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I don’t do anything, but I’m not doing nothing

I really like Milk Duds. I dunno why, exactly. They are mysteriously attractive.

I have over 100 stars in Mario Galaxy 2.

I had a thought. A bit of a callback to that Dark Tower post. A few months before I read the Dark Tower series, I read Ringworld. It is a good book. It is good sci fi. It explores several interesting ideas, as sci fi should, and is entertaining. I think Ringworld is an example of a case where deus ex machina could have been a problem, but decidedly wasn’t, a contrast to The Dark Tower Series. It is a bit unfair to compare a single book to a whole series (I haven’t read any of the Ringworld sequels) but Dark Tower makes me appreciate the achievement of Ringworld more, so I thought I’d share.

I just started reading American Gods. I like it so far, mostly, but I’m not very far. Don’t think I’ve read Neil Gaiman before, so we’ll see. I’ll let you know when I finish, if I have any strong feelings. Progress might be slow, however, as Lauren arrives for the summer tomorrow.

Om nom nom, Milk Duds.

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Hey party people

I think you guys should know about Hunch.com, so I’m going to write this blog post.

It’s a site that has many facets. The one that jumps out at you when you first get there is an endless stream of questions you can answer about yourself. So, that’s fun, especially if you are one of those quiz takers. Hunch also has those types of quizzes, and various topics to narrow down the questions for a specific purpose. For example, if you wanted to know what book to read next you could go to one of the book topics, answer questions about what you like, and then it will make recommendations for you.

The topics, questions, and results, are all user generated. So, if you are an expert in something that isn’t on the site yet, you can add a whole new topic. Or, if your favorite book isn’t in the list, you can just add it and tell the site what answers would lead to that book.

The site also keeps track of everything you do so it can recommend topics you might be interested in, and tell you of other users that answer similarly to you, and stuff like that. It keeps a giant database of answers and looks for strange correlations. Like 46% of moms who used a fake ID got really muddy as kids. Stuff like that is interesting to me. Plus the topics can be really helpful, if you want to know what TV to buy or whatnot.

Oh, and there are also badges you can get and stuff. Anyway, check it out. My username is geneo if you want to be my friend on there.

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1 down


Today is the agreed upon anniversary of the start of mine and Lauren’s relationship. Go us.

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Awesome

This is very useful. I have to remember to study it carefully every once in a while. Ya’ll should too.

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nice

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Command: donate rice

You know how I’ve suggested ways of using freerice.com to good use in the past? Yeah, well, I’m doing it again. I’ve got a better system that takes no effort after initial setup and will yield greater results.

So here’s what you do.

  1. Download and install and use Firefox. Most of you should have that skip covered already.
  2. Download and install Greasemonkey.
  3. Optional: Download and install FaviconizeTab. This will allow you to shrink the Freerice tab, so if you don’t care how big the tab is, you don’t need to do this.
  4. Reboot Firefox. This makes the newly downloaded addons actually work.
  5. Install the freerice cheater. This is a script that Greasemonkey uses.
  6. Go to freerice.com.
  7. Answer the question. If it starts rapidly answering for you and wracking up the rice, skip to step 13, else continue.
  8. Right click on the little monkey face at the bottom of your browser and click Manage User Scripts.
    Alternative: Click Tools->Greasemonkey->Manage User Scripts
    Alternative: Hold Alt and then press T, then G, then M
  9. Click Add.
  10. Click Ok.
  11. Click Close.
  12. Answer another question.
  13. Optional: Click View->Page View->No Style
    Alternative: Hold Alt and press V, then Y, then N
    This prevents the page from loading fancy make pretty things, so it can load more quickly.
  14. If you have FaviconizeTab: Right click on the freerice tab and select FaviconizeTab.

There. You should now be donating up a storm. You can simultaneously set up multiple tabs to do this, if you want, although there is a point at which the slowdown will not be worth it. This will depend on your computer and internet connection, so feel free to experiment.

The script will run as long as the tab is open regardless of whether that tab, or Firefox, is the focus, so you can leave it going all day.

I hope you enjoy helping the worlds hungry. Please contact me if you have any comments or questions.

Also, thanks to Samwise for showing me the freerice cheater script.

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Updating… because I don’t have headphones

Is there a word for a person who is willing to have sex with someone because that someone’s sexual history is linked to some highly desirable person?  Like, Lisa loves Johnny Depp so she’s willing to sleep with Mike because Mike had a tryst with Depp’s ex-wife, for example.  If there isn’t such a word, perhaps someone should craft one.  It seems like the kind of thing that could use a good latinate word.

Paul Pirone, CS friend, won the Central Washington University strong man competition that was held recently.  So congrats to him.  I saw him win the flippy tire thing and the round stone picky upy thing so I figured he probably did well, but I didn’t stick around to see that he actually won.

I guess I haven’t posted since Lauren and I came out as a couple.  So, yeah, we’re dating.  One caveat for you guys out there, we haven’t come out to her family yet.  We’re assuming none of them read this, but if you could avoid telling them, or posting things on facebook in such a way that they might see, or whatever, that would be appreciated.

So, probably largely because of this new dating situation, I’ve stayed with the Central people.  Hanging out with everyone, doing the same ol’ things.  We went to Portland as planned and did stay with Keston and Ody, except Sidney and Dan ran away to Linfield cause they are weak (allergic to cats).  Whatever, just extra driving for them.  Yusuke became good friends with the cat.  I named the cat Henry, since it had no name.  I dunno if it’ll stick w/o my presence, though.

Portland was Portland.  I never really understood why people think it’s so great.  I guess if you’re not raised amongst the hippies you think seeing hippy people and hippy stores is really novel and awesome… maybe?  I dunno.  Regardless, stores and just stores to me, filled with piles of stuff I don’t want.  I bought volumes 3 and 4 of Otherland used from Powell’s, though, for Sidney and Lauren.  The rest of the time I spent walking around, which I found quite pleasant because the weather and company were so good.

School’s out for the Central peeps in 2 weeks, so then I’ll have to go home I suppose, maybe even before.  Otherwise the plan is to continue hanging out while I can before everyone goes to their preferred countries.  Tonight we’re going to play basketball.

There’s this new thing called WolframAlpha.  It looks cool to me.  If I had headphones I would have learned all about it by now and could recommend better how to use it, but I think it has a variety of uses for everyone and that you all should play around with it yourself and see what you come up with.  It’s good if you have math homework for sure, and if you wanna do financial analysis, or if you just curious about some statistics but you don’t know where you’d find them.  Like, finding out the number of people with your name… or the population of females in your area.  I dunno, it’s new and probably will ever grow, but I plan to keep an eye on it.  Yeah, it’s definitely cool.

K, I’m gonna go play with it some more.  TTFN, folks.

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Pick up

Today I walked into the kitchen where mom was listening to some audio book.  The first words I heard were, “if they had half a brain cell to rub together”.

This is a very funny phrase.  I have laughed heartily twice at the thought of this phrase today.  I give it to you all freely.

Just imagine someone yelling that at you.  Oh… lol.

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Thesis: Ignorance is inversely proportional to cognitive dissonance among anti-vaccinationists

I’ve taken an excerpt from the most recent episode of Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.  It’s only about 1.5 minutes or something, but it was humorous to me.  There are much funnier things in the podcast if you listen regularly, but they’re not as compact and stand-alone as this.  Enjoy.  Sorry no embed, kinda tired and busy these days.

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Evolution ftw

A little late for Darwin Day, but I post in the spirit of the holiday anyway.  There are a few more here.