Camel Knights

Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:16:16 -0500

Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag

Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:43:07 -0500

Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:03:04 -0500

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner

The xx - Shelter This entire album is fantastic. Atmospheric,...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:06:23 -0400

The xx - Shelter

This entire album is fantastic. Atmospheric, sparse, really really good. And here’s a remix of that same song!

What Made Milwaukee Famous - Cheap Wine

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:11:04 -0400

What Made Milwaukee Famous - Cheap Wine

Sometimes Computers are Too Smart

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:15:19 -0400

I’m working on an application that needs to be able to read a date from a string. Obviously there are countless libraries that will do this for me, so I essentially renamed the long datetime.datetime.strptime(string, “%m/%d/%Y”) to a shorter name.

I had initially assumed everything would be in mm/dd/yyyy format, but occasionally I would notice people leaving off the first two digits of the year. So I altered my wrapper method to deal with that, and things were working well. Then I noticed that sometimes people left off an initial 0 in front of a month, like 6/31/2008 vs. 06/31/2008. So I altered it again to deal with that.

But I was still having trouble parsing certain dates, and I couldn’t figure out why. Specifically, “6/31/08” wouldn’t work. At first I thought it was because it was both missing a leading 0 and two digits of the year, but after a while I realized that it wasn’t formatting because June has only 30 days, not 31.

Kind of annoying, but I guess it’s a good thing.

Crazy Link Of The Day: Fibonacci Edition

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:37:09 -0400

Crazy Link Of The Day: Fibonacci Edition:

Let F(n) be the nth Fibonacci number - that is, F(1) = 1, F(2) = 1, F(3) = 2, F(4) = 3, etc.

Then (in pseudo-latex notation)

sum_n F(n) / 10^{n+1} = 
0.01 + 
0.001 + 
0.0002 + 
0.00003 + 
0.000005 + 
0.0000008 + 
0.00000013 + 
...

is equal to 1/89.

The shortest path between two points is apparently a mess. To...

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:58:43 -0400

The shortest path between two points is apparently a mess.

To be fair, Google Maps doesn’t know about the monorail, and this image with the map overlay loaded and zoomed in looks a lot better.

T-Shirt Idea

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:24:08 -0400

The Picture: A single slice of bread
The Caption: PSEUDO MAKE ME A SANDWICH

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:06:18 -0400

I apologize for making that last post a chat instead of just plain text, but I had already explained it to a few people and didn’t feel like retyping it all. And all of that actually happened, I promise.

Oh, also check out my new blog, Google Food. It’s my attempt to document every lunch and dinner that I eat at Google. Hopefully I’ll remember to take pictures in the future.

My Morning

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:04:39 -0400

9:09:51 PM seth: i had an insane day
9:09:54 PM seth: completely insane
9:10:08 PM seth: like nothing i ever imagined
9:10:40 PM seth: so
9:11:12 PM seth: new interns were supposed to get to mountain view by 8:00
9:11:15 PM seth: returning interns by 8:45
9:11:24 PM seth: i'm in san francisco; mountain view is a non-trivial distance away
9:11:42 PM seth: i figured i might as well get there early
9:11:48 PM seth: so there was a bus that left from the civic center at 6:45
9:11:51 PM seth: and another at 6:55
9:11:58 PM seth: my reasoning was that if i somehow missed the 6:45 one, i'd at least see it leave, and know where the stop was, and be able to get the 6:55 shuttle
9:12:08 PM seth: so i woke up at 5:30 since i really didn't want to miss these shuttles
9:12:32 PM seth: i got to the civic center at 6:20 or so
9:12:35 PM seth: plenty of time to spare
9:12:44 PM seth: when it occurred to me that i didn't know exactly where the stop was
9:12:58 PM seth: i realized that the "civic center" area was far bigger than i thought it was
9:13:02 PM seth: like a few blocks in both directions
9:13:07 PM seth: so i was looking for the stop, but i didn't see it
9:13:42 PM seth: and i didn't see anyone who looked like they worked at google either
9:13:43 PM seth: anyways
9:13:51 PM seth: long story short, 7:05 rolls around, and it's pretty clear that i missed both shuttles
9:14:14 PM seth: now, apparently i had passed by a certain coffee shop a few times while i was rushing up and down the street
9:14:20 PM seth: and this guy came out and asked if i was lost
9:14:37 PM seth: or looking for something
9:14:51 PM seth: so i told him i was looking for the google shuttle, and that i had to get to mountain view
9:14:54 PM seth: he was very friendly and offered to help
9:14:57 PM seth: said he had some time to spare
9:15:14 PM seth: i was thinking about getting a taxi since i didn't want to be late on my first day
9:15:29 PM seth: but he suggested that i take a caltrain (public transportation) to mountain view and then go from there since it would be a lot cheaper
9:15:37 PM seth: the caltrain station wasn't very close by
9:15:37 PM seth: so
9:15:57 PM seth: the plan was to take a taxi to the station, take the caltrain to mountain view, and then get to google after that
9:16:01 PM seth: now
9:16:05 PM seth: he said he was going in the same direction that i was
9:16:16 PM seth: so he went with me to try to flag down a taxi
9:16:26 PM seth: we tried to get one, but they kept passing us on the wrong side of the road
9:16:28 PM seth: anyways
9:16:33 PM seth: it soon became abundantly clear
9:16:38 PM seth: that he was gay
9:16:39 PM seth: and hitting on me
9:16:40 PM seth: pretty hard
9:16:47 PM seth: like, he eventually lost all subtlety
9:16:56 PM seth: he asked if i was "a healthy young man"
9:17:00 PM seth: well, i'm not sure if he asked that or stated that
9:17:04 PM seth: and if i liked to party
9:17:06 PM seth: what i liked to do
9:17:08 PM seth: pot, alcohol
9:17:19 PM seth: where i was staying, how i liked san francisco so far, what i'd be doing for google, where i was from
9:17:19 PM seth: etc.
9:17:32 PM seth: i answered his questions with the minimum amount of information required to be polite
9:17:43 PM seth: do i like to party? sure
9:17:50 PM seth: where am i staying? around union square
9:17:57 PM seth: how do i like san francisco so far? it's pretty good
9:17:58 PM seth: etc.
9:18:16 PM seth: i mentioned "i'm spending the summer here with my girlfriend"
9:18:18 PM seth: didn't faze him
9:18:30 PM seth: he was very persistent
9:18:41 PM seth: at one point he mentioned possibly getting my number
9:18:47 PM seth: i deftly changed the subject and he didn't bring it up again
9:19:24 PM seth: anyways we finally found a taxi
9:19:37 PM seth: so since he was going the same direction, we both got in the cab
9:20:07 PM seth: during the cab ride
9:20:11 PM seth: he asked if i had a pen
9:20:14 PM seth: unfortunately, i did not
9:20:20 PM seth: fortunately, he had both a pen and a piece of paper
9:20:34 PM seth: he gave me a piece of paper with his name
9:20:37 PM seth: and his phone number
9:20:38 PM seth: and his email
9:20:48 PM seth: the one piece of information that he didn't give me was his actual address
9:21:08 PM seth: we finally reached the caltrain station
9:21:12 PM seth: and i got off the taxi
9:21:14 PM seth: he offered to pay
9:21:19 PM seth: but i didn't let him
9:21:45 PM seth: so
9:21:50 PM seth: i got out of the taxi
9:21:50 PM seth: paid
9:22:07 PM seth: and then he tells the taxi driver "no, i'm not getting out here... can you take me back to where you picked me up?
9:22:13 PM seth: so he just came along purely for the ride
9:22:41 PM seth: anyways i finally caught the caltrain
9:22:45 PM seth: i was like 30 minutes late
9:22:50 PM seth: on my first day of work
9:23:10 PM seth: luckily, it didn't end up being a problem

Evil companies

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:00:11 -0400

Boingo used to be the evilest company I could think of, but that was before I recently tried to buy tickets to a Wilco concert on Ticketmaster. Not only do they charge exorbitant “handling” fees (such bogus - since when does emailing a ticket cost more than sending it through the mail?) but they also TIME you while you’re making your purchase.

You first find the event that you’re looking for (which isn’t as easy as it could be, but that’s the least of my complaints). Then you click this ridiculous “finding tickets” button and enter a captcha. You can’t even see if they’re sold out yet without this extra step.

They claim that they block the tickets for you, and that you have a (very) limited window in which to buy them. And they actually time you on each page. Filling out forms. 90 seconds per page, and there’s this huge obnoxious timer in the bottom-right corner of the page, ticking down the seconds.

Really awful. And the handling fees are crazy expensive. It’s a terrible experience but they’ve got a monopoly for most events somehow.

Also, it’s kind of hard to read long posts like this with all the text centered. Annoying at least.

Rachael Yamagata - Brown Eyes

Sun, 31 May 2009 02:18:23 -0400

Rachael Yamagata - Brown Eyes

Ubuntu FTW

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:29:25 -0400

9:13:39 PM george: my computer is STRUGGLING because Transmission seems to be writing a dummy 7.2 gb file to my hdd
9:13:50 PM seth: transmission sucks, i know
9:14:03 PM seth: it blocks out the whole download before it finishes downloading
9:17:52 PM george: it just won't stop
9:17:57 PM george: thrashing my computer!
9:18:04 PM seth: ooohhhh you're on ubuntu
9:18:08 PM george: i am
9:18:16 PM seth: kill transmission; cancel the download
9:18:25 PM seth: do yourself an enormous favor and install wine and utorrent
9:18:29 PM george: hahahha
9:18:36 PM seth: i wish i was joking
9:18:49 PM seth: utorrent is the best bittorrent client on ubuntu
9:18:50 PM seth: far and away
9:18:51 PM george: is there anything else about it that sucks?
9:18:56 PM seth: transmission?
9:19:03 PM seth: you don't have the options utorrent has
9:21:20 PM george: I can't even open a terminal to kill it
9:21:25 PM george: i might have to kill the x server
9:21:27 PM seth: hahahaha
9:21:30 PM seth: open a new terminal
9:21:31 PM seth: ummm
9:21:40 PM seth: it's ctrl+alt+F5 or something
9:21:48 PM seth: but wait
9:22:01 PM seth: i think you hit ctrl+alt+f7 to get back to the graphical display
9:22:14 PM seth: so make sure you remember that, otherwise you can't leave that other terminal
9:23:51 PM george: the creature you attacked is immune to kill levels 1 through 8
9:23:53 PM george: try -9
9:24:00 PM seth: hahahahaha
9:24:06 PM george: i have never seen such a miserable program
9:24:21 PM seth: i laughed out loud
9:25:25 PM george: the machine i have has half a gig of ram
9:25:30 PM george: and transmission was using hundreds
9:25:32 PM george: that was the problem

A Fun Game To Play With Google Images

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:39:54 -0400

Think of a name (first name only).
Think of famous people with that first name.
Guess which person has the first result in a Google Image search for that name.
Perform said Google Image search and compare results.
My results appear below.

George: George Clooney. In retrospect, I probably should have picked George W. Bush, and unsurprisingly, this was the first result.
Bill: Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, it appears that Bill Bryson is more popular. Perhaps if I had performed this search 10 years ago, in Clinton’s heyday, things would be different.
William: William Shakespeare. Wrong again - Prince William is number one, followed by one William Dicks.
Seth: Seth Rogen. I was the first result! Actually that honor goes to the Egyptian god (or a statue of him I guess, if we’re being picky about wording) - but I am the first result for “seth glickman”. Or at least a strange creation of my face superimposed on 50 Cent’s body. And my mouth is upside-down. Thanks, Colby.
John: John McCain, maybe? It was John Paczkowski. Never heard of him. Oh well.
Mickey: Mickey Mouse. 1 for 6.
Isaac: Isaac Newton. First was a rendering of biblical Isaac, followed by Isaac Asimov.
Tina: Tina Fey. I thought this was a no-brainer, but instead I was surprised by Tina Wallmann, the CarbonPoker Queen of Hearts, and then Tina Wang.

That was fun guys. I batted 0.125! (unfortunately that exclamation point is there solely for emphasis, and does not mean “0.125 factorial”, which would have been a much better 0.942)

I made it on the Google Docs blog! wooooooooo It is a pretty...

Tue, 26 May 2009 21:55:44 -0400

I made it on the Google Docs blog! wooooooooo

It is a pretty nifty gadget, if I may say so myself.

Complaint #419

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:34:49 -0400

whitewhine:

“Thank you, Pizza Hut, for the world’s most dilapidated $1 bill. I hope you will be serving me some Purell with this.”
-Whine by Rich
Follow WhiteWhine on Twitter

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - Natural Light

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:29 -0400

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - Natural Light

bullshit: Which one is the most stoned?

Fri, 15 May 2009 19:22:27 -0400

bullshit:

Which one is the most stoned?

nickdouglas: Everybody dance. Now.

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:35:15 -0400

nickdouglas:

Everybody dance. Now.

Camel Knights

Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag

Neon Indian - Deadbeat Summer

Richard Hawley - Coles Corner

The xx - Shelter This entire album is fantastic. Atmospheric,...

What Made Milwaukee Famous - Cheap Wine

Sometimes Computers are Too Smart

Crazy Link Of The Day: Fibonacci Edition

The shortest path between two points is apparently a mess. To...

T-Shirt Idea

Previous Post

My Morning

Evil companies

Rachael Yamagata - Brown Eyes

Ubuntu FTW

A Fun Game To Play With Google Images

I made it on the Google Docs blog! wooooooooo It is a pretty...

Complaint #419

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - Natural Light

bullshit: Which one is the most stoned?

nickdouglas: Everybody dance. Now.