For the first time in my adult lifetime, I too am proud of my country.

[Edit 11/5/08: I'd be a lot prouder, though, if another 5% of CA voters had pulled their heads out of their collective asses and realized that "discriminating against people" does not help  "protect marriage".  Assholes.]

float tolittle(float i){ return i; }
float tobig(float f){ return f; }
…
return tobig(tolittle(input));

Yesterday I received my new decked-out Dell Precision M6300, courtesy of the wonderful and incredibly generous people at Intel.  It came with Windows XP pre-installed, so the first order of business was to put Vista and Ubuntu on it.

After installation, the computer was basically unusable in Windows.  Vista could not even recognize the built-in ethernet port, let alone the wireless card (let alone the bluetooth module, etc.) without having drivers installed from Dell’s DVD.  This, mind you, is on a computer with a fucking Windows Vista sticker on it.  The wonderful people at Microsoft also made me go to Dell’s website to get video drivers, since they claim that the NVIDIA ones don’t work for mobile cards.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, detected everything, and even went so far as to find an open wireless network and connect to it.  All without me having to do a damned thing.  No problems with the NVIDIA drivers, either.

Linux is ready for the desktop.

Highway Companions Club Membership: $20

Total Ticketmaster Costs: $587.10

Sending your Mother (and your Godmother) to see her favorite band from the front row of a 25,000 seat venue: Priceless.

I almost expect this kind of stuff from The Washington Post, but a Time story on the front page of CNN? Who the hell proofreads these things? The article ain’t any better, either.

In other news, I’m feeling slightly more purple than €17.46.

As far as coding goes, I’m used to using 8×13 in Emacs, since it’ll let me fit two windows with 115 lines of 155 characters each on my Samsung 305T. This is important to me because it lets me see a lot of code at once, and the less moving around I have to do the more productive I am. However, there’s no question that this is an ugly font:

Since I’m using Emacs 23 anyways, I’d much rather have an anti-aliased font, like, for instance Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-10, as it’s much nicer looking and easier on the eyes. However, it’s also much taller, meaning I’m down to only 85 lines per screen:

I’m sure there are fonts out there that are both short and easy on the eyes (in addition, of course, to being fixed-width, having distinct glyphs for 0 and O, i, l, and 1, etc. etc. etc.), but I don’t know of any. Can someone help me out here, please? I’ll be your best friend…

Me at Metaverse U: http://youtube.com/watch?v=02hUCDH1Ztw.

I need a haircut.

Also, here’s an excellent talk my advisor gave at the conference on the subject of my most recent research, the collaborative exploration of design spaces.

Why no more Computer Science AB AP exams?

“Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.”

Fuck them in the ear.

[Edit: Lest anyone think that I'm insensitive, let me remind you that I've published on the problem of underrepresented minorities in computer science. That being said...in both ears.]

…articles about my work at:

• MIT Technology Review
• ars technica
• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• ZDNet
• Computerworld
• Slashdot

…and many other places. What’s more, the server hasn’t even crashed yet!

P.S.: This work is not about trees, no matter what anybody tells you.

[Edit: I should also add this.]

…for the first time in the 25 years that I’ve been alive, I played video games with my mom.

Thanks, Nintendo!