Doug Orleans's Journal

Auto-forwarding text messages?

2009-11-26T03:43:04Z

When I'm at home, I often don't notice when I get text messages on my phone (T-Mobile G1), but I usually check my email on my desktop regularly. I'd like to auto-forward text messages to email. Anyone know how to do this? I could do it with Google Voice, but not if I want to keep my current phone number. There's an Android app txtForward that claims to do this, but it's £2.99, and there's only one comment in the Android Market (complaining about screen locking or something). Anyone tried it? Are there other apps?

Also, by the way, I have 16 Google Wave invitations. Let me know if you'd like one. So far Google Wave is underwhelming, but I figure it can't hurt to claim an address.

Something I learned from Antichrist:

2009-11-13T00:01:11Z

Beneath despair is the wrench.

Also, my next band is called Soft Sun Operator. Thank you Fred Gottfried.

Aspect-oriented supermarket

2009-10-13T18:52:17Z

Some more examples of the Tyranny of the Dominant Decomposition, at the Porter Square Shaw's:

The ground turkey is not in the Turkey section, it's in the Ground Meat section.
The Kashi brand cereal is not in the Cereal section, it's in the Wild Harvest section.
The grated cheese is not in the Cheese section next to the Deli, it's in the Cheese section next to the Milk.

I feel like I need a card catalog.

Happy Tower Day

2009-09-12T00:36:57Z

An excerpt from the play "Happy 9/11" (formerly "Season's Greetings") by Chris Lockheardt:

STEVE: When does it change?
ELLEN: Into what?
STEVE: To a, you know, a celebration.
ELLEN: Celebration? What is there to celebrate?
STEVE: Well . . . that we survived it.
ELLEN: Steve, of course we did, but—
STEVE: No, no buts. Did you see everyone's faces this morning? During the moment of silence? Bill's jaw all clenched with rage. Roberto looking like he was crumbling in slow-motion. And Jesus, Gina . . .
ELLEN: Her cousin was working in the towers.
STEVE: It's like it happened yesterday for them.
ELLEN: That's why you have to be careful with—
STEVE: But it didn't happen yesterday! There's no avalanche of ash crashing through Manhattan. There's no blue sky eerily clear of contrails. There's no endless loops of fireballs and falling bodies playing on the television. We made it back, safe and sound, to the right side of the looking glass!
ELLEN: Wonderful. So what do you want to do? Declare September 11th "Snap Out of It Day"?
STEVE: No, I just want . . . I want . . .
ELLEN: What?
STEVE: I want a day, just one day out of the year, when nobody's asking me to be afraid, when nobody's warning me that "they" can take my livelihood from me, that "they" can take my loved ones from me, that "they" can take my life from me—when nobody is desperate to convince me that there is a "they" out there! Just one day where I'm given permission to believe everything is going to be okay.
ELLEN: Well . . . there's always your birthday.
STEVE: Exactly! That's what I want! A birthday! A day when everyone claps you on the back and says, "Nice work! You made it through another year! I had my doubts, you dumb bastard, but you're still on your feet. Here, have some cake."
ELLEN: Except it would be a birthday for . . .
STEVE: For all of us!
ELLEN: With cake.
STEVE: Oh, man, yeah! You have to have cake!
ELLEN: A 9/11 cake?
STEVE: Sure!
ELLEN: Which would be what? Frosting-covered towers?
(Steve runs to the table and begins constructing the cake out of office supplies as he and Ellen describe it.)
STEVE: Yes! Yes! With a, with a . . . marzipan plane-tail sticking out of the top.
ELLEN: And gumdrop news crews covering the scene from the Oreo streets.
STEVE: And licorice whip fire hoses spraying down mango coulis jet fuel!
ELLEN: Amidst smoldering piles of graham cracker rubble!
STEVE: Under plumes of marshmallow smoke!
ELLEN: With a lit birthday candle sticking out of each window!
STEVE: And everyone gathered around the table singing!
ELLEN: Singing, yes! The . . . the . . .
STEVE: The Tower Day Song!
STEVE & ELLEN: Happy Tower Day to you! Happy Tower Day to you! Happy Tower Day, Happy Tower Day, Happy Tower Day to youuuuuuuuuuu!

Moon, Defying Gravity

2009-08-18T22:41:26Z

I've been trying to write an essay about the recent film Moon and the new TV show "Defying Gravity". They're both set in the near future (mid-21st century) and involve mostly-realistic space travel, and I was going to use them to jump off into my taste in science fiction in general. But the more I think about it, the less I understand exactly what it is I like and don't like in SF, so I'm just going to point them out and wave my hands a bit. I have mixed feelings about them both; in the wider scheme of things they are good-but-not-great, solid B+, but in the genre of SF film and TV (which is a continual disappointment to me) they are remarkable and groundbreaking, and I hope they will lead the way to more of their ilk. Unfortunately, "Defying Gravity" is not getting good ratings, and might not even complete its 8-episode run (they've aired 4 so far). But check it out while you can, if a show that was pitched as "Grey's Anatomy in space" sounds at all appealing.

Game night this Tuesday

2009-07-19T16:12:31Z

For locals who aren't on my Nutting Lake Gamers list:

I'm having some game parties before I pack up the games for the move, starting this Tuesday, July 21, from 6pm to midnight. Let me know if you're coming, or just show up!

4 Crest Rd, Billerica, MA 01821
(978) 987-5084

Won't you be my neighbor?

2009-07-18T02:59:57Z

I signed the lease for my new apartment on Tuesday. I move on September 1 (along with everyone else in the greater Boston area), but there's a slight chance that I can move earlier if the current tenants find another place sooner. Recommendations for movers would be welcome; I've used Gentle Giant the last three times, and been very happy with them, but I've heard that there are cheaper moving companies that do just as good a job (Roadrunner being one recommended by dictator555).

The new address is 882 Broadway #3R in Somerville, just west of Powderhouse Square. It's above an unused commercial space, which looked like it had been abandoned a long time ago: there are decades-old signs for Cabot Farms Catering and Garden Room. I had been meaning for years to take pictures of it for urban_decay but I never got around to it... now I'll have no excuse! Anyway, the apartment is about two-thirds of the top (third) floor, and I think it's quite nice; it's old but not rundown, and it's spacious, with two bedrooms, full dining room, eat-in kitchen, and high ceilings. (This is where I was going to link to the Craigslist ad with pictures, but apparently Craigslist doesn't keep old posts for more than a couple weeks. Oh well.)

The building has four units, two on each of the second and third floors; the one below me is staying occupied, but the other two are available, in case you want to be my neighbor! I didn't look at the second floor unit, but I quite liked the third floor unit. It wasn't as much space as I wanted, but it's a big one-bedroom unit, with an "open plan" living/dining area with a great big corner window that overlooks Tufts and Powderhouse. The second floor unit splits the dining area into a second bedroom, but I imagine it's otherwise similar. Let me know if you're interested in one or the other, or contact the landlords through the Craigslist ads directly. They were willing to lower the rent for me from the advertised price, so I'm pretty sure they'd be willing to negotiate on these units too, especially if I can vouch for you.

Also, if these don't interest you but you're looking for a rental broker, I can recommend Scott Allison at Apartment Rental Experts near Porter Square. He was the best of the three brokers I worked with; we didn't end up finding anything together, but he was friendly, helpful, and patient while I was being picky and indecisive (we looked at over a dozen places over a few days). He also was good at keeping in touch and forwarding me new listings that he thought might appeal to me. Mail him at scott.apartmentx@gmail.com or call him at 413-687-3700.

New job, new apartment

2009-07-13T03:33:13Z

I have a new job. Well, it's more like an arrangement than a job: I'm subcontracting for Appleseed Software Consulting, a.k.a. prog. Basically he slices off chunks from his clients' tasks (currently, Perl web app stuff using Catalyst) and hands them to me, and pays me slightly less than he charges his clients (the difference paying for his managerial overhead, not to mention the fact that he finds and deals with clients so I don't have to). It's not an exclusive contract, so in theory I could call myself a full-fledged consultant and find my own clients, but unless something falls into my lap this is not generally likely to happen. (In fact, something did just fall into my lap, but I'm still thinking over whether I want to do it. It's somewhat southeast of center in the How To Be Happy In Business Venn diagram: I'm not sure I want to do it, and I'm not sure I can do it. Weirdly, though, these sort of cancel each other out. We'll see.)

My job search, which started with gusto in mid-February and petered out sometime last month, was a big bust. I inquired at about 15 places, went to interviews at four of them (Vistaprint, BAE/AIT, Google, and Ab Initio), and got zero offers. I limited my inquiries to places where I knew someone; I could have spread my net much further and more vigorously, but by the time I realized I was going to turn up dry with my contact network, the whole job search process had left a bad taste in my mouth and I was not inspired to start sending out "cold" applications. I could write a lot more about my interview experiences, but it's really hard to avoid it sounding like sour grapes—and who knows, maybe it is just sour grapes; that, or it's just a symptom of the bad job market. And I don't want to burn any bridges... But, honestly, I did get the feeling I was being jerked around more than necessary. Enough said for now.

Once I made up my mind to stop looking for a full-time salary job, I started looking for a new place to live. I had moved to Billerica to reduce the commute to my job in Burlington, but that's been moot for 19 months now, and lately I've been driving to Somerville almost as often as I was commuting to Burlington when I lived in Somerville. So, after another lengthy, exhausting, and somewhat demoralizing search, I settled on an apartment pretty close to where I used to live, right near Powderhouse Square. I'll post more details after I sign the lease this week.

An interesting footnote: right as I was about to commit to staying in the Boston area for another year, I got two out-of-town job nibbles, one from Amazon.com in Seattle, the other from a very interesting-sounding startup in Silicon Valley. If these had arrived a couple months earlier, I would have seriously considered them, but the timing was just off so I passed. But, if you're interested in a Silicon Valley startup job that involves a "pure-functional, lazily-evaluated, functional-reactive language that compiles to JavaScript for execution on both the server and the browser", ping me and I'll connect you up.

Obvious joke

2009-05-01T01:25:03Z

Surely I can't be the first one to make a "Specter turned by Republican clerics" joke?

Four Seasons

2009-04-28T16:12:54Z

...in 36 hours.

Oracle to buy Sun

2009-04-20T17:41:43Z

Oracle is buying Sun. I know Sun's been on death watch for a while now, but it's still kind of sad to see them no longer exist as an independent company. I worked for Sun for a summer in college, and I would have liked to work for them again, e.g. in the Programming Language Research Group, but I'm not really sure if I'd want to work for Oracle (and who knows if they'll keep all of Sun's research teams, let alone start hiring again). I have a general impression of Oracle as kind of evil, but maybe that's just FUD.

Anyone want to speculate on the ramifications of this?

A real corker

2009-04-04T17:18:47Z

CBS News:

Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said that the Obama administration's demands of General Motors and Chrysler set "a dangerous precedent."

"I think for all of us who believe in free enterprise, this is the crossing of a major threshold, and it actually should send a chill to people all across the country," Corker said.

This is incredible doublethink. The administration is asking for changes in the auto companies because we gave them billions of dollars and they're asking for more. If they don't want to make the changes, they are more than welcome to give us the damn money back. You know what's not free enterprise? Asking the government for free money, no strings attached. Corker (and the pundits who are echoing his talking points, or is it the other way around?) should be criticizing GM for wanting to go on welfare, not the administration for offering them a deal that protects the people's interest.

More new TV shows

2009-04-04T05:12:35Z

I watch TV so you don't have to...

Kings: Great, bold concept (what if we had a king?), but so far the writing has been a little lackluster. It feels like it wants to be an alternate-universe The West Wing, but without the witty dialogue. And the setting might be a little too different: it's a kingdom called Gilboa, whose capital city is Shiloh, and they're at war with the kingdom of Gath to the north; so far there's been very little indication of when their history diverged from ours, and how. I read a blurb online somewhere that said Shiloh was Manhattan, and I guess Gath is supposed to be Canada, but neither has been made clear on the show yet. (The only historical reference that I've noticed so far is a famous piano that was played by Liszt.) Oh, hm, I just read in the Wikipedia article that it's based on the biblical story of King David. Suddenly I'm less hopeful that the story will get more interesting. But I'll keep watching.
Castle: Female police detective gets assigned a famous playboy mystery author who helps her solve murder cases. So basically it's Murder He Wrote, with some Moonlighting-style rom-com banter. I always like Nathan Fillion (and Susan Sullivan), and the first two episodes were pretty good, but the third kinda bored me and I decided I didn't need another episodic murder mystery show when I already watch Monk. (Same reason I don't watch Psych.) If you like that kind of thing, though, check it out.
Eastbound and Down: HBO comedy mini-series about a former major league relief pitcher trying to cope with no longer being famous. Produced by Will Ferrell, who also has a recurring role; I am not a Will Ferrell fan, and his scenes are often kind of tedious, but otherwise it's a surprisingly funny and well-done show. Lots of lowbrow humor, but not the over-the-top fart-joke stuff I would have expected. Danny McBride plays the lead character with a really sharp focus, as an egotistical dirtbag moronic asshole loser who you still somehow end up sort of rooting for. It's already over after 6 episodes, but I'm hoping it gets picked up into a full series.
Better Off Ted: network sitcom starring a lot of familiar friendly faces, but after the first ten minutes without a single laugh I gave up.
Head Case: Sitcom on Starz, about a ditzy female psychiatrist. Also not quite funny enough to hook me. I only found about this show a couple days ago, and it's already ten episodes in, but I don't think I would have liked it much more if I'd started from the beginning.
Party Down: Another sitcom on Starz, about a bumbling LA catering company. This one made me laugh—a bit more edgy—so I'll keep watching (or maybe I just have a crush on Lizzie Caplan, from The Class, Cloverfield, and True Blood).
Samantha Who: Not a new show; it just returned from hiatus in the middle of its second season. Somehow I didn't hear about it when it debuted in 2007, but apparently it was highly rated and won some Emmys, and I like Christina Applegate so I downloaded the first season. I watched the first three episodes tonight, and it is actually pretty good. It's about a woman who wakes up from an 8-day coma with amnesia and slowly learns that she used to be a horrible selfish conniving corporate VP. The writing and direction is snappy, and it plays up the subtext pretty well, about becoming more conscious of your actions and struggling to change for the better. Not sure yet how they'll get two seasons out of the premise though.
The Unusuals: Starts next Wednesday, haven't read anything about it to avoid spoilers, but it looked like it could be interesting. Any other new shows coming up?

And hey look, a few shows I'm no longer watching:

Battlestar Galactica: The finale, like the whole series, was not really what I wanted it to be, but it could have been a lot worse. I'm glad I stayed with the show, but I'm glad it's over.
Heroes: I finally gave up after a few episodes piled up on the Tivo and I realized I had no desire at all to watch them.
Life on Mars: Also not quite what I wanted it to be, but it always managed to stay just interesting enough for me to keep watching (and it seemed to get noticeably better after about the season midpoint). I don't know if this didn't get renewed for a second season, or they only intended it to have one season all along, but either way, I'm glad it ended, and I have to applaud the way they ended it. I don't want to spoil it, but I'll say it was totally different from the British version ending (which I didn't see, but read about, and it wouldn't have fit the tone of the American version anyway). And, you have to like a show that sneaks in more Bowie lyrics than The Venture Brothers.

An investment opportunity!

2009-03-28T16:59:21Z

I have a low promotional rate on my Discover card balance, but it goes up in a couple weeks when the promotional period expires. So I called up Bank of America (where I have two credit cards, due to past mergers) to see if they could give me a better rate; I've had luck with that before. At worst, I was expecting them to say "sorry, no offers right now", but instead, they instantly lowered my existing credit limits to be my current balance + $500! That's about a 25% cut! It's not a total disaster, but it makes my safety net smaller. And it makes me think that maybe now's not the best time to have credit card debt, if they might start changing more things about my accounts willy-nilly.

So, here's a brainstorm: any of you private investors out there sitting on a pile of cash and want to "recapitalize" me? I'm not FDIC-insured, but I think I'm a pretty safe investment; the job search is taking a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I do expect to be making a pretty comfortable salary again in the not-too-distant future (two interviews next week). And I can probably double any one-year CD rate you could find these days. (If not more; make me an offer...)

Fast & Furious

2009-03-20T15:39:55Z

The latest sequel to The Fast & the Furious is called Fast & Furious. Here are some other sequels in the works:

Good, Bad, & Ugly
Quick & Dead
Gone With Wind
Fellowship of Ring
Return of Jedi
Silence of Lambs
Planet of Apes
Friday Thirteenth
Day Earth Stood Still
Boot
Godfar
Y Live

The Krugman view

2009-03-17T23:46:53Z

I've been following Paul Krugman's blog and columns for a couple years now. He's the only political writer that I read consistently—and even though his blog is called "The Conscience of a Liberal", he's really still more of an economist than a political writer; that is, he has strong viewpoints about politics and policy, but he backs it up with a lot of economic data and theory. I don't agree with him on everything—he supported Hillary over Obama in the primary—but generally the things he says make a lot of sense (though sometimes they are a bit hard to follow when he gets wonkish). It's frustrating, though, how seldom his views seem to filter out into the mainstream media and popular mindset. Perhaps it's just that he's wrong, and I should venture outside the Krugman bubble and read some opposing viewpoints; I would happily accept suggestions for blogs that are similarly grounded in data and science but draw different conclusions. But I also sometimes worry that he just doesn't speak plainly and emphatically enough for his (often counterintuitive) positions to get noticed and understood. So, in the interest of public education, I'm going to try to summarize his stance on the current economic situation as I understand it. (I've never taken an economics class or anything, so my understanding is probably pretty shallow; please correct me if I get anything wrong.)

Normally, when the economy starts to decline, the best way to get more money into the system is for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates (this is called fiscal stimulus). The problem right now is that interest rates have stayed low ever since the Fed lowered them to help the economy after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000—in fact that was one of the main things driving the real estate bubble, i.e. cheap mortgages. After that bubble burst, the Fed lowered interest rates down to essentially zero, but that turns out not to be enough. Since interest rates can't go below zero, the Fed can't really do any more to help that way (this is called a liquidity trap). So the next best way to get money into the system is for the government to spend more money, i.e. to run a bigger budget deficit (this is called economic stimulus).

In the long run, deficit spending is bad, because it drives up the debt, which causes inflation. And it seems to go against common sense: if times are tough, shouldn't the government tighten its belt just like its citizens are having to? But, as Krugman says, "When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly." When consumers and businesses start saving instead of spending, the government is the only one left who can spend, so it has to take up the slack by spending more. Moreover, spending too much is safer than spending too little: if it spends too much and the economy grows too quickly, the Fed can raise interest rates to combat inflation. But if it spends too little, or too slowly, and a full recovery doesn't appear on the horizon, consumers will continue to save rather than spend, businesses will continue to cut jobs, and the economy will go further down the spiral.

So, how much spending is needed? The $800 billion stimulus package that Obama proposed sure sounded pretty huge-mongous. But all the numbers are big when you're talking about the national economy; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that GDP will drop $2.9 trillion over the next three years. So the stimulus was already too small, and centrists in Congress whittled it down further. As Krugman asks, "shouldn’t Obama have made a much bigger plan, say $1.3 trillion, his opening gambit?" The centrists wouldn't have asked for a corresponding $500 billion more in cuts; they could haggle it down to $1.2 trillion and look like they were being prudent and reining in excess spending, while still ending up with a big enough number to stay in scale with the problem.

Note that there are two ways for the government to "spend" money: actual spending, and tax cuts. Of course, this is the fundamental split between the parties; Democrats want the government to provide services for the public good, like roads and bridges, scientific research, and universal health care, while Republicans want to give money directly to the people. Putting aside the philosophical debates about socialism vs. libertarianism, there are two economic arguments in favor of spending over tax cuts:

First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over.

Estimates say that each dollar of public spending results in a $1.50 increase in GDP, whereas the results of tax cuts are closer to 1-to-1. This is not an either-or question; there may not be enough "shovel-ready" projects for spending to have an immediate effect, so the stimulus should be a combination of spending and tax cuts both. But 100% tax cuts (like the DeMint amendment, which would have replaced Obama's $800 billion with $3.1 trillion—so much for the deficit hawks) would be much less efficient.

Okay, I'm running out of steam on this project, and getting tired of searching for specific links for each point. But I'll briefly go over some other topics and what I think is Krugman's take.

Bank bailouts: necessary in order to relieve the credit crunch. (Letting Lehman Brothers fail didn't "teach Wall Street a lesson", it just made everyone panic and exacerbated the problems.) But we should get something in exchange for the bailout money, i.e. temporary ownership of the banks. The Obama administration is afraid of anything that could be called nationalization, but it's what the FDIC does all the time with smaller banks, and they should, and do, get re-privatized within five years.
Fannie and Freddie: there was corruption there, but they were accounting scandals, and while they were dealing with that they actually reduced their involvement in the bad lending practices that were going on throughout the mortgage industry. So you can't blame the subprime mess on them (or Barney Frank/Chris Dodd).
Housing prices: still inflated, because it takes much longer for owners to give up and lower their prices than it did for them to raise prices during the bubble. They still have another 10-20% to fall back to historical norms, and buying up foreclosures or other plans to put a floor on housing prices will just delay the natural market operation.
Social Security is not in trouble; Medicare is the problem, and it's due to spikes in health care costs.
Government health care coverage can be more efficient (i.e. cost less per citizen) than free-market privatized health care, but it only works if it's universal, i.e. everyone is mandated to have it. I think this was the main reason Krugman preferred Hillary to Obama, because Obama was using Republican talking points to attack mandates. This is probably worth another whole post when I get around to digging up the appropriate links.

Public newspapers?

2009-03-15T20:52:38Z

The future of the newspaper business is looking pretty dire, as people prefer to read news online rather than get printed copies, and it's a lot harder to charge for news online; also, newspaper classified sections can't compete with Craigslist, and that was a big part of their revenue. It makes me wonder, though, why newspapers must be a business. We have public television and public radio, why don't we have public newspapers? Maybe it smacks too much of Pravda, the state newspaper of the Soviet Union. But PBS and NPR certainly aren't propaganda outlets, so it should be possible to have non-profit newspapers, funded by the government and by private donations, that are journalistically independent. How come this hasn't happened yet? Do you think it will happen?

Update: I just found out about MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, and St. Louis Beacon, non-profit local papers. Are there others?

Charlie Rose tech interviews

2009-03-15T18:45:13Z

Charlie Rose did a bunch of very interesting in-depth interviews with tech people last month. You can watch them in full online for free, and I recommend them if you have the time (most are an hour, some are a half-hour).

Feb 3: Chris De Wolfe and Tom Anderson, founders of MySpace
Feb 19: Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic and founder of Netscape. He has also invested in sites like Digg and Twitter and sits on the board of Facebook and eBay.
Feb 26: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com. Mostly promoting the Kindle, but even though I don't want one, I still found it a fascinating topic.
Feb 27: John Hennessy, President of Stanford University. He also founded MIPS Computer Systems, co-wrote (with David Patterson of UC Berkeley) a well-known textbook on computer architecture, and sits on the board of Google and Cisco.
Feb 27: Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter
Mar 4: Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Mar 5: Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products at Google, and an early engineering employee.
Mar 6: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

Saturday Night Videos

2009-03-08T04:14:13Z

Since urbaniak seems to be falling down on the job:

More from where that first video came from at Kutiman - Thru-You. Awesome idea, brilliant execution, very satisfying.

Starting the job search

2009-03-06T16:15:38Z

I am finally getting back into the job market. I've sent my resume to 11 different places so far, but if you know of any interesting places that are hiring, please let me know! Ideally I would like a more research-oriented position, since that's why I got a PhD, but I am keeping a very open mind and considering all opportunities.

What is wrong with me?

2009-02-20T06:45:09Z

Last week, aroraborealis hosted her annual LJ Confessional where people were encouraged to post their confessions, anonymously or not. There were a fair number of Post Secret-style deep dark secrets, but many of them were about crushes (it being the week before Valentine's Day). After I posted a comment on someone else's confession, someone anonymously commented that I was hot. It was flattering, of course, but it made me realize that I was actually more interested in getting negative comments than positive ones. (That was the only one I got either way.) It may just be my natural pessimism that makes me believe negative opinions more than positive ones, but mostly I feel I can learn more from criticism than from compliments. I always want to improve myself (I may not always be capable of it, but I always want to), and learning about a perceived fault of mine gives me more actionable information than a perceived strength.

So with that in mind, I am hereby inviting you all to say something negative about me here, anonymously or not (IP logging is off, as always). Constructive criticism would be preferred, but if you just want to insult me, go for it—as long as you really mean it! If you can't think of something to criticize, tell me something about myself that I might not know. If for some reason you don't want to broadcast your complaint, you can email me at dougorleans@gmail.com, perhaps using an anonymous remailer or something (just make sure it doesn't look like spam).

Brainwaves video

2009-02-18T06:31:02Z

At the Brainwaves festival in November, there were several professional cameramen filming everything. Someone finally posted a 4-minute "trailer" compiled from this footage, and it does a fantastic job at conveying the atmosphere of the event, maybe making it seem even cooler than it was.

brainwaves from ZF FILMS on Vimeo.

(There's also a video of the last two minutes of the Major Stars set.) I still want to post my own videos from the weekend, but now I'll be even more embarrassed at how crude my camera is (and how lame I am at taking video). Oh, and, hm, I guess I never linked to my photo set here.

New TV shows

2009-02-11T17:01:05Z

I've been enjoying the new Showtime show The United States of Tara. Created by Diablo Cody, so it has a little of that annoying Juno-style dialogue, but it's not as concentrated as in the movie (or maybe I'm just getting used to it). Interesting storylines, likable characters, great acting.

Important Things With Demetri Martin starts tonight; Survivor: Tocantins starts tomorrow; and Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse starts Friday. Any other new shows worth checking out?

Your Moment of Zen

2009-02-02T16:50:03Z

ZyzzlCon 3009, part 4

2009-01-30T00:43:36Z

Here's part 4 (the last) of my recap of the 2009 MIT Mystery Hunt, Escape From Zyzzlvaria.

Sometime on Saturday afternoon, someone finally figured out how to put the words in the grids for Dual Singularities and got the final answer. This gave us the fourth of the five answers for the Castor & Pollux round, which was enough for someone to figure out the answer to the meta. (I don't know who these someones were because I was asleep at the time.) This in turn gave us the final sheet of the sample game of Escape From Zyzzlvaria, and three hours later we were also given the "strategy guide", which was the final piece of the meta-meta puzzle for finding Zyzzlvaria Alpha and rescuing Captain Blastoid. When I arrived on Saturday evening, a few people were working their way through the sample game; two other groups had tried and failed to make it through the whole game, but the third time was a charm and they eventually finished successfully. But no one could figure out what to do with the strategy guide.

At some point early Sunday morning, Marc (the Central Services team captain) announced his opinion that solving the meta-meta should be our highest priority, and that everyone who hadn't looked at it already should take a look. So I sat down in front of the board and had Marc show me what we had. I looked at the strategy guide and said "why is each component name followed by its first letter in parentheses?" No one (who was nearby) knew; there didn't seem to be anywhere else that these letters were used. I then looked at the sample game and said "why are these capitalized two-word phrases in bold?" and again no one knew. Then I said "hey, looks like all of those words start with one of the component letters," and suddenly Marc said "Oh! Now I know exactly what to do," and proceeded to put these together with our sample game record and the answers to all of the puzzles we had solved in Inner Zyzzlvaria. He ended up with AL__A_AB__E_MEGA, which we guessed might be ALPHA'S ABOVE OMEGA (since we were looking for Zyzzlvaria Alpha on the game board). We didn't see any omega on the game board, though, so we started going back to solve more puzzles that we had put aside when we solved their round meta.

We started with And Now A Word From Our Intergalactic Corporate Overlords; others had long ago identified all but three of the logos, and someone had already noticed that all of the companies seemed to have parent companies, so it didn't take long to put the pieces together and get the answer. This confirmed the H in ALPHA, but we still weren't sure about the phrase so we started working on pluHarmony to see if it gave us the S, but no one was coming up with the final aha to finish solving it. We also called for a hint on Invasion of the Micronauts, because were all frustrated that no one had been able to even start the puzzle, but the hint didn't really help, other than confirming that we should ignore the invisible exclamation points in the PDF, and telling us to look for a set of six related words that were "really small". (In retrospect, that was a reasonable hint, but we were not in any mental shape to make the required aha at that point.) We were also staring at the game board trying to find an omega; I was pretty close to convinced that we needed to peel off the game board label to find an omega written underneath, but cooler heads prevented me from doing that. Finally Hugh noticed that the phrase "home game" contained "omega", and we all groaned in relief.

We called UPGAFS and told them we had found Zyzzlvaria Alpha; soon afterward, lunchboy came to our HQ and told us where we needed to go, and that we should lead him there (because he didn't know the campus well enough to know where it was). This was around 8am Sunday morning, and we trudged out into the morning snow to the third floor of some nearby building (Hayden maybe? I forget). As we went up a few flights of stairs, we heard some moaning coming from behind a door. We opened it and out fell Captain Blastoid! (Who had apparently grown a beard in her long captivity—wesleyjenn was asleep and unavailable for this skit.)

Saving Captain Blastoid from Doug Orleans on Vimeo.

It was definitely satisfying to finish "phase 1", even though it was almost 24 hours after they had given every team the reward that was supposed to be tied to it. UPGAFS had designed this two-phase structure to give more teams the feeling of completing a "mini-hunt"; I respect their motivation, but I was still frustrated with how it played out for our team, being stuck with no new puzzles for about 8 hours on Friday night/Saturday morning. The ending was also a little anti-climactic; it would have been nice to have an actual runaround puzzle after finding Zyzzlvaria Alpha, rather than just a skit.

Most of the rest of the Hunt was spent trying to solve the metas for the two rounds we had the most answers to, Combat Simulator and Virtual Sectors. It turned out that these were probably the two most difficult metas, and in retrospect I'm not sure why we didn't put more effort into looking at the other metas. I think it's because we felt we were so close, especially for Combat Simulator where we had 11 of the 12 answers and a pretty clear idea of how it worked (with each answer assigned to a die). Also we were just frazzled by that point, and thinking that the Hunt would end at any moment, we just wanted to solve one darn Outer Zyzzlvaria meta. But even with that goal, we were just too disorganized—I think if someone had been a proper "fresh brain" for the Combat Simulator meta and started from scratch assigning letters to the die faces, they might have been able to fit together a few puzzles pieces to spell a word or two. As it was, when I returned at 1am on Monday, I wanted to take a crack at it, but I couldn't find a complete set of puzzle pieces that had already been printed out, and when Michael finally made a new printout for me, it turns out it had used the wrong die face assignment (numbering the letters for the 10-sided dice 0-9 instead of 1-10, since the 0 and 9 were on opposite faces instead of 1 and 10 like you would expect). Someone else had already figured this out and there was another version of the puzzle pieces floating around, but by this point the people who were still in the room didn't know enough of the history of the puzzle to tell me. If I had instead just started from scratch, I might have been able to solve it, although probably not before the COIN was found at 3am and UPGAFS shut the whole website down.

So, overall, I enjoyed the Hunt as usual, but it was neither my favorite Hunt—that would probably be SPIES in 2006, which was well-put-together and ran remarkably smoothly—nor my favorite Hunt experience—that would probably be last year, where despite feeling hopeless because we had an overwhelming number of puzzles with a smallish team, I felt like I was always making progress and solving tons of puzzles. I really liked this year's theme, both the 3009/space-opera part and the board game part, and the puzzles did a good job at fitting into both of those themes. And many of the puzzles were well-designed, fair, and satisfying. But it felt like there were too many "look up a bunch of things on Google" puzzles, and the Outer Zyzzlvaria metas especially were one or two layers more complicated than they should have been. There also seemed to be more errata than usual, though I don't think any of it directly affected our team. And I've already complained about the phase 1 bottleneck, which really almost ruined the Hunt for me. I hope Beginner's Luck learns the right lessons and doesn't make the same mistake next year.

As for my team experience, it felt a little too crowded on Friday evening and Saturday evening, and at several points we seemed to be out of chairs and/or table space. It would have been better if our secondary room had been full-sized, so that we could use it both as a sleeping room and a puzzle-overflow room, but really I would prefer if we could all fit comfortably into one room. We also still had the problem of progress grinding to a halt in the wee hours of the morning; on Saturday morning, that was mostly the fault of the Hunt structure bottleneck, but on Sunday morning, we could have used more people (or at least fresher people). I think instead of trying to encourage more people to stay up all night, it might be better to encourage people who are early risers to come in at 4am, say, instead of 8am.

I have some more post-mortem thoughts about how we can improve, but I think I'll save them for email to our team. I'll end this by giving a big thanks to UPGAFS (aka EMBWBAM) and to Central Services, and a hearty congratulations to Beginner's Luck. I'm already getting impatient about next year's Hunt! Here's a few more pictures:

Marc, our team captain, addressing the room (I think about paying for dinner).

Team Electric Mayhem left their name in the snow outside our window on Sunday morning. Thankfully it was not yellow snow.

At around 1am Monday, we requested that Scotchy come and show us his Dance of the Seven Ales. He explained that he didn't really remember how to do it sober—he usually only did it after drinking seven ales in seven minutes. But he gave it a shot, which was enough to help our morale. He didn't give us any hints, though—he didn't even frown when we showed him how we had fit the Combat Simulator pieces onto the Inner Zyzzlvaria game board (which was an unintentional red herring and a total dead end).

UPGAFS at the Warp-Up, explaining how things worked (or didn't work).