“15 of the stupidest items Jesse Jackson Jr, bought with embezzled funds”:http://www.ijreview.com/2013/02/37631-jesse-jackson-jr-pleads-guilty-to-living-off-of-campaign-money/ – Well I’ve never embezzled money, but I have certainly bought WAY stupider items than these. $9K on kid’s furniture? Seems downright sensible. A bunch of money on memorabilia? As someone who buys OSU tickets every year and has a closet full of OSU-themed clothing, what’s the problem?

For stupid, here is my personal list:

* A boat. Any boat. A moment’s purchase, and a lifetime of maintenance hassles. * That whole life insurance policy I got fooled into buying at one point. Dumb. Combining financial instruments into one complicated hairball just confuses you, which is probably the seller’s intention. * Every kitchen small appliance ever. The juicer, the bread machine, the rice cooker, the popcorn popper, etc. Used <6 times and then they clutter up some cabinet somewhere. I’ll make an exception for the toaster. * That cool-sounding weekend trip at a charity auction. Which you never end up using. At least the money went to charity though. * Antivirus software. Just don’t download sketchy crap. * Any meal at “claim jumper”:http://www.claimjumper.com. Terrible food, and lots of it. * The infamous “$100,000 couch”. Every MSFT employee in the 90s sold options to buy some household goods, and then lived to regret it 3-4 stock splits later when they realized that couch cost them $100K. * Golf club membership. Seemed like a fine idea, but no one else in the family was excited, which I could have figured out earlier…

Thankfully I have ducked some stupid things:

* any vacation time share. whew. * car lease. the last time i bought a car, they pushed me hard on this, telling me it was a huge win for me. so exactly why were they pushing it so hard? * UPDATE: hot tub. Suggested by a friend, we’ve never bought one of these, and in fact filled one in at a house we bought. Never knew why we needed a really big Petri dish.

* “A Memory Of Light”:amazon by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. This series finally comes to end, about 6 books too late. Good to get to closure on the tale but I can’t recommend starting the series. The first 3-4 books were excellent but then the series meandered far too long. * “Storm Prey”:amazon by John Sandford. A fine detective tale – a team commits a robbery at a hospital pharmacy and then have a falling out, with deaths resulting everywhere. No new ground broken here but a fun ride. An aside – I only picked this book up because it was on the “2 for $8” hardback table at the local B&N. The only B&N purchase I’ve made in like 6 months, and I am their core market. There is no path to recovery for B&N. * “Explosive Eighteen”:amazon by Janet Evanovich. My other $4 hardback. It is probably a mistake to pick up the 18th book in a series – my guess is that the high point of the series was probably back somewhere around book 4 or 5. Still, a lot of people must like these books since there are now 18. I thought it was trite, formulaic. Felt like the author spent a single afternoon writing it. I’m glad I spent only $4. * “O Jerusalem”:amazon by Laurie R. King. I’ve only read a few of King’s Mary Russell series, they have all been very very good, as is this one. Wish I’d read another of these instead of the Evanovich. * “A Manuscript of Ashes”:amazon by Antonio Munoz Molina. Tried to go highbrow but, well, boring.

So the new “Chromebook Pixel”:http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/02/chromebook-pixel/ is out, and it is an interesting move. Nice hardware, but expensive, and of course limited to whatever software runs on Chrome.

Being the “proud” owner of a Surface RT – another nice piece of hardware limited by its software – I’m not betting that this is going to be a big seller.

If I was Google, I would have built a Windows machine with great Google service integration and a Google/Chrome alternative to the new Win8 interface

* PC OEMs are not doing an amazing job on building machines, the field seems wide open * One less thing to explain to users – it is a Windows machine, it runs all Windows software if you want to, no need to explain Chrome * Probably easier to get wide distribution – it is just a great Windows machine * Users have to deal with a new interface on Win8 anyway – the time is ripe to offer something that is different than Metro (and maybe supports the classic Windows look better) * It would befuddle Microsoft. They can’t hate or attack a Windows machine.

I’ll never buy a Chromebook. I’d think about a great Windows PC with great Google integration.

I’m playing around with nano copters, the first I picked up was the “Syma S107c”:http://www.amazon.com/Syma-Channel-Control-Helicopter-Recording/dp/B0081VOEZM. Cheap and has a camera.

So super simple to set up, it comes assembled, you just need to connect the camera up, charge the copter, load batteries in the controller, and go. First run was indoors, and the copter was pretty uncontrollable due to body rotation. In theory you can use bias wheels on the controller to fix this but didn’t seem to work that well.

The camera was easy to use in theory but all my movies were blank, and then the camera USB connection wouldn’t work.

So then an outside flight. Still uncontrollable and then I had a hard landing from 8 feet onto pavement and boom, parts everywhere. I may be able to get it back together.

If this thing had a sensor/fb mechanism to control rotation, and a height sensor to prevent damaging drops, it would be infinitely more fun…

UPDATE: Ok reassembly successful. The camera payload is super fragile and pops apart easily. And when that happens, the copter decides not to fly. But reassembled, and i got a little better at using the bias wheel to control the rotation. Successfully took my first movies.

* “Going Clear”:amazon by Lawrence Wright. A tough look at Scientology. The author does a nice job of letting the evidence speak for itself. If even a fraction of the accounts of abuse are true, the church has some serious issues to face. The public figures who are adherents probably should step up and make sure their church practices are reformed. * “The Big Truck That Went By”:amazon by Jonathan M. Katz. Recent history of Haiti and recovery efforts after the devastating earthquake there. Much damning evidence about the effectiveness of charities, about the US’s role, about the UN’s role. The author makes a compelling case that we should give much more aid directly to Haitian institutions and much less to outside institutions (including any US government or UN institution). Sobering.

The “sphero”:www.gosphero.com is nicely done and drives dogs crazy. Solid packaging and works. But it is crazy expensive for a little gadget. I appreciate everything that has gone into it, but it just costs too much. Because I really want a fleet of them so that I can do things like “this video”:http://www.techrockies.com/sphero-s-robots-impress-in-nyc-christmas-video/s-0046561.html. But at $100+ my fleet is going to be small.

The “Twine”:www.supermechanical.com is also slick. Super easy setup, nice directive packaging. Not as polished as the sphero but of course a different target. Also too expensive because I want $20 of these. Not so clear why the twine is so expensive, the bom has to be less than the sphero.

But both are inspiring – nicely executed and they meet their promise. Really fun to see products like this exist. How cool would it be if they could work together! I want my sphero to flash red and go into panic motion if my twine detects too much heat.

Trying to decide…I am drawn to the Zappa…

Updated my Python install and NumPy/SciPy on my Mountain Lion machine. A couple of sites provided great guidance:

* “Python, NumPy, SciPy instructions”:http://www.thisisthegreenroom.com/2011/installing-python-numpy-scipy-matplotlib-and-ipython-on-lion/ provide good guidance on getting python, brew, virtualenv, and bumpy up to date on osx 10.8. The scipy instructions are busted tho * “SciPy instructions on StackOverflow”:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12092306/how-to-install-scipy-with-pip-on-mac-mountain-lion-os-x-v10-8. Once you have Python and Numpy installed, these steps solved the SciPy install. OK well no they didn’t. Still working on. * UPDATE: Back to a later post from the first author: “Compiling SciPy on Mountain Lion”:http://www.thisisthegreenroom.com/2012/compiling-scipy-on-mountain-lion/ – and I have SciPy working now.

Eh. All the characters were unidimensional cartoons. Northern politicians all were noble public servants with hearts of gold – even the politicians that had to be bribed into voting for the 13th Amendment ultimately did it with enthusiasm and clearly were good people. The politicians against the amendment were clearly despicable people, and the Southerners were all clearly corrupt hateful people. I was bored, this did not seem real.

I’ve actually seen a lot of the Oscar and Golden Globe slate this year:

* Argo, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook– all very memorable and very different from one another. * Les Miserables, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Zero Dark Thirty – all entertaining, all worth a viewing, not sure they are best of anything tho. * Beasts of the Southern Wild – didn’t see in the theater, watched at home. Not my taste. Don’t really get all the hoohah. * The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – didn’t see in theater, watched at home. Didn’t bother to finish, sad and boring. * Amour, Moonrise Kingdom – haven’t seen.

I am pushing myself a little this month.

* “Real World Haskell”:amazon by O’Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart. Functional languages have always seemed like a research toy to me. But some of the smartest guys I know are using the concepts at least in commercial products, and “this post from John Carmack last year”:http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/26/functional-programming-in-c/ has stuck with me. So I pretty randomly grabbed this book, I could have just as well grabbed a book on Clojure or Erlang. Makes my head hurt but that is probably a good sign. UPDATE: well, Haskell is interesting, but we really need a functional language with great readability. Some of the decisions the Haskell designers made create nearly unreadable code; maintenance seems like it would be a disaster. * “Vaccines”:amazon by Plotkin and Orenstein.This one is a total brain buster for me. But I am trying to get smarter about one of our portfolio companies, “Paxvax”:http://paxvax.com, and they tell me this is the text. I am pretty much lost three chapters in. Again probably a good sign.

* “The Machinery of Life”:amazon by David Goodsell. I have a reasonable understanding of atoms and electrons and electron-based chemistry, particularly for semiconductor materials. I have never really understood biochemistry – protein chemistry, DNA, etc. I love this book because it builds up from atoms to proteins and other biochem molecules, and has tons of great pictures. It does gloss over some steps and I’d love understand the electronics of protein folding, transcription, and other processes, but still this is a great book. Buy the physical edition, the pictures are absolutely critical. * “The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date”:amazon by Samuel Arbesman. An engaging discussion about the rate of change in the things we think we know. Not prescriptive, but an important paradigm to keep in mind. * “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything”:amazon by Joshua Foer. I found this book to be unbelievable and strangely depressing. I don’t doubt that these extreme memory techniques work or that these memory athletes exist. But the characters seemed almost farcical, and the use to which they put their memories seem such a waste. I gave up on the book, I wouldn’t be shocked to find out some parts of it were exaggerated.

We always get some board games over the holiday season and have some gamefests. Settlers, Ticket to Ride, Survive have been winners in past years. This year we tried 3:

* “Seven Wonders”:http://www.amazon.com/Asmodee-SEV-EN01ASM-7-Wonders-Game/dp/B0043KJW5M/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1357360279&sr=1-1&keywords=seven+wonders. This was the real winner of the holiday season. It seemed crazy complex at first, but the game play is swift, there are many ways to win, and everyone is in the game until the last turn. Excellent game. And there are a bunch of expansion backs for it I see. This might be my new metric for judging games – if it has expansion packs, then it has probably found a good audience. * “K2”:http://www.amazon.com/Heidelberger-Spieleverlag-HE344-K2-Game/dp/B0049HLTNW/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1357360503&sr=1-1&keywords=k2. This one seemed promising, and it is not a complete disaster, but there are some problems in the end game that left us all feeling a little deflated. The bottlenecks at the top of the mountain really stymie play at the end. * “Kingdom Builder”:http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Games-60832QNG-Kingdom-Builder/dp/B0063I6Y2G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357360009&sr=8-1&keywords=kingdom+builder. Good reviews on Amazon and on some game sites, but this one is a dog. As one player described it, “This game is what I could come up with in 10 minutes”. We may have to go into the game design business.

Per @CFTalkThrough, through 14 bowl games, attendance is down more than 11 percent from a year ago. 574,095 in 2011, 508,969 in 2012.

Too many bowls? Maybe. But “looking at fan bases countrywide”:http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/, when you take 5.8M fans out of the market for bowl tickets because of OSU (#1 fan base nationwide) and PSU (#3 fan base nationwide) suspensions, well, sales are going to drop. Replacing these schools with NIUs and Minnesotas and the like simply is not going to move the same volume of tickets.

It probably doesn’t help that some of the other top programs – Texas, Auburn – had off years, and USC is in El Paso.

The market needs the top teams to have good seasons to make the postseason compelling.

Ok I got an iPad mini for Christmas – thanks family! The lack of retina display does bother me, it is super noticeable. I will certainly upgrade to an iPad mini retina when it exists.

But it is interesting to see the impact on the rest of the gear in my bag.

* obviously the big iPad will not be in my bag much anymore, the mini is just so light and convenient. I need to figure out what to do with old iPads. Can I use them as monitors for raspberry Pi’s? * do I need to carry an eInk kindle anymore? On the one hand, the mini fits nicely in a hand and so can supplant the kindle. On the other, the mini is so light, there is really no problem carrying both, and the kindle still has that great battery life. * needless to say the Surface is rarely in my bag – and it now seems really obese in light of the iPad mini. * I used to carry a 17” laptop. Now I’m at 15”. Really wondering if 13” would work just as well .. And for the first time considering the 11” Air. I pretty much run every app full screen at this point, is the larger screen buying me that much?