Hey Dan that was a good point about the half-full cup. I never thought about the starting point before. Gives me something to say to the pessimists at school.

Hm, wow 3000 beans. Seems like they should do a computer sim or something that takes less time. Well, maybe they just couldn't think of anything to take up the whole lab time so they stalled with beans.
posted by Larry at 5:34 PM

"i cant believe i woke up to count beans today!" those words cycled in my mind over and over as i sat in my bio lab [earlier] today. we learned how to make accurate estimates of large populations without actually counting it. doesnt sound too bad, except the drawback was we ALSO had to calculate the % error, which cant be done without, well, actually counting the large population. what a self-defeating lab! in the end, there were over 3,000 beans, which of course wasnt all counted by just me, but still quite a task even for a group of 4 people. and do i remember how to do the calculation? no! why?? because i was too busy counting beans! maybe this is naive of me, but if my bio lab book presents a formula for estimating a large population and claims that it works, hey, thats good enough for me. i dont need to prove it to myself by counting out thousands of beans while everyone else in our time zone was probably out eating lunch. oh well, further evidence of just how ridiculous the education system is. booooooooooo
posted by yodaslap at 1:36 AM

plus i think www.losir.com sounds cooler anyway. who wants their real name as the domain name anyway? *yawn*
posted by yodaslap at 4:32 PM

duh. i dont really have a webpage worthy of a unique domain name, so i guess this isnt a problem for me as of now.

anyway, i was bored earlier, so i wrote this on my other blog:

---

"Is the glass half full or half empty?"

if i understand correctly, this question is meant to determine whether someone is an optimist or pessimist based on their answer. however, in my opinion, this question has no validity whatsoever, because of the biased nature of a glass. a glass is inherently empty, so "half full" is the only logical response. consider the two ways a glass can achieve a so-called "half empty" status: 1) the glass was filled all the way (to "full") and later dumped out halfway, or 2) the glass was filled only halfway to begin with. in either case, the glass is halfway to "full", hence, "half full". why not say it's halfway to "empty"? recall that any given glass is inherently empty. "empty" is the starting point. if you were in the middle of a trip from point A to point B, you would say "i am halfway to point B". i believe its safe to say that not many people would express it as "i am halfway away from point A". hence, "half full" appears to be the only logical answer. of course, i am not out to change anyone's mind or to say there is only one right answer, but this is simply my feeble attempt to explain in a logical manner why this question has never had any degree of validity to me.


incidentally, i have become somewhat of a pessimist in recent years, but i still opt to say the glass is half full :)

---

ok i think im going to sleep soon.

posted by yodaslap at 3:04 AM

Wow. Well I read about a site in the news that sells ballet tickets somewhere in Minnesota. After their rent expired (without them noticing), a porn site came in and squatted with an ad. It demanded nothing less than $300 for the site back, which the poor company couldn't pay. So they had to change their address by one letter, with all the old customers hitting the porn ad instead. And these are probably conservative, old, sensitive people that would want to watch ballet. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Well, not really. It was pretty much laughter all the way.
posted by Larry at 2:17 AM

hmm, interesting....
www.ericlo.com <---"legal" cybersquatter
www.ericlo.net <--- ??
www.ericlo.org <--- same guy....

Very odd. By the way, yes justinlo.com is squatted too.


posted by asiliat at 10:46 PM

I actually celebrated American Thanksgiving! Well I was invited to a dinner anyway, had turkey, stuffing, the whole nine yards. Didn't watch the football game though. I'm Canadian afterall. ;)
posted by asiliat at 10:05 AM

boooooo!!

well i went back to sleep around 7, and didnt wake up until 11 something. there goes my sleep schedule, again.

duh, so i never got a chance to see Lawrence while he was in town. i guess a 3-day window isnt quite big enough to easily make any plans. there's always winter break, of course. oh well, i have to go wash some dishes now.
posted by yodaslap at 1:13 PM

Well, I spent 3 hours last night watching the Bears game, and I think a lot of the hard tackles make it exciting. I wonder how a lot of the ball carriers manage to hold on to the ball when getting hit by 3 250+ pound guys.

It's good to wake up that early. At least is sets up a good sleep schedule for later (well, not always, but most of the time).

Thanksgiving was turkey, shopping, and bowling. We didn't watch any movies after all, Dan.
posted by Larry at 1:02 PM

quiz: what happens when you try to go to bed at 9:30pm?

well, in my case, wake up at 3:40am, toss and turn until 4:38am, get up, turn on the computer to work on DU until about 5 minutes ago, and then blog about it. boooooooooo.

oh, we didnt play with equipment, besides the football itself (duh).

well im wide awake right now, but with nothing to say. maybe "wide awake" isnt the best phrase to use. not sleepy, hows that.
posted by yodaslap at 5:16 AM

I've never ever played tackle football. Not w/ equipment anyway. But I think football is one of the most fun games to play, but not watch. I find it really boring for some reason.

quick and dirty update.
posted by asiliat at 11:32 PM

i played my first game of tackle football ever [earlier] today. it was with my church in its annual "turkey bowl" thanksgiving football game. needless to say, im quite sore, plusi dont know the first thing about football so it was very confusing at times but i guess overall it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. i must admit its kinda fun to tackle someone full force... not something you get to do everyday i suppose. anyway, i have to wake up early tomorrow morning [later on "today"] so thats it for now.
posted by yodaslap at 12:58 AM

havent had much to say lately, mainly because, well, nothing's really been going on. i spent the past few days editing a video with a borrowed laptop, so thats something new (editing at home, that is). wow, what a boring post this is.

duh, anyway, happy thanksgiving i guess.
posted by yodaslap at 9:10 PM

buydig.com is a good palce for online digicam prices. They were the lowest (and most trustworthy of all the bargain online sites) that I found when I bought mine. Take a gander.
posted by asiliat at 1:39 PM

btw roberta, you can start your digi camera search @ www.dpreview.com & http://imaging-resource.com

Both very good place, with dpreview having an edge. You can get a nice 2.1MP camera for pretty cheap now. Might I suggest any of the mini Canon series of cameras.... S100, S110, A10, S20, etc. They are very compact, and feature rich. If you just want to snap very sharp pix for the web or for friends, the Canon is the way to go.
posted by asiliat at 7:51 PM

sorry, have not checked or posted here for a while now.

Been real busy. Can't keep up in RL, much less virtual space. Sigh.

Roberta: yeah, I hear ya. But then again, I'm prolly one of the knee jerkers, compared to you. *smile*

Dan: get off the web and do some real work. :) J/k. you're a posting machine.

Saving silvermen was a terrible movie. A total drag. one of the few flicks I've ever just stop watching in the middle of it. Even if it just on DIVX, totally free, bored out of my skull. I turned it off and twiddled my thumb instead. Much more entertaining.

That spank the monkey thing is a little old hat. Saw the link several days b/4 you posted it. There was supposed evidence people were gettin over 400mph per spank. They cheated w/ an optical mouse tho.

Blah.

posted by asiliat at 4:27 PM

i just spanked the monkey at 1687mph. >=)
posted by ivan at 12:29 PM

Haha, some funny reviews there. Well it reminds me of some Amazon.com reviews I was reading for a book on evolution (the Blind Watchmaker). Some people really think that evolution means none of us have any meaning or purpose in life. It's like they can't imagine that they can make up their own purpose to their own lives. They have to be told what it is. Funny or sad, you decide.

Well I'll be home around 5pm at the latest Wednesday, assuming I beat rush hour traffic on the expressways. Dan you should come over for dinner or something sometime.
posted by Larry at 10:29 AM

Hey Daniel, you'd hear from me a lot more if I could actually post successfully! :-) For every post of mine that makes it here, there's about 3 or 4 that vanished enroute.

I wouldn't mind an inexpensive digital camera myself. Guess I'll have to do some research into what qualifies as a good one...

Something amusing I saw today: I was loking up some movie reviews, and on epinions.com they have a "Pros" and "Cons" field for the reviewer to fill out. For the movie "Saving Silverman" (huh? this existed?), one reviewer put

Pros: It's less painful than a root canal
Cons: but not by much
posted by Roberta at 3:34 PM

hello. good to hear from Roberta, even if once every few moons. i guess that just leaves Justin...

anyway, memory loss strikes again. thought of a lot of stuff to post, but dont remember now. oh well, they will be posted as i remember them.

oh, just remembered something. i got a mediocre digital camera the other day... Fuji Finepix 1300. blah. i guess i just wanted a camera, but cant justify getting anything that cost more than $100 for now. it kinda sucks, in the sense that its "only" 1.3 megapixels , it runs on 4 AA batteries, has no optical zoom, and no lens cover. oh well, i havent owned a camera in a while and i figured that until i find enough money to buy a respectable digital camera, this one will do for now.
posted by yodaslap at 11:10 PM

Hey all...Hope this post makes it, my last few didn't.

Just wanted to vent and this seemed a good a place as any, haha. It's a stupid little thing, but the underlying stupidity makes it even more annoying.

I was reading mailing-list messages for a TV show, see, and someone wrote in and said that they thought Season 6 didn't really seem to fit in with the tone of the rest of the show, although the only other seasons they'd seen were Seasons 1-3. Someone else replied and said, quite nicely, that you couldn't really judge the rest of the show without actually SEEING the rest of the show first.

To which the first person replied, huffily, that they COULD judge it because there was such a thing as, get this, FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Knee-jerkers. Gotta love them.
posted by Roberta at 4:36 PM

duh... strange. i always get the spanking sound. dont know why you dont. have you tried it on a different computer? well, my record to date is 1195 mph... i broke 1000 a few more times afterwards but never quite as high. anyway, as anyone can probably tell by now, nothing is really going on lately, seeing how this monkey game is all i can think of to talk about. oh well, i have a bio lab in less than half an hour, so gonna get ready to pack up. tootles.
posted by yodaslap at 11:37 AM

I did! All I heard was the music.
posted by Larry at 10:34 PM

uh, there are sound effects. you just have to turn your speakers on.
posted by yodaslap at 1:34 PM

Duh, I thought there would be sound effects like "wa-pshhh!" for Spank the Monkey. Boo.
posted by Larry at 1:13 PM

well ive never been a big fan of japanimation, but ive recently been introduced to Initial D* (apparently pronounced "uh knee shall deeee!"). i must admit, ive grown quite a liking for it. the show itself is pretty old, so of course the cars are a bit outdated, with the RX-7 being the cutting edge car in the show (not that its not a sweet car now, of course), but its top-notch street racing animation/footage if ive ever seen it. reminds me very much of GT3 replays. personally, i prefer live action movies/shows over animated ones (even pixar stuff), but this is definitely a worthy exception. justin case any of you are interested, i can mail out a CD (mpg and DivX) if anyone wants to check it out.

*didnt have time to pick out the best link yet
posted by yodaslap at 10:22 PM

duh, well i ended up studying all day today and amazingly, i have a slightly better grasp of things now. but enough about biology...

here's the latest website thats caught my attention: spank the monkey!

although having the audio does add to it, its not entirely necessary. however, if you are looking at it for the first time on a computer w/o speakers or what not, i highly recommend looking at it again, with sound. 200+ mph gives you a small reward :)

well, thats all for now. have fun everyone.
posted by yodaslap at 11:42 PM

Haha, well there was no sun or heat, but plenty of girls and fun. Unfortunately, these are biologist girls. Actually, there are a few *very* good looking girls in our program, but I don't date other biologists. We'd end up talking about bio too much. Besides, these few all have boyfriends.

Anyways, there was plenty of drinking going on too, but for the most part I didn't. I just sat around and tried to get to know people. I even slept from 10-2 before getting up for an hour and a couple of beers in the hallway. It was a bit overwhelming with all these older students I didn't know yet, so I spent a lot more time listening than talking. But at least it was fun.

You should tell us more about your parties, Eric. Seeing as how I may never get to see you in action (or what did you have in store for us on our visit? Corrupting us youths, perhaps?!).

http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~lnkwong I guess the only thing interesting on my page would be my pics.

Dan, if you have some bio questions call me and ask. I'm sure I can help with at least a couple things.
posted by Larry at 8:05 PM

hey kids, sorry I haven't kept up. Very busy lately, and partying to boot.

I hate skol, and I can't imagine studying for anything anymore. Ugh. Duh, Boo!

Retreat? I would love to hang out a retreat, complete with sun, fun, heat, and girls. Oh, that kind of a retreat.....

I have no idea Larry's web URL. Care to paste it?

Come up in spring then, if I still have a job.
posted by asiliat at 10:16 AM

sucks... 3 more days until my bio test, and i am about as ready as ill ever be. today i realized our textbook was completely useless while trying to go through the practice test. i basically blew $90 on a textbook that at best can be used as rough toilet paper. yay.
posted by yodaslap at 10:31 PM

Well just got back from a retreat for our program. Kind of fun, lots of silly people doing silly things. Also lots of talks that weren't too boring, but not too exciting either, for the most part.
posted by Larry at 3:19 PM

well i read similar versions WITH pictures and it didnt make that much more sense to me. biology will forever remain a mystery for me... [BTW i copied/pasted from a website i was attempting to study off of]

yeah, thats one of my concerns about going to Canada during winter (keyword: winter). i havent been to canada in over 10 years and id rather go back during a more pleasant time of the year. not that i hate winter, but the cold kinda gets annoying after a while.

ok, my brain is too fried to think of much else for now. i am talking with Justin on IM and plan on going to sleep as soon as he gets off. thats all for now.
posted by yodaslap at 3:01 AM

Duh Dan, I read your blog post for Tuesday. You know why that stupid paragraph doesn't make much sense? Because the book needs put a picture right next to it that shows where all those parts are. I bet the dumb authors didn't think of that. Haha. It's what's wrong with bio textbooks these days.

In other news, ivan is a dork. Boo.

I think I won't go up to Toronto for Winter.
-Partly because of the planes.
-Partly because it's winter in Canada.
-Partly because both my high school friends and college friends are planning some big reunions.
-Partly because I have absolutely no money.
-And mostly because I think I can go during Spring. I should have saved up money by then and paid off some student loans.
posted by Larry at 1:33 AM

i think Yuen Wo Ping should've coordinated the fights...where are the Chinese jedi's? we should throw jet li into the starwars mix >=)
posted by ivan at 12:18 PM

Well, I did like the fight scene. If they just released the fight scene on DVD with everything else edited out, I would buy it for, say, $2. The music was great too. But yeah, it was far too short, and Darth Maul needed to have said something, and they also shouldn't have killed off the two coolest characters in the movie all within 5 minutes.
posted by Larry at 8:52 PM

gheyness?!? sure, the fight COULD have ended a bit more gracefully, but there is no way anyone can complain about the fight choreography. also, i dont think getting cut in half and falling down a shaft to your doom is the most appropriate occasion to be doing any trash talking. Darth Maul died like a man (even if in pieces of a man), and that's that.

kinda busy at "work" so this is it for now.
posted by yodaslap at 5:46 PM

hey guys, just thought i'd make a surprise appearance. i'm at school right now, bored and waiting for my lunch period to begin.
on the subjet of episode I, i agree with eric that darth maul did die like a wuss...he didn't even utter any last threats/insults but instead stared blankly and fell down the shaft whilst halves of him bounced about on the walls. although i'm not as big of a starwars 'nut' as Dan, i must say i am eagerly anticipating episode II to come out. i saw the trailer yesterday after Dan DLed...ok, time for lunch. =d
posted by ivan at 12:39 PM

the lightsabre duel?! Are you joking me? While in the trailer it looked like it had potential, the actual fight was gheyness. Darth Maul was by far one of the cooler characters, and he died like a wuss. It was good while it lasted, but was way too short.

Everything else was dumb, including the space fights with the kid. The kid also couldn't act for beans, but oh well.


posted by asiliat at 10:55 AM

BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! ALL OF YOU!!!!!!

ok, just had to get that out. while i agree that episode I isnt as well refined as the original trilogy, how can you ignore that spectacular lightsabre dual at the end? to me, thats what makes the movie, no matter how good or bad the rest of it is. lesson to be learned: never trust my opinion about movies.

well, i "downloaded" the episode II trailer today, but somehow the folks at starwars.com managed to prevent a cached copy of the .mov file to be stored on my computer. i dedicated the bulk of my afternoon trying to get ahold of it, but to no avail. oh well, in the process i ended up watching the trailer about 20 times, so i think my appetite has been satisfied... until tomorrow, that is.


posted by yodaslap at 7:47 PM

Yeah, EP1 was just bad. The way I look at it, Lucas forgot what made 4-6 so special. It's that everyone wanted to be a jedi and have fun jedi adventures. EP1 showed us that some jedi adventures can just be really stupid and involve even stupider characters. Also, I hate microfloridians (spelling?). Just messes with the whole religion thing about the Force. Now it's just some plain boring biological reason instead of a cool unseen, unmeasurable one.

FYI my blogs are working again. They were so backed up. If anyone was reading them, there's just a ton of stuff. Stupid people took 3 weeks to fix the bug.
posted by Larry at 7:29 PM

Jar Jar was definitely the biggest low-light of the movie. W/o the Star Wars name, the movie would have sucked beyond belief. George Lucas has turned the movie what a lot of PC games have become, in terms of technical achievement, it's way up there, but in actual gameplay, it's pretty stank.

The movie just plain sucked. The story was totally contrived and fairly low brow. It was not the science fiction opera ep. 4-6 was. Also, it may be that the Star Wars universe had gotten so big that EP1 had to be so broad (and boring) to set it up for later movies... whatever the case, EP1 is a definite bore.

I'm still looking for the DIVX version though. :L)


posted by asiliat at 2:48 PM

BEARS WIN! BEARS WIN!

Well, I said after Episode I that as long as II has Jarjar in it, I wouldn't watch it. Though supposedly he's not in the trailer, I still think I'll not watch it, at least until I hear if it's any good or not. Oh yeah, I have to see Monsters Inc, too, it looks pretty funny.
posted by Larry at 6:51 PM

me too, and it sucked. Totally got me lusting for more. I was going to bring my digital camera and capture it, but didn't bother in the end. I guess you sa Monster's Inc eh? It was okay, I think the "bird" thing in the beginning was funnier (altho just as predictable.)

The idea for the doors would have been original, except "Ding Dong" the japanese cartoon I love so much already was using a door that oculd travel anywhere around the world.... so it kinda ruined it for me.
posted by asiliat at 5:13 PM

DUH!!!!!!!!! I SAW THE EPISODE II TEASER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BOY DID IT TEASE ME!!! I THINK I'M TEASED BEYOND MY CAPACITY FOR GETTING TEASED!!!!!!!! I'M GONNA EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!

man, i dont know how im gonna make it until may of next year. i dont know how to explain it, but the trailer was freaking awesome. not very flashy at all, but man... unbelievable. after it ended, i yelled out "YEAH!!!!!" and started clapping, and then the rest of the theatre joined in with the applause.

ok, im going to go explode now.
posted by yodaslap at 12:46 AM

Duh, now I don't really want to see The One, if people say it's that bad. I already was worried that it'd be another Romeo Must Die with too many special effects and not enough real kung-fu. Hm, well maybe I'll wait till it comes out on video. Instead, I want to go see Shallow Hal. I told my friends that I couldn't decide if it was a guy movie or a girl movie. It's probably both. Guys go to see fat jokes, and girls go to see the sensitive dream-quality thing. Well, I guess I like those kind of gimmicky magic movies though, like Liar, Liar and Mask. Actually, I didn't like them that much as movies, but I just liked seeing the premise carried out, even badly.
posted by Larry at 12:01 PM

oops, forgot to mention that i saw The One earlier this evening. i know my opinion is in contrast to what seems to be everyone else, but i personally liked it. the plot wasnt overly cheesy, and the action was pretty decent. definitely not the best movie ive ever seen, but i dont think it deserves the bad reviews that it got. anyway, i think im gonna watch Monster, Inc. tomorrow, because.... ITS PREVIEWS INCLUDE THE EPISODE II TEASER TRAILER!!! WOO HOO!!!!!
posted by yodaslap at 2:40 AM

i love practical jokes. bwahahahahaha.
posted by yodaslap at 1:57 AM

Going to try and watch The One this weekend with some people from my program that I don't know so well. Unfortunately, they don't have phones (!) and haven't responded to my emails yet. And I don't know where to find them (one of them is in my class, but never actually shows up). Hopefully I'll get a call or email tonight. Blah.
posted by Larry at 2:04 PM

duh, i am at work

posted by yodaslap at 6:45 PM