I watched a funny movie last night, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. It's about one night in the life of two twenty-somethings who get a craving for White Castle hamburgers after smoking some weed. It's kind of a combination of a Wayne's World movie, a Cheech & Chong movie, and a Bill & Ted movie. But unlike these movies, the main characters, Harold & Kumar, are very intelligent (Harold works at an investment bank, and Kumar is applying for med school).
NBC mistakenly reveals face of Saddam's judge
Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News led off the Tuesday March 1
newscast with an "exclusive" that the presiding judge in the trial of
Saddam Hussein had been assissinated. Although a judge was
assassinated, it was not the lead judge in the Saddam case. Oops.
Not surprisingly, nearly everbody has blurred out the lead judge's
face and never referred to the lead judge by name. But NBC,
believing that the lead judge was dead, aired footage of the judge without his face blurred. Double oops.
So now, anybody who saw that newscast knows what the judge who will decide Saddam's fate looks like.
Twenty-five restaurants for $25
This is a sweet deal.
Twenty-five restaurants in Seattle offer a prix-fixe (fixed price)
dinner for $25, Sundays through Thursdays for the month of March.
Some of the restaruants also offer a $12.50 lunch.
Lake Geneva icestorm pictures
An icestorm at Lake Geneva, Switzerland, coats everything in inches of ice:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/icestorm.asp
Rather than freezing rain, it looks as if there was a lot of wind
with sub-freezing temperatures, and waves splashing onto shore coated
nearby structures/boats/vehicles/trees with lots of ice.
SD card with built in USB connector
Sandisk is releasing an SD card with built-in USB connectivity.
http://www.sandisk.com/pressrelease/20050219a.htm
It functions as a regular SD card in any device. But you can fold back part of the card to reveal a USB connector
Nuttin But Stringz
Heard these guys on the Tonight Show. From their website:
When you first spy the New York duo's
streetwise style, you may expect them to start rapping, but then you
hear their violins, and an entirely profound and altogether surprising
sound awakens from their souls. Dubbed N.B.S or Nuttin But Stringz, the
talented young musicians play an intense blending of classical music,
jazz, r&b, and yes, hip hop.
They've got a 30-second audio clip available.
Zip code "viewer"
I don't know if there is any "practical" use for this, but it's still pretty cool:
Once the java applet is running and the map is fully rendered, click
anywhere in the map (give it focus) and then start typing a zip code —
there isn't a text entry box, just start typing after clicking on the
map.
Clouds
I got home one evening, and saw these amazing clouds from the back porch of my house in Seattle.
Epistemic uncertainty
Below is an excerpt from Jonh Ridgway's book review of "Waltzing with Bears", which is about software project risk management. The general concept of epistemic vs. aleatory uncertainty is very important.
[…] Do yourself a favour, ignore what the book says about risk analysis [for software projects] and go and buy a good book on Bayesian Methods and Decision Theory. You don't have to take my word for this, just type in 'epistemic uncertainty and Monte Carlo' into your Internet search engine and take it from there. In the meantime, here are some background notes to help explain my remarks:
There are two types of uncertainty: epistemic and aleatory. As the name suggests, epistemic uncertainty results from gaps in knowledge. For example, one may be uncertain of an outcome because one has never used a particular technology before. Such uncertainty is essentially a state of mind and hence subjective. Aleatory uncertainty results from variability that is intrinsic to the behaviour of some systems [like throwing dice] (alea is the Latin for die). For example, I can be confident regarding the long term frequency of throwing sixes but I remain uncertain of the outcome of any given throw of a dice. This uncertainty can be objectively determined. Read More …
Amazing wood carving
His name is Livio De Marchi.
