A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

NCAA bracket tools — the majors

john — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:32:16 +0000

ESPN’s tool is super easy to use. Can make picks first time right from the ESPN main page.

SI — where is your brain? Shoving me to Facebook and forcing me to let some other random Facebook app smash through my privacy wall? Wow this seems dumb dumb dumb. How can a sports media site let fantasy sports activity slip off their site??

CBS Sports also good, easy to enter, also a nice bracket manager for your own pool. They have a facebook thingy too but it is an optional side thing, much more rational.

Foxsports. Visually clumsy — orange, too much Hootersness, and the bracket layout is hard to parse. Not my fav. Oh and registration seemed more onerous.

Yahoosports seems good, nice bracket manager too.

OSU can never beat Minnesota by too much

john — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:14:40 +0000

Nice to see the Buckeyes wrap up the Big10 title in dominating fashion, onto the dance! And especially nice to wipe out Minnesota, too bad they weren’t knocked out of the tourney altogether. Why the hatred for the hapless Gophers? It all goes back to this incident, which pretty much flattened the OSU program for the next 10 years and ended Witte’s career. The Minnesota thugs got wrist slaps, Winfield went on to a successful baseball career which always galled me.

Here’s hoping the Gophers flame out in their first game.

iPad preorder day arrives

john — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:51:54 +0000

Ok well the day arrived. I can’t quite figure out what the ipad is for. I still need to carry my iPhone for phone calls. I still need to carry my MacBook Pro for real software — Matlab, Mathematica, Aperture, LaTEX-heavy docs. I’ll still carry the Kindle for its awesome battery life. Would I carry the iPad as well??? Or are there occasional trips where I’d carry instead of the MacBook Pro?

Or maybe it is for the couch at home. But usually I again need to run real software. So what is this thing for?

So I only ordered one.

Recent Books — Typhoon, Invisible, Private Patient

john — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:58:42 +0000

Typhoon by Charles Cumming. I really liked this tale, suspense set in China over the last 15 years, with some nicely shaded characters. Amazon says just 3.5 stars, but I’m at least 4 stars, I would pick up another book by the author in a heartbeat.
Invisible by Paul Auster. Quite a twisted little tale of a very evil and manipulative man working his way through a set of lives. And a very nice structure to the tale, raises the book above your typical mystery. I’ve had several Austers on the shelf for a while, very worth the time. Amazon says 4 stars, I’m good with that.
The Private Patient by P.D. James. This one feels to me like it is the dead zone between a good mystery yarn and literature. The author aspires to write a deeper more thoughtful tale but is just boring. Doubt I will finish. Amazon says 4 stars but really not close.

West Hollywood extended stay hotels

john — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:29:41 +0000

Just back from a stay in West Hollywood. Stayed at Le Parc Suites. I think this place had its best moments 10 years ago. Not terrible, the service levels were good, the street is nice, but the facility is aging and probably wasn’t great to start with.

From walking around, where we should have stayed (kitchen a requirement):
* Palihouse. Looks very cool and good kitchens. Not as nice a street location as Le Parc but looks way awesomer.
* Petit Ermitage. Also full kitchens.

Close but lacking a real kitchen:
* LeMontrose Suite Hotel. Kitchenette type facilities
* Chamberlain. Kitchenette as well in some rooms

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-21

john — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:06:00 +0000

Congrats USC Lax on Sunday's win over UW! Great to see all of you http://bit.ly/dsWpcF #
Hear hear RT @th73: I get gov subsidies for not farming on Facebook RT @ChrisPirillo: I just became the mayor of I'm not on FourSquare. #
Search for "drugstore" on iPhone google maps and I get this? http://twitpic.com/13st7z #
Oregon 2009 backfield — most felonious ever? http://tinyurl.com/y9ys4vr #
Recent books â�� Freedom, Give Me Liberty, Judas Unchained, Forgotten Man — http://bit.ly/bciszU #
Awesome — http://5z8.info/38–start.spamBot–this-ip–_p4i1f_molotovcocktail #
Advice to hoteliers: biz center PCs should prob not have null password on admin account #

Signs of strain at Google?

john — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:33:26 +0000

OK the missteps that Google has made with Buzz this week are well chronicled. They jammed a product out without really thinking it through.

That doesn’t hit me that much as a user. But today using the iphone map app I am getting continuous errors — here is the map of drugstores near my current location. Not unique to me, I’ve heard of this from many folks today.

And I’m looking at the ESPN boxscore page for Purdue/OSU right now and first the google toolbar tells me it is in Portuguese, and now in Catalan, and asks if I want a translation.

One wonders if Google is spreading itself a little thin.

Recent books — Freedom, Give Me Liberty, Judas Unchained, Forgotten Man

john — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:51:26 +0000

Freedom by Daniel Suarez. Not as mind-wreckingly good as his prior, Daemon but a very nice conclusion to the tale. 3.5 stars, Amazon says 4.5 stars but that I think is carryover from the first book.
Give Me Liberty by Naomi Wolf. Nice nonfiction complement to the above. Does a nice job of illustrating how our rights have been eroded, and admonishing us to do something about. Amazon says 4.5 stars, well, it is a fine book, but I’d stop at 3.5
Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton. Vaguely remember the prior book but it has been a while and this book does not stand alone. Amazon says 4 stars, I am hard on books today, I’d say 3 stars
The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. History of the Depression, interesting although some of the details could have been left to an appendix. Roosevelt’s level of power was amazing. The story of the transformation of government into a very active role is told well and is clearly not an unalloyed good. The abject failure of monetary policy is well told and a good lesson for today. And my impression of Hoover from high school history as a total bumbler changed, he was incredibly competent prior to his stint as president. Amazon says 4 stars, I’ll say 3.5, and with tighter editing could have been a 4.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14

john — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:06:00 +0000

Douglas Preston knows entitlement — http://bit.ly/b24Fzr #

Douglas Preston and entitlement

john — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:57:42 +0000

Preston is exhibiting that he knows deeply what it means to feel ‘entitlement’. My reaction when I read Preston’s quote was exactly the same as this writer. Fortunately his books are throw-away fluff, and not even good throw-away fluff, so I will miss nothing if I never buy one again.