Jesse Ruderman

Blackmore's Night

I found Blackmore's Night by searching a P2P network for Greensleeves in order to practice recognizing minor-third intervals for my Fundamentals of Music class. I liked Blackmore's Night's version of Greensleeves enough to look for more of their music a few months later. Now they're my favorite band.

I bought their two newest (studio) CDs for my parents for Hanukkah/Christmas. My mom loves them. (I won't pretend that buying CDs as presents is a long-term excuse for downloading large amounts of music without paying for it.)

New camera

In October 2002, I won a $750 Amazon gift certificate in AllTheWeb CSS/design contest by abusing CSS. I used XBL bindings (a Mozilla extension to CSS) and HTC behaviors (an IE extension to CSS) to add keyboard shortcuts.

Last month, I used some of the gift certificate to buy a digital camera. Leonard Lin pointed me to Imaging Resource, which helped me choose between the 8oz Canon PowerShot S400 and the 4oz Pentax Optio S4. (dcresource also has useful reviews of an earlier version of the Optio and the Canon PowerShot S400.) Even though experience tells me that I'll carry around a 4oz device (Palm V) while I won't carry around an 8oz device (Sony Clie), I bought the Canon because its image quality is a lot better.

The camera arrived last week. I will post some photos as soon as I stop running my finger around the rim of the closed lens while muttering "precious" figure out how to make thumbnails.

Wild were the winds that came

My family's house lost power for 6 hours last night during a windstorm. The power went off and came on about 6 times throughout the evening and night.

Candles rock. Not only do they last longer than flashlight batteries, but they also light rooms better than flashlights. We played card games by candlelight: Munchkin, Hoopla, and Magic. Munchkin was my gift to Drew, and Hoopla was one of Mom and Dad's gifts to Drew and me.

By the end of the night, the only flashlight still working was a tiny LED flashlight with a button that is very hard to press. Brushing my teeth in complete darkness was an interesting experience.

This morning, my entire family spent several hours sweeping up the mess outside.

Non-association game

On the way to a Hanukkah party, Drew and I invented a silly game. We took turns saying random-sounding things: "tree", "Gorbachev", "sawdust", "blue", "question mark", "cranberry", "stumble", etc. After a few rounds, we decided on a rule: what you say can't be associated with the what the other player just said. For example, "Gandalf" can't be followed by "the One Ring", and "speeding ticket" can't be followed by "asphalt".

Spam subjects

I got some spam titled "get it up". In the same batch of spam was one titled "lose it". It took me a second to figure out that the second one was about losing weight.

Mozilla 1.6b < Mozilla 1.0.1?

This USPS page uses the expression (browserName == "Mozilla" && browserVersion >= 1.0) to recognize acceptable versions of Mozilla. The string "1.6b" becomes NaN when coerced to a number, so the expression is false if you're using Mozilla 1.6b. If you're using Mozilla 1.5 instead of 1.6b, you won't see the warning. Ironically, "1.0.1", the minimum version they claim to support, coerces to NaN.

If the site had used parseFloat instead of implicit coercion, it wouldn't have hit this problem. parseFloat("1.6b") returns the number 1.6.

Everything is a set

I think I'm taking Zermelo's idea that "everything is a set" too seriously.

I saw a freeway billboard advertising a SUV or small truck, saying "Category of One". But the Pairing Axiom tell us that for any x, the set of x (written {x}) exists.

My family uses the following strategy to light the Hanukkah menorah: light the Shamash, use the Shamash to melt the wax at the bottom of the other candles and light the other candles, use one of the other candles to melt the wax at the bottom of the Shamash, put the Shamash in place. During Set Theory lectures, I always pointed out when the prof implicitly assumed that a set was nonempty in his proofs. I told my family that our strategy would not work on the 0th night of Hanukkah. (Question for any other Jews reading my blog: Is using another Hanukkah candle to melt the wax of the Smamash disallowed?)

I'm going to take Abstract Algebra I next semester at Pomona College. Groups, rings, and fields... this could be dangerous.

The RotK experience

Like Fellowship, Return of the King came out during Mudd's finals week. Despite the timing, 300 of Mudd's 700 students went to Ontario Mills AMC on Tuesday night. Tickets only cost $3 thanks to a subsidy from DOS and APC.

FNMG showed extended editions of Fellowship and Two Towers in a lecture hall on Tuesday, creating a private version of Trilogy Tuesday. I had a International Economics final Tuesday afternoon and a Microeconomics final on Wednesday to study for, so I only watched the first half of Two Towers. I liked the added rope scene at the beginning.

Theater 16 was almost entirely Mudd students and students from the other Claremont Colleges who bought their tickets through Mudd. I brought Set and started a game on the floor in the front of the theater. We quickly had 12 players. I still have all of my cards, and I was the only person to step on the case.

I liked RotK, but there were a few things I didn't like:

• The ring had an immediate effect on Smeagol's grammar. It's easier for me to believe its effect on emotions than its effect on grammar... I blame the linguist in me. (Hmm, wasn't Tolkien a linguist?)
• The battles were too predictable. During the battle for Minas Tirith, I was waiting for the army from Rohan and the army of the Dead to show up rather than wondering how well the good guys would hold the city/castle.
• The steward of Minas Tirith seemed to be doing everything in his power to screw up his side. His actions didn't seem to be random, but he didn't seem to be under Sauron's control either.
• There's no way an army of ents can keep Saruman locked in his tower without a strong leader like Aragorn or Gandalf around. I'm told they don't succeed in the books.
• Aragorn ends up with Arwen rather than Eowyn. I'm told that the relationship between Arwen and Aragorn makes more sense in the books. (I only read Fellowship.)

The part of Two Towers where Theoden (King of Rohan) discovers his son's death is still the only part of the trilogy that makes me cry.

Wrong date on midnight tickets

AMC printed the wrong date on Lord of the Rings tickets again:

Two years ago, my suitemate and a few of her friends drove to the theater on Monday night for Fellowship. As she left, she told me she had tickets to see the movie a day early. I believed her until I saw her at the theater on Tuesday night.

I'm not aware of any Mudders making the same mistake this year.

I wonder if printing the wrong date could be intentional. It's better if 10 people drive a day early than if 2 people drive a day late. Someone at the theater said the tickets are printed incorrectly because the AMC software only understands business days.

Façade

Michael Mateas of Georgia Tech gave a colloquium talk about Office Plant #1 and Façade. Alex missed the talk.

Alex: What's Façade?

(Selene and Ryan explain the premise to Alex: A couple you knew in college has invited you over for drinks. Their marriage is about to fall apart, but your character doesn't know that when he/she arrives. The characters talk, and you communicate by typing in free-form English.)

Alex: Ok.

Ryan: It's 3D and it has an FPS perspective.

Alex: So there's a gun in front of you?

Thanksgiving at Montecito-Sequoia

I spent Thanksgiving at Montecito-Sequoia Lodge in Sequoia National Forest again. Like last year, there weren't any activities designed to bring high school or college-age kids together, so I only met a few (Alex and Jenny). My brother Drew and my cousin Jessica were also there.

It seems that many visitors have not internalized the idea that black bears are dangerous. When we saw a bear several meters from the road, we stopped and took photos. Other people stopped and got out of their SUVs to take photos. Also, members of my family kept leaving food in the car and even taking trips to put food in the car.