Hi Steven, plus the one or two other people who read this :)
I'm moving to tumblr, so you might have to update your RSS links if you still want to follow me:
http://blog.rodarmor.com
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Life in Xela
Every day is pretty much the same:
7:15a Alarm goes off
7:45a Mama Cony yells, "VAS A COMER?!" - "ARE YOU GOING TO EAT?!"
7:55a Eat Breakfast lovingly prepared by Mama Cony
8:10a Arrive, late as always, to Spanish school
1p FINALLY finish Spanish classes. Jesus, 5 hours 1 on 1 is a killer
1:15p Eat lunch with the fam. I will make halting conversation, while the other American, Douglas, will look on, dumbfounded.
2:30p shower with the pathetic electric shower head (truly, a masterpiece of Guatemalan engineering)
4p take a salsa class (I still suck, but soon.. Dance floor carnage!)
5p Use the internet for a couple of hours
7:30p eat dinner with the fam. I've pretty much gotten used to the traditional Guatemalan dinner of beans, eggs, and tortillas.
8:30p go out, maybe. If so, mama cony will probably express light exasperation, ask me where my keys are, and make me promise not to get robbed.
7:15a Alarm goes off
7:45a Mama Cony yells, "VAS A COMER?!" - "ARE YOU GOING TO EAT?!"
7:55a Eat Breakfast lovingly prepared by Mama Cony
8:10a Arrive, late as always, to Spanish school
1p FINALLY finish Spanish classes. Jesus, 5 hours 1 on 1 is a killer
1:15p Eat lunch with the fam. I will make halting conversation, while the other American, Douglas, will look on, dumbfounded.
2:30p shower with the pathetic electric shower head (truly, a masterpiece of Guatemalan engineering)
4p take a salsa class (I still suck, but soon.. Dance floor carnage!)
5p Use the internet for a couple of hours
7:30p eat dinner with the fam. I've pretty much gotten used to the traditional Guatemalan dinner of beans, eggs, and tortillas.
8:30p go out, maybe. If so, mama cony will probably express light exasperation, ask me where my keys are, and make me promise not to get robbed.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
First joke in Spanish!
I was eating dinner with my Guatemalan family yesterday (super late, because I passed out for 8 hours right after I got there). Mama Cony, mi madre guatemalteca, has all these cow tchotchkes, including a salt and sugar dispenser that look like beatifically reclining cows. However, she had washed them earlier, and they were on their sides. So, I said, "Ay caramba! Tus vacas!" And started setting them upright, like they were injured or something. All present were at least mildly amused.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Top Thirty
I was in the library, just about to get down to working on the BSC's broken online application and reservation system. Instead though, I wrote a script to extract some statistics from my iTunes library. Oh well, they can't all be productive days...
Top 30 artists by total play count
And, just in case you'd like to assemble a playlist that's representative of my musical tastes, here we have the most played song by each of those artists:
Harold Budd - Luxa - Nove Alberi
Uakti - Aguas de Amazonas - Purus River
Yoko Kanno - Music for Freelance - Space Lion - 4 Hero Remix
The Sea and Cake - The Fawn - Sporting Life
Andrew Pekler - Cue - On
Boards of Canada - BOC Maxima - An Eagle In Your Mind
Sam Powell - Shadowrun - Mortimer Reed
Richard Bone - Joy of Radiation 12" - Radiation
Ten and Tracer - An Hour Brighter - Next Sun
Goldfrapp - Black Cherry - Train
Capcom - Mega Man 3 - Magnetman Stage
The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros - Space
Talking Heads - Popular Favorites - I Zimbra
To Rococo Rot - staubgold - mit dir in der gegend (sehr)
Juana Molina - Segundo - El Desconfiado
nagz - Nagz's CV - GardenGuardin'Gordon
Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain - China My China
Spoon - Girls Can Tell - Take the Fifth
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express - Europe Endless
Moby - Play: The B Sides - Sunspot
I Am Robot And Proud - The Electricity In Your House Wants To Sing
Familjen - Det Snurrar I Min Skalle - Det Snurrar I Min Skalle
Hossein Alizadeh - Torkaman - Daramade Rast
Royksopp - Melody AM - Poor Leno
Plej - Electronic Music From The Swedish Leftcoast - Lay Of The Land
José González - In Our Nature - Time To Send Someone Away
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Akira OST - Exodus from the Underground
DJ Shadow - The Private Press - Six Days
Koji Kondo - Super Mario Bros 3 - Nervous Breakdown BGM
Queen - Greatest Hits - Under Pressure
Top 30 artists by total play count
Harold Budd: 881
Uakti: 784
Yoko Kanno: 727
The Sea and Cake: 713
Andrew Pekler: 577
Boards of Canada: 551
Sam Powell: 510
Richard Bone: 508
Ten and Tracer: 433
Goldfrapp: 419
Capcom: 340
The Beta Band: 334
Talking Heads: 318
To Rococo Rot: 306
Juana Molina: 283
nagz: 271
Brian Eno: 235
Spoon: 233
Kraftwerk: 233
Moby: 229
I Am Robot And Proud: 228
Familjen: 219
Hossein Alizadeh: 218
Royksopp: 208
Plej: 192
José González: 191
Geinoh Yamashirogumi: 187
DJ Shadow: 187
Koji Kondo: 179
Queen: 177
And, just in case you'd like to assemble a playlist that's representative of my musical tastes, here we have the most played song by each of those artists:
Harold Budd - Luxa - Nove Alberi
Uakti - Aguas de Amazonas - Purus River
Yoko Kanno - Music for Freelance - Space Lion - 4 Hero Remix
The Sea and Cake - The Fawn - Sporting Life
Andrew Pekler - Cue - On
Boards of Canada - BOC Maxima - An Eagle In Your Mind
Sam Powell - Shadowrun - Mortimer Reed
Richard Bone - Joy of Radiation 12" - Radiation
Ten and Tracer - An Hour Brighter - Next Sun
Goldfrapp - Black Cherry - Train
Capcom - Mega Man 3 - Magnetman Stage
The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros - Space
Talking Heads - Popular Favorites - I Zimbra
To Rococo Rot - staubgold - mit dir in der gegend (sehr)
Juana Molina - Segundo - El Desconfiado
nagz - Nagz's CV - GardenGuardin'Gordon
Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain - China My China
Spoon - Girls Can Tell - Take the Fifth
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express - Europe Endless
Moby - Play: The B Sides - Sunspot
I Am Robot And Proud - The Electricity In Your House Wants To Sing
Familjen - Det Snurrar I Min Skalle - Det Snurrar I Min Skalle
Hossein Alizadeh - Torkaman - Daramade Rast
Royksopp - Melody AM - Poor Leno
Plej - Electronic Music From The Swedish Leftcoast - Lay Of The Land
José González - In Our Nature - Time To Send Someone Away
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Akira OST - Exodus from the Underground
DJ Shadow - The Private Press - Six Days
Koji Kondo - Super Mario Bros 3 - Nervous Breakdown BGM
Queen - Greatest Hits - Under Pressure
Friday, October 9, 2009
Oh Yeah, Oh No
I've had a song stuck in my head on and off for at least two years. I mean, it wasn't really stuck, it was just this song that I knew that I didn't know the name of. It infuriated me, and I would hum it sometimes, which just infuriated me more.
Well, today, at 10:50pm, I finally figured out what it was. Turns out it was Oh Yeah, Oh No, by Add N to (X). Now that I know, I feel like a more complete human being.
Well, today, at 10:50pm, I finally figured out what it was. Turns out it was Oh Yeah, Oh No, by Add N to (X). Now that I know, I feel like a more complete human being.
Monday, September 21, 2009
How to make dinner*
*assumes you are Casey Rodarmor
1. Get home to your coop at 3:30am after 8 semi-productive hours of studying and wasting time at Soda Hall
2. Make two open faced sandwiches, each consisting of half a bread roll spread with some sambal oelek from the gigantic jar in the fridge, and a whole avocado
3. Eat your sandwiches standing up in the kitchen while listening to this song over and over again on your ipod. Make sure you're mouthing the lyrics, dancing spasmodically, and thinking about writing this post
4. Go to sleep
PS Just kidding, don't go to bed. Instead, read about databases for an hour or two.
1. Get home to your coop at 3:30am after 8 semi-productive hours of studying and wasting time at Soda Hall
2. Make two open faced sandwiches, each consisting of half a bread roll spread with some sambal oelek from the gigantic jar in the fridge, and a whole avocado
3. Eat your sandwiches standing up in the kitchen while listening to this song over and over again on your ipod. Make sure you're mouthing the lyrics, dancing spasmodically, and thinking about writing this post
4. Go to sleep
PS Just kidding, don't go to bed. Instead, read about databases for an hour or two.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
How to appreciate professional wrestling
For me, professional wrestling has always been about the crazy moves. I would like to share that joy with you. My personal favorites include the dragonrana (#22), the go 2 sleep (#19), and the ranhei (#16).
PS Please just ignore #37, the "cattle mutilation", I don't know what the hell is going on with that one.
PS Please just ignore #37, the "cattle mutilation", I don't know what the hell is going on with that one.
How to ask questions
Questions follow the Anna Karenina principle, which comes from the opening of Anna Karenina:
Like families, good questions are all the same, and bad questions are bad for many different reasons. Some kinds of bad questions really irritate me.
Leading Questions: These look like questions, but they're really just asking for confirmation of a piece of information. People ask them a lot when they think they know the answer, or they think that providing possible answers makes them look smart.
Bad: "Is this the gas cap?"
Bad: "Is the gas cap on the right or the left"
Good: "Where's the gas cap?"
(Actually, if someone is terrible at communicating information and you just need to get them to spit something out, you might have to resort to leading questions.)
Questions Asked to Make the Asker Look Good: General categories include inappropriately advanced or detailed questions, leading questions where the asker knows the answer, and questions which are actually statements. God knows you get plenty of these in a college setting, and they piss me off to no end.
Don't be this douche: "Is that similar to the behavior in Apache 1.2, where malformed cgi scripts could cause runaway memory usage?"
Me: "Shut it, motherfucker! This is CS 3!"
There is another type of question that lots of people don't like, and those are questions that you can answer yourself. I think this mostly only applies on the internet. After all, you're already on the net, so why not google it. But in real life, it's still probably a good idea to ask yourself the following, "Am I asking for data, or analysis?" If it's data you're after, check the web. The web is chock full of that shit: elimination half-lives of prescription drugs, dates of historical events, how to write a comment in c++, the nutritional contents of a bowl of cheerios, etc. But if it's analysis you want, go for it. Go ahead and ask your doctor for ideas for a healthy breakfast, or your programmer friends about which style of comments they prefer in python.
Good questions are motivated by curiosity, reveal ignorance, and are open ended. It's only one sentence, but I think it pretty much sums up most good questions.
You would think curiosity would be obvious, since questions that nobody cares about don't get asked, but think about questions that people ask to make themselves look good; they don't actually care about the answer.
Revealing ignorance is scary, but don't try to avoid it. The more ignorance you reveal, and the faster you reveal it, the faster the helpful, smart people around you will help you fill in the gaps.
Asking an open ended question means not supplying possible answers along with the questions, and fully putting yourself in the hands of the person you're asking. If you can, use question-word questions that start with "why", "how", and "what", as opposed to yes/no questions.
I'll also say that the fastest way to impress me is to ask an honest, open ended question that shows that you're not worried about looking stupid. If a pretty girl walked up to me and said, "Why can't I dereference a void*?" I would probably just throw in the towel right there and propose to her.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Like families, good questions are all the same, and bad questions are bad for many different reasons. Some kinds of bad questions really irritate me.
Leading Questions: These look like questions, but they're really just asking for confirmation of a piece of information. People ask them a lot when they think they know the answer, or they think that providing possible answers makes them look smart.
Bad: "Is this the gas cap?"
Bad: "Is the gas cap on the right or the left"
Good: "Where's the gas cap?"
(Actually, if someone is terrible at communicating information and you just need to get them to spit something out, you might have to resort to leading questions.)
Questions Asked to Make the Asker Look Good: General categories include inappropriately advanced or detailed questions, leading questions where the asker knows the answer, and questions which are actually statements. God knows you get plenty of these in a college setting, and they piss me off to no end.
Don't be this douche: "Is that similar to the behavior in Apache 1.2, where malformed cgi scripts could cause runaway memory usage?"
Me: "Shut it, motherfucker! This is CS 3!"
There is another type of question that lots of people don't like, and those are questions that you can answer yourself. I think this mostly only applies on the internet. After all, you're already on the net, so why not google it. But in real life, it's still probably a good idea to ask yourself the following, "Am I asking for data, or analysis?" If it's data you're after, check the web. The web is chock full of that shit: elimination half-lives of prescription drugs, dates of historical events, how to write a comment in c++, the nutritional contents of a bowl of cheerios, etc. But if it's analysis you want, go for it. Go ahead and ask your doctor for ideas for a healthy breakfast, or your programmer friends about which style of comments they prefer in python.
Good questions are motivated by curiosity, reveal ignorance, and are open ended. It's only one sentence, but I think it pretty much sums up most good questions.
You would think curiosity would be obvious, since questions that nobody cares about don't get asked, but think about questions that people ask to make themselves look good; they don't actually care about the answer.
Revealing ignorance is scary, but don't try to avoid it. The more ignorance you reveal, and the faster you reveal it, the faster the helpful, smart people around you will help you fill in the gaps.
Asking an open ended question means not supplying possible answers along with the questions, and fully putting yourself in the hands of the person you're asking. If you can, use question-word questions that start with "why", "how", and "what", as opposed to yes/no questions.
I'll also say that the fastest way to impress me is to ask an honest, open ended question that shows that you're not worried about looking stupid. If a pretty girl walked up to me and said, "Why can't I dereference a void*?" I would probably just throw in the towel right there and propose to her.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Auto tune the news
This is amazing, because it turns the non-stop stream of bullshit that is the news*, and turns it into something great.
And it's really equally absurd as the original broadcast, except by removing the pretensions of importance and adding some uplifting music, it's beautiful.
*Let me just tell you why I hate The News. I hate it because it's ugly, it's nothing but sound bytes and stupid little tickers, overwhelming you with useless information. It also turns the non-context-free grammar of the world's events, and turns it into a tune-in-at-any-time context-free show. It's like a cartoon where each episode resets from the same premise, so you don't need to know anything to watch one.
And it's really equally absurd as the original broadcast, except by removing the pretensions of importance and adding some uplifting music, it's beautiful.
*Let me just tell you why I hate The News. I hate it because it's ugly, it's nothing but sound bytes and stupid little tickers, overwhelming you with useless information. It also turns the non-context-free grammar of the world's events, and turns it into a tune-in-at-any-time context-free show. It's like a cartoon where each episode resets from the same premise, so you don't need to know anything to watch one.
Monday, July 20, 2009
There's something about "A Treatise on the Astrolabe"
From this paper on natural language classification by character frequency:
A strange result I found was that nearly all of the incorrect classifications of Middle English were in a specific file of A Treatise on the Astrolabe by Chaucer. The other texts by Chaucer had much greater accuracy than the average shown in the graphs.
Driven Development
Why and how does software get made? While Nicholas and I were pondering ways to make program development easier, I decided to waste some time and search google for "* driven development". Here are the results, sorted into some pretty arbitrary categories:
development driven by your desires:
resume driven development
curiosity driven development
employee driven development
brain driven development
asshole driven development (based on avoiding suffering, assuming that someone else is the asshole)
specification:
test driven development (evolving specifications)
model driven development (executable specification)
feature driven development
example driven development
documentation driven development (non-executable specifications)
storytest driven development
dialogue driven development
annotation driven development
bug driven development (implicit specification)
behavior driven development (implicit specification)
interface driven development
specification driven development
exception driven development
user-guide driven development
outside desires:
dilemma driven development
turmoil driven development
demand driven development
community driven development
task driven development
mission driven development
omoiyari driven development (Japanese for "what other people are thinking")
beverage:
tea driven development
coffee driven development
ill defined:
anecdote driven development
neo-liberal driven development
reality driven development
secret driven development
worksheet driven development
rup driven development
ontology driven development
pattern generator driven development
pajama driven development - working remotely
platform driven development
semantics driven development
diary driven development
development driven by your desires:
resume driven development
curiosity driven development
employee driven development
brain driven development
asshole driven development (based on avoiding suffering, assuming that someone else is the asshole)
specification:
test driven development (evolving specifications)
model driven development (executable specification)
feature driven development
example driven development
documentation driven development (non-executable specifications)
storytest driven development
dialogue driven development
annotation driven development
bug driven development (implicit specification)
behavior driven development (implicit specification)
interface driven development
specification driven development
exception driven development
user-guide driven development
outside desires:
dilemma driven development
turmoil driven development
demand driven development
community driven development
task driven development
mission driven development
omoiyari driven development (Japanese for "what other people are thinking")
beverage:
tea driven development
coffee driven development
ill defined:
anecdote driven development
neo-liberal driven development
reality driven development
secret driven development
worksheet driven development
rup driven development
ontology driven development
pattern generator driven development
pajama driven development - working remotely
platform driven development
semantics driven development
diary driven development
Friday, June 12, 2009
Humorous gmail rendering problems
[So this blog's title is now out of date, since I'm back from Sweden. But, as they say, whatever. -Ed.]
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Strange fruit, hanging from the web
Someone wrote a blog post right before they and their sister were murdered: http://toto247.xanga.com/261268578/item
The police used it to track down the killer.
The police used it to track down the killer.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Do your shoelaces come undone?
[Song of Sverige has been delivering the hard-hitting, relevant journalism that you demand for over two years, and we think you'll find this post to hit especially hard. -editor]
Do your shoelaces come undone? Mine do, all the time. Or at least, they did... Now, thanks in large part to Wikipedia's page on reef knots and Ian's Shoelace Site, I have corrected this terrible problem.
It is a fact almost too shameful to admit, but it is true... Unbeknownst to myself, I, a 26-year-old nearly-college-educated man, have been tying my shoes with granny knots for the whole of my adult life.
I'll leave the technical details out of this hard-hitting blog post, but if your shoelaces come undone, forcing you to resort to double knots, you too may have this problem.
Fortunately, there is hope. Visit Ian's page on slipping shoelaces, and rid yourself of undone-coming shoelaces once and for all!
Do your shoelaces come undone? Mine do, all the time. Or at least, they did... Now, thanks in large part to Wikipedia's page on reef knots and Ian's Shoelace Site, I have corrected this terrible problem.
It is a fact almost too shameful to admit, but it is true... Unbeknownst to myself, I, a 26-year-old nearly-college-educated man, have been tying my shoes with granny knots for the whole of my adult life.
I'll leave the technical details out of this hard-hitting blog post, but if your shoelaces come undone, forcing you to resort to double knots, you too may have this problem.
Fortunately, there is hope. Visit Ian's page on slipping shoelaces, and rid yourself of undone-coming shoelaces once and for all!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Designing two nuclear reactors in latin while running a 10k
The bundles of uranium should be at least 50 centimeters...
Tack vare random nätperson Anna P. för hjälp med latinet :-)
Monday, April 27, 2009
Libera Encyclopaedia
Check it out! Latin Wikipedia: http://la.wikipedia.org
Isn't it crazy that Pliny the Elder could time travel to the present and read about the atomic bomb in his mother tongue?
Isn't it crazy that Pliny the Elder could time travel to the present and read about the atomic bomb in his mother tongue?
Friday, February 20, 2009
The most tortured physical analogy of all time
It is with great pleasure that I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, this, the most tortured physical analogy of all time.
It will come as no surprise that this analogy is from electrical engineering, a field filled nearly to bursting with absurd fictions.
Even if you aren't familier with basic electrical circuits, have a look at this circuit diagram of a camera's flash:
Now, compare and contrast with this baffling and bafflingly unrelated diagram of a cabin's water supply:
Which part of the circuit is the ball valve? What about the other valve? Where the hell is lake superior in the circuit diagram?
Has anybody ever encountered something worse?
Ironically enough, while writing this post, I finally got the analogy. It's really not too bad!
It will come as no surprise that this analogy is from electrical engineering, a field filled nearly to bursting with absurd fictions.
Even if you aren't familier with basic electrical circuits, have a look at this circuit diagram of a camera's flash:
Now, compare and contrast with this baffling and bafflingly unrelated diagram of a cabin's water supply:
Which part of the circuit is the ball valve? What about the other valve? Where the hell is lake superior in the circuit diagram?
Has anybody ever encountered something worse?
Ironically enough, while writing this post, I finally got the analogy. It's really not too bad!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
1st Annual Fictitious Logo Contest: The English Language
It is with great pleasure that I announce the first annual Fictitious Logo Contest!
The rules are simple: create and submit a logo for the English language. It should be suitable for publications and advertisements promoting the language, both printed and electronic.
The winner, determined by online poll, will receive a small box of Solstickan matches, Sweden's preferred match since 1936.
The deadline for submissions is March 15th, 11:59pm.
Good luck!
The rules are simple: create and submit a logo for the English language. It should be suitable for publications and advertisements promoting the language, both printed and electronic.
The winner, determined by online poll, will receive a small box of Solstickan matches, Sweden's preferred match since 1936.
The deadline for submissions is March 15th, 11:59pm.
Good luck!
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