This is so geeky that I cannot describe it. It is something that only Paul Allen would dream of doing, but no, it in fact belongs to someone else. A home theater that looks just like the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise. Funky 3-D view of it can be found here. Otherwise the photo gallery is here.

Here in Southern Cali, the burger franchise known as In-N-Out burger is a local delight. They only sell hamburgers, fries, soda and milk shakes. They use decent quality food to make their wares and they make it fresh while you wait. There is also an In-N-Out burger right by my bus stop. That is torture.

I didn't know that you could add as many patties as you want to a hamburger at $1.00 each. Apparently some dudes executed some physical reductio ad absurdum and ordered a 100-patty burger. Hilarity and internets fame ensued:
What Up Willy! - Surfin, Hangin, Poker, and Life's other goodness: In-N-Out 100x100

"Here are a couple of interesting stats to summarize the experience:
Total calories (extrapolating from info provided here): 19490 calories
Total eaters 8 (2 girls and one guy who already ate dinner and only ate 6 patties)
Most patties eaten by one person : I think I ate about 20. I think Nalin ate about 20 as well (including the raw ones)
Time to finish : less then 2 hours
Number of people who barfed : 1 (way to go Elena!)
"

I now have another thing to do while I'm waiting for my bus!

Here is a cool website that will find copies of two websites. Valuable if you are worried that people are ripping off your content and claiming that it is thier own. Copyscape

Overheard in Southern California the birthplace of many a trend:

"Yea, that's the first time we've had a kickback"

Translation: That's the first time we've had a party.

"Yo, Dog! Cool scooter. Keep it real."

My best guess to the translation: cool scooter

From the Nature podcast:

What do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endandered plant?

What good is a blog if you can't post information in your own self-interest? I was recently profiled in an alumni column for my high school alma mater, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

"Patterson now works at U.C. Irvine in the Department of Informatics, a type of computer science that does evaluations of new technology with people involved. He will become a Ph.D. next week."

A copy of the article is archived here.

One of the many reality bending experiences that go on in Southern California is the Sunday program at the Crystal Cathedral. This is Robert Schuller's church. It is widely viewed with disdain from the evangelical Christian community. I have driven by it on the way to DisneyLand because they are separated by about 3 miles. Honestly I've never been there, but all of the press that I've seen has suggested its a huge production with television involved. The building itself reminds me of a Mormon temple. Neither of these things appeal to me.

So it was with some surprise that I read an article by my former pastor speaking quite highly of Dr. Schuller. I'm glad I read this early on in my Southern California adventure (technically my third such adventure). It will allow me to speak more intelligently about such an influential local institution.

From: Lunch with the Schullers at the Crystal Cathedral | Resurgence

"This is the final week of Dr. Robert H. Schuller's tenure as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California. He founded the church some fifty years ago and is handing the leadership of both his church and the "Hour of Power" television program, which he has led since 1970, to his son. Throughout his ministry, Dr. Schuller has been a controversial leader, lauded by some for pioneering cutting-edge ministry, and loathed by others for promoting over-the-edge doctrine..."

As long as I'm going to post about how to get off of telemarketing lists, on the left is an awesome counter script to use when a tele-marketer calls. It's really funny. I can't wait to try it out. Click on the image to see the whole thing.

Source for this is here.

TV-B-Gone is an awesome little device. It is an infrared keychain fob. When you press a button on the keychain, it emits all the known infrared signals for the "Power-Off" command on many types of televisions. It is available at Think Geek

More details are here.

If you aren't familiar with the way the AdSense/AdWords program works at Google, it goes something like this: If you are someone with something to advertise you can set up an account that will place your ad on a search results page. You can specify which search results page you want your ad to show up on by specifying the keywords of the search query. So if you sell fruit, you can have Google put your ad up on the search results page when someone searches for "oranges". Google will charge an advertiser for this placement. But, clever people that Google are, they don't fix the price. The price is set in an auction that basically causes more profitable words to cost more. A very expensive word to advertise next to is "sex". Google will charge you over $1.00 everytime someone clicks on your ad advertised next to a search that includes "sex." In the course of a single day, (as of right now) it will cost you over $48,000 to place such an advertisement. (Meaning that 48,000 people will click on your ad) Google has some tools to help prevent you from spending more than you want and more than you plan, as you would expect, but this is the basic idea.

Another way that Google advertises is when people, like me, allow Google to put an ad on their site. (See the ad box on the right). In this case, the auction for advertisers is similar, but rather than placing ads based on words in a search query, ads are placed based on the words used on the web page. But anytime someone clicks on the ad on my site, I also get a portion of the revenue as a benefit for placing the ad on my site. So far the revenue ($1.00/month) is far less than the amount that I pay my hosting company to host this site ($9.00/month).

Breathe Deep (The Breath of God) 1996

from the album "Green Room Serenade, Part One"
TheLostDogs.com - THE LOST DOGS Green Room Serenade, Vol 1

Politicians, morticians, Philistines, homophobes
Skinheads, Dead heads, tax evaders, street kids
Alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dim wits
Blue collars, white collars, war mongers, peace nicks

Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God

Suicidals, rock idols, shut-ins, drop outs
Friendless, homeless, penniless and depressed
Presidents, residents, foreigners and aliens
Dissidents, feminists, xenophobes and chauvinists

Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God

Evolutionists, creationists, perverts, slum lords
Dead-beats, athletes, Protestants and Catholics
Housewives, neophytes, pro-choice, pro-life
Misogynists, monogamists, philanthropists, blacks and whites

Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God

Police, obese, lawyers, and government
Sex offenders, tax collectors, war vets, rejects
Atheists, Scientists, racists, sadists
Photographers, biographers, artists, pornographers

Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God
Breathe deep
Breathe deep the Breath of God

Gays and lesbians, demagogues and thespians
The disabled, preachers, doctors and teachers
Meat eaters, wife beaters, judges and juries
Long hair, no hair, everybody everywhere!

There is an interesting post at the Tomorrow's Professor's blog about how professors are "intellectual entrepreneurs." I think this describes very well what I spend my time doing: raising money, selling my ideas, training people to execute the ideas and to come up with their own under the umbrellla of a single research agenda. It just fits. The article is here.

Choice quote:

"Some may better understand what academics strive to do not by thinking of classes and books but of "intellectual capital." Like monetary capital, intellectual capital is the cumulative product of both individual effort and supportive communities. Intellectual capital is the dividend of years of hard work and practical experience that bears fruit by transforming lives and benefiting society."

It gets a little self-aggrandizing at points, but the general idea is a good one.

Just needed a little break this weekend, so we drove into Los Angeles to see the sights. Apparently the reason why movies all have car chases and explosions is because this is the daily life of Hollywood. Art imitating life. On the left is a real car fire that happened on our way to check out the farmer's market in L.A.

Life is changing. Part of the changes in my life have been a reorganization of my computing resources. I had a Pentium II desktop computer at home that has become unused now that my family is running off of laptops. I was then faced with the eternal dilemma of how to dispose of a dual-headed-CRT tower computer that was somewhat obsolete. Being a responsible fellow, I won't put them in landfills because computers are filled with hazardous waste. (I know that no one else cares) So typically disposing of these things costs ~$50.00 and a bunch of time trying to find the right place to take them. (Side note: There's been news recently that sometimes these computer-dropoff places are just dumping the junk in Africa [NY TImes][blog][primary source], not recycling them, but still, I try to do the right thing)

So I took a few camera-phone shots of the thing, wrote a description of the guts and posted it on craigslist as a "free" item. Within 5 minutes of the ad going on the web, I had a list of 6 people who wanted to come by my house and take the computer off my hands! In fact the phone was ringing so often I freaked out and pulled the ad off of craigslist before I got anymore interest. The first guy that contacted me was at my house in less than an hour, carting it off.

So I asked myself, did I make a mistake? Was this computer worth something? So I looked on ebay to see the going prices of the components and pretty much convinced myself that between the profit that I would have gotten on the good parts and the cost of disposing the bad parts I would have come out even and spent a lot of time shipping stuff.

The moral of the story is: If you have marginally valuable stuff that you want to get rid of quickly, put a classified ad up on the local craigslist and stand by the phone. It worked in Seattle, it worked in Orange County with this computer and it's worked in Orange County in the past with a bunch of moving boxes I got rid of the same way. Props to craigslist. I still don't know what that means.

When will the madness end? Google has started to fill the unsold space in the Chicago Sun-Times with their own ad content. There is no apparent monetization of this for them yet, but it's clear that this is huge! Google is moving into real world advertising. ClearChannel better get ready to fight.

Source:
Sun-Times nets Google ad deal | Crain's Chicago Business

Now, in the Sun-Times, Google is running ads in proximity to relevant content. On Dec. 12, for instance, Google ads touting ticket brokers, White Sox apparel and Chicago Bears memorabilia ran in the Sports section.

retrievr is a sketch based image query tool. The user draws an image using coarse colors and brushes, like my picture on the left, and then retrievr searchs through flickr's photo database to find images that match. The image on the right was among the ones returned.

It's pretty cool. It kind of works.

This is entirely speculation, but it is curiously close to reality and too juicy not to mention. Rumors are flying on the internets that Google is considering launching their own home-PC box of some sort. The most interesting part of the rumor is that they are replacing Microsoft OS with their own. It will probably leverage all the Google tools that are available online and become the home-media center, because what good is a rumor like this that doesn't center on a "home media center".

The source of this rumor appears to be a predictions for 2006 article (which used to be) located ( "http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-predict1jan01,0,3503327.story")here, in the LA Times. It is far from confirmed, but dangerously believable.