As I sit down to close out this brilliant weekend,

I've got a new lungi, Outkast and Passion Pit on the stereo, a Doctor Who season-finale-part-1 queued up, a loving family enjoying Father's day in Cleveland, a wonderful group of friends here in Seattle, a GRE behind me, an exciting and promising future in front of me figuratively, and a plate of Thai food in front of me literally.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Things that make me say:

Meh: I watch soccer for the first time in 4 years, it's USA-England, big game... and it ends as a 1-1 tie?

Eep: not being able to record policemen sounds pretty sci-fi dystopian.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha: Russian Who Wants to be a Millionaire

So cool: a font for each city!

I love living in a city that has these: SIFF and Ignite

Yes yes hells yes: Everything Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and particularly right now Micmacs.

On a kick again

This is pretty nice. I sometimes alternate between bits of feeling wonderful and feeling kinda out of it. Now I'm on an upswing. That's good.

On an upswing, everything is fast and colorful and energetic! And I say yes to things. I have physical energy to do things. I have willpower to resist things. I have mental energy to think about and plan things. I have ... interpersonal energy? ... to really care about people.

I remember a couple of these in recent history: while making Is it a Party? and after realizing I wanted to go to grad school. This one doesn't have such a cause. So why is it happening?

Blame it on a lot of things: nice weather, having allergy medicine again, making progress at work. Coming back from vacation maybe, but I felt not so great the first week or so after vacation. I did fast for a day on Memorial Day, and thought "wouldn't it be convenient if this were a turning point?" ... maybe it was, coincidentally or not.

Anyway, upswings all end... is this one different? I hope so. The difference this time could be that I'm more focused on compassion. Also, I realize that my previous goals were to minimize all that I don't want, and that approach wasn't working for me, so perhaps I can wisely refill my life now. I'm going a little easier on myself. Maybe I've learned something.

... uhh, talk about feelings on the internet much? whatever, I'm feeling good, I don't care what you think! plus, this is as close to a diary as I have, and I like to record these things.

Oh, unrelatedly, I jumped out of a plane last weekend. I quite recommend it.

Meta-social-network-problem

First, are you a grad student? Or anyone else who reads a lot of PDF's, and needs to save PDF's as well as metadata on all of them in the cloud, and maybe organize them in cool ways? How do you do it? What software do you use?

Second, how do I best broadcast the above request? I want it to go to everyone I know, but low-priority, so they just ignore it if they don't know. Blog -> Facebook, Buzz, and RSS reader, but it's in facebook as a "note", so most people may not read it. I think Twitter also -> Facebook and Buzz, but I'm not sure. In this case, I solved it by blasting everywhere. HI INTERNET I HAVE SOMETHING TO ASK YOU.

Oh nevermind, this is exactly the use case for Aardvark.

Self-control (again)

Is exhaustible. (skip the movie, transcript is fine.) Willpower is like a muscle.

Yet, it's super important. (read the long article or just take my word for it.) Okay, maybe not the marshmallow study as such. But still. Would you argue that willpower isn't crucial for personal success, worldly success, any kind of success?

Sure, there are tricks to help you improve your self-control. But it's not through just trying harder.

Anyway, we discriminate against people who don't have it. (I may have been thinking about this during the unfortunate Doctor Who episode "Voyage of the damned", in which there is a fat couple who really likes food. One character makes fun of them for eating all the time. He is a jerk; they are the salt of the earth.) We hate on them, and consider ourselves justified in doing so!

It seems particularly unjust to me. We judge people for lacking willpower, because they don't know the willpower-increasing tricks. That's like judging someone in America for not knowing Swahili. And we do this all the time: any time you say "that person is dumb because he was too lazy to do his homework" or "that person is fat because he eats too much and never exercises," you're judging someone for lacking willpower.

(I guess the answer here is just not to judge anyone. Increase the radius of beings who deserve your appreciation and concern to be all humans, not just all humans with enough willpower.)

Ever had sleep paralysis?

It's more fun if you know about it beforehand. Here's the wikipedia. Here's how my episode last night went:

I half woke up, and I thought there was someone in my room. For some reason, I thought it was my friend Pete, but then I looked over, and it wasn't- it was kind of a big lumbering dude, and I only say "dude" because he/she was big and lumbering; I couldn't really make out a face. I couldn't do anything. Then said person kinda laid across my chest sideways. This was a little inconvenient. I could still kinda breathe, but maybe a little less. I couldn't do much. I felt like I could see everything fine, except the person; it was like he had a perception filter or something. I could move my hands, except to get the person off me, and I could talk but not to the person.

Eventually he got up and stood in the corner of the room. Same thing: I couldn't see him or talk to him, although I felt awake. At this point it was really just kind of annoying. I was thinking "well, what if I roll out of bed, maybe hitting the ground would wake me up for real." Luckily, before I could, I was awakened by a text message.

This has happened to me I think once before, and I don't think it's unusual for most people to get it a couple times. I bet if you didn't know about it, it'd be terrifying. Because you do, hopefully it'll be only a little bit scary, probably kind of annoying, and more interesting.

(side note: I guess this qualifies as lucid dream #3. But "I know I'm having sleep paralysis" is a lot less fun than "I know I'm dreaming!")

Androidespair

In the last year or so, I've launched maybe four legitimately-sized personal projects: The Voting Game, Dinnnner, Is It A Party?, and Whistle Weasel.

The Voting Game still exists, albeit with some big flaws (when you create a game, it's public; the workflow is unintuitive; doesn't really support people not voting for certain things; you can accidentally delete an object). Dinnnner crashed and burned due to issues with people not getting emails; plus, it was not really any better than a mailing list. (I didn't talk about it much; don't worry about it.) Is It A Party? is still rocking, for all four of its users (literally), and Whistle Weasel... has issues:

First of all, it crashes if you try to use a Motorola Droid, despite Android's attempts to be the one OS for a lot of phones. Second of all, I just found out the new version of Android (2.2, or "Froyo" as it's unfortunately known) changes something about the audio recorder calibration. So even if you whistle a very high note, you can't get more than 1/4 of the way up the screen. This makes gameplay less than fun, to say the least.

What to do?

1. I hard-coded the calibration values; I could just re-hard-code them with a value that works on Froyo. But then, if you still had the old OS (Eclair), it would not work.

2. Add a new startup flow where it shows the splash screen, then there's a screen that says "whistle as low as you can", then "whistle as high as you can", then it lets you actually start the game. This would be a lot of work.

3. Scrap it.

4. Hard-code the Froyo value so at least it's on my phone and I can demo it as a party trick, then otherwise scrap it.

I'm leaning towards #4, and here's why: I'm not interested anymore. I didn't set out to make an enterprise-grade bit of software, or even a game that's worth $1. I set out to make a silly game that you control by whistling. Also, my code is not very good; the audio recording code I could probably fix up, but I think I've made big mistakes with the UI code design, which is to say, there is not much UI code design.

So what's the big deal? I feel like I'm trying to build up a portfolio. Sure I can write servers at work, but I can also write mobile apps, see? And if it's alive and kicking, I can point to it as a legit Thing That I've Done. (why? I dunno...) Also, I've hit the UI-code-sucks snag with all four of my side projects, and while they've been mostly small enough to limp along with ugly code, I've never relished diving back in to the UI. I'd like to actually make a solid maintainable program.

But I think I should let it go. I'm learning each time, so maybe next time when I'm interested in another program, I can design it better from the start. Software is transient anyway, and any energy maintaining this would be more energy not spent doing something else exciting and useful, and either way, nobody will remember it in 5 years. Finally, I should really lighten up: writing software on the side while you already have a full-time job writing software is hard work. Sheesh, this is supposed to be fun!

Side note: pretty much all of my problems with Android have come from the AudioRecord class, which is supposed to let you record audio and fiddle with it on-the-fly (as opposed to saving it to a file). I think my next project should not involve recording audio.

More thoughts about Thailand

I take it back about Thailand being kind of like India. In India, we had adversaries. In Thailand, we had helpers. It felt safer than lots of places in the states, walking across Chiang Mai at midnight. (okay, not Bangkok; I'll take a mulligan on that one.) Maybe I'm more confident or more naive now. Also, large parts of Chiang Mai are tourist ghettos.

Here's a story about A. how I was a hero this one time, and B. it sparked some thoughts or something; it's going to sound self-congratulatory, but I kinda want to make sure I remember it, although I probably will anyway. So I'm riding my motorbike around Doi Suthep National Park, where there is:

- a temple

- some nature

and I had already been to the temple so I went past it this time. Signs pointed to a Hmong village. Y'know, cool, so I went there, though the LP called it "touristy." Okay, it was touristy. But I wandered into the Royal Something Conservation Project HQ for the city, and a couple young folks working there sold me some coffee and discussed lychees with me. (along with what they did, where I'm from, etc.) And this guy had a crossbow-ey thing that shot bamboo arrows, and for 10 baht (30 cents) I got to take 3 shots at a papaya. So this was touristy, but still awesome. I'll come back to this later.

So then I rode on, and the road got more smaller, then more dirt-like, then more bumpy, but there were signs to another Hmong village. Might as well; I was really digging just being outside and exploring. Eventually I found it. No tourists, just people living their lives. So I felt a little out of place, wandered a little, and left. Followed another path until I met another biker who warned me that it was too bumpy ahead. Okay, so I turned around. I noticed he was pushing his bike, so I asked if it was broken. Now I think Thai was not his first language- probably Hmong or whatever he spoke in his village. But between the two of us, I found out he was out of gas. He was going to push the bike the 1/2 mile back to the village! So I offered him a ride back. Hooray, I thought, I did a Good Deed today.

Then with some broken Thai, he showed me around his village. His name was Yen. We sat at a place with a view and watched the krung-bins fly into the Chiang Mai sa-nam-bin. That was neat, thanks, Yen! But I should be going. Why don't you get some gas and I'll drive you back to your bike. Pantomime plus my broken Thai: oh, you have no money for gas. No prob, I'll buy you a liter. He didn't understand.

Then who comes along but another farang! Her name's Luna, she's from Russia by way of Vietnam, and she was not having a good day. She was not digging the northern Thailand way of life. It wasn't jingoism or Ugly-Americanism, as she lived in Vietnam for years. I think it was just that certain areas don't sit well with some people. 's fine with me, I like hills, but to each his/her own. She didn't know Thai, but she needed gas.

And my bits of Thai came through: as I interpreted between Luna and Yen, we all understood that she needed gas. And then "hai kun" came to me: "to give to you." "She'll buy some gas, and I'll buy some gas to give to you." Understanding all around! We then went to some guy's shop who sold gas in 1L liquor bottles and worked it out!

And it didn't feel unsafe, or weird at all, like I was being taken advantage of. That's nice. Tourism feels nice in Thailand. It's big (6% of their GDP; don't know what ours is) but as a result, they're totally cool with it. I didn't encounter any anti-tourist snobbery like you get in the US or Europe. If you're into traveling, I recommend Thailand.

One of my "someday" projects:

a small keyboard, plus a tiny LCD screen. All you can do is type text files and save them. Then I guess it's got a USB key or something so you can plug it into a real computer to get the text off of there. I'm just incapable of actually writing anything these days, and phone keyboards are right out, so I have to find a little bit of internet if I want to blog while I wait for a flight.

I guess just a keyboard that plugs into a phone would work fine; then I could just use whatever notepad program. In fact, they probably make those. I should look into this.

Point is, can we talk for a minute about Thai food? And where has it been all my life? I've fancied myself a bit of an Indonesian chef (despite the fact that the closest I've ever been to the place was its colonial oppressor), a Japanese chef (despite the fact that I'm not really okay with buying a lot of fish) and an Indian chef (despite the fact that Indian food is so heavy the beatles should have written "I Want You/Indian Food Is So Heavy")

I sort of wrote it off kinda like I've written off China and Africa for now: I'm sure it's great, but it's a whole vast world that I haven't even started to explore, and I have a lot of other interests to check out first. I didn't know what I was missing, and here's maybe why: our culture has really uneven food experiences. Your day-to-day Western food might be pretty mediocre, and then once a month you go out to a fancy restaurant and it's awesome. So great Italian or French restaurants really exude confidence. They say "you are having a special meal right now!" On the other hand, great Thai restaurants cost $8-12, have some pretty average decor, and the food tastes very good. They don't aim to be the best meal you've had all year. And the thing is, they don't have to. In Thailand, I had pretty consistently great food, every meal, every day. It's all fresh, it's all cooked by experts, and it's all cheap. If you live in a world like that, you don't need to have occasional splurges. It's like fresh air: living in Seattle, the idea of an oxygen bar seems absurd, but if you lived in Shanghai, it'd probably seem like a nice indulgence. Needless to say, having pretty great food/air all the time is probably healthier than these things being mostly crummy but occasionally awesome.

Here are some reasons that Thai food is great:

- most dishes use only one pot.

- Thai food all uses mostly the same ingredients.

- it's cheap; even if you eat meat, you just buy a little and cut it up. You're not serving steaks.

- it's healthy. Probably the unhealthiest thing in it is the white rice/noodles. (note that "coconut milk has saturated fat therefore it's bad" is false.)

- it's easily vegetarianable by just not using meat. (most dishes still hold up well without it.)

- there are pretty well-defined Thai flavors and dishes.

- so many fruits!

Here are some reasons it's not so great:

- there are a lot of ingredients.

- kaffir lime leaves and galangal are still not in your local mega-grocery, and often not in your local Chinese grocery.

- it's not really fit for Seattle's climate; here you don't get all the nice fruits.

So that's where my cooking interests are going to be heading these days. Any of you enjoy Thai cooking, and have any recommendations?

Let's start unpacking this trip now

while it's still fresh in my mind. Also I have an evening with nothing to do, and really, typing up some things about this trip sounds like a fun thing.

(I'm really quite rubbish at having fun. I always feel like there's someone over my shoulder saying "you're not having enough fun!" or "you're not having the right kind of fun!" So that's kind of annoying. But the thing is, the voice is usually right. Often it gets me to do things that I wouldn't otherwise have done, and I'm usually glad when I do things. How to benefit from this go-get-em voice while not going crazy? Good question.)

Enough about me! Some thoughts about Thailand:

- Thailand at first seems like India. It's hot and there are elephants. Everything is cheap. A lot of people are poor. But Thailand is at least kind of reasonable. You shouldn't drink the water from the tap, but you can trust a glass of water in a restaurant. You should haggle a little, but most people aren't trying to rip you off hardcore. Buses and trucks are overfull, but like "dog carrying two bags" full, not like "hamster carrying a credenza" overfull. And yeah, it's not a super rich country, but there's not so much suffering all over the place.

- That said, the government is a mess right now. I guess there's an uneasy peace where the main protesting in Bangkok has stopped. But still, the internet cafe where I'm typing this (in Chiang Mai) will close in 1/2 hour (2 1/2 hours early) because there's a curfew in effect. Whoa! From what I understand, the country has a case of urban-vs-rural, where Bangkok has the money and power and everyone else is not too pleased. Plus they want democracy or something, and they see that "their man" Thaksin Shinawatra got ousted from power a few years ago and they want him back. I guess? But also, Thaksin is super corrupt. Good idealism! Bad particular choice of hero.

But what do I know, I'm just a kid. Wikipedia knows more, as it always does, although the neutrality of this article is disputed.

- Geez oh man, don't come to Thailand in May! What are you thinking?! It's about a trillion degrees. Note that "35" means "95", and "40" means "104". Plus it's humid.

- Memo to my future self, if I am ninety years old or living in a city where biking is infeasible: get a Vespa! Oh yeah, Mom and Dad stop reading now. I rented a little scooter over the last couple of days and had a really splendid time zipping along the hills and valleys of northern Thailand. You get a lot of the benefits of a bike (wind in your face, easy to park, fun to ride) and some partial benefits of a bike (doesn't use a ton of gas, is relatively cheap) and a couple other ones (you can go long distances, even if it's suffocatingly hot and humid out; you can carry a passenger). What a good deal! Mom and Dad you can start reading again now. It was totally safe, the roads here are great and pretty empty, the bike went like 35mph, I had a super helmet, and did I mention how totally safe I am?

(plus how it was totally the greatest for serious?)

- Prices of things, in case you're considering a trip:

a guest house room with A/C in Chiang Mai: $12

overnight sleeper train with A/C: $28

daytime train for a few hours, 3rd class: like a dollar

meal at a night markety stall which is guaranteed delicious: also like a dollar

meal at a restaurant: $2-3

coffee (this is getting popular, especially up north. that is cool.): $1-2

the best fruit ever, in a bag: under $1

1hr massage: maybe $6

cross-town taxi in Bangkok: $5

you get the idea, things are super cheap. Which does change your life: certain things become non-decisions. I didn't have to decide whether I really wanted to rent a bicycle for a day, because it cost $1.50. I used it for a couple hours and returned it. This sort of non-decision is nice.

Okay, so about that curfew. Shop's closing up. More juicy details later.

Bangkok is stained, and it's not my fault

No, seriously, it's a mess. I'm safe, thankfully, and so is everyone else I know in Thailand, which means that violence is happening to strangers, which I guess is better than violence happening to people I know, weird as that is to say. It's a mess in the way that I was never even near any danger but, y'know, last week I was in a city that featured an army shooting its own citizens.

This week I'm in Chiang Mai, having a grand old time on vacation. Woo hoo!

Trip report to follow, and maybe I'll spout about the whole protest situation a bit or maybe not. But also to follow: we are about to celebrate the birthday of the one and only Mr. T on Friday, and if you'd like to receive the 2nd annual Mr. T's Birthday Letter (that is actually entirely about me and not about Mr. T), then send me an email or comment here or send me a facebook twitter foursquare digg twerp snit gropple and I'll put you on the list.

EDIT: I mean, if you want to be on the list, and you weren't last year, then send me a Buzz or something. If you got it last year, you'll get it again this year, like it or not!

Whistle Weasel, or APP THE SECOND

Can you whistle?

Did you ever think "man I am so tired of tapping on the screen to play my cell phone games, I wish I could control one with the pleasant tones of my whistling"?

Can you find it in your heart to help out a poor hang-gliding weasel with a wicked hankerin' for pineapples?

Boy howdy, have I got the Android app for you. It's called "Whistle Weasel", and I am stoked to bring it to you for free. So get to the Android Market right now; you have no excuse not to download, rate, and review the snot out of that sucker. You might even enjoy playing it! You might enjoy even more watching your friends sit there and whistle at their goddamn cell phones!

(also, if you get a high number of pineapples, post it here. if yours is THE HIGHEST, I will let you request a feature that I will try a little harder than usual to bring you in the next version.)

Do you couchsurf?

If so, and if we know each other, would you please vouch for me? I'm just starting on the site, and would like to surf in a couple weeks, but I understand that someone with approximately no history looks kind of sketchy.

In other news, I woke up yesterday at 5 AM, and for some reason, I have the sort of personality that thinks it totally makes sense to go biking a lot instead of going back to sleep. I went to Seward Park and almost saw Mt. Rainier, almost at sunrise. It was cloudy. I froze my toes and had the best croissant, as Cafe Presse opened. I think the baristas didn't quite know what to make of me. I didn't quite know what to make of myself.

I hesitate to blog about this sort of thing, as it must make people think I'm Calvin's dad, or some kind of crazy outdoorsman. Really, it's a part of my personality that pops up only rarely, and I will not join you if you want to do a similar adventure, because you can't plan these things. Nevertheless, I hope I never lose this part of my personality.

In other other news, I'm quite excited about things! It may be a time of great change! I may have just planned the next like decade of my life! I'll keep mum though, because I'm really just throwing out theoretical ideas; we'll see what actually comes to fruition.

Facebook, you're done.

Up until now, I thought the "waah my boss saw the photos of me at a party" crowd should just use better judgment, or edit their preferences better or something. But today, I tried to understand my Facebook privacy settings, and I couldn't. Or at least, I'm not confident that I understand the ramifications of all the choices I've made in their labyrinthine privacy settings.

I used to think that Facebook maybe cared about its users, but sometimes had an experiment go wrong. Or they were maybe going to change the game so the whole world cared less about privacy, and maybe this would help society or something.

I feel sorry for Facebook, really; they're in a new industry where it's not clear what you can and can't do, and if you step over the line, the whole internet blasts you. Furthermore, with so much data about everyone, there are all these cool things you could do if people would let you, but to do them, you have to get people's permission. And more permissions for more things -> more complexity.

But maybe they should just quit while they're ahead. Today, Facebook haters, I stand with you. To try to use Facebook without accidentally making huge privacy errors is too much of a headache. And if Facebook actually cared about its users, it would take much bigger steps to make sure this situation didn't happen. I'm not deleting my account, because it's useful for its basic purpose (remembering people's email addresses and stuff), but I'm sure not going to be adding more information there.

New Busy

Can I just talk for a moment about how bad Hotmail's new ad campaign is? It's on buses and billboards and stuff, and it's about the "New Busy." Examples:

"The New Busy use cab drivers as therapists."

"The New Busy make beavers look lazy."

"The New Busy always keep a suitcase packed."

"The New Busy like to play Fill the Calendar."

Here's a photo of a bus.

Here's their nauseating site.

God! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! How could you be so wrong?! I'm probably someone they're trying to target with the "new busy" campaign. I want to vomit!

Here's someone else's summary of why. Here's my summary:

- the campaign is trying to "create a tribe" by offering a definition for your life.

- the campaign assumes that your life is defined by your achievements. This is false.

- the campaign assumes that, even if your life were defined by your achievements, you would want to admit that your life is defined by your achievements. This is false.

- finally, the campaign assumes that your achievements are defined by how "busy" you are. This is false.

Argh! This campaign is so incredibly poor. It is about three cuils of reasonable. The thought behind it is the reason that we all hate our lives these days. It might have flown in the 1950's. ("The New Busy buy a cookie-cutter house because it's faster!" "The New Busy mow their lawn with a gas-powered mower!" "The New Busy fast-forward their old Amos 'n' Andy tapes so they can listen to them twice as fast!") But it is about twelve steps backward in the 2010's.

In other news, I decided on my habit for this month-or-so; it is so blindingly obvious that I should have been doing it for years. It is this: I will sleep enough. And to ensure that I do so, no alarm clocks. Done! Easy! And because I am not NEW BUSY, this is not a problem.

Two nights ago, I was in Leh

Argh you can't link in titles. Leh. Of course I've never actually been there, but dreams are nice.

How are your habits going? Over the last 4 months, I've picked up 4 habits: listening to language tapes on my way to work, getting to work at 9, meditating daily, and not eating desserts. They've all been crumbling a bit, but still holding together. I get in to work at like 9 or maybe 10 but usually 9ish. My meditation is down to maybe 10 minutes per day. And after Easter hit, well, I've been eating desserts as if I had never resolved not to. (language tapes are still doing well. Pom pudh pasar thai dai nit noy khlap.)

In April, I thought maybe I'd resolve to practice my dual n-back skills, as improved working memory would be very nice. But maybe I'm better off doubling back and picking up on those habits I've let slide. (or a little of both. I can do dual 3-back pretty competently now, anyway.)

But otherwise, life is nice! Have you picked up any habits that have helped your life? Can I help you keep them?

Children International Again.

Have you met these people? Have you been able to walk away without feeling either like a terrible person or pissed off at them?

They're a charity where the deal is that you donate $22/month, and the money goes to one particular kid in a poor place. And of course it does all these wonderful things for this kid, vaccinations, education, etc. Anyway, they're very visible, at least around Seattle, because they have canvassers go out on the street to persuade you to sign up to sponsor a kid. And once you make eye contact, they will not take no for an answer!

So of course, this is annoying. I've met them twice before, I think, and never signed up; the first time, because you don't just sign up for a $262/year commitment on the street just like that, and the second time because I was so weirded out by the first time.

I met them again today. An affable lad named Tristan and a cute girl named Kat. Both of my general demographic (err, young, white, reasonably well-off). I could tell as soon as Tristan started talking to me that they were from Children International, because nobody else in my demographic approaches me on the street.

They gave me the whole spiel, I told them I'd met them before and didn't want to give them money, they continued their spiel and told me the details. Now, I don't want to give them money, but why not? I laid out my objections:

1. "They could be a scam." But I know they're not, I researched them before.

2. "You don't just sign up for a $262/year thing on the street." But I've researched them before, and in fact I am currently actively looking for places to give money to.

3. "It's just a band-aid, it doesn't get to the root causes of poverty." But it sounds like they know what they're doing, and they're on my side with this one. If kids are dying of dysentery or whatever, sure, they'll vaccinate kids against it, but they'll also get a well installed so the kids have clean water, and also by paying for a kid's education, maybe he'll become an engineer.

4. "You don't know the long-term effects." Of course not. And who knows, maybe this could turn out awful somehow. But that seems unlikely; it seems mostly likely that this could be mostly good, and that's about as good a solution as I know.

5. "You should do charity closer to home." Okay, that's not even MY objection. Sheesh. I like the idea of helping faraway kids just as much as helping nearby kids. (plus your dollar goes a lot farther in a faraway place.)

6. "They'll bully the kids. Force them to write letters and stuff. It's all imperialist-weird." From my prior internet research, this seems untrue. Plus, they're adamant about not putting the kids into a weird spot; they're secular, not pushing any agenda.

7. "I'll do it later. I'm doing things today; context-switching so I can think about poverty is not productive." But then I won't do it later. (have I ever before?)

8. "It's too much money." What? I am planning to give much more than that this year sometime to someone. Why not to these kids?

9. "This seems too easy. Donating money isn't that easy." Why not? Wouldn't this be the ideal charity; one that helps kids holistically, and then makes it easy on the donors too?

10. "They shouldn't be out on the street." Again, why not? These are not paid salesmen, they are young men and women who really care about what they're doing. Who better to raise money for an organization?

11. "They're an inefficient charity; give somewhere else where your money will be used more effectively." I don't think they are; looks like they're a 3-star organization where 82% or whatever of your money goes to aid.

I couldn't figure out any reason not to give to these folks! Besides that it felt too good to be true, and that it felt weird. And that I was angry at them, because whenever I tried to segue out and move on with my day and say "Well I'll look into it later" or something, they would not let it drop! But for a good reason: if they do, I'll never donate. But I still do not want to donate to them! But I can't figure out any reason why. It was this sort of terrible logic tornado that I used to get myself into more than I do now, and so I just at one point had to say "I am walking away now. Bye."

Argh! I guess the thing to do is to just not think about it, and continue with my philanthropic adventures to try to figure out what I actually want to donate to. But I guess I'm just curious: Have any of you done this? Or do you also hate these hard-selling fundraisers? Or are you also weirdly fascinated with them, kind of like Mormons or Scientologists?

More Musics

The Decemberists- The Crane Wife- So, title track is awesome. They're still the Decemberists, though. I can't decide if I think they're the Heroes of the 2010's, or if they still make music too long and whiny. I guess they need some filler to make stuff like the Shankill Butchers stand out more.

Basement Jaxx- Scars- You know, it's pretty fun, and easily digestible, and there are a lot of guest stars and stuff. It's practically a compilation. Varied, interesting tunes, pop through and through.

Movits!- Appelknyckarjazz- I don't get it. There's the novelty factor, but after that I don't really want to listen to it. I guess I'm incapable of really enjoying non-English music? (ugh.)

Owl City- Ocean Eyes- After the first listen, my friend Greg was making fun of it, and I said "oh shut up, you know it's just the Postal Service prequel that never existed." And then I promptly ate my words a couple listens later. Like turned to mild dislike turned to cavities. His lyrics are so bad. But unlike YACHT, I don't even want to like the character he's trying to be. I mean, maybe if he grew up a little bit he could make some really inspiring music! (and/or, y'know, become Ben Gibbard.) But somehow, that never happens, does it?

Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix- okay, counterexample. A couple albums ago (Alphabetical) I thought they made sappy lame music, and now they make this solid pop gem. In a league with, say, Peter, Bjorn, and John's Writer's Block. Best Alternative Album? Grammies are irrelevant, but this is not a terrible choice.

Belle and Sebastian- interruption. "Everything in its right place" just came on. Chills! Even a decade later! Okay, end interruption. Belle and Sebastian- the Life Pursuit- How do they still make such catchy, achingly pretty tunes? Maybe that Owl City guy should take songwriting lessons from Stuart Murdoch. For about twelve years.

Mika- Life in Cartoon Motion- Finally got this album. So good. I wanted to hate it for so long (because metacritic did!) but it is very _____, and eventually I usually come around to liking things that are very _____, for any value of ____. Burningman memories don't hurt. Care to stop being all cool and we can put on this album and dance around like fools?

Mika- The Boy Who Knew Too Much- so it's longer and not as consistently great. I mean, sophomore slump the way Arcade Fire did, where your first album is such a zinger it's hard to repeat.

Soul Coughing- Irresistible Bliss- this was fun to rediscover. Cool like a poetry reading.

Talking Heads- Speaking in Tongues- I didn't know they made another album as good as Remain in Light! Also, I feel like the Talking Heads rival the Beatles in "number of songs you have to have a passing knowledge of, in order to get pop culture references to this band." For example, Burning Down the House, Girlfriend is Better, and This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody). They're all stellar.

Bobby Birdman- New Moods- singer plus loops. Catchy pop (featuring his beautifully rich voice! think Jens Lekman). Probably produced for twelve dollars. Love this guy. Another dude I would go see in concert anytime.

Nosaj Thing- Drift- relaxy technoey squelchy goodness.

Orkestar Zirkonium- s/t- see Movits!. I want to like them very much; they are nice background music, and it sounds like you are not in the United States of A.

My Dear Disco- Dancethink- I'm getting tired of writing about music again but I wanted to shout out to these folks, because I really like this debut album. Do you know Tally Hall? They are also from Ann Arbor, and they also make colorful all-over-the-place music, a little amateurish but quite good. Throw in a dash of Portugal The Man, and video game music, particularly of the Final Fantasy and Sonic varieties.

Webcomics Top Three

I was just noticing, again, how I really like Hark! a Vagrant, and while we're on the subject of "things that are good", wanted to send you my beliefs about comics that are The Best, because I like making lists.

First of course must be Nedroid. Oh my, this one is wonderful.

Second would be the aforementioned Hark! a Vagrant. It blends dry humor with pretty good drawings. She injects a lot of personality, which is difficult when your characters are different each time. Well done.

In third place is Dinosaur Comics. All the pictures are the same every time. This pictorial laziness was a reason I used to hate xkcd. But like xkcd, it has nevertheless won me over. (bonus points whenever he plays with his own format by introducing God or raccoon and cephalopod neighbors.)

Honorable mention goes to Left-Handed Toons (especially ones of the form "10 bad comics"). Any recommendations of yours?

Let's do a music post

because I haven't in such a long while! I can't possibly recap everything I've been listening to, but I was struck recently by a couple songs that are really extraordinarily cathartically fist-pumpingly good (you know, in that way that I fist pump, like when a song just gets everything right all at once). But I like lists so I expanded that into a few songs that deserve list mentions. Let's start with that list:

1. Andrew Bird- Fake Palindromes: The rockinger this guy is, the better. There are two key moments in this song: 0:14 and 1:29, right after "... in her eyes for you" when you realize, crashing violin thing again, sounds like something big just happened!

2. Mika- Touches You: This, friends, is a splendid pop song. Three minutes and change, well produced, crispy drums, exuberance, and some falsetto. What splendid falsetto! Perfectly timed! Just when you think you know the last chorus is coming in, at 2:30, it's a falsetto verse instead. And then there's a chorus under it, and then when you're like "this is great, the layered chorus, I just wish the backing track would drop out" it totally does!

3. The Decemberists- The Crane Wife 3: at 3:14 when he was doing the kind of low chorus for a while and you're all "why don't you just sing the fuck out in you know a high octave Colin Meloy" and THERE IT IS.

Okay let's end this list at three, because now I'm reaching. Point is, these are great.

Now let's do an album roundup.

Eno/Byrne- My Life in the Bush of Ghosts- this is pretty atmospheric. I would gladly listen to it. But it has no words; I cannot remember it so much.

Byrne/Eno- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today- "I Feel My Stuff" sounds like it's the most fun track here, but then after a few listens you realize that "Strange Overtones" is the one that really sticks with you, and is so good it maybe deserves a place on the list above. Overall it sounds a little folky for me, and maybe hard to listen to a bunch of times.

Headlights- Some Racing, Some Stopping- borderline too twee for me but just borderline, I still like it.

Passion Pit- Manners and Chunk of Change EP- on first listen I knew this would be one of those albums that I remember. Their sound is fuzzy and friendly and rocking and I want to compare them to someone and I don't want to say Broken Social Scene because they're just my go-to fuzzy band. Uhh, a less frenetic Los Campesinos!? Anyway, I recommend.

Modeselektor- Hello Mom!- this is the kind of music I want to listen to but I don't know when. Almost backgroundey enough to be background music, but just a little in-your-face sometimes. I think this is "techno". I like it.

Throw Me the Statue- Moonbeams- I do not love, but do solidly like this album. Good straightforward Seattle pop. I absolutely would have bought it for my dad for Christmas, but there's a topless girl on the CD cover! TMTS, are you listening?

Venetian Snares- Detrimentalist- this is a caffeine nightmare. Avoid, unless you're into that sort of thing.

Daedelus- Denies the Day's Demise- this... well, his live show is so wonderful, because he is so charming, he has such cool gadgets, he's really into it, and there are so many sounds coming into your ears at once! It doesn't translate awesomely into a CD. (still, he puts on a great show.)

Daft Punk- Alive 2007- I wouldn't say it's harder, better, faster, or stronger (see what I did there?), but it is certainly more. Good if you'd like to listen to Daft Punk one more time. (see what I did there again?)

Fiery Furnaces- I'm Going Away- speaking of more, this band is only capable of making more. If you also like more of them, or also dig their autistic stage presence and lyrics, or also have a weird crush on Eleanor Friedberger, this is a record for you. Also, do let me know I'm not the only one.

YACHT- See Mystery Lights- grew on me grew on me. You're not allowed to get on my "good" list with such lame lyrics, and noncommittal stage presence, but somehow they did. I can't tell if they take themselves seriously. If so, they're all about Illuminati and secret religions and symbolism and stuff; more likely, they like the words "illuminati" and "secret religion" and figured it's a good shtick for their band. But they're a little catchy! You might like it.

Look, let's pick this post up later. It's getting Too Long.

"Is it a Party?" LIVE in the App Store!

All you iphoners: you can get it now! I strongly suggest that you do! I suppose I am biased.

In other news, I tracked my happiness again. And found... nothing. All the scatterplots are all over the map. Well, so it goes. Guess there's more to "happiness" than one number. (of course, right?)

Why everyone always loses at gambling

You always hear about people coming back from Vegas having lost big. A small percentage of people win big. However, you may also know that, if you make smart bets*, the house edge is only, say, 1 or 2%. So you'd imagine, if you had 100 friends, maybe 49 would go to Vegas and win and 51 would lose.

Ah, but here's the trick: if your friends each took $1000 to Vegas, bet it all at once on one of these low-house-edge bets, and stopped there, you'd have 49 friends who won and 51 friends who lost. But that's not how we gamble. I might sit down at a table with $100 and bet $5 until I lose, in which case I'm trivially guaranteed to lose.

Or you might play like me. I thought "aha, I am a clever one. I will sit down at a table with $x, and if I double my $x, I will shrewdly leave the table. Thus my two exit points are $2x and $0; I have a 49% chance of hitting the first and a 51% chance of hitting the second, so I will likely not lose all the time."

But that's not how things work! If the house edge is 2%, like in this example, you basically lose 2% of your money on every bet! The longer you play, the less likely you are to hit $2x, and the more likely you are to hit $0.

How much more likely? You could probably math it out. But I gave up math for programming, so here's a bit of python you can copy and paste:

#!/usr/bin/python

#

import random

startingMoney = 50

bet = 5

wins = 0

losses = 0

for i in range(10000):

money = startingMoney

while 1:

result = random.randint(0,99)

if result >= 49:

money -= bet

else:

money += bet

if money <= 0:

losses += 1

break

elif money >= 100:

wins += 1

break

print "wins: " + str(wins)

print "losses: " + str(losses)

Run it a few times. The house edge here is set to about 2%, corresponding to the 49/51 thing we discussed earlier. You'll find that you win about 40% of the time, though. Ratchet the house edge up to 4% (change that 49 to a 48), and you'll win only 30% of the time! Terrible! And this is not even counting the fools who play slots or those goofy table games or whatever.

Or, you could just accept the folk wisdom that "everyone always loses in Vegas", and you wouldn't be too far off.

* AFAIK, the "good bets" are the pass line and odds in craps and 3-2 blackjack with solid basic strategy. And poker, if you're good. But that's a whole different story...

And... my first mobile app ever is live.

Is It A Party?, now on Android.

Scan that sucka! Download it! Shake it, yell at it, rate it like ten thousand goddamn stars!

After all, we've got Is It Tuesday? to compete with.

Goodnight world! I'll catch you on the flip side of Las Vegas.

Wait for it...

"Is it a Party?" is coming out soon! So very soon! Sooner on your Android device than on your iphone because Android developers don't have to wait for Apple to approve anything!

In the meantime, working on this app has reminded me of college. Assignments that really take more time than I have, but they're pretty fun because they're all toy problems, so sometimes I don't mind staying up late to work on them. Because I keep getting that little jolt of "you changed something else and now it works!" which keeps me awake wayyy past the point of optimal brain functioning.

It makes me a little loopy and irresponsible! My apartment is a wreck; there are dirty dishes in the sink. I NEVER leave dirty dishes in the sink. But the app has to get done by tomorrow, because I'm leaving for the weekend... some things are just more important. And it's so exciting: discovering mobile apps is like discovering paint for the first time.

So, give me a couple weeks to recover. Then... anyone want to make another mobile app?

In other news, I got a cavity filled yesterday, without novocaine. It was really not so bad. And I'm going to talk up how it's not so bad because I guess people hate going to the dentist a lot or something, but I think it's all just a feedback loop. Do you have a dentist appointment coming up? It is not so bad!

Also, drills in your teeth: what an interesting feeling! I decided I was going to frame it as such, and not as "pain" or whatever, and I think it helped. It was a little painful, but mostly it was just a brand new sensation, and kind of like food and countries, I like new things. Plus, when I thought of it like that, it was like I was taking control of the situation, and that made it easier, I think.

So, do you ... design stuff?

Or draw stuff? Or something? Gary and I have this app that is quite functional and needs like 4 screens' worth of design. It tells you whether you're at a party or not. Very simple. But I realized, after trying to do it, that I am no good at making apps look all professional-like. Let me know if you're interested.

In other news (actually the same news): Startup Weekend was really great. You know that whole concept of "flow"? You get it when you do things that you're good at, and are really engrossed in. I haven't had a big hit of it for a while, but I sure did this weekend, and that was really nice.

A lot of people made cool things! I'm impressed at these big teams that can get something done in a weekend.

At the same time, I'm sick of trendy software. If I hear the words "social media", "twitter", "facebook", or "foursquare" again I will punch something.

Social software is bacon. It tastes good at first. It tastes good at second, too. But these days, everyone has figured, well, it tastes great, let's get more of it! I don't have enough (bacon/social software)! Furthermore, I'm making a new (food/software); why don't I make it hip and modern by adding (bacon/facebook). We can have (bacon/social software)-fests! We'll joke about how everything is better with (bacon/twitter).

Well, who knows. Maybe it's great. And who am I to talk: I just spent a weekend making a dumb phone app.

Which brings us full circle! If you can make said phone app look sweet, let me know.

Take 10 seconds to help me out. This is not even an online petition or survey.

Okay, so. I'm doing this thing called Startup Weekend. A bunch of people who want to start businesses get together and pitch ideas, then people clump together and work on those ideas for a weekend. Maybe they start a business about it.

(If you know me, you know that I don't at all want to start a business right now! But I do like hacking on things and learning things etc, and I'm interested to learn how these startuppy things go and how people make software things quickly.)

So while other people are working on all these actual serious things where they're going to make money or save the world or social network facebook linkedin twitter mashup foursquare blaaaaaah, a guy named Gary and I are making an app called "Am I in a bar or not?"

The premise is simple: you know how often you hold up your phone to Shazam a song, and it's all noise and Shazam doesn't work? Well, there's a lot of background noise there, which is a lot of data... what can we learn from that data? How about whether you're in a bar or not? So our app will work like Shazam: you hold up your phone, get an audio sample, and it tells you whether you're in a bar or not.

Here's where you can help: we need data points. We need data from you when you're in a bar, we need data from you when you're not in a bar. So please, record 10 seconds or so of audio with your iphone or whatever you have (an app called "hifi recorder" works well on android, unless you know a better one), send it to amiinabar@gmail.com, with the subject line "in a bar" or "not in a bar", accordingly.

Kthxbai.

When I finish this post I am going to hit "Enter" with such a flourish...

Have I mentioned "What Japan Thinks"? It's one of the oddest blogs I read, in that it doesn't really fit into "webcomics", "enlightenment", "travel", or "friends' blogs". I don't really think you can get a sense of "what a whole country thinks" by reading surveys, but I think you could do worse. Still, it's not super entertaining; I'm considering no longer reading it. But then a post like this comes along and it's great: what girls do to appear cute and what guys do to appear cool.

I mean, I know I always fall for girls who say "upsadaisy" quietly when they lift things. (Only quietly, mind you.) That's why I hope to attract them by leaving a toothpick hanging out of my mouth and staring into the distance.

(waves finger) Indeed!

A thought about Happiness by way of Math Contests

I swear I'll stop talking about Happiness soon. It's getting annoying, even to me. Anyway, the topic of this post: Everyone wants to know about Happiness these days. But when people talk about Happiness, they're talking about a lot of different things.

---

A long diversion into high school math contests:

Back in high school, there were math contests. You might have had them too. We had the OML (6 tests x 30 min), the CML (5 x 30 min), the OCTM (1 x 60 min?), and then the big one, the AMC (1 x 90 min?).

Each test had its own little flavor. The OMLs were the most popular, because they were just a half hour and I think most teachers gave you bonus points if you took them. Each test had 6 questions, 2 easy, 2 medium, 2 hard. Your school's score for each test was the top 5 students' scores that day, so as long as we had 5 6's, we were golden. Your personal score was your total along all 6 tests. We had a guy named Orest who got a 36 my junior year, I think; the math teachers were pretty excited. (to be fair, some of us kids probably were too, but it's high school math contests, so you always had to play it cool, like you were just taking them for the extra credit and didn't really care.) Anyway, at the end of the year, our school would get a little plaque that said "#9 in the state" or whatever. Or did we win that one a lot? Maybe we got #1 in the state a couple years, I don't remember.

The CML was just like the OML but really nobody cared.

The OCTM was even better: you had to take it on a Saturday! Of course I did, because I was a dork, and about 30 other students ended up going because they were dorks or were getting extra credit. But it was cool, because invariably like 5 of us would do pretty well, so we got to go to the OHMIO, which was in Columbus on another Saturday. (why did I think this was fun? oh right, high school, basing my self worth on mathematical ability. (and you know other stuff but really on mathematical ability)) The OHMIO actually was kinda fun though, because I'd get to hang out with all the senior math guys, some of whom I thought were cool, and we'd all joke about how we didn't care about this dumb contest. (clearly we, y'know, dragged ourselves to Columbus on a Saturday just to show how much we didn't care.)

(interlude interlude. At this point in the story, I realized I haven't mentioned an important character: the B-man. He was that math teacher who wrangled all the math kids to the math contests. He also taught the advanced calculus classes, and his classroom was called "the Math Factory". Naturally, he was this intense, motivated, Stand and Deliver-type inspirational Math Guy who spurred us all into love of all things numbers, right? Nope. He was very disorganized, not good at teaching, terrible at keeping order in class, likable but out of it, nutty professor. Oh the B-man stories I could tell... but that's another post. Or series of posts.)

And then there was the GDOTA (Grand Daddy Of Them All): the AMC. You got to get out of your first two classes one day to take the AMC, so that was popular too. 25 questions, multiple choice, where each is 6 points if you get it right, 2 if you leave it blank, and 0 if you get it wrong. 90 minutes. You could take the AMC 10 if you were in 9th or 10th grade, or the AMC 12 if you were in any grade. Also, you could take it twice (the AMC A or B). If you did well on the AMC, you could take the AIME, and that was a trip: 3 hours, 15 questions, each answer is a number between 1 and 999. And then I guess if you did well on the AMC and the AIME combined, you could go to super math camp where they prepare you to duke it out against the Soviets or something at the International Math Olympiad, which is 6 hours, 5 questions.

Nobody from our school ever went on to the IMO; that's crazy talk. What super nerds those guys must be! ... but we all kinda, or at least I kinda, wanted to be the first. And one year I got hella close! I remember I got a 136 on the AMC 12 B, and I think a 9 on the AIME, so my total score was (136 + 9 * 10) = 226, and the cutoff for being a Friggin' Righteous Mathstronaut was 236. I was so proud that year! But besides my winning the AMC school champ's prize, I didn't really tell anyone.

So, no Math Uber-champs from our school. But we'd have 5 or 10 kids take the AIME every year, and this one was a real treat. We'd get out of our first like 5 classes one day, sit around in the School Board room with its fancy wood table and leather chairs (private high school...), one of the teachers would bring donuts, and we'd sorta rack our brains for an hour, sit around for 119 minutes, and then pick out random numbers to guess right before the time ran out. I mean, this test was hard.

Anyway, why do I tell you about all this? Well, 1. because it's interesting. What a weird, cool, nerdy, nervous subculture we had! There were clearly a few Math Guys, and we'd all take these math contests that were pretty fun, but we'd never admit to them being fun. Or maybe some of us were just there to get out of class, I don't know, but I at least quite enjoyed them. We'd celebrate our OML victories, but only a little bit; we'd never all go out together or meet up at any time besides math contests. The B-man really enjoyed all this, and he'd do stuff like get OML sweatshirts printed (no lies), but his enthusiasm wasn't contagious. Well, maybe a little bit. But the whole thing was a little warped-- repressed nerdy math kids taking math contests so the Grown-Ups can give us gold stars and we can further develop our identities as "just the smart kids".

But 2. because I actually have a point out of all of this. Okay. So I'd always notice on the statewide scores for Ohio math tests (any of these, but particularly the AMC), I'd find my name, and it'd be in the top 100 or whatever somewhere, and always a bit above it would be this other kid, Jason Juang. I never met him, I don't know why I picked out his name, but kid was good at math. Even on the tests I did well on, I'd go up the list a bit, and there he was. This bugged me! I'd always say, man, if only I were as smart as that guy. I could win statewide contests, instead of just school-wide. I'd be actually smart, not just kinda smart.

(in my super-year when I fell just shy of math stardom, I did beat him on the AMC 12 B. But he beat me on the AMC 12 A. Meh.)

Anyway, I don't know why his name popped into my head this morning, but I got to wondering, what's he up to now? (I might have googled him. err, creepy? yes. sorry. ooh, I hope my pagerank is high enough that this post shows up when he googles himself. Hi Jason!)

Uhh, me-being-creepy aside, I got to thinking, what do I mean by "what's he up to now?" I wonder that about people sometimes, and it's never really clear what I'm wondering. I guess it'd be kinda interesting to look back at my 6th grade class, say, and see who's the most rich and famous, but I don't even care. It'd also be kinda interesting to gawk at who totally burned out, but again, I even more don't care.

It'd be really interesting to go back and see who's the happiest.

---

And here's where I get back into my original post. Happiness. Everyone's talking about it, and I think we just have a big issue of word choice failure. There's a lot of things people talk about when they talk about Happiness, especially these days. Shooting for "happiness" has become like shooting for "goodness"- almost a tautology. Of course you want to be happy, because you define "happy" as the thing you want to be.

There's experienced happiness, and there's remembered happiness. Daniel Kahneman gave a great TED talk (is there any other kind?) about this. People think vacations are better than they actually are, because when they remember vacations, they only remember the good parts. Which do you want, happiness seeker? Do you want to maximize experienced happiness or remembered happiness?

How about fulfillment? Maybe I'll be happy today if I play video games all day. But tomorrow, I'll feel like I wasted today, and that will make me unhappy indeed.

There's comfort, too, and I think this is what this post ("you can either be happy or interesting") is all about. I don't buy the "you can either be happy or interesting" argument. (Penelope Trunk would then say "then you must not be interesting. interesting people don't mind that they can't be happy." But that's some kind of logical fallacy, some reductio-ad-you-can't-argue-with-me circularity. Assuming the consequent?) You can be either comfortable or interesting, maybe. And comfort is nice; even Kahneman above says, if you want experiential happiness, spend time with people you like. Easy enough.

And then there's mindfulness, or transcendence, or whatever it is that supermonks have. I bet Matthieu Ricard (another 20-min TED talk, sorry) isn't "happy" the same way I'm "happy" when I go to the pub with some friends. In fact, it's demonstrably not the same: delta waves, left prefrontal cortex, n'at.

So there's a few, to get started:

• Experienced happiness
• Remembered happiness
• Transcendence
• Comfort
• Fulfillment

Or, maybe some are subcategories of others: experienced happiness includes comfort and transcendence, remembered happiness includes fulfillment.

What am I leaving out? Help me out here. And which of these is most worth pursuing? Ah, now that's a good question.

Finally, while we're still talking about this, I'll leave you with another talk, this one by Srikumar Rao, in which he posits that unhappiness comes from concentrating on the results of something; happiness results from enjoying the process. Nothing really new, at least to me, but it's fun to watch because he's really into it.

Oh snap, No Impact Man!

Question: am I using my big ol' noggin to help the world in a meaningful way?

Point: what I do is useful, because though I am but a cog in a big machine, I am helping make Chrome, which is very fast and makes the internet better by pushing for faster better more standards-based websites, and more internet makes things better for everyone! You know, like those farmers in Africa who can look up information about crops on their phones now.

Counterpoint: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/progress.html

Let's duke it out, but first let me diverge and talk about Buddha for a while. I saw a talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu yesterday where he talked about questions and answers with the Buddha. A lot of people asked the Buddha a lot of questions, and were often confused by his answers. Most people answer questions one way: categorically, but the Buddha answered questions 4 ways:

1. categorical answers, like "yes" or "no".

2. analytical answers, which take a little explanation, or breaking it down into cases.

3. answering the question with more questions

4. just not answering the question, or the "mu!" answer

The Buddha didn't pick from these at random; he did whatever would be most skillful. And you can see this makes sense, and you get questions like this in daily life. Examples:

1. categorical: if you said "does 2+2=4?" I'd say yes. Done.

2. analytical: if you asked me "is it sunny today?" I couldn't just say "yes" or "no"; I could say "if you mean "was it sunny this morning" then yes, if you mean "is it sunny now" then no."

3. more questions: if you said "hey Dan, what kind of knife should I buy?" I'd say "do you mean for the kitchen, or for juggling?" and next "if you mean for the kitchen, do you want a cheap knife or an expensive knife? and what kind of knives do you already have?"

4. mu!: if you said something nonsensical, like "do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?", that would not merit answering. Or like "hey, what's the best way to dismember a corpse?" It would probably be best for all involved if I didn't answer that.

(for the record, draw and quarter. cut at joints, not through bones. duh.)

The Buddha is such a pragmatist! It's kind of weird that it's even considered a religion. At all points, he's just trying to get people enlightened (/in a higher mental state/happier), in the most logical, straightforward, and effective way. It's kind of weird that there are scientists or engineers out there who are not Buddhists.

Anyway, No Impact Man vs. me working at Google. I was going to say "well, my point above wins." Then I was going to be all mopey and be like "yeah, but does it really? I mean, internet is nice and all but I should be feeding starving children." Then I was going to be like "look I learned cool things from the Buddha; this question does not have a categorical answer." But I think ultimately I just posted about two unrelated things, and my point above wins.

(or at least, to worry about it, at this point in time, would not be skillful.)

Call me Thomas Jefferson?

I was listening to a thing on the radio about health care. They also mentioned the bank bailout. From what I understand, the bank bailout will go down in history as a big "huh?" because everyone did dumb reckless greedy things, got away with them, and then the government paid them a lot of money. Similarly with healthcare, some corporations are greedy with health things, a small (but not tiny) percent of the population gets quite screwed over, a larger percent of the population gets a bit screwed over, and a large percent of the population is doing okay, so for the most part we're saying "meh" and getting on with it.

I just got a card game called Dominion, where you buy cards with gold, and some cards do useful things, and some cards just give you "victory points". You keep drawing cards and you reshuffle your deck when it's empty, so it's worthwhile to get good cards, because you'll see them again a few times. At the end of the game, the person with the most victory points wins, but in the meantime, they don't do anything, so you don't want to buy them too early. Otherwise, it's possible to get into a state where you can never do anything because all you draw are these victory point cards that don't do anything.

It might be that bureaucracy increases too much when you try to govern 300 million people democratically. It might also be that different parts of the country want different things.

What if we were 50 countries instead? Arranged sort of like the EU, where a few administrative things (currency, passport control) were handled by a big governing body, but otherwise the states are free to go their separate ways?

The potential administrative benefits are huge. Stuff like health care is still tricky, but say, gay marriage? Apparently we as a country keep wasting time on that. Washington could quit messing around with "civil unions" or whatever, go ahead and all-out legalize it, and move on to more difficult questions. Utah could ban it and turn itself into a Mormonocracy. Whatever. (don't get me wrong; this would be terrible for Utah, and whatever gay people live in Utah. But I can't imagine things are all that pleasant for them now, right? And maybe pressure, trade agreements, etc from neighboring countries could convince them to give everyone equal rights, more than a weak bloated federal government...)

Instead of one country with a few mega-media corporations, we'd have more reasonable media focused on local issues. Wal-mart would have a bunch of new problems to deal with. We'd be able to develop our own local cultures more, instead of being one uniform McDonaldized lump. And we'd be a lot more fun to visit.

Also the states should be redistributed like this map because it's neat.

Today, I have more important things to do, like moving, so I should get to that. Point is, Dominion is a pretty sweet game. Also, while I'm here, the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is flat-out excellent. It's a crazy hodgepodge, plots and acting going everywhere, but visually stunning and incredibly enjoyable nonetheless, and maybe even the better for it. I like it the way I like Dresden Codak or Blueberry Boat. You'll like it if you like wonder.

I tracked my happiness.

http://www.trackyourhappiness.org

You sign up, they send you a couple texts or emails (or twitters) every day, you record how happy you are and answer some other questions. After you've done 50, they stop, and you can look at your happiness report and see what makes you happy.

SUPER DISCLAIMERS: you can't actually find what makes you happy. At best you could find correlations. Also, 50 is a small amount of data points for some of these things (like "happiness by location"). And there's a little bit of sampling bias because you don't always respond exactly when you get the text (although you should).

All that said, here are some graphs I found not terribly surprising (the y-axis is always happiness):

Happiness by day of week:

I'm a little happier on weekends. And Thursdays.

Happiness vs. Productivity

Looks like a strong correlation! That sounds right, too. Whatever I'm doing, I like being productive.

Happiness vs. whether I want to and/or have to do what I'm doing:

Surprise! I like doing things I want to do. I don't like doing things I don't want to do. Whether I have to do it doesn't really make a difference.

Okay, those were not super exciting. Here are some that are interesting, though:

Happiness vs. focus

I would have thought that focus would make me happier, but I guess not! How do I explain this? Maybe I don't know what focus really is. When I think I'm focusing, I'm not reporting it right. I don't actually get into deep focus much.

Happiness vs. hours of sleep:

Doesn't seem to matter. (also apparently I slept for 20 hours one day. data entry!) However:

Happiness vs. sleep quality:

Seems to have a slight positive correlation. Although I could just be imagining things, or it's not statistically significant, or happiness causes good sleep instead of vice versa, or any number of things.

Anyway, this is the coolest thing I've seen on the internet in a while! I've often found myself wanting something like this, and luckily, Matt Killingsworth and Visnu Pitiyanuvath are making it happen! Thanks much to them.

Other things on the internet that have intrigued, annoyed, fascinated, elated, bothered, or bamboozled me:

Networking feels icky. It feels like you're using some mind games (like "people like you better if they meet you in person" or whatever) to get ahead. I don't want to think about "how this relationship will benefit me" with people. It just immediately feels slimy. Maybe there's nothing really wrong with it; we're all doing it at some level, even if it's just "this relationship will benefit me because I'll have a new friend." I'll withhold judgment for now, especially because networking is kinda fun when it works.

Amen. Give me real prices all day long. If poor people can't afford to live, we should fight poverty, not give everyone artificially cheap prices now at the expense of the future.

I dig Umair Haque. I dig Google. This is often difficult, because he takes time out of his column to give Google a light bashing every so often. His is one of the "Google used to be good but they're slacking" voices, which I disagree with, but I'm glad it's out there to keep up honest. Anyway, Google Buzz. I think I actually like it, because if I can start reading that instead of Twitter, then my life is a little simpler. I'm not sure though; it might be a complication. If I can read that instead of Facebook, my life is a lot simpler! And I do enjoy the map view.

Hot cha! I was going to blog this article about how travelers pick tomato juice more often, but it wasn't enough for a full post; soon enough, this article about how travelers pick ginger ale more often came along. The tomato juice is particularly uncanny: I used to do that myself, and I did notice other people picked it a lot too. Ginger ale was a close second. In my old age, I've switched to sparkling water. I like to drink something unusual; it makes the flight more of an occasion. Because no matter where I'm going, or how tired I am, or if the guy next to me asks to use my legroom to store his suitcase (true story), I'm still flying through the air. Incredibly.

Happy Lent!

I guess today is Ash Wednesday! Christian readers will note that this means today is the start of Lent, which is the season of 40 days (plus 6 sundays because they "don't count" or something; thus 46 days) before Easter.

Christian readers might also take this opportunity to give up something for Lent, as a bit of a sacrifice while we prepare to see Jesus Friggin' Christ rise from the friggin' dead! And also not eat meat on Fridays, although fish is okay because the pope said so once upon a time. Young Dan Tasse would take this opportunity to quite enjoy Fridays because it meant cheese pizza! (modern readers are urged not to miss the spirit of the law.)

Limburgers (and a lot of people worldwide) might take the opportunity to have a hangover today, as it's the day after five days (whoa) of Carnival. Take down the Mooswief n'at.

Modern lapsed Christians who are searching for the best life possible, however, might take this opportunity to do some life-hacking. The traditional Christian deal is to "give something up for Lent", which sometimes sounds like "sacrifice something and suffer for a while so God will smile upon you," but I offer you another viewpoint: you can make any one positive change in your life. 46 days is a perfect amount of time to start a habit. Whatever it is, start it now, and by Easter, it'll be second nature. Furthermore, you'll have a billion people worldwide starting their good habits with you.

But let's do this right! Lay down the law so you can follow it. For example, I'm giving up sweets. I must first define "sweets", or else I will cut corners everywhere... I'd like to say "no refined sugar", as one of my coworkers does (this is badass), but then I'd have to stop cooking Japanese, as everything has a little sugar or mirin or something. So how about this: no more than trace amounts of refined sugars. (okay, "trace" is still not defined, but let's not be too picky here.) And I'm going to say "no breaks", although sometimes Christians run the "you can have this thing you're giving up on Sundays because they don't count" rule. It's up to you: I know that I'll do better by just drawing a hard line, but if you know that you do better when you can allow yourself one sweet a week (or whatever), that's fine; do what works for you. Don't phrase it like "I'll cheat once a week" or "I'll break the rules once a week", though, as this terminology will make you feel like you're failing.

And keep it up after Easter! I'm not advocating temporary asceticism here, because that's temporary. Do something that you'll be proud to continue. I think after Easter I'll allow myself one sweet per week, because birthday cake and stuff.

Rock on, and start something new! Your habits are your life, make them good. I invite you to start one along with me; we can check in however often, if you'd like, and I'll keep you honest. (and please, do the same for me.)

How much is your friendship worth?

I had a funny experience the other day when I was trying to buy a plane ticket to visit my friend Ram in Thailand. My friend Julie booked a ticket too, and we were going to be on the same flight, but then I found another one that was literally $500 cheaper. $500!

I hemmed and hawed. I had previously told her I'd book the same flight, but I wondered, would she mind if I took the $500? I'm going to spend a week in Thailand with her; surely there's nothing we could talk about in 20 hours on a plane that we couldn't catch up on in Thailand. Furthermore, we'd be taking different flights back anyway. And what do you do on a plane anyway, sleep?

But I'm sort of insensitive sometimes, so I didn't know if this was one of those cases where I was being totally a jerk for even considering it. I have money; isn't a good experience with a friend (or a so-so experience; we're on a plane after all) worth more than money? And, I don't know, landing in Thailand at midnight is undoubtedly bewildering and confusing (if landing in Delhi is any indication); would we be better off facing the madness together? If I asked her, would she be offended that I insinuated that our friendship maybe wasn't worth $500?

Of course our friendship is worth more than $500! I'd say $550. Maybe even $600. ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Of course our friendship is worth more than $500! A true friendship is priceless.

But there's the thing: it's priceless, but it's not infinitely valuable. If I had to spend $10000 extra to fly on the same flight as her, well, obviously I wouldn't. So does that mean 20 hours of friendship is worth less than $10k? Does my hemming and hawing mean 20 hours of friendship is worth less than $500? Maybe there's marginal utility: if I hadn't seen her in years, the first hour would be worth a lot, the second maybe a little less, and so on, until we're sick of each other and the next hour is worthless. But no, even then, you start putting prices on hours you spend with someone, and it just all feels wrong.

I guess it's just orthogonal. You can't make that judgment. It's like if someone said "you can have doubled smelling power if you agree to never say the letter "J"." It's incomputable. You can't hope to make the best choice in this case. Just make one and deal with it. (duh, right? guess I passed this voight-kampff test.)

Anyway, in this case, hilarious conclusion, I tried to book the cheaper flight, and it didn't exist. Curse you Travelocity/Expedia! So now we're on the same flight, and I almost didn't have to tell her that our friendship is worth less than $500. ... oops.

PS. oh by the way, did I mention I'm going to Thailand?

A talk by Shinzen Young, about which I am all jazzed

This guy Shinzen Young came to Google in California and gave a talk. I watched his talk on a video-conference. I have since begun meditating twice daily.

It was a talk about meditation. I encourage you to watch it online. But that's an hour, so if you'd rather, I took notes, I will try to make them into real sentences so you can read them here:

You try to meditate, to focus on the physical sense of your breath. You'll get distracted. What distracts you? Internal self-talk, external sounds, internal mental images, external sights, internal emotions and feelings (let's call this "feel"), external physical discomforts (call this "touch"). 6 aspects: internal and external, 3 main senses. (smell/taste are kind of different anyway, and you can blend them in with touch.)

If you meditate a lot, what happens?

- early on, you'll have a sobering event where you realize how distracted you really are.

- soon you get good at focusing on your breath. This is easily generalizable: you'll be good at focusing on anything.

- you get a taste of a highly concentrated state

- then this highly concentrated state expands: deeper (more powerful) and broader (into more parts of your life)

This is super magically incredible. This is an awesome state. Anything you do will be more subjectively fulfilling, and you'll be more objectively good at it. This state has names: Samadhi (Buddhism), Recollection (Christianity), Kavanah (???) (Judaism), Zikkur (???) (Islam).

Eventually, a figure/ground reversal happens. Before, there's your life, and meditation is a thing that you do. After, there's meditation, and your life is just this thing that you do. This is like that concentrated state all the time. You're never bored again, because you're always "in the zone." (or high, even) You get twice as much life, not because you live longer, but you live twice as concentrated/twice as big.

As your concentration grows, your senses expand, and you get some epiphanies. It's like looking through a microscope; you learn things deeper within you, and broader, about everyone.

You also notice suffering, and that physical discomfort and the experience of suffering due to that discomfort are not the same. Suffering = pain * your resistance to that pain. It's like electricity, even, V = I * R. Similarly with pleasure: you hold on to it and get attached to it, and in this way you have this "resistance" to pleasure as well. Fulfillment = pleasure / resistance (or attachment). The inverse of this resistance is called equanimity, and that grows along with concentration.

You'll also get increased sensory clarity, and a sense of how your identity comes into being moment by moment. You can monitor your internal talk/image/feel, just as you can right now monitor your external world. And you'll notice that when you have none of the three, you cease to exist. Noting these things and their change is a big deal in Buddhism.

So what about Buddhism, why Buddhism? Well, it's not a big distinction; most meditative traditions have these concepts of concentration and equanimity. Buddhism's focus in this sensory clarity and noticing your moment-by-moment existence is rather unique. It's also called "mindfulness". You realize that your "identity" is paradoxical; that it only exists sometimes, and that it's a home you can leave and come back to. Call this an elastic/paradoxical/enlightened identity.

Back to practicality. So you want to meditate: how should you do it? Well, most practices are roughly equally ineffective. They totally work, but they take years. So, go to it. Interestingly, Young's ideal is a world where meditation is obsolete. Technology and knowledge get us to a point where enlightenment becomes much more attainable for anyone, even without practicing for 50 years, so more people can get in on the spiritual path.

A closing paraphrase: "Take me or anyone who's meditated for 40 years and give them the following choice: a lifetime of ordinary pleasure, or one day with a meditator's consciousness. Any meditator will pick the latter."

End talk, and these are Dan's ideas again, not Shinzen's. Why did this get me so excited? Well, it sounds awesome, right? But it's not just that; anyone can promise you 72 virgins or eternity in Best Heaven or whatever. The thing is: this is all worldly, it's doable (half hour a day?), it offers incremental benefits as you progress, and most importantly, I believe it. I believe it because it's entirely reasonable and consistent with everything else I've heard about meditation.

Practical note: if you want to meditate, I think it's pretty simple: sit down and focus on your breath. On the feeling of it in your nose. Your consciousness will inevitably wander, each time just gently bring it back- no worries, you're not a bad meditator, just focus on your breath again. Set a timer, try 10 minutes at first, or even 5. If it stops being enjoyable, do it less. I like Mindfulness in Plain English if you want a book.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go meditate.

Flat hunting

I am doing this now. Hunting for an apartment of my own. This is fun and stressful!

Three big general points:

- it's the biggest chunk of money I have to spend. If you rent a place for $700/month for a year, that's $8400! A price difference of $50 is really a price difference of $600! I don't spend that kind of money often!

- it's a difficult decision. Most things these days are not decisions really. Most things you buy, like groceries, are just commodities; I figure out where I can get the best food (one simple decision with only a couple factors, and I've made it already), and then just go there. It's often a question of "can you afford it?" and then "how much do you want?" Like skiing: a lift ticket costs $60/day, take it or leave it, for as many days as you'd like. But apartment hunting has so many variables!

- there are a lot of variables, so a good first step is to divine the most important variables, and figure out how to make a decision in the face of so many of them.

Some variables usually don't change, but when they do, they're whoppers! Like bugs: if you have bugs I will not rent your place. But no places I'm looking at have bugs. These are easy variables to deal with, because they are just gates. It only gets tricky if they don't become gates: I'd like to have my own bathroom, but if sharing a bathroom meant I could have a super sweet place for cheap, would I share one? (this hasn't come up, just hypothetical.)

Some variables don't actually matter, like square feet. A place is as big as it feels, not as big as the number says. Still, it helps calibrate, because maybe one place feels bigger when you look at it, but then feels smaller later.

Some variables matter surprisingly a lot! What if you have a nice view and you can see far away? I don't remember where, but I read a study once where that is a big deal for your outlook on life.

And a lot of variables you probably wouldn't even think about until later. Blocks to a grocery store? (where they sell real food, not a mini mart.) Mine is 3, and it's awesome. If I need something, it's not a deal to go get it. What if that were 6? Well, instead of a 10-minute jaunt, now it's 20, which could mess with the timing of other things that were cooking.

Here are all the variables I have thought of:

How the place feels, guest policy, total price (incl utilities), bike storage, view, counter space, outdoor common areas, laundry on-site (24/7 access?), noise, bugs, whether the manager seems cool, dishwasher, garbage disposal.

It would be nice if I could set up a big equation to tell which apartment I should get. Alas, this doesn't scale; I only have to make this decision once a year at most, and my equation is different from everyone else's.

And what the heck. Throwing equations to the wind and making slightly emotional decisions keeps life interesting, anyway.

Finally, some specifics on my situation: I am liking to stay in my neighborhood, Capitol Hill, because it is a good distance from work, close to friends, relatively close to almost everything, and also full of weird people. I'm interested in group housing or some other idealistic thing, but haven't found many openings. So I think a studio is it. (unless you, dear reader, know an awesome flat or house somewhere...)

Also, pricing seems like a pretty normal distribution. (with pretty low kurtosis.) All things included, it seems a Capitol Hill studio will run you $700-800/month. Now you know.