Flash Mob

"I instructed everyone to simply mill about the store and shop. I told them that if anyone asked questions, to just claim that you’re shopping for a shirt."

-- one of a surprising many

Hook Or By Crook

A post on this blog is now the second result for the query [perl haters]. Too bad all it points to is a reasonably intelligent essay about perl.

I'm getting roughly 2 visitors a day now, half of them new.

If anyone has a request for a topic I should blog about, post it in the comments! Wooo it's the future!

The Glass Bead Game

(A book by Herman Hesse)

I'm rereading it now. Unless you are a particular fan of reading, this book is probably too long and subtle. But Wikipedia pages on books are often quite enlightening.

Once when I was younger I read a whole rack of Cliff's Notes. I think I became immediately more intelligent. I like book summaries even more nowadays, and Wikipedia is a great source. Even better is literature that itself contains summaries of imaginary books. Why don't you read the Wikipedia entry for one great such short story by Jorge Luis Borges and revel in how meta you are.

The book describes a future where the most elite intellectual activity is playing a game, the "Glass Bead Game", where the moves correspond to principles across music, mathematics, all the artistic fields, etc. The main character ascends this essentially academic hierarchy to become the top official in charge of this game.

The book is even more interesting if you remember that it's written by a German, and you have some experience with the difference between German board games like Settlers of Catan, versus American games like Scrabble. German games are more balanced, usually with several different possible styles of play, or different ways of scoring points. It's usually hard to gain a large advantage in a German game.

American games are different. (Or just non-European games, really; chess and go seem non-German.) More often you must perform one sort of mental feat, do it over and over, and if you are better at this one skill then you will smash your opponent.

For example, if you know all the two-letter words and AEINST* bingos, it is no fun to play Scrabble against a newbie. And nobody ever wants to play 24 with me. I think you could have quite the entertaining game of Settlers, though.

So I think it is easier for a German to imagine a game whose subject matter is so broad, it extends to all academic subjects.

Games

What's the coolest game that you can play with no equipment at all, just talking to the other player(s)?

You can play Ghost but it seems everyone hates playing that game with me. It really seems more like a dynamic programming puzzle than a real game.

Maybe something along the lines of Taboo. Apples to Apples I think is in the Taboo family of games, something where you need to use the random knowledge you assume you share with the other players.

You can argue about philosophy, if you consider that a game.

You can pose riddles but it is rather difficult to construct a riddle off hand and unclear who wins.

Nim sucks.

Ambiguous Vent

"Hey I was thinking about your project, I think it's great, just one condition, this one part, instead of the way it is, I think the opposite would be totally awesome."

...

"Very good presentation, I am just concerned about that one part that was not exactly what I expected."

...

"Very good presentation. I have no further thoughts about it at all."

...

"Very good presentation, it brought to light seven things I think you are doing wrong."

...

"I was wondering... was it ever considered... to not do this, but instead do something more innovative and more new?"

...

"Hmm, this way seems too controversial. Not with me, but with this guy I know."

...

"I can't think of how exactly it should be, but I wish it was different."

...

"Maybe instead of being unusual, this should be just like what we already do, and I would feel better about that."

...

"I don't have any concrete requests, I'm not going to be like 'You must do this thing I want.' No no nothing as bothersome as that. I just want to keep an ongoing conversation going, I just want to make sure that you commit to getting my approval for any change you do or do not decide to make in your plans in the future."

...

"I'm not happy with this project. I think the initial launch should be much more ambitious."

...

"I'm concerned because this reminds me of something I have seen before."

...

"Before you do anything else, could I provide you with a list of people who might have an opinion about this, and then you go check with them to make sure they think this is a good idea?"

............

I wanted to make this post just one long "AAARRRRGGH" but I figured I should flesh it out in some more detail.

Wrong

The CEO of LinkedIn explains why his strategy is to prevent independent developers from making his site better.

"We have no interest in doing it like Facebook with an open A.P.I. letting people do whatever they want," Mr. Nye said. "We're not going to have people sending electronic hamburgers to each other."

I don't know what the next cool thing is, but I can guarantee Mr. Nye will not have pre-approved it in a launch meeting.

Not That The System Works

A faint public glimmering of the first project I worked on at Google has emerged in the dregs of the Google-watching blogosphere.

I think this blogger wrote more words about it than we ever did. ;-) If you don't count lines of code, at least.

Allusion

Alone in my house
Quiet but for rain and the
Refrigerator

Verbatim Note To Self

This is funniest if I just copy exactly the notes I took. A bit newspaper headliney.

"Anna considers old Australian to be sex tourist, then softens when he holds baby."

Cambodian Snack Recipe

Ingredients:
One grassy field
Bug spray
Salt

Actually I'll just leave it at that. Suffice it to say I was shocked, shocked! to see how excited Cambodian homeless guys were to eat the rest of our bag.

Beer Cozies Everywhere

I'm "resuming" Thailand-blogging. Expect disjoint snippets of what I was thinking about approximately two months ago.

Anyway, it's pretty desperate when your local economy relies on selling beer to tourists and you're outside of the elite few who can afford a refrigerator. Ice in beer is not so bad when you've been staggering around in 90 degree weather all day. This is perhaps also related to the fact that I loved Singha while I was in Thailand and find it somewhat dubious here.

I Didn't Get It Until "Manatees"

"Bungie is like a shark," founder Jason Jones said. "We have to keep moving to survive. We have to continually test ourselves, or we might as well be dolphins. Or manatees."

- Jason Halo on why Halo is leaving Microsoft

I Excuse The Comcast Guy

"I love your neighborhood. Especially the parking."

"Really? Parking around here always seems like a pain to me."

"Well I've been parking a huge van full of electronics all around the Tenderloin this morning... you don't *want* to know why I'm an hour late."