Yelp's description of the latest update to their iOS app pokes fun at Rick Perry's debate gaffe.

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While buying a wedding gift using the Bloomingdale's gift registry, I decided to collect my thoughts about an aspect of these stores that I find infuriating: They all make it as difficult as possible to write a gift message. 

Over time, on sites like Bloomingdale's and Macy's, I've seen one or more of the below restrictions on gift messages:

• You must separate your message into lines.
• Each line is limited to a certain number of characters.
• Punctuation is stripped from your message.
• Your message is converted to ALL CAPS.

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I hit the New York Times website's 20 article limit today. I haven't decided if I'm going to become a subscriber or not, but in the meantime, to read the article, I just had to type a few words of the headline into Google, and click through to the story from there.

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I was trying to turn off "User Interaction Enabled" in a UIImageView. I happened to be on the third tab of the settings for the object. I saw the "User Interaction Enabled" checkbox (near the bottom of the first screenshot), but unchecking it didn't work. What I didn't notice was that the header for that section of settings is "Accessibility". I finally found that the (identically named) setting I wanted is actually under the fourth tab near the bottom (see second screenshot). Tricksy.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Note that as long as you do this only if the Daly City train is coming before the SFO train, it doesn't increase your commute time. When you get to Balboa Park, check the displays for when the next SFO train is coming. I like to make sure I have at least two minutes to get upstairs, exit the turnstile, reenter the turnstile, and then get back downstairs to the trains.

If for some reason you don't think you can make it, just get off the Daly City train and wait for the SFO one. You won't save the 50 cents, but at least you won't miss your flight.

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Leslie Valiant, newly announced winner of the 2010 Turing Award, recently wrote a book called Circuits of the Mind. I headed over to Amazon to see what people have said about his new book. The one "review" that's there is really just some content lifted from Valiant's book, with no actual opinions expressed. This was curious, though, since the review's author is listed as a "Top 1000 Reviewer". I clicked to see his other reviews. He's written a ton, but all of them (or at least the first two pages of them) follow the same basic format:

5 stars

<A sentence or so of bio>

Here are some quotations from the book:

<one or more quotations from the book>

Clearly these aren't helpful as reviews, but it seems their creator has probably invested a decent amount of time making these. There's got to be an angle here, but I don't know what it is.

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Mark and I wrote a new game called Santa's Lil' Zombies. The story goes like this: something went terribly wrong up in the North Pole (aka "Nopo") and the elves were infected with stuff that makes ordinary elves turn into zombies. You, with your trusty snowball blaster, have to take down these little monsters in order to save Christmas.  More info over at http://santaslilzombies.com, or you can try out the demo right here:

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Floating around the internet today is the stat that 61% of world series game 1 winners go on to win the world series. (Interestingly, 84% of the last 13 have gone on to win it, but I'm not looking at that fact right now.)

I was curious what the probability of this happening is, if I assumed a simple model where each game in the best of 7 series is a fair coin flip. I expected that the probability would be much lower than 61%. Why? Because I assumed that the psychological advantage combined with whatever skill advantage is implied by the team having won the first game would lead to a much higher chance of those first winners (the Giants, this year) winning the whole thing.

But, I was surprised to find that the probability is 0.66.

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Schrodinger’s printer cable.

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It must take an economist to understand the massive savings I get by pre-paying for 2 years.

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Don’t forget to shut off the servers before you leave for the holiday!

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This was an email my sister sent the family about her experiences in San Francisco the day before the Iraq war began, five and a half years ago.  We lost the email for awhile, but I found it yesterday on an old backup drive of mine.  Go sis!

From: sarah hunter
Subject: sarah’s story (saturday, march 20, 2003)

hi all…i have a great adventure story to tell you, sorry it’s long, but trust me, it’s worth reading.

my house mate sarah, travis, doris and i hit the road, on our way to san francisco yesterday morning around 10 o’clock.  we drove to fremont and caught BART to the city.  by about 1 or so we were in the middle of my first big anti-war protest.  it was amazing, hundreds of people playing instruments, holding signs on sticks, yelling for peace.  we marched through the city with this large group for about an hour when 50 or so cops tried to corner us all on the sidewalk.  some leaders of our group yelled for everyone to turn around and go down a different street to avoid the cops, but it was too late, we were completely surrounded.  what was scary was that doris and i were sitting on the curb with 10 of these cops standing at our feet, holding clubs, guns in pocket, helmets with face shields on…definitely not smiling.  one protester with a microphone told everyone to remain calm, and reminded us this was a peaceful protest. she tried to get the cops to communicate with us as to where we could go instead to protest, but no responses.  at one point another woman standing near me started yelling at a cop asking him why they were doing this when we weren’t doing anything wrong, but he had his eyes closed, just taking a nap standing up i guess.

so, we were sitting there waiting, many onlookers witnessing the scene from the tall building windows above, and doris says into my ear, “if anything happens, don’t resist, just play dead and they can’t do anything to you.”  that was a little frightening to hear, especially because the day before there had been police brutality in the streets.  after about 20 minutes of waiting, the cops started pointing to random people in the crowd to come forward.  they got to me too, saying get up, taking my arm.  they took two polaroid pictures of me with a cop, then tied my hands behind my back with zip ties.  they took my bag (with my really nice camera in it) and threw it into a plastic bag on the ground with the rest.  all of us protesters got arrested, then put us into a gated bus.  luckily i got to stay near my friends.  they drove us down to a warehouse at the pier.  while driving there other protesters passing by would scream for us on the bus, and we would yell out the small crack in the window.  the whole bus was so rowdy, stomping feet on the floor, and a lot of hooting and hollering, still protesting for peace, the cops couldn’t stop us.   we got to the warehouse and had to be checked in, which took forever. then we were all detained in a holding pen, for almost 5 hours!  it actually wasn’t too bad though. me and the other protesters had a pretty good time; we played hacky sack, soccer (with an orange juice container), shurades, i read my book, and when we got really bored, travis started writing anti-war and anti-bush slogans on my arm.  oh, we even had a yoga session at one point.  after a couple of hours they fed us, and let me tell you, jail food is not good.  soggy bread, bologna, small container of juice, an orange, and a cookie.  i was starving so i ate it all.  but other people who didn’t eat meat made bologna art.  they made the shape of a peace sign on the floor, and used orange peels to write in the center of the peace symbol “war is bologna.”  it was so great…completely worth every minute.  what was also great was the enthusiasm for every other bus full of protesters that pulled into the warehouse.  we screamed, yelled and cheered as loud as we could for them.

finally, they started calling names for people to be released.  and of course, every time a name got called, we cheered for them too.  the cops were pissed.  they were threatening us saying if we don’t shut the hell up, they won’t call the names.  we decided to not really listen to them and cheered our fellow protesters on any way, saying things like “see you tomorrow!”

well, my name finally got called, they checked me out, gave me a paper with my citations on it (i was supposedly arrested for disorderly conduct, blocking traffic (even though we were on the sidewalk), and disobeying a police officer (not true at all, i didn’t even say a word to them until i had to give my name).  they just made up a lot of bullshit as an excuse to get us off the streets.  jen, when i talked to you one the phone, you were very smart when you questioned my first amendment rights for freedom of speech…it was definitely an unfair arrest.

well friends and family, that’s the story.  it was one of the best days of my life!

one more thing i want to write:  mom and dad i love you even more now because of how wonderfully you took this story when i called you. thanks for understanding and being proud! you are defintely cool parents, that’s for sure.

love, sarah

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Oats, honey, raisins, and gold.

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The other day I was watching a movie through Comcast On Demand.  At one point, I needed to pause the movie briefly, but accidentally did this with the TiVo remote instead of the Comcast remote.

Q1: What happened?

A1: Pausing worked just fine.  TiVo was recording the On Demand movie to its hard disk just like a regular TV program.  (As an aside, this is a simple way to store On Demand movies beyond the 24 hours they give you.)

When the movie credits rolled, I wanted to make sure TiVo was ready to record its next show, so I tried to exit the On Demand system and go back to regular TV.  I hit “stop” with the Comcast remote, but nothing happened.  I got really close to the receiver, tried a few more times, and still no effect.  I tried some other buttons.  Finally, the movie did stop playing, but at this point it seemed to have a mind of its own, moving randomly through the Comcast menus.

Q2: What was going on?

A2: Ever since I had paused the movie, I had been watching it about a minute behind the “live” broadcast.  At the end of the movie, when I hit stop on the Comcast remote, I wasn’t affecting what I was seeing at that moment, but rather what I would be seeing a minute in the future.  When the remote seemed to take on a mind of its own, that was TiVo playing back what I had made Comcast do a minute before.

Sanity was restored by fast-forwarding TiVo to the present.

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Here’s a video of me attempting a pretty tough descent.

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