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Freight Train (easy)
Posted 12:18 PM, Sep 27, 2008 |
I finally got some equipment together to do some recording:
- a small, 15W Fender amp with a headphone out jack
- a Dean Markey pickup that fits inside the sound hole of my acoustic guitar, basically converting it into the acoustic-electric that I wanted (for about 1/8th the price)
- some sound editing software
I put all of that together and tested it out by recording this little number.
Freight Train (easy)
I have the music for a more difficult (and better) version of Freight Train, but really just wanted to test out and post something quickly.
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Hypothetical
Posted 9:00 AM, Sep 27, 2008 |
So a piece of toast pops out of your single-slice toaster. You put it on a plate and immediately load up the toaster with another slice. You return your focus to the piece of toast on your plate and slather it with butter, which starts melting immediately. Then, the phone rings. It’s your kid, away at college, asking for money. It doesn’t take long to turn them down - just long enough for the other piece of toast to be finished. You put it on your plate and liberally spread butter on it. Now, you have a decision:
Do you eat the hot second piece of toast, knowing that by the time you finish it, the slightly-cooled first piece will be particularly cool? Or, do you eat the slightly-cooled first piece of toast, knowing that by the time you finish it, the second piece of toast will also be slightly cooled?
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Swoopo 2
Posted 6:03 AM, Sep 19, 2008 |
A couple final notes on Swoopo:
1) Someone’s got the idea that mining all the data about individual users and items at Swoopo is the key to success, so much so that they’re willing to budget $250 (!) to hire someone to do it. The answer might be in there somewhere, but if it is, it’s worth more than $250 of some computer wonk’s time.
2) I’m amazed by the number of people that think this site is a scam. Some of the complaints could be legitimate, in that the company could be bidding up their own items to make sure the prices reach a certain level. That’s possible. However, that’s not the chief complaint, as far as I can tell.
Most of the complaints seem to stem from cranky people who bid and didn’t win and then, of course, were out $1 (or whatever other currency) per bid, with nothing to show for it. Of course, the site is totally up front about how everything works and what the costs are. Here are some comments culled from various internet forums:
“They charge you to place bids. LMAO. That is a ballsy scam. They should be shut down immediately by the FTC.”
“I even tried waiting for the last 1 second of the auction then placed my bid thinking for sure that I would be the winner. That did not work, each time I thought I got the very last bid the website would add 15 more seconds to the auction. So basically the only way to win one of their auctions is to be the last bidder plus have no one else bid on the item for the next 15 seconds, which seems impossible since there are so many people constantly bidding. There was always another bidder willing to place a bid adding 15 more seconds to the auction multiple times.”
These people just seem like they don’t understand how the site works. That’s all.
If you can win something, is it a scam? If they’re totally up front about what they’re doing, is it a scam? How dare they! How could they come up with a decent idea, explain to you exactly how it works, and then get away with it? The nerve!
Lastly, another comment:
“This might be a scam, but it is a very, very clever one and I think with a bit of patience, like Lyn’s comment above proves you can win something, but a strategy is definitely needed, and I think they’ve targeted a very stupid, and very gullible audience with a lot of success.”
I suppose that it’s a scam in the same way the lottery is a scam (which is to say, isn’t one, unless you’re clueless and don’t stop to think about the fact that the site must be making money somehow.) Perhaps it’s all semantics about the meaning of the word “scam,” but I don’t think so - these people seem to think it’s actually ripping people off in some underhanded fashion, which I don’t get.
The last word (for me) on Swoopo is this: I don’t plan on registering at the site and won’t be spending any money there. Every auction is a gamble - even if there is some small scrap of skill (timing, data analysis, etc.), for the most part it’s a crapshoot. I would be interested in hearing the FTC’s distinction between something like Swoopo and any of the multitude of online poker sites, which are now illegal for US players, especially considering that Swoopo actually auctions off cash, and that most people in the know would consider poker much more a skill “game” than bidding at Swoopo.
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Swoopo
Posted 3:40 PM, Sep 18, 2008 |
The other day in my GMail I saw an ad stating that, at swoopo.com, an xBox 360 was recently sold for $17.20 or some ridiculous price. Sounds like a scam to me, since they sell for a couple hundred bucks, give or take. And, upon further research, this xBox 360 also came with a decent game, which I don’t recall the title of. So what gives?
Swoopo is a new (to the US, at least) auction site. They basically auction off electronics, and all the auctions are hosted by Swoopo (unlike eBay, where anyone can post an auction). When the auction is posted, there is an initial countdown time of at least a couple hours. However, at a certain point that countdown timer changes to (or reaches) 20 seconds. When that happens, if you’re the winning bidder when the countdown timer hits zero, you win. If someone bids before it gets to zero, the timer resets to 20 seconds and $0.15 is added on to the price of the item. The timer (and the process) begins again.
At a certain price level, the countdown timer starts resetting to 15 seconds instead of 20, and I think it gets even shorter, reducing to 10 or 5 seconds.
So how does Swoopo make money selling an xBox at $17? Well, in general, they don’t - while there was one that sold at $17, the most recent one I could find today ended at $156.15. But still, that had a MSRP of $349. So still, how do they make money? Simple. In order to bid on Swoopo, you have to buy “bid vouchers” which are $1 a piece. Each time you place a bid (and increment the price by $0.15), you use a bid voucher. So each bid you make costs $1. If it takes you 20 bids to win the xBox at $17, you’ve really spent $37 - still a steal, certainly. Everyone who bid but didn’t win the item basically paid Swoopo $1 per bid to offset the $150+ savings that you got on the item.
Some math: Suppose the xBox starts at $0.00 and is valued at $349. Suppose the xBox sells for, say, $156.15. That’s a total of 1,041 bids. Holy smoke. That means Swoopo made $1041 + $156.15 for the item (one dollar per bid + the actual selling cost), resulting in an income of $1197.15, an $848.15 profit if Swoopo is actually paying $349 for the xBox in the first place, which I doubt they are - since they aren’t, let’s be conservative and give them $10 back off the MSRP. In addition, if Swoopo is like any online site, they overcharge for shipping, so let’s give Swoopo an extra $5. Now consider the fact that, suppose you bought a pack of 20 bid vouchers, costing you $20, and you spent 16 of them trying to win this xBox. That means you have 4 left that probably aren’t going to win anything, and you might not even use them, which means Swoopo just made an extra $4. So now Swoopo has made $867.15. Certainly enough to offset the occasional “fluke” where they give away an xBox for $17.
This also raises the other awesome math part about Swoopo - somewhere, they have to decide how many of each particular item to auction off. They have to auction off enough so people are interested, but if they auction off, say, 100 xBoxes and there are only 110 active users, then they’ll have oversaturated the market and end up taking a loss. It’s definitely a balancing act for Swoopo all around. I’d love to see the mathematical modeling behind it.
I’m toying with getting $20 in bid vouchers and trying to pick up a good digital camera, but feel like I need to do some research - I haven’t figured out the best way to access the results of ended auctions sorted by particular item, though.
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RIP, DFW
Posted 7:33 PM, Sep 13, 2008 |
Sadly, David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, the source from which the name of this website is taken, committed suicide yesterday, Friday, September 12, 2008. (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and a nice piece from Laura Miller at Salon, who also did an excellent DFW interview back in 1996.)
Infinite Jest was the first book I really fell in love with - I borrowed $20 from a high school friend, Blake, during a high school basketball game in which Blake and I were playing in the pep band, and went to Barnes and Noble after the game and bought it, based entirely on one positive review from Entertainment Weekly.
I spoke to Wallace on the phone once, when he was teaching at the University of Illinois in Bloomington-Normal. Wallace was generous enough to both sign a copy of Infinite Jest that I sent him and also, months later, return, with comments and edits, a portion of a story I had written. Looking back on it now, the story wasn’t very good, which makes Wallace all the more commendable and memorable for taking the time out of his day to read it, comment on it, and send it back.
Wallace wrote, in his comments on my story, to keep writing, to keep practicing, because that’s all any of us can do.
—-
Here is the full text of Wallace’s work originally published in Harper’s.
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Over and Out Rag
Posted 10:35 PM, Sep 12, 2008 |
I’ve been doing all this typing about playing guitar, and, since the EC is on call this evening and I’m bored, I thought I’d make a little video. I’ve never actually seen myself play guitar, and haven’t had the chance to listen for quite a while, either - you can’t listen while you’re playing, or at least I can’t. So I made this video.
Over and Out Rag
I thought about not posting it, not because it’s bad (although there are missed notes and other miscues) but because the audio is so bad and, well, that’s the point. But I posted it anyway, mostly because it took about 30 takes for various reasons and I actually spent an hour editing an entirely different video that, in the end, was such a poor result for, again, various reasons, that I decided to just make a new one, which took me about 7 minutes of editing time.
No more excuses.
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Guitar Stuff
Posted 1:59 PM, Sep 11, 2008 |
So I’ve been thinking a lot about guitar stuff lately. Since Ye Olde Math Shoppe switched to its school-year hours, I rarely leave for work before 1:15 in the afternoon, meaning I have the whole morning to do whatever I want. There isn’t much for television in the morning hours, and seriously, how much internet can you surf? So I’ve been playing a lot of guitar, usually at least an hour a day, and things are definitely progressing. I’m usually pretty hard on myself in terms of progress, but even in the last couple weeks, I can tell that the songs I’ve been working on are getting better and better.
Also, I bought a keyboard a couple months back and, while it gets some use, it’s really been instrumental (ha ha) in improving my guitar-playing - it gives me a much better visual picture of how things work. Visually, for me, the guitar is a tough nut to crack. I understand how its laid out, etc., but it isn’t nearly as intuitive as a piano keyboard.
As noted earlier, somewhere around here, I’ve been working on using my thumb in my playing to fret the E string when necessary. The books I’m working out of, both fingerpicking books by Mark Hanson, recommend using the thumb on many, many chords instead of using a full barre, which provides less flexibility and is generally slower (at least for me) to transition into and out of. I was browsing online, seeing if there were any useful tips on getting that thumb working, and of course ran across guitar snobs that say, “It’s bad practice - never use your thumb.” I’ve heard the same thing from a friend who taught me some stuff, although he said, “People will say it’s bad practice, but if it works for you, do it.” And, of course, lots of great guitar players do use the thumb - players like Eric Clapton and B. B. King, both of whom are… okay at guitar.
It reminds me of how difficult teaching guitar is - a lot of it is by feel and sound, and most teachers teach by demonstration, not by instruction. They “teach” things without bothering to explain any theory behind them or the reason why.
“Don’t use your thumb.”
“Why not?”
“It’s bad practice.”
But why?
Anyway, I’ve also been looking at acoustic-electric guitars recently, as a part-time additional job has fallen into place, providing me with some extra funds. The problem is, I have a “traditional” electric guitar, and also have a regular acoustic guitar, so do I really need one that bridges the gap? If I get an acoustic-electric, I should just sell my acoustic. The problem? Like an old pair of tennis shoes, I’m quite attached to it.
I don’t think it’s a great guitar - it was about $200 used, but in perfect condition - but it’s the one I learned on, so I can’t just sell it.
I picture myself in twenty years with a room set aside just for guitars.
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Indecent Exposure
Posted 11:10 PM, Sep 7, 2008 |
A couple months back, I was contacted by this guy I lawn bowl with over in Santa Monica, Phil, who asked me to bowl in the annual Jack Beckley Quinnell Rinks Tournament with him and two other people.
(If you’re interested in just what “quinnell rinks” means, read on, or else skip ahead to the next paragraph / post / blog / internet on your list.) So in lawn bowls, there’s two teams. If you play with two people on a team, each person gets 4 bowls to roll; a game of triples means each of the three team members gets 3 bowls; a game between two foursomes means each team member gets 2 bowls. Rinks is just a special / funny / jargon-y way of saying each team is comprised of 4 people. So that’s “rinks.” “Quinnell” is a special type of scoring that may occur independently of a rinks game. A game scored under quinnell rules means that the game is scored normally except that the actual number of points scored during the game is (somewhat) irrelevant. Your team’s actual score for the game is determined, at least for this particular tournament, by awarding your team one point for every end (or round) that your team won, and three points for winning the game as a whole. Thus, a game with 10 ends is worth 13 “quinnell points” - 1 per end for 10 ends and 3 at the end. (By the way, if you’ve read this far, it’s worth noting that this is almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the post - it’s a bit like explaining that bacon comes from pigs in an explanation of the Bay of Pigs crisis.)
So Phil contacted me, and I said no because I work on Sundays, and then Phil said, well, the other two people on the team, see, one is on the U.S. National team and the other is a national team selector. So imagine if you were invited to participate in whatever pursuit you enjoy with members of the United States National Team for that particular pursuit. Pretty cool, right? So I accepted. Today was that tournament.
First, the good news:
Now, the bad news:
Okay, so it isn’t that dire. Our team finished with 2 wins and 2 losses and something like 28 quinnell points (out of a possible 52, for those keeping track at home), resulting in a finish of 5th in a field of 8, which isn’t really respectable. I bowled lead (as in to lead a cow to the slaughter, not as in lead poisoning), which means I bowled first for our team each round - I bowled one bowl, then the opposing lead, then my second bowl, then the other lead, then the next person, and so on, basically. My job as lead is to get bowls either on the jack (the little white object ball) or get them in a good position behind, in the event that the jack is knocked backwards. I did this about, oh, 25% of the time.
Some bowls were behind, but so far behind they were basically worthless, many were in front which are really worthless, and then a small fraction hit a bump or divot or something and ended up near the jack.
I cannot recall four consecutive games in which I have bowled so badly.
My teammates were, for the most part - almost entirely, actually - good-natured about it, trying to make it about having fun more than anything. And, it’s worth noting that, in a 4-person game, even if I threw every bowl out of bounds, I can’t be held responsible for a 2-2 finish on a team with three outstanding players. I don’t think any of us bowled up to our capabilities - I know Phil didn’t and, while I hadn’t ever seen the other two fellows bowl, I don’t imagine they did, either.
However, as the event was promoted to me by Phil as “an excellent chance for some exposure” to great bowling (there was some, but not on our team) and some national team members, it really was indecent exposure.
It’s the kind of thing about which they created the maxim, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” (Well, probably not.) But I did leave with a kind of bifurcated path in front of me, a whole “road not taken” thing:
I could just decide such high pressure situations and tournaments and competition aren’t really for me, or I could decide that the next time I see any of those guys in a tournament, probably on an opposing team, that they at least see what I’m capable of, even if it still isn’t good enough.
I haven’t really decided yet.
Lest that sound like a cop-out, like if you’re thinking, “Well, don’t just quit, you big doofus,” it is entirely possible that taking something really seriously can suck the fun right out of it.
If that still sounds like a cop-out, well, what can I say?
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Still Avoiding Politics — No, Really
Posted 10:25 AM, Sep 5, 2008 |
So John McCain’s GOP Convention speech was given in front of a backdrop of what looked like a mansion, perhaps - some unidentifiable building. Unidentifiable, at least, until the Internet steps in.
Turns out McCain delivered his speech in front of a backdrop of… Walter Reed Middle School, located in North Hollywood. Seems strange, and the only plausible explanation is that some tech guy confused it for Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Way to go, McCain staffers, and way to go Internet.
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Algebra Who?
Posted 7:10 PM, Sep 4, 2008 |
At YOMS today, I was thinking about math teachers that I’ve had in the past. I was able to easily recall my 9th grade (Geometry), 11th grade (Pre-Calc), and 12th grade (Calc) teacher, but my 10th grade Algebra II teacher is a total mystery to me. I actually don’t remember anything about the course (other than the actual algebra), unlike the other courses where I can remember the teacher, the particular classroom, and even where I sat in class and who sat around me. But not for Algebra II.
There are a few readers of this blog that may be able to help me, if they remember their Duluth Central faculty - of course, I could get the old yearbook out, but it’s actually in Duluth somewhere, too.
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