arbitrary user

Because I said I would blog this.

“The smallest cock-up of them all is sometimes the solution”
- anonymous

Also, there was a small discussion about monkeys doing repetitive tasks, which led us of course, to clarifying the distinction between regular monkeys and trained monkeys.

ath.

Nerd, Geek, Hacker; The lines are definitely blurred and there are definitely people out there whose mind’s think differently.The older I get the more in-touch with my inner-nerd I become, and the more happiness that part of my self brings me.

What did you do last night. It was a typical saturday night, The revellers were revelling, the rabblers were rabbling.

And the geeks? Well, we were hacking. Firstly an attempt to fix a broken ICD (In circuit debugger) and then a lengthy conversation over dinner about the complexities of tracking supersonic aircraft with combination radars (one of the geeks works for an unnamed company that develops military radars.

Then the conversation moved to using solar flares to map a 3d model of the earth’s density, and then later still, a conversation about how to hack a pic into a remote controlled car and make it drive a set path. Next logical progression? A discussion about building control better control circuits and the maximum possible data transfer rate over FM, farm wide wireless sensor system for use on farms and why you don’t want to stand in front of one of the biggest radars in the world. The answer? Obviously because, as it spins quite fast, it is likely to know up side the head and leave you unconscious. Oh, and high powered lasers and an unfortunate incident inside a dam wall.

The point I’m trying to make is this is where I feel most at home. In the presence of other hackers. Kindred spirits. I love to learn constantly, I crave the knowledge and the outside-the-box, anything-is-possible philosophy that comes with it. Perhaps this is why I am so happy being a frog… you never know what’s going to be your next challenge and you know that there are bright people around to help you come up with a solution.

Anyways, back to last night. While somewhere else in cape town another group of 20-somethings were likely drinking themselves into oblivion and using their best pick up lines on other, just as alcoholicly-oblivious, females, we were plotting our next hack.

Someone said “Let’s distil the pineapple juice stuff”, or something to that effect. The pineapple juice stuff was something that my best friend’s house mate had “concocted” a while back. I think it is just pineapple mash, some yeast and some water. It definitely tasted like there was some alcohol in there.

Now, first I must be clear on something. We all drink. Occasionally we even drink to much. I have nothing against those who choose to drink themselves into oblivion. I’m sure they think our geek-hacker-nerd evening was just as much a waste of time as we think theirs was. To each his own.

Ok, so checklist: Digital probe thermometer, check. Boiling container, check. Tubing, check. Ice, container for ice, check. You get the idea.

So we set rig it all up in the most liebig condenser looking fashion possible (this is at about midnight) and do some test runs to make sure we can keep the temperature of a liquid at a stable 80ish.

I must point out that, at this point in time, the chemical engineer in the group is lying on a mattress in the lounge shouting the occasional instruction at us. She is not too concerned about the process, but rather that we don’t kill ourselves. In true geek form, her book is far more entertaining than a group of electronic engineers and programmer trying to make alcohol.

The kitchen at this point looks like a meth lab.

Moving on. Get the temperature up to 80ish, notice the tiny bubbles, see the viscous looking liquid condensing in the tube and running down all the way into the clean black cat peanut butter jar. Yup, the pinky finger test confirms, it kicks like meths (apparently someone knows what meths tastes like).

Now, in true geek form, after about an hour of distilling, and probably a little over 30ml of alcohol we all take the tiniest of sips and decide that the only logical next step is to pour the rest of what we have into a saucer, turn off the lights, and set fire to it. Awwww, pretty.

GEEK PRIDE!

ath.

The other day I was part of a discussion regarding how to detect fraud in large datasets and I was reminded of Benford’s Law… it really is quite amazing.

Essentially the law states that in a large enough collection of naturally occurring statistics the frequency of the first digit will tend towards “1″. This holds true for things as diverse as house numbers and stock prices.

If a large set of numbers is generated by a psudo number generator to say, fake atmospheric pollution data, the resulting set of numbers will not adhere to Benford’s Law and therefore can be assumed to be fake. It is obviously a trivial exercise to analyse a large set of data and modify it to adhere to Benford’s Law.

The table from the wikipedia article shows the logarithmic nature of these numbers.

What does facinate me even further is the question: Would a large set of randomly generated numbers generated by atmospheric noise random number generators adhere to Benford’s Law, and if not, Why?. Surely if pollution data does adhere to the law then atmospheric noise, which is much like pollution, should too.

I think I might generate a large set of random numbers generated by atmospheric noise and have a look at it while I’m disconnected at the river this weekend.

I hope this puzzles you as much as it does me…

j.

I think I’ve been ranting a bit too much recently so I’m going to write a completely positive blog entry.

Firstly, while I’m writing this I’m listening to my flippen awesome old friend’s band, civil twilight, off myspace. I can’t believe how far these guys have come from a garage in Hout Bay.

For many reasons that will be clear if you read my posts regularly, Rian, my girlfriend, decided to return her HP laptop for a full refund. Being the instant gratification junkie that she is, she decided she needed another laptop ASAP. She’s also been harbouring a rather latent mac fetish for a few years now. I had a bad experience with a powerbook a while back but admittedly it was in the midst of a bad life experience so maybe I was just confused.

We ended up getting a really good price and awesome service from Project3 near Cavendish. They knew their products and their price for the 2gHz core 2 duo, gig-o-ram flavour macbook was 1 mili-bar less than everyone else.

What is perhaps more surprising is how nice the little baby is. Her name is Joy because until her we just weren’t getting any joy.  She’s really bright, fast and light (13.3″)… and, yes, I’m liking OSX… so all my OSX fan friends (bje, tuna) can start to hope again.

Jumping madly to food I want to rattle off the names of a few restaurants that I like.

Greens (in Park Rd, off Kloof)

Greens is pretty much where all the pretty people who drink at Vida E around the corner go to eat, however, it is actually a really nice restaurant. Their portions are larger than you’d expect and the overall quality and environment is worth the few extra rand you’ll be spending.

Jimmy’s Killer Prawns (also on Kloof)

The company and amount of alcohol previously consumed at Relish probably had something to do with it, but the few times I’ve been there (yes, all after friday night drinks at Relish) have all been wonderful. Do yourself a favour and get some of the Jimmy’s Killer Prawns, they’re awesome. I think they may also still be doing their Tuesday night all you can eat sushi.

The Ocean Basket (heh, also Kloof but the one in the waterfront also seems good.)

While the Ocean Basket probably fights against the family restaurant stereotypes in the hopes of not becoming the “spur” for seafood, what they do offer is repeatability. Their prices are good, the food is good and the service, generally good. If you’re looking for seafood give them a visit. (The one in Canal Walk is not quite at the same level as the two I’ve mentioned here)

Krugmans (V&A Waterfront)

This one is a gem. Tucked behind the Kauia, below the cinemas, this suprisingly large restaurant is probably one of those places you avoided because they look like you’ll walk out sorry with an empty wallet. Luckily Krugmans seems to only look that way.  Sure, they’d gladly sell you a R1400 bottle of wine but they also have amazingly good value for money burgers for under R50 and all kinds of steaks under R90.  On the topic of wine. They don’t have House Wine, so be careful when the waiter rattles off a list of their 26 cab savs that you don’t pick the R38 per glass option,  a few times…

Ok, enough about food… I’m getting hungry.

Just one final prop to Momentum Short Term insurance. Having recently bought a car (I take delivery in a few hours) I now know the pain of purchasing a vehicle privately. However, getting it insured proved rather simple. I currently have my household and all risks stuff (laptops etc) insured through momentum. I realise that the fact that they had me on their “books” made this slightly easier. I dialed the number, waited less than 30 seconds, spoke to a knowledgeable consultant called Yolandi who gave me the quote in less than 2 minutes and gave me her *direct* number so that when I wanted to give the green light it would be simple. The next day I called the number, she answered and remembered my name, called my policy up, initiated the insurance, told me what me new total premiums would be and sent a confirmation fax to the vehicle finance people and an email to me. All in less than 3 minutes. I’ve subsequently got various quotes via *my* bank and none have come close.

This concludes my anti-rant.

ath

j.

Now, most of you know that I’m a tolerant person… The kind of person who tries his best not to loose it when dealing with idiots and liars. But unfortunately I can honestly say that nobody, not even Telkom, has made me as mad now as the idiots who run Computer Mania.

Having eventually been told that we could come and collect a new laptop to replace the one that was obviously broken we drove out to Canal Walk to get our “new” laptop.

The box had been opened, and the laptop had been started up before. Knowing how brilliant Computer Mania isn’t, I should have known to check that *everything* was in the box… However, in reality I just wanted to get out of there before I punched someone.

We take the laptop and receive no apologies for anything.

Once home we unpack the box to discover the remote control is missing. Now, for the love of science, IF YOUR CUSTOMER IS ALREADY TELLING THE OTHER CUSTOMERS IN YOUR STORE NOT TO BUY YOUR STUFF, WHY WHY WHY NOT MAKE SURE THAT EVERYTHING *EVERYTHING* IS PERFECT WITH THE “NEW” REPLACEMENT.

To not do so just makes you look like an idiot… but really, there are plenty of idiots to go around at computer mania.

After multiple calls and multiple people saying they can’t do anything I decide I want something in return for all this shit.

I want some ram. Nothing big, just an extra gig to make Vista run properly. Dealer cost of that is probably not much more than the petrol I’ve wasted driving back and forth.

Eventually I get the actual regional manager on the phone. He claims that computer mania has done nothing wrong. He says that the random blue screening is so random that multiple people were able to reboot the computer multiple times and never get a blue screen… and yet, when I walk into the store I get a blue screen instantly.

I call him an idiot. Subsequently I think a better retort would have been that we should go gambling sometime. He seems to have amazing odds.

He refuses to give us more ram.

I tell him we want a refund. He says ok.

So all in all we’re going to be down a few bucks but hey it’s been worth it

ath

j.

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It’s funny how things work out… And how quickly news spreads. Even Sherri is following the saga.