super hot couple.
D-Giles "saves" the day by smashing an artifact,



thus reinstating the original Buffy-full reality.

My point: In so many fantasy and/or sci-fi stories, parallel realities get revoked, destroyed, squished or (and they should have a word for this) made to have never existed. What happens to those people? In back to the future 2, Marty creates a split in the space-time whatchamacallit and a dystopian Hill Valley comes into existence. He then fixes the space-time thingerdo and the future goes back to whatever it "should" have been. What about all the people in that splinter? What about all the babies born of unions that didn't happen in the "correct" future. All over the world people were just going about their lives, and who knows, maybe everywhere else people are happy and free and someone has invented an interstellar spacecraft. Shouldn't Marty be guilty of the murder of billions of people? Worse yet, what if they don't die, but their existence is revoked. Surely it is better to die than to have never existed at all. The thought makes me shudder.

Now back to my favorite flavor of dystopian realities:

More cowbell than you can handle

Free Energy Music Video

I'm sorry, my little linux powered netbook doesn't want to let me ebed the video. Therefore, follow the link to watch my big brother's first official music video. I'm so proud of him and I want to you all to feast your ears on this carpe diem anthem of love.

I promise I won't forget any of you once I ride my brother's coattails to rock-star nirvana.

Definitions

Does anyone else find this ad a little strange? The wait is over? You can preorder your Zune now and WAIT until September 15th to actually get it. Maybe I'm just arguing semantics. I mean, if, perhaps, you were waiting for the opportunity to preorder an iPod wannabe, then yes, your wait is over. However, if you're one of those people, I bet you really enjoy having cake as well.

SP out.

Public Service Announcement

So here's a fun idea, why don't I write about a couple of interesting facets of statistical thinking?

From my personal statement, part of my application to grad school:

Midway through my first probability course I began seeing the world in a different way. Absolutes gave way to probabilities, certainty to estimation, and placid acceptance to examination. Phrases like “mutually exclusive” crept into my daily parlance and the salad bar became much more interesting when order mattered.

---

To illustrate an interesting principle, let me summarize a problem from the Statistics: Concepts and Controversies lab book. I can't remember the actual numbers, so I'll make some up. The problem is a critical look at an article put out by the Associated Press. The article is basking in the improbability of a certain event. The event is that the past 16 births at the local hospital in some small town in Indiana have all been boys. Well, surely, if the probability is about 50% for either gender, we should have seen about 8 boys and 8 girls, right? The probability is not difficult to calculate. Assuming that the sexes of the babies were independent, the probability of 16 boys in a row is .5 to the 16th power. 0.5^16 = 0.00001525. If you were a gambler you wouldn't bet on it, right?

So the question is this: Is this story newsworthy?

Counter intuitively, the story is not newsworthy (in a statistical sense).

Why isn't the story newsworthy? Four years ago, according to the 2005 census, there were 7,569 hospitals in the USA. In every hospital across the country, children are being born. Is it so unlikely that one of those hospitals gets a run of male births? Think about it another way. Let's say you go to a baseball stadium with 7,568 of your closest friends. You all crowd onto the field and each of you pulls out a coin. I call out "go" over the loudspeaker and everyone starts to flip his or her coin. Each of the 7,569 people flips a coin 16 times and records the number of heads and tails.

After everyone's finished, someone in the middle of center field yells out "Holy Balls, I just got 16 heads in a row!"
Is this so unusual? Do you grab this guy, throw him in your trunk, and make him play craps for you in Vegas? For legal (and statistical reasons) I wouldn't. The punch-line is that if you work on a large enough scale, even outcomes with very small probability will eventually occur. Now, if you do the math, the probability that at least one person gets 16 heads in a row (or at least one hospital gets 16 males births in a row) is about 89%. That means that if I wanted to, I could find a hospital almost every day that had this exact same, "newsworthy," event.

About 10 years ago, a man won the lottery...for the 2nd time. Holy shit, you may exclaim, certainly Baby Jesus has blessed this man above all others. Ye, let us make a shrine to him and rub its bronze nose for luck before we watch the powerball drawing. Again, faulty logic. The fact is that many people play the lottery, and, in fact, many people who win the lottery keep playing afterwards. If you get enough repeat players, eventually one of them is going to win again. Some statistician claimed it would be about every 10 years, and about 8 years later someone else became a repeat lotto winner.


Now I'm getting long winded, but I want to give one more example of how this logic applies. Say that you're talking to a new coworker and after a while you find out that you both had golden retrievers as kids and that BOTH of you have sisters named Julia. Is this crazy? Are you soulmates? People ask me, what's the probability that you meet someone at random and you both have sisters with the same first name? It's not quite the correct question. You see, if you talk for long enough, you're bound to find something in common. So when you do, you tend to forget about the dozens of things you don't have in common, and fixate on what you share. That's fine, since that's how we develop interpersonal relationships, but it's not nearly as "weird" or "spooky" as it might appear to be.

blah blah blah, i'm done. did anyone find this interesting?

mama said knock you out

*whew* I just completed the first segment of Riddick. As insanely difficult as it was, it did a lot of things really well. The game did some beautiful things with light and shadow, there were also some genuinely funny moments.
Such as when you acquire a giant mechanized walker called the "heavy guard." You become a juggernaut of gatling weilding rocket launching fury. The armor talks to you during the segment giving advice to the "pilot" in a deep roboty voice.
armor: "Battle Analysis: Walk over smaller organic targets to conserve ammunition"
"Battle Analysis: Pilot should read instruction manual before operating Heavy Guard."
At the very end of these often hilarious recommendations you get
"Battle Analysis: Pilot should turn off auto Battle Analysis suggestions."

Kudos to you, oh creators of Escape from Butcher Bay. Now, on to the second (and final) portion: Assault on Dark Athena.

Something has been on my mind recently. What's up with the expression "You can't have your cake and eat it too." ?
I mean, I think I understand the meaning. It means one action is mutually exclusive of the other and both are equally desirable. You have to make a choice, you can either have your cake, or you can eat your cake, but you cannot do both. So this begs the question, who the hell wants to have some cake, but not eat it? I mean, do people really sit at the kitchen table with a huge slice of chocolate cake (presumably with a tall glass of milk) and debate this?

Inner monologue:

Hmmmm, this looks like delicious cake, I can't wait to eat it. But wait! If I eat the cake then I can't have the cake. Oh no! I am at an impasse since I do so enjoy simply possessing this piece of cake. Oh God why have you forsaken me?!?!?

I doubt it. So it seems like the only reason one would get cake would be to eat it. Right? So these two actions are not equally desirable, at least for me. There might be some weird cake hoarding fetishers out there, at which point the actions become unbalanced but in the other direction.

Can somebody please suggest an alternative to this phrase? Something like, you can't go out with a girl and sleep with her sister at the same time.

Anyway, we all know that the cake is a lie.

I hope you're not afraid of the dark.

So I just bought a used copy of "Chronicles of Riddick: Assualt on Dark Athena" and lemme tell you, I was extremely excited to get it. Before I go on a little rant I want to explain the concept of "Gamer Achievements" to those of you who don't have an Xbox 360. Built into the games are meta-awards called achievements. Once you complete or "unlock" an achievement you get the requisite number of points added to your Xbox Live account. So if I've played 5 games and gotten 2,000 points worth of achievements, that score is posted on my Xbox Live account and all my gamer friends can see what ahcievements I've unlocked in what games and how many points I have total. So, these don't have any functional use, they're mainly for your own sense of accomplishment and perhaps bragging rights. They look like this (like one of my last posts).



Now all your gamer buddies can see that you've been philandering.

Some of these achievements can be very straightforward, like "complete the first level of Star Wars: force unleashed."
Some of these achievements are quite devious like in Half-Life 2 the acheivement: "targeted advertisement." Use the Cross-Bow to pin an enemy to a billboard.

And the achievements vary in difficulty and value.

Aaaaaaanyway, I looked up the achievements for Dark Athena and you get some nice points for beating the game on the hardest difficultly. I can do that. Thought I. I've played for about 4-5 hours now and I can tell you, it's really fucking difficult. Why is the game so difficult on "hard"?

1) whenever you pick up a gun dropped by an enemy, you apparently reload the gun with semi-damp cotton balls. Thus, when you shoot an enemy with said gun, the enemy says, "Oy, you got my armor slightly damp. Now you shall die." And the enemy then shoots you a single time and since his gun is filled with depleted uranium rounds, you quickly explode.

2) If you manage to pull of a head-shot (which is a little tricky given your life expectancy when you enter the same zip code as an enemy, the enemy dies. If you don't shoot him in the head and instead, for instance, put 27 rounds into his chest, he simply snickers a little, then shoots you in your little toe, which causes your face to implode.

3) The point I'm at right now there are these little fuckers called Spider Turrets. These are robots, the size of a typical paramecium, that attach themselves to the walls. A good way to discover where these turrets are is to breathe. Once you breathe, the turrets lock onto your nearest vital organ and perforate it for your dying convenience. I honestly have no idea how to get past these things.

4) I'm sure there's going to be a #4. I mean, I'm about a tenth of the way into the game and already I'm bitching about how hard it is.

*edit*
#4) I forgot to mention, the enemies have really fast reflexes. If you come around a corner and there's a guard there, he'll shoot you before you can even turn. If you're hiding in the shadows and you take careful aim and shoot a guard in the head with an assault rifle, he'll still have time to shoot you before he dies.

XKCD

For those of us without iPhones

Google has an extremely robust set of queries you can send via text message (that's txt msg for those of you under 18). You simple text your query to 466453 and instantaneously (usually) you get a text message back with the information you want.

Google SMS

Usual text fees apply, but if you have an unlimited texts plan, I would highly recommend checking this out.

Uses: last night, I was playing Rainbow 6 and I got this word in my head. The word was "inimical." I texted
"Define: inimical" to 466453 and immediately I got

unfriendly: not friendly; "an unfriendly act of aggression"; "an inimical critic"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

This is the first definition if you would have typed "define: inimical" into the google search engine. Pretty rad, no?

home is where the Xbox is

So it's been a great week in Columbus, OH. I've been living a life of leisure, playing videogames, watching movies, and reading two great books: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami.

The Xbox games that own my life right now:

Rainbow 6: Las Vegas 2
Burnout Paradise
&
Crackdown


Between those and assimilating the arguments against intelligent design, I've been pretty "busy."
Can I just say, here and now, that Evolution is one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of mankind.

Just a "come on" from the whores on 7th avenue

Tomorrow I turn my steering wheel towards Columbus, Ohio.
I used to make the drive from C-bus to St. Paul in one fell swoop, but as I've grown older and possibly wiser, I've decided to take it in two fell swoops. So I'll be staying in Bloomington, IL for a night and then landing in Glenn Ave. on Tuesday.

Things I miss about home:
My Xbox (two weeks worth of downloadable Rockband Content to peruse)
My bed (although those bastards at Howards Inn in Madison still haven't called me back to tell me they found my pillow)
My girlfriend (no, leave the glasses on, they get me hot)
My grocery store (I know exactly where they keep the dr. pepper)
My motorcycle (freedom on two wheels)

I'd like to give a huge shout-out to Mr. & Mrs. Gubbins for so graciously hosting me this past week plus. Also a big thanks to Gubbins Jr. for teaching me the true spirit of christmas.

SP out

clouds

Fuck you, Windows(R)

I decided to copy The Fighting Librarian and purchase a netbook for myself. For those of you unfamiliar with the now supersaturated market of "ultra-portable" computers, these are, simply, very small laptops with limited processing power.

Let me start by saying I love my Asus EEE PC. It's little, it's light, it's got a battery that will last past judgement day.


<---Actual size.




The Catch: It comes preinstalled with Windows XP.
I'm not a fan of Micro$oft, as most of you know, but I was going to swallow my pride for the sake of ultra-portable internet bliss.
So I get everything set up and I was surfing the web while watching a little Band of Brothers. And right as the courageous members of Easy Company were being shelled by the Germans while foxholed during the Battle of the Bulge...I got a virus. I got three viruses.
Windows informed me of this in the most annoying way possible. Three pop-up windows that could not be minimized or hidden. These windows informed me that my computer was infected and that I should click this link to clean the computer. The link brought me to a website proffering some anti-virus software for only 59.99. "Bullocks!" I exclaimed. I can live with a couple of viruses. exempli gratia: people live long happy lives with HPV.
So I close the pop-ups and go about my business. The thing is, these windows keep popping up. Literally every 20 seconds, these same three windows would pop up and obscure my entire screen, rendering my machine useless.
The thing is, the application sending these annoying pop-ups was hidden somewhere on my computer. I couldn't even find it and delete it. This process took me a long time since I would need to stop the search every 20 seconds to close those damn pop-up windows.

Eventually, I threw up my hands and decided to wipe that ungodly operating system from my hardware.

The solution:



Linux, sweet linux. Ubuntu is beautiful. Ubuntu is virus-free. Ubuntu costs nothing. The GUI is simple, efficient, and did I mention that it's free? Did I mention that it comes with a copy of OpenOffice which can open and edit word documents just like Windows Office? Did I mention that it's free?

So, I'll let you know how it goes, but so far so good. The installation wasn't exactly foolproof as my computer has no optical drive. I needed to install Ubuntu on a usb drive and make the drive bootable.

I gotta run, I'm in Luck, WI right now at West Denmark Family Camp. More on that later.

Sprocketplug Out

it gives you insomnia™

So it's finals week. That means a few things. It means I have to endure the begging and pleading of students: "But I'm only 15% away from an A, can't you do something?"
It means I have to grade hundreds of pages of exams.
It means I drink Red Bull.
It means that after I'm done grading at 12:00am, the residual caffeine in my blood keeps sleep just outside my grasp.
It means that as I write this I am semi-conscious and I am listening to Ingrid Michaelson's The Chain, a beautifully mellow song that ends in a lovely round:

So glide away on soapy heels
And promise not to promise anymore
And if you come around again
Then I will take, then I will take the chain from off the door

Plan for the summer:

1) Workout (for reals this time)
2) Learn French (a lá Rosetta Stone)
3) Play my newly bought (but not yet received) Rock Band 2
4) Film a movie following students about to take the Statistics Qualifier Exam

So the question is: What should I name my Rock Band? Here's the shortlist:

Rachel and the Lady Killers
The Stoic Unicorns
The OCD Elves
James Taylor Overdrive
Civil Hands
One Man Down
Challengers of Change
Aphrodite's Itch
Temporal Fugue
Inebriated Koala
The Sprangettes
Madrak and the Holy Rollers
P and the Values
Starbuck and the Vipers
Circular Logic


What would you call YOUR band?

His blood ran cold...

Yesterday was the second time that I've given a double red cell donation at my local Red Cross.




For those of you unfamiliar with this newfangled process, it works thusly. For a regular, whole blood donation, you give a pint of red goo straight from your vein to the bag. The three major constituents of blood (excluding white blood cells) are the red blood cells, plasma, and platelets. Without getting into too much detail (read: this could be bullshit I just made up), the plasma is the fluid, the red blood cells carry oxygen, and the platelets are an important factor in producing blood clots.




So, when you give a double red donation, you give twice as many red blood cells as you do during a regular donation...but you get your plasma and platelets back. No, they don't give you a doggy bag filled with icky yellow liquid, they run your blood through a centrifuge, spin out the red blood cells, which should be heavier (hemoglobin has iron in it, right?) than the rest of the junk. Then they give you back your platelets, plasma, and they throw in half a pint of saline solution at no extra charge. Wonderous, isn't it? They pause the donation at three separate times and give you back your fluids. It goes back through the same needle and you can't even feel it! The best part about the donation is that your blood can get to another person much faster because it doesn't need to hang around to get separated.

So, my first time through, I was sitting there, marveling at the wonders of modern science when my lips started to tingle. No worries, I thought, it's just nerves. But them my stomach started to twitch a little bit and I started to tremble. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I've given gallons of blood in my lifetime and never had any adverse effects. The donation ends and I need to sit for a good 20 minutes before I feel like moving.

I thought about it for a while and then I came up with a hypothesis (later confirmed by Sprocketplug Senior, Doctor of Medicine). It turns out that I was cold. Why, you ask? Well, during the return, they gave me a little more than half a pint of saline solution. That's just salt water, but it was being stored at room temperature, let's call it 67 degrees Farenheit. Normal body temp is around 98 degrees so that was a little shock to my system. I didn't recognize the feeling, because I've never gotten cold from the inside out. Weird, right?
Anyway, the second time was better since I brought a heavy sweatshirt and winter cap, but I still got the same trembly feeling. I might go back to just giving a pint of whole blood, but we'll see.

Sprocketplug out.

blogger ennui

So, I've been thinking about this blog quite a bit recently. I don't really know what I should do with it. I feel like I want to post more. Lord knows I can wax whimsical with the best of them...but I don't really know where to go.
I've thought about several things:

1. reviewing video games i've been playing
2. reviewing girlfriends that i've been sleeping with
3. talk about my life as an educator
4. discuss, in depth, the relative usefulness of foam vs. gel shaving cream
5. make fun of fast eddie

one idea that will come to fruition is this: for my birthday, which was last week sometime, Fast Eddie and wife gifted me a year subscription to Parents Magazine. On the usefulness scale, this gift ranks somewhere between partially chewed pen cap and 100mL of lukewarm hamster vomit. Not that the sentiment wasn't appreciated.
I've received the latest issue as well as two back issues and all I can think about is how I can defile it. you know, cut and paste ransom letters, mix and match pictures that imply vile and disgusting things.

Just thought I'd muse aloud (so to write) a little.

-Sprocketplug

Bistromatics

Yesterday, my friends and I spent a delightful evening at Dewey's Pizzeria in Grandview. When we were ordering pizzas, two friends, Roland and David, each ordered a small (eleven inch) pizza. The waitress said, "It would be cheaper if you bought a 17 inch pizza and split it."
I pondered, cheaper, maybe, but would they get the same amount of pizza?
So I pulled out a napkin, grabbed a sharpie, and did a little bistromathics.

It was a simple calculation, finding the surface area of an 11 inch pizza and comparing that to half the surface area of a 17 inch pizza*, but the activity drew a few exasperated sighs.

I say, why accept a premise on faith when you can prove or disprove it with a few simple mathematical tools? If we let enough of those moments slip by, we become slaves to hearsay and speculation.

Sprocketplug

[dictated but not read in the penthouse of an ivory tower]




* circle with diameter 11 inches has surface area
= π * r^2 = π*5.5^2 ≅ 95.03 in^2

circle with diameter 17 inches has surface area
= π * r^2 = π*8.5^2 ≅ 226.98 in^2
So half that would be approximately 113.5 in^2

It's coming.

Outlander

Space Dragons, Bitches!

iPod Shuffle

New iPod Shuffle

This, to me, seems like a giant step backward in terms of user interface.

The Onion posted this a while ago and seems to be more than a little prescient.

The Onion's MacBook Wheel

Yes.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

facebook

For those of you unaware of the change in the terms of service that was recently revoked...
They tried to slip this in:

"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."

Meaning, basically, they own any and all content you put on facebook. And if you cancel your account, they still own every piece of material you put online. There were protests and groups formed against this change in policy and due to the outcry, Facebook backed down. The creators said in their blog:

"Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input."

Translation: We didn't think you would notice what a bunch of dicks we are, but since you did we're going to back down and say the terms of service need a change of "language."

And then on the facebook bill or rights group, the creators say:
"5. We apologize for the confusion around these issues. We never intended to claim ownership over people's content even though that's what it seems like to many people. This was a mistake and we apologize for the confusion."

As if they didn't have a dozen lawyers drafting the language.
It's almost enough for me to bail on Facebook. This is the age of privacy rights and we have to be vigilant.

Outlander

Finally a movie with a concept even better than Zombie Strippers.

....

What roller coaster ride of action and emotion. This movie has it all: stoic hero consumed by revenge meets beautiful local girl who knows how to wield a sword (if you know what I mean). Will she soften his heart and help him exorcise his troubled past? Local warrior/heir to the throne is skeptical of hero at first, but camaraderie in the heat of battle forges a deep and lasting friendship. I don't want to ruin anything by giving away more of the plot (and I use that term loosely), but I will say one more thing: Space Dragons. Oh hells yes: SPACE DRAGONS!!!!

Check it out one time, won't you.

Sooooo good!!!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/55259/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-wed-jan-28-2009

Great interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson!! Check it out!

"Who are we training to land on that thing with nuclear weapons?"

Even better:

Oh yeah, baby.

Look what's coming to Sprocketplug's house tomorrow!!!




Oh 1080p Matrix. Will you as beautiful as I hope you will?

For the last time...

The world is not going to end in 2012. Seriously.

So say we all.

Dudes and Dudettes,
Well, it's time for my biannual blog. Since last I wrote I've been to a party celebrating the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. I've been to California, to Boston, and to Florida. I ended Fall quarter and started Winter quarter. I designed a time-travel device only to have my future self travel back and destroy it before its first run. I have loved, lost, and played a crap load of Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360. Corporations have crumbled, economies have tumbled, and Solstice has passed. I learned the true meaning of christmas only to have woodland nymphs (dryads) steal the memories from me (or so I was told).

I bought a new phone, a new TV, and a new spleen. I think Graham Crackers are underrated. I spent 15 minutes watching Dr. Phil simply because the HD picture was so amazing. I'm looking forward to Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse, I am looking forward to the X-Men: Wolverine movie. I am looking forward to playing Fallout 3.

here are some photos.













P.S. I love Starbuck.