I currently have a song very firmly stuck in my head.
I was watching a rerun of Scrubs late last night and after the episode I started humming on a song. After a while I realized that the song I was humming was from a Scrubs episode, but not the one that I'd just watched. It turned out to be the following song:
I've seen this Scrubs episode quite a number of time and I really like it, especially this sequence with Colin Hay singing "Overkill". It's just such a catchy song. I consider this episode a real classic among Scrubs episodes. It's not just that's good, it contains so much that is the essence of Scrubs, with all the relational conflicts and stuff.
Anyway, so how does songs get stuck in your head. It seems research find it mysterious too but this article explain it as some kind of brain-itch. And the cure seems to be to scratch it. The thing is, I seem to be extremely susceptible to getting songs stuck on my head. Once I had "Norwegian Wood" by Beatles in my head for several months. But it should be said that I didn't listen to the song even once during that period and when I finally listened to it a couple of times it went away. So I'll be listening to "Overkill" quite a lot for a few days now, so as to "scratch the itch". But not that I mind, it's a good song.
2007-08-20
An Ingredient For A Good TV Show
I had a bit of an epiphany the other day about popular TV shows. As I mentioned in my last post the thing I like about The Simpsons is all the small absurd jokes they throw in all the time. But it's not the only show that uses this.
There's another show that me and my wife watch semi regularly, even the reruns, is Scrubs. Based on it's imdb rating I'd say it's a pretty popular show. That show is good for many reasons but one that I like in particular is the absurdities it throws in, all the weird behaviors and comments from the characters. While the humor is different from The Simpsons the concept is pretty much the same, although applied to a completely different show. And it works just as well in both.
Another example is Ally McBeal. The thing that made it popular and stand out was how it showed small clips of how the characters felt and what was going on in their minds. Not seldom was this rather weird and embarrassing stuff. Although different it is also in line with The Simpsons and Scrubs. Unfortunately the writing in Ally McBeal went downhill after a few seasons and the absurdities wasn't that exciting anymore. In my mind that's one important reason as to why it lost in popularity.
So there you have it. A nice ingredient for making a fun TV show. Have people say, think and do not only fun and weird stuff but push it towards the absurd. Now I only need to think of a set of characters and a cool environment for them and I'll start writing a pilot.
There's another show that me and my wife watch semi regularly, even the reruns, is Scrubs. Based on it's imdb rating I'd say it's a pretty popular show. That show is good for many reasons but one that I like in particular is the absurdities it throws in, all the weird behaviors and comments from the characters. While the humor is different from The Simpsons the concept is pretty much the same, although applied to a completely different show. And it works just as well in both.
Another example is Ally McBeal. The thing that made it popular and stand out was how it showed small clips of how the characters felt and what was going on in their minds. Not seldom was this rather weird and embarrassing stuff. Although different it is also in line with The Simpsons and Scrubs. Unfortunately the writing in Ally McBeal went downhill after a few seasons and the absurdities wasn't that exciting anymore. In my mind that's one important reason as to why it lost in popularity.
So there you have it. A nice ingredient for making a fun TV show. Have people say, think and do not only fun and weird stuff but push it towards the absurd. Now I only need to think of a set of characters and a cool environment for them and I'll start writing a pilot.
2007-08-10
The Simpsons Movie
We went to see The Simpsons Movie earlier tonight. It was good but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. The problem? I think it had too much of a story.
The defining things about The Simpsons for me is all those absurd jokes they throw in constantly which are just out of the blue. Sure, the episodes in the series do have some kind of a plot or story. But I find it secondary, it just sets the scene where they can do all these short absurd jokes.
So the problem I have with the movie is that they've cut down on the short absurd jokes. All jokes are longer and relate much more to the main story than in your typical episode. I think it's for the worse.
But that being said, I still had a lot of fun and I would still recommend the movie. It just that I don't think that it lives up to the standard of the show. If you haven't seen it, it's a good hour and a half.
The defining things about The Simpsons for me is all those absurd jokes they throw in constantly which are just out of the blue. Sure, the episodes in the series do have some kind of a plot or story. But I find it secondary, it just sets the scene where they can do all these short absurd jokes.
So the problem I have with the movie is that they've cut down on the short absurd jokes. All jokes are longer and relate much more to the main story than in your typical episode. I think it's for the worse.
But that being said, I still had a lot of fun and I would still recommend the movie. It just that I don't think that it lives up to the standard of the show. If you haven't seen it, it's a good hour and a half.
2007-08-09
Who does what in the U.S. legal system
There is no shortage of crime shows on TV. Solving mysterious, perverse and/or obscene murders seems to be a very popular spectator sport. I also watch my share of these shows. Some of the ones I watch include CSI, Jordan, Law & Order, Shark and Numb3rs. But while I enjoy these shows they also greatly confuse me.
Solving cases typically involves evaluating evidences, interrogating suspects and witnesses, checking alibis and trying to fit all of it together. The peculiar thing with the crime shows is that all of these things are done by a single profession in each show, but the profession changes between shows. It ranges from the coroner, crime scene investigators to cops or lawyers, all depending the particular show.
The only show (or rather set of shows) that seems to have a more realistic tack is Law & Order. They have all the professions of the legal system represented and working together. It's actually kind of cool to see how the cases starts out with the detectives to eventually move over to the attorneys who needs to make the final conviction happen.
Sure, I realize that this discrepancy between between series is there to cut down on the number of main characters and make their work seems central and important. But when you compare CSI and Shark it just seems ridiculous. Obviously, they can't both reflect the reality. And even if the truth is somewhere in the middle the gap between them is so big that I think they're both pretty far from how it's really done.
Oh well. I'm glad I got that off my chest.
Solving cases typically involves evaluating evidences, interrogating suspects and witnesses, checking alibis and trying to fit all of it together. The peculiar thing with the crime shows is that all of these things are done by a single profession in each show, but the profession changes between shows. It ranges from the coroner, crime scene investigators to cops or lawyers, all depending the particular show.
The only show (or rather set of shows) that seems to have a more realistic tack is Law & Order. They have all the professions of the legal system represented and working together. It's actually kind of cool to see how the cases starts out with the detectives to eventually move over to the attorneys who needs to make the final conviction happen.
Sure, I realize that this discrepancy between between series is there to cut down on the number of main characters and make their work seems central and important. But when you compare CSI and Shark it just seems ridiculous. Obviously, they can't both reflect the reality. And even if the truth is somewhere in the middle the gap between them is so big that I think they're both pretty far from how it's really done.
Oh well. I'm glad I got that off my chest.
2007-07-29
The IQ of a group
A funny quote:
One of the teams in the ICFP programming contest had this as its group name.
The IQ of a group is equal to the lowest IQ of a member in that group, divided by the number of people in that group
One of the teams in the ICFP programming contest had this as its group name.
2007-07-20
Aptonym
I'm always excited to learn new, almost useful, funnily sounding words. Today I've learned a new one: aptonym. Wiktionary describes it as:
Unfortunately I haven't been able to think about any person who's name is an aptonym. However, the place where I learned about this word, this freakonomics post, called for it's reader to supply some examples. You'll find some really good ones there.
A proper name that aptly describes the occupation of the person, especially by coincidence.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to think about any person who's name is an aptonym. However, the place where I learned about this word, this freakonomics post, called for it's reader to supply some examples. You'll find some really good ones there.
2007-06-29
A bit of Wisdom
I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel something lacking in the blogosphere. I read a lot of blogs and sure, it's both fun and educational, I'll give it that. But it's often very shallow. Short pieces of text about some recent event which the writer has probably thought about for maximum a week. What I want is a little more contemplation, ideas which have matured from decades of experience, some deep thoughts. In other words, I want a bit of wisdom.
Now, wisdom is hard to come by, even in the real world. And even when you find it you won't always recognize it as wisdom. It can certainly feel a bit elusive that way.
But there is one blog that I read occasionally which I think offers a bit of wisdom every know and then. It's the raganwald blog by Reg Braithwaite. Somewhat surprisingly Reg's blog is mostly a software technology blog and I certainly don't expect to find any deeper thoughts there. Once in a while you can find some good advice on such blogs but anything out of the ordinary. But Reg has learned some hard lessons over the years and seems to be a contemplating man so he has some very valuable things to share. Although most of the things he says is phrased in terms of programming, software development or management many things are generally good lessons that have much wider applicability.
I will refrain from throwing out quotes here, instead I'll give a list of some of my favorite posts raganwald: What I've Learned From Sales, Part I: Don't Feed the Trolls, What I've Learned from Sales, Part II: Wanna Bet?, R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Still failing, still learning. I'm sure there are many more, I haven't read all of his posts. Also, many of the more technically oriented posts are very worthwhile reading, in case you're interested in the subject. Maybe I'll talk about that another time.
Now, wisdom is hard to come by, even in the real world. And even when you find it you won't always recognize it as wisdom. It can certainly feel a bit elusive that way.
But there is one blog that I read occasionally which I think offers a bit of wisdom every know and then. It's the raganwald blog by Reg Braithwaite. Somewhat surprisingly Reg's blog is mostly a software technology blog and I certainly don't expect to find any deeper thoughts there. Once in a while you can find some good advice on such blogs but anything out of the ordinary. But Reg has learned some hard lessons over the years and seems to be a contemplating man so he has some very valuable things to share. Although most of the things he says is phrased in terms of programming, software development or management many things are generally good lessons that have much wider applicability.
I will refrain from throwing out quotes here, instead I'll give a list of some of my favorite posts raganwald: What I've Learned From Sales, Part I: Don't Feed the Trolls, What I've Learned from Sales, Part II: Wanna Bet?, R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Still failing, still learning. I'm sure there are many more, I haven't read all of his posts. Also, many of the more technically oriented posts are very worthwhile reading, in case you're interested in the subject. Maybe I'll talk about that another time.
2007-06-27
End Credit Music
Which piece of music is the most important in a movie? Well, I'm a film score buff so I wouldn't start ranking the music but there is one piece of music that gets an awful lot of attention from the studios. It's the end credit music. It's the music that sets the mood when you leave the movie theater and you will carry with you when you've finished seeing the movie. So naturally quite a lot of thought go into getting the right kind of mood into that piece of music.
I usually don't write lists on this blog but today I give you a list of some of my favorite pieces of end credit music.
What's my criteria for good end credit music? The crucial thing is the first twenty or thirty seconds of the piece. It has to suggest the right kind of mood which has to be in accord with the rest of the movie. It doesn't have to be a very good song, for instance, I don't particularly like Wake Up but it's beginning fits very well in Matrix, and that's what's important.
I usually don't write lists on this blog but today I give you a list of some of my favorite pieces of end credit music.
- Extreme Ways in the movies Borne Identity and Borne Supremacy. My bet is it will be used for Bourne Ultimatum as well.
- Wake Up from Matrix.
- May it be from Fellowship of the Ring.
- Into the West from Return of the King.
- Lose Yourself from 8 Mile. I'm not sure about this song was actually the end credit piece as I've only seen this movie once but the song is good nevertheless.
What's my criteria for good end credit music? The crucial thing is the first twenty or thirty seconds of the piece. It has to suggest the right kind of mood which has to be in accord with the rest of the movie. It doesn't have to be a very good song, for instance, I don't particularly like Wake Up but it's beginning fits very well in Matrix, and that's what's important.
2007-06-17
iPod woes
It's supposed to be the best mp3 player on the market. For me it has meant nothing but trouble.
Where I work, at the computer science department at Chalmers, we have a very nice tradition to buy a gift for any person who successfully defends his or her PhD thesis. This spring it was my turn to get a present from my colleagues and to my delight they gave me a fifth generation iPod sporting 30Gb of memory and the capability of showing movies. Awesome. Or so I thought.
It all started when I unpacked my brand new iPod and plugged it into my computer. For once I had actually read the manual and did exactly what I was told to. Yet after a short moment the player became unresponsive and it seemed like there was no way I could get it to do anything with it, even turn it off. This is why one of the first things I learned about my iPod was that it has an equivalent to Ctrl-Alt-Del, a key combination which reboots the player. So after rebooting things went fine for a while.
Unfortunately I've needed the rebooting feature quite a lot. It often happens that when I plug the iPod into my laptop it just freezes. But this is not the only annoying thing it does. Often when I've synchronized it with my laptop it seems like the iPod was totally erased! I can't see a single file, music or otherwise. The first time this happened I was quite alarmed. What had happen to all my music?
Fortunate things work much better when I synchronize with my wife's computer. First of all the iPod doesn't hang or lose all it's music. But what's even better is that it restores all the music that seems to have been lost. I think what happens is that the file system on the iPod becomes corrupted when I sync with my laptop and my wife's computer can somehow repair it.
What am I doing wrong? I'm running both the latest ITunes and firmware on my iPod and I haven't fiddled around with it in way that could potentially be harmful. I'm playing strictly by the book.
It seems there is a short term solution to this and that is to only use my iPod solely with my wife's computer. I find this rather unsatisfying as her computer is painfully slow and it makes me very impatient. I guess I'll have to buy her a new computer :-) But at the end of the day, I'm rather disappointed with the instability of my iPod. I had quite high expectations on the ease of use and robustness and it has failed miserably in this respect.
Steve Jobs, if you read this, please fix the software on your music player so that it doesn't behave like a Windows computer from the 90's.
Where I work, at the computer science department at Chalmers, we have a very nice tradition to buy a gift for any person who successfully defends his or her PhD thesis. This spring it was my turn to get a present from my colleagues and to my delight they gave me a fifth generation iPod sporting 30Gb of memory and the capability of showing movies. Awesome. Or so I thought.
It all started when I unpacked my brand new iPod and plugged it into my computer. For once I had actually read the manual and did exactly what I was told to. Yet after a short moment the player became unresponsive and it seemed like there was no way I could get it to do anything with it, even turn it off. This is why one of the first things I learned about my iPod was that it has an equivalent to Ctrl-Alt-Del, a key combination which reboots the player. So after rebooting things went fine for a while.
Unfortunately I've needed the rebooting feature quite a lot. It often happens that when I plug the iPod into my laptop it just freezes. But this is not the only annoying thing it does. Often when I've synchronized it with my laptop it seems like the iPod was totally erased! I can't see a single file, music or otherwise. The first time this happened I was quite alarmed. What had happen to all my music?
Fortunate things work much better when I synchronize with my wife's computer. First of all the iPod doesn't hang or lose all it's music. But what's even better is that it restores all the music that seems to have been lost. I think what happens is that the file system on the iPod becomes corrupted when I sync with my laptop and my wife's computer can somehow repair it.
What am I doing wrong? I'm running both the latest ITunes and firmware on my iPod and I haven't fiddled around with it in way that could potentially be harmful. I'm playing strictly by the book.
It seems there is a short term solution to this and that is to only use my iPod solely with my wife's computer. I find this rather unsatisfying as her computer is painfully slow and it makes me very impatient. I guess I'll have to buy her a new computer :-) But at the end of the day, I'm rather disappointed with the instability of my iPod. I had quite high expectations on the ease of use and robustness and it has failed miserably in this respect.
Steve Jobs, if you read this, please fix the software on your music player so that it doesn't behave like a Windows computer from the 90's.
2007-06-07
Super Villain
Your results:
You are Dr. Doom
Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test
Apparently I'm Doctor Doom.
If you want to take the test yourself try it out at the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz. Found via Andre Pangs blog.
You are Dr. Doom
| Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity. |
Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test
Apparently I'm Doctor Doom.
If you want to take the test yourself try it out at the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz. Found via Andre Pangs blog.
2007-05-30
Silly bug in Gmail
Not long ago I wrote about how much I love GMail and about a particular feature that I like. Well, today's post is about a bug in GMail which just feels outright silly.
GMail has this feature that you can use it to handle other email accounts. It goes like this: you set your other email account to forward it to your GMail address. Then you can tell GMail that you want to be able to send emails using that email account. In order not to enable fraud or any wrongful impersonation GMail sends out a confirmation email to the address you want to use and if it comes back properly then you can click on a link which enables you to use the other email address when sending emails from GMail. Pretty straightforward.
The other day I was going to add another email address to my GMail account just as I described above. This is where I bumped into the bug. When GMail sent out a confirmation email it didn't come back. I thought that was odd and sent another one. It too seemed to disappear somewhere on the internet. Since this address wasn't very important to me I just left it alone and went to work on other stuff.
The surprise came when I opened the spam box to weed out the false positives (something which I get at least once a week). Lo and behold, there were the two confirmation emails sent out by GMail before.
Excuse me but this just seems silly? Sure I can see that the email has to go through the spam filter. But there are many good techniques for creating a little back door in the filter such that you can make sure the confirmation emails always goes through. This just shouldn't happen.
Well, I've reported it to the Gmail team. I hope they get around to fixing it soon.
GMail has this feature that you can use it to handle other email accounts. It goes like this: you set your other email account to forward it to your GMail address. Then you can tell GMail that you want to be able to send emails using that email account. In order not to enable fraud or any wrongful impersonation GMail sends out a confirmation email to the address you want to use and if it comes back properly then you can click on a link which enables you to use the other email address when sending emails from GMail. Pretty straightforward.
The other day I was going to add another email address to my GMail account just as I described above. This is where I bumped into the bug. When GMail sent out a confirmation email it didn't come back. I thought that was odd and sent another one. It too seemed to disappear somewhere on the internet. Since this address wasn't very important to me I just left it alone and went to work on other stuff.
The surprise came when I opened the spam box to weed out the false positives (something which I get at least once a week). Lo and behold, there were the two confirmation emails sent out by GMail before.
Excuse me but this just seems silly? Sure I can see that the email has to go through the spam filter. But there are many good techniques for creating a little back door in the filter such that you can make sure the confirmation emails always goes through. This just shouldn't happen.
Well, I've reported it to the Gmail team. I hope they get around to fixing it soon.
2007-05-10
Gravity Waves
The following video is an awesome time lapse showing gravity waves in the clouds.
When I first read that the video showed gravity waves I thought it was those pretty much undetectable waves generated by gravitons. But I can't say I was disappointed to see this magnificent display of rolling clouds. I hadn't heard the name "gravity wave" before but I'll be sure to keep it in mind. Oh, what I wish that I could watch these clouds in real life. Another form of wavy clouds that I really wish to see is Kelvin-Helmholtz wave clouds.
When I first read that the video showed gravity waves I thought it was those pretty much undetectable waves generated by gravitons. But I can't say I was disappointed to see this magnificent display of rolling clouds. I hadn't heard the name "gravity wave" before but I'll be sure to keep it in mind. Oh, what I wish that I could watch these clouds in real life. Another form of wavy clouds that I really wish to see is Kelvin-Helmholtz wave clouds.
2007-05-04
Memorable Defences
So it turns out I survived my PhD defense. It was held on Match 23, a month and a half ago roughly. I must say it went very smoothly, almost too smoothly perhaps. The opponent was Jakob Rehof.
I should perhaps say something about they way defenses work here in Sweden. They're always public, anyone can come and listen. There is an opponent who is an expert in the field and who asks most of the questions. Then there is a grading committee, usually consisting of three people, with varying degree of expertise in the field. My committee consisted of Fritz Henglein, Kostis Sagonas and Sibylle Schupp. They also get to ask questions, after the opponent is done. Lastly, anyone in the audience can ask questions to the defendant. After the defense the grading committee will meet and decide whether to pass or fail the candidate. They always pass. Some of you might think that I'm joking here but I'm not, in Sweden they always pass. The reason is that if the PhD candidate might not pass then the opponent should say so before the defense, not after. So once the opponent has agreed to having the defense you know you're going to pass.
Having had my own defense got me thinking about all the defenses I've attended through the years and I thought I'd give a little tour of the ones that I particularly remember.
The First Defense I attended I think was for my cousin Åke Wallin who did his PhD in the area of neuro-psychology. He studied the episodic memory of very old people, in their 80's or 90's. Studying such old people is rather unique, there are very few places in the world were there are large enough groups of old people to make experiments statistically valid. Stockholm is one of those places and is where he conducted his research.
The First Computer Science Defense I attended was that of Urban Boquist. He had written a whole program optimizing compiler for Haskell. I found his thesis a very exciting read, it's really well written and has lots of cool optimization described in a very clear and concrete way. Very appealing. A guy call John Meacham also found this appealing and has taken the ideas from Urban's thesis and put them into a publicly available Haskell compiler called JHC. John has also made sure that you can order Urban's thesis online.
The Best Defense is without a doubt that of Johan Agat. Johan worked in the area of computer security and studies timing leaks. He pioneered the technique of cross-copying to pad programs to eliminate timing leaks. The reason I found is defense so good is two-fold. First, the opponent, Jens Palsberg, gave an exemplary introductory explanation to Johan's work. Everyone understood it. It was as clear an explanation I have ever seen. Normally on these occasions it can be hard, even for other computer scientists who are not experts to follow these explanations. Second, Johan did an amazing job at answering all the questions he had. Even hard, deep question he had very good and well thought through answer to. Very impressive. For these two reasons I find this defense the best I've ever attended.
The Most Pathetic Defense was that of Koen Claessen. If you know about Koen you know that he's an extremely good researcher and his work during his PhD was no different. In fact, it was exemplary. Which is why the opponent and the grading committee really didn't have anything to ask about. It was all just praises from their side, no criticism or hard question. So it wasn't much of a defense, more like an appraisal. Hmmmm.
The Longest Defense goes to Karol Ostrovsky. The poor guy. It seems his opponent and grading committee wasn't properly informed of the standard procedures here in Sweden. Normally a defense take around two hours. Karol's must gone on for like four hours or so. And since it started at 10 am and going well past lunch there weren't many people left in the auditorium the last hours. I didn't stay either, I simply had to get some lunch. But eventually Karol also became a doctor.
The Most Nerve Wracking Defense was obvious that of my own. But as I said, it all went very well in the end.
I should perhaps say something about they way defenses work here in Sweden. They're always public, anyone can come and listen. There is an opponent who is an expert in the field and who asks most of the questions. Then there is a grading committee, usually consisting of three people, with varying degree of expertise in the field. My committee consisted of Fritz Henglein, Kostis Sagonas and Sibylle Schupp. They also get to ask questions, after the opponent is done. Lastly, anyone in the audience can ask questions to the defendant. After the defense the grading committee will meet and decide whether to pass or fail the candidate. They always pass. Some of you might think that I'm joking here but I'm not, in Sweden they always pass. The reason is that if the PhD candidate might not pass then the opponent should say so before the defense, not after. So once the opponent has agreed to having the defense you know you're going to pass.
Having had my own defense got me thinking about all the defenses I've attended through the years and I thought I'd give a little tour of the ones that I particularly remember.
The First Defense I attended I think was for my cousin Åke Wallin who did his PhD in the area of neuro-psychology. He studied the episodic memory of very old people, in their 80's or 90's. Studying such old people is rather unique, there are very few places in the world were there are large enough groups of old people to make experiments statistically valid. Stockholm is one of those places and is where he conducted his research.
The First Computer Science Defense I attended was that of Urban Boquist. He had written a whole program optimizing compiler for Haskell. I found his thesis a very exciting read, it's really well written and has lots of cool optimization described in a very clear and concrete way. Very appealing. A guy call John Meacham also found this appealing and has taken the ideas from Urban's thesis and put them into a publicly available Haskell compiler called JHC. John has also made sure that you can order Urban's thesis online.
The Best Defense is without a doubt that of Johan Agat. Johan worked in the area of computer security and studies timing leaks. He pioneered the technique of cross-copying to pad programs to eliminate timing leaks. The reason I found is defense so good is two-fold. First, the opponent, Jens Palsberg, gave an exemplary introductory explanation to Johan's work. Everyone understood it. It was as clear an explanation I have ever seen. Normally on these occasions it can be hard, even for other computer scientists who are not experts to follow these explanations. Second, Johan did an amazing job at answering all the questions he had. Even hard, deep question he had very good and well thought through answer to. Very impressive. For these two reasons I find this defense the best I've ever attended.
The Most Pathetic Defense was that of Koen Claessen. If you know about Koen you know that he's an extremely good researcher and his work during his PhD was no different. In fact, it was exemplary. Which is why the opponent and the grading committee really didn't have anything to ask about. It was all just praises from their side, no criticism or hard question. So it wasn't much of a defense, more like an appraisal. Hmmmm.
The Longest Defense goes to Karol Ostrovsky. The poor guy. It seems his opponent and grading committee wasn't properly informed of the standard procedures here in Sweden. Normally a defense take around two hours. Karol's must gone on for like four hours or so. And since it started at 10 am and going well past lunch there weren't many people left in the auditorium the last hours. I didn't stay either, I simply had to get some lunch. But eventually Karol also became a doctor.
The Most Nerve Wracking Defense was obvious that of my own. But as I said, it all went very well in the end.
2007-05-02
Quarter Finals
The quarter finals are under way in the snooker world championship in Sheffield. All the players that are left are all good candidates for the trophy. Well, there's at least one match that seems decided, Murphy has a really long way to go if he wants to beat Matthew Stevens. But still, there's a lot of good players in very good shape.
I'm tempted to make some guesses as to how this is going to end. But given that the candidates that I flagged for earlier are both out I probably shouldn't. Although it gives me some comfort that I did a little better that the Swedish commentator on Eurosport: he guessed Marco Fu and Ding Junhui in one of the semifinals, both of which were eliminated in the first round. Sure, I hope for Ronnie O'Sullivan, but Higgins is looking mighty good right now and may just prove to be too difficult. I'm also very impressed by Selby and Stevens. In the end, this is going to be a very tough championship to win.
I've had a bit of an insight about snooker while watching it during the last week. I'm really impressed by the mental strength of the players on the tour. They just never give up. Even when they need several fouls to beat their opponent in a frame they keep going. Likewise many players keep playing very well and fight hard even when their chances to win a match is pretty much zero. You don't see this kind of morale in many other sports.
I'm tempted to make some guesses as to how this is going to end. But given that the candidates that I flagged for earlier are both out I probably shouldn't. Although it gives me some comfort that I did a little better that the Swedish commentator on Eurosport: he guessed Marco Fu and Ding Junhui in one of the semifinals, both of which were eliminated in the first round. Sure, I hope for Ronnie O'Sullivan, but Higgins is looking mighty good right now and may just prove to be too difficult. I'm also very impressed by Selby and Stevens. In the end, this is going to be a very tough championship to win.
I've had a bit of an insight about snooker while watching it during the last week. I'm really impressed by the mental strength of the players on the tour. They just never give up. Even when they need several fouls to beat their opponent in a frame they keep going. Likewise many players keep playing very well and fight hard even when their chances to win a match is pretty much zero. You don't see this kind of morale in many other sports.
2007-04-26
The Principles of Pool and Billiards
In these days of intense Snooker watching I went looking for some information about the physics behind it. I've been doing some fiddling myself but I wanted to see if there was some more material which fleshed it out in more detail. And I struck gold indeed. The pearl of a web site that I found is this: The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards. The web page is the online resource to a book written by an associate professor in mechanical engineering. But while most online resources to books usually don't contain that much material this one is absolutely packed with stuff. For instance is seems that all the formulas and their derivation from the book can be found on the web page. This includes stuff like Relationship between the amount of throw and cut angle. But the real fun is in the supplementary material not found in the book. Here he goes into explaining things like spin and other fun phenomena. Make sure to check out the "Post-impact cue ball trajectory for any cut angle, speed, and spin" derivation for instance. Now I got some nice reading in the breaks in the snooker matches.
Release Me
Saab has made a commercial which has turned out to be very popular. The thing that really sticks out is the music. It's a song called "Release Me" by a Swedish band called Laura. I hadn't heard of them before but apparently they've had an enormous boost from having their song in the commercial. As it turns out "Release Me" is currently the no. 1 selling song on the Swedish iTunes Music Store.
Like everyone else I also like the commercial but I don't think the song in it's entirety is as good as the special version they made for the commercial. It's still OK though.
Like everyone else I also like the commercial but I don't think the song in it's entirety is as good as the special version they made for the commercial. It's still OK though.
2007-04-22
Snooker World Championship
Ah. It's that time of the year again. The World Championship in Snooker, which means many ours a day in front of the TV.
Actually it already started yesterday and with one of the favorites being eliminated immediately. Graeme Dott, the defending champion and ranked no. 1 on the provisional world ranking lost against Ian McCulloch. It's clear that the pressure was too much to handle for Dott; McCulloch didn't win because played particularly good, he just had a lot of luck and could benefit from the fact that Dott's nervousness made him unable to pot. And so the curse is still unbroken: no-one has ever defended the world championship title when they won it the first time.
So who's going to win? It's harder than ever to predict winners in snooker tournaments but that makes it even more interesting to try. One player that has stood out this year is Neil Robertson, Australia's young snooker wiz. He's already won two tournaments this year, a feat in itself these days. I think he will make it quite far.
Another player which always plays well is Ken Doherty, Ireland's no.1 sportsman ever. He never has these slumps of bad snooker that some of the other top player has and so you always have to take him into account. Doherty plays a very graceful snooker and it would be good to see him make it far in the tournament. He has won the World Championship once before.
A lot of people has put money on Ding Junhui, the extremely talented Chinese teenager. However, his odds went down dramatically when it was revealed whom he was going to play in the first round: Ronnie O'Sullivan. That match is currently in a break and will finish tomorrow, but so far is seems that O'Sullivan is giving Ding the same treatment as in the Masters Final. Ronnie O'Sullivan currently has a 8 to 1 lead where they play first to 10. So I think we can safely rule out Ding Junhui from this years World Championship. It's actually been kind of sad to see him after the Masters Final. He hasn't been himself and hasn't played very well every since then. It seems he hasn't been able to recover from the total knockout he got from his idol. And things are not going to get better if he gets the same treatment in this tournament. I hope that he can pull himself together over the summer break and come back to the extremely fine snooker that he is able to play in his best moments.
What about Ronnie O'Sullivan then? He should surely be a favorite to win. Yes, he's always a favorite in every tournament but I don't have very big hopes despite his brilliant play against Ding. He has this problem of maintaining his good play throughout a whole tournament. Sometimes it seems as if he just can't motivate himself to play good snooker, especially against players that are not among the top ten. It's like it takes a real challenge for him to even bother. So, while I think that Ronnie O'Sullivan is the best snooker player in the world I'm also aware of his shortcomings. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
There are of course a couple of other players that are good contenders. Stephen Hendry, Peter Ebdon, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and Matthew Stevens are some of those to look out for. But the names I mentioned above are those that I wanted to comment on. It's going to be an exciting couple of weeks.
Actually it already started yesterday and with one of the favorites being eliminated immediately. Graeme Dott, the defending champion and ranked no. 1 on the provisional world ranking lost against Ian McCulloch. It's clear that the pressure was too much to handle for Dott; McCulloch didn't win because played particularly good, he just had a lot of luck and could benefit from the fact that Dott's nervousness made him unable to pot. And so the curse is still unbroken: no-one has ever defended the world championship title when they won it the first time.
So who's going to win? It's harder than ever to predict winners in snooker tournaments but that makes it even more interesting to try. One player that has stood out this year is Neil Robertson, Australia's young snooker wiz. He's already won two tournaments this year, a feat in itself these days. I think he will make it quite far.
Another player which always plays well is Ken Doherty, Ireland's no.1 sportsman ever. He never has these slumps of bad snooker that some of the other top player has and so you always have to take him into account. Doherty plays a very graceful snooker and it would be good to see him make it far in the tournament. He has won the World Championship once before.
A lot of people has put money on Ding Junhui, the extremely talented Chinese teenager. However, his odds went down dramatically when it was revealed whom he was going to play in the first round: Ronnie O'Sullivan. That match is currently in a break and will finish tomorrow, but so far is seems that O'Sullivan is giving Ding the same treatment as in the Masters Final. Ronnie O'Sullivan currently has a 8 to 1 lead where they play first to 10. So I think we can safely rule out Ding Junhui from this years World Championship. It's actually been kind of sad to see him after the Masters Final. He hasn't been himself and hasn't played very well every since then. It seems he hasn't been able to recover from the total knockout he got from his idol. And things are not going to get better if he gets the same treatment in this tournament. I hope that he can pull himself together over the summer break and come back to the extremely fine snooker that he is able to play in his best moments.
What about Ronnie O'Sullivan then? He should surely be a favorite to win. Yes, he's always a favorite in every tournament but I don't have very big hopes despite his brilliant play against Ding. He has this problem of maintaining his good play throughout a whole tournament. Sometimes it seems as if he just can't motivate himself to play good snooker, especially against players that are not among the top ten. It's like it takes a real challenge for him to even bother. So, while I think that Ronnie O'Sullivan is the best snooker player in the world I'm also aware of his shortcomings. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
There are of course a couple of other players that are good contenders. Stephen Hendry, Peter Ebdon, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and Matthew Stevens are some of those to look out for. But the names I mentioned above are those that I wanted to comment on. It's going to be an exciting couple of weeks.
2007-04-13
One of the things I like about gmail
I've been using Gmail now for longer than I can remember. And I still think that it's the best email solution out there, all things considered. Today I just want to write a few words about one of those little things that took me a long time to notice but which Gmail gets right. Please bare with me here, it's going to take a little while to explain all the background behind this.
Most email clients have a split view. One part of the screen shows a list of messages in the current mail box, typically the inbox. The other part shows the contents of the currently highlighted mail. Gmail does this differently. It starts out by showing only a list of messages (or conversation in Gmail lingo). When you select one of the conversations it changes view to only show that particular conversation.
When I use Gmail I mostly use the keyboard. To facilitate this Gmail has a little cursor which can be moved up and down between the conversations in the list view. When the cursor points at a specific conversation one can for instance open it, to see the actual conversation. When going back from the conversation to the list view the cursor still points at the conversation which we looked at last.
When viewing a conversation one can choose to archive it. If you started out from the inbox then that will mean that the conversation is removed from the inbox and Gmail switches back from the conversation view back the viewing the inbox. Now, here's the thing: since the conversation that we just looked at is removed, which conversation should the cursor now point to? It seems that there is no obvious right answer here. We could choose to point to the conversation above or to the one below, but any of those choices are bound to be wrong half of the time.
The way Gmail seems to do this is that it remembers the last two conversations that I looked at. If the second one I looked at is below the first then it will make the cursor point to the conversation below. Otherwise to the conversation above. For me this scheme works incredibly well! It does the right thing at least 90% of the time. I'm just so amazed at the fact that they've obviously given this very small detail a lot of thought and come up with an incredibly useful solution.
As always, hats off for Google.
Most email clients have a split view. One part of the screen shows a list of messages in the current mail box, typically the inbox. The other part shows the contents of the currently highlighted mail. Gmail does this differently. It starts out by showing only a list of messages (or conversation in Gmail lingo). When you select one of the conversations it changes view to only show that particular conversation.
When I use Gmail I mostly use the keyboard. To facilitate this Gmail has a little cursor which can be moved up and down between the conversations in the list view. When the cursor points at a specific conversation one can for instance open it, to see the actual conversation. When going back from the conversation to the list view the cursor still points at the conversation which we looked at last.
When viewing a conversation one can choose to archive it. If you started out from the inbox then that will mean that the conversation is removed from the inbox and Gmail switches back from the conversation view back the viewing the inbox. Now, here's the thing: since the conversation that we just looked at is removed, which conversation should the cursor now point to? It seems that there is no obvious right answer here. We could choose to point to the conversation above or to the one below, but any of those choices are bound to be wrong half of the time.
The way Gmail seems to do this is that it remembers the last two conversations that I looked at. If the second one I looked at is below the first then it will make the cursor point to the conversation below. Otherwise to the conversation above. For me this scheme works incredibly well! It does the right thing at least 90% of the time. I'm just so amazed at the fact that they've obviously given this very small detail a lot of thought and come up with an incredibly useful solution.
As always, hats off for Google.
Amazon embarrasing itself
I've complained before about Amazon's book recommendations that I get via email. But today's recommendation just totally baffles me.
Yesterday (or the day before, I forget) I pre-ordered "The Children of Hurin", the new Tolkien book from Amazon.co.uk. Today I get an email recommending this book to me and telling me what a great deal I can make if I pre-order it from Amazon. Well, doh!
Yesterday (or the day before, I forget) I pre-ordered "The Children of Hurin", the new Tolkien book from Amazon.co.uk. Today I get an email recommending this book to me and telling me what a great deal I can make if I pre-order it from Amazon. Well, doh!
2007-03-15
The Cloud Appreciation Society
I'm happy to announce that I am, as of a couple of days ago, a proud member of the Cloud Appreciation Society. More specifically I'm member no. 7719. I've had a thing for clouds for quite a while and once I leaned about the society I applied for membership right away. Those of you who've read my blog before will not be surprised by this as I have occasionally written about clouds and had some pictures here.
Even if you're not a big cloud fan I can still recommend the web site. The founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, is a guy with a lot of humor and he's a very good writer. Furthermore there are a lot of awesome pictures.
How did found out about this club? Sometimes coincidences work together it seems. Not so long ago my wife and I had our honeymoon which we spent in Dublin. As we both have a soft spot for books we went to a couple of book stores. One of the book stores had a popular science shelf which I browsed and found a book that seemed interesting. It was called the The Cloudspotter's Guide by a certain Gavin Pretor-Pinney. I didn't start reading it right away but I noticed that there was a URL in the book to the Cloud Appreciation Society and so I made sure to visit the website. And I was hooked.
As for the book, I've just started reading it. And I must say that it's absolutely delightful. As I wrote above, Mr. Pretor-Pinney is a very skilled writer and with a lot of humor and passion he writes about clouds and his love for them. He describes each kind of cloud in turn, but the book is so much more than a dry catalog of cloud varieties. He mixes the description with colorful stories from other books, actual event relating to clouds and various odd trivia. One example is that he retells the account of the only person who has fallen through a Cumulonimbus (you know, the one with a lot of rain, thunder and lightning) and survived to tell the story. A truly fascinating account.
I have a bunch of other books about clouds but none of them can compare in any way with The Cloudspotter's Guide. The Book of Clouds has a lot of nice pictures but that's essentially it. It's very thin on details and doesn't have the same passion about it. The Invention of Clouds on the other hand is very heavy on details, to the point where I almost lost my interest. And that's a bit worrying given that I'm such a cloud fan. The Cloudspotter's Guide really comes out on top of both these books. The only thing that it isn't so strong on is beautiful pictures. It's not that it doesn't have them, it's that they're not so many. But on the other hand, I don't really need pictures of clouds in a book. The whole point is that I can go outside whenever I want and take a look at the real thing. So the lack of pictures isn't really a problem.
So, finally I would like to do my job as a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society and urge you, my reader, to Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!
Even if you're not a big cloud fan I can still recommend the web site. The founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, is a guy with a lot of humor and he's a very good writer. Furthermore there are a lot of awesome pictures.
How did found out about this club? Sometimes coincidences work together it seems. Not so long ago my wife and I had our honeymoon which we spent in Dublin. As we both have a soft spot for books we went to a couple of book stores. One of the book stores had a popular science shelf which I browsed and found a book that seemed interesting. It was called the The Cloudspotter's Guide by a certain Gavin Pretor-Pinney. I didn't start reading it right away but I noticed that there was a URL in the book to the Cloud Appreciation Society and so I made sure to visit the website. And I was hooked.
As for the book, I've just started reading it. And I must say that it's absolutely delightful. As I wrote above, Mr. Pretor-Pinney is a very skilled writer and with a lot of humor and passion he writes about clouds and his love for them. He describes each kind of cloud in turn, but the book is so much more than a dry catalog of cloud varieties. He mixes the description with colorful stories from other books, actual event relating to clouds and various odd trivia. One example is that he retells the account of the only person who has fallen through a Cumulonimbus (you know, the one with a lot of rain, thunder and lightning) and survived to tell the story. A truly fascinating account.
I have a bunch of other books about clouds but none of them can compare in any way with The Cloudspotter's Guide. The Book of Clouds has a lot of nice pictures but that's essentially it. It's very thin on details and doesn't have the same passion about it. The Invention of Clouds on the other hand is very heavy on details, to the point where I almost lost my interest. And that's a bit worrying given that I'm such a cloud fan. The Cloudspotter's Guide really comes out on top of both these books. The only thing that it isn't so strong on is beautiful pictures. It's not that it doesn't have them, it's that they're not so many. But on the other hand, I don't really need pictures of clouds in a book. The whole point is that I can go outside whenever I want and take a look at the real thing. So the lack of pictures isn't really a problem.
So, finally I would like to do my job as a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society and urge you, my reader, to Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!
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