What’s Up with Paul Oppenheim

Please see exhibit A, Episode 3 of Oddistry, a video blog produced in part by my pal Chadrick who is evidently Valleywag’s mascot. As if I didn’t have enough ego gratification.

You just need to see this.

A recent CSI:NY episode revolved around Second Life. Unlike your average CSI episode, there was no solution to the murders in the episode - you had to log into Virtual CSI: NY in SL to find out what happens next. I think the episode (show?) is cheesy, but a good opportunity to get into SL with a “goal”. If you have tried SL before and didn’t quite know what to do next, this might be worth trying for you. Likewise if you don’t understand why virtual worlds are going to be relevant for a long time coming. Trailer with a delicious quote from Gary Sinese after the jump…

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Wow, youtube. You can get lost for hours. However, you find gems like this:

Yeah. Also…

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Another article about “controlling your public appearance”. The article talks about google caches, and the new facebook privacy options for public profiles, and the general idea of the new all-seeing eye. That’s some positive education.

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Ever wonder where your favorite artist gets their funky samples? Check out Sample Wednesday.

Today an IEEE Spectrum article pretentiously called The Future of Music argued against the overcompression of modern music known as the “loudness war.” Aside from the fact that that sounds like a war I want to fight in, it made an argument that we aren’t making technological progress on sound quality because of loud music.

If you have been hanging out around me lately, you know I totally dig the new Justice album, †. Their whole point is loud. Face-rocking, turn-it-up-to-11, side-chain-compressor-to-the-grill loud. Same with that good ol’ SebastiAn who I have previously blogged about. So, are these guys that I love so much right now really destroying the future of music technology? How can you have many of the intense modern sounds without loud? (Does indie rock make this point moot?)

Algorithm to resize images so “important” details are kept, resulting in images that fit whatever aspect ratio you need:

(or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-SSu3tJ3ns )

There is a great talk by Richard Hamming on doing great research (”Nobel-prize type of work”) called “You and Your Research”.

Choice quote:

You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, “Yes, I’ve stood on so and so’s shoulders and I saw further.” The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

Interesting to hear that high performers underrate themselves only until they see the work of others, but low performers never learn that they are low performers.

NYTimes - Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss

I usually link instead of reproducing materials, but googled and only found a hit on a page with a zillion other jokes. I did not write this, I don’t know who did, but they are Pretty Funny.

The Internal Revenue Service sent their auditor to a synagogue. The auditor is doing all the checks and then turns to the Rabbi, and says, “I noticed that you buy a lot of candles.”

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like, rn.

Man, the housing bubble in NorCal is ridiculous. It’s the opposite back in motown; the article title says it all:

Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit

I actually looked online for a housing auction site, and found that a lot of these houses are in heavily blighted areas such as 48215. (Yes, those green and brown spots are empty lots. Yes, this is in an “urban area.” For a quick background on Detroit’s blight issues, read about elmhurst and try and ignore the “racist jews” slant.)

The title says it all:

BBC: Alaska natives left out in the cold

http://homepage.mac.com/ianrickard/wiimote/ (from slashdot )

I can’t wait to try this.

I guess if you’re a robot, humans taste like bacon.

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391

Unfortunately this article doesn’t mention that Linksys did stop selling this unit. They sell a different unit (which does not run Linux) under the same name, and took the Linux version and renamed it the WRT54GL (the L is for Linux… GET IT?!?) and added $15 to the price. Because of this stupid maneuver I have to ship the one I bought back, and get the new one. Grrr. Hopefully the new firmware is as good as people say, because the WRT54G v5 that I bought (without Linux, with VxWorks) crashed every 4 hours for no reason.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

it might not hurt to read the other articles on Paul Graham’s site, too.