Glenn Willen

12:00 am: Backdated contact info post
Because all the cool kids are doing it:

Glenn Willen
5153 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Cell: (310) 809-9044

Email: gwillen@nerdnet.org

02:02 am: Is there a name for the fallacy of assuming, when one is in the dark, that everyone else actually knows what's going on? I don't mean this in a conspiracy sort of way; just a sort of implicit assumption that, when in doubt, other people have more complete knowledge than oneself.

As an example of this, consider real-time strategy games, i.e. Starcraft. I always inordinately fear what's going on in the part of the map that I can't see; obviously my opponent is building up a massive army and preparing to destroy me with it. (Note that this is typically not true.) But I fail to properly take account, in my own strategy, of the fact that my opponent cannot, in fact, see what I'm up to either, and may well fear that unknown; and that I should be using this to my advantage.

Does everyone do this? Is there a name for it?

01:00 am: PSA
I am in the San Francisco area until Friday (the 25th). Hang out with me!

04:13 pm: Today I learned what a NOM2 EDGE network is. (It is sadly not related to the nomfunctor.)

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10115034-233.html?tag=mncol;title

I don't have an iPhone to try this with, but sure enough, T-mobile's EDGE network is Pittsburgh is NOM2, which does seem to explain why my G1 has problems receiving calls when using data.

Since this seems to be well-documented, why is it so hard to find out? >.>

On the plus side, I've heard a rumor that T-Mobile may have 3G service planned for Pittsburgh. Pretty please?

11:52 am: PSA
I will be visiting Redondo Beach, August 15-19.

02:32 pm: For Unix wizards out there: Here is a neat puzzle I just solved for a coworker. See if you can solve it. :-)

# Pipeline that prints every line in somefile:
cat somefile | while read FOO; do echo $FOO; done

Output:

line1
line2
...

# Pipeline that should do something on a remote host for every line in somefile:
cat somefile | while read FOO; do echo $FOO; ssh remotehost "<some command>"; echo "DONE."; done

Output:

line1
<output of ssh command>
DONE.
<END OF OUTPUT>

Why does the loop only seem to run once? (You can try this on your own system; for an example, try using '/etc/passwd' for somefile, and 'id' for the command. My guess is you will get the same problem; if you don't I'd be interested to hear that.)


EDIT: Wow, time to first complete answer: 38 minutes. I will remember to ask elljay next time I am perplexed. I was wondering aloud to my coworker as I posted this whether anyone on my friendslist did enough shellscripting to care about this puzzle. :-)

(I think it took us about half an hour to figure it out also, because I think that's about the length of the meeting we were ignoring while we fiddled with it.)

01:09 pm: PSA
Public Service Announcement:

Google is hiring [more]! ;-)

Message me in some fashion for details / to express interest.

03:00 pm: Swine flu
Apparently there have been some very recent cases of H1N1 swine influenza, a strain not generally seen in humans, with confirmed human-human transmission.

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/investigation.htm says cases have been seen in Mexico, San Diego/Imperial counties in CA, and in San Antonio, TX.

I don't think I know anybody in San Antonio or Mexico, but those of you in San Diego please be careful. :-\

EDIT: Also unconfirmed cases in New York. You guys stay safe too.

06:13 pm: I have a bad feeling I'm going to need an oscilloscope to get my IMSAI back into fully-working order. Anybody have one they want to lend me for a month or two?

Currently it will execute anywhere from a few to a few dozen instructions correctly, then launch itself off into the weeds...

EDIT: Apparently the thing I really want is called a "logic analyzer". But an oscilloscope would be better than a hole in the head.

02:51 pm: Dear lord, it appears that the GNOME developers have completely lost their fucking minds:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=552387

*sigh* This is the sort of bullshit I really hate about open source. You give people lots of power and no accountability, and lo and behold, they do stupid shit. I wish there were a good solution to this.

EDIT: Oh, and I think the only reason that everybody is being so civil on that bug, in light of the developers being COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS, is that there's a threat at the bottom from the moderators to ban people who rant. Lulz.

02:45 pm: KGB puzzlehunt coming up!
I need a puzzlehunt team for the KGB hunt on March 28!

http://twistytimelines.com/

Difficulty: I have been one of the organizers/writers for each of the previous hunts, so the following restrictions on my participation are suggested, probably vaguely negotiable: If I have any other past writers or past winners on my team, we play as an exhibition team only (we can't win). I would be fine with that. If I play with a team with three people who have never won a hunt or written for one, we would probably be allowed a shot at winning. :-)

Any takers?

12:06 pm: Fantastically awesome Flash game:

http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/

There's no trickery -- it's a series of tests of how well you can eyeball angles and distances. It runs you through the series three times, and your score is your average error measurement. The errors are in "units" otherwise unspecified, which I assume are calibrated for the difficult of the tasks.

My first score was 3.67; my second score was 1.87, which is enough to get me the #2 spot on the "last 500 games" top score list, and a spot near the bottom of the "last 10,000 games" list as well.

Suggestions for play: Rotate your head. Squint. Try closing each eye in turn.

Before trying to play for score, run through it once just to see the visualization it gives you of the correct answer for "Triangle center" -- it will give you a better intuition for what point the game is asking you for.

02:21 pm: Need [Pittsburgh] housing?
This will be interesting only to Pittsburgh-types:

Jcreed and I have a spot open in our place at 5153 Fifth Ave. (corner with Wilkins). It's the first floor of a duplex; we have two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room.

We're looking for anyone who needs housing starting any time between now and august, but we'll prefer an arrangement where we don't end up having a long vacancy.

If interested, send mail to gwillen@nerdnet.org and jcreed@andrew.cmu.edu.

By all means tell your friends, but preference will go to people we know.

X-posted: cmukgb

12:21 am: I seem to have a blister between two of my toes.

I wouldn't have thought that was possible...

09:52 pm: Mystery Hunt!
[This was originally a comment on this post by 530nm330hz, but it got too long for the comment box, so I decided I should make it an entry. So that's why it reads like a reply to that post.

Note also that most of this is about 1) the Reverse Dimension metapuzzle's first stage, because I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and 2) the difficulty of the metas in general. There was a LOT MORE to the hunt than that, but I will never get around to writing a "real" Mystery Hunt wrapup post, so this will have to sufice. ;-)]

First things first: Yaaay there was a Mystery Hunt! :-D These things will never get old. ^_^ They're always Damned Fun, no matter who's running them, and that's really impressive. :-)

( on the Pluto Meta )

( on the awesomeness of the Reverse Dimension round )

( on the difficulty of the metapuzzles )

And despite all that, let me reiterate that the hunt was Damned Fun. :-D I am looking forward to many more of these, both Evil Midnight Bombers hunts -- despite length and difficulty, I have tremendously enjoyed both that I've been to, and find them to be masterful writers -- and hunts in general.

We are still hoping that some day the Manic Sages will win one... as several of us have gotten in the habit of saying, "hopefully next year". ;-)

12:34 am: Went to a Most Awesome New Years' party at Frances' place in San Diego. <3 the Mudd crowd. (Also pigsrcool who I think was the only non-Mudder there besides me. :-D)

The real purpose of this post, though: I know I don't have half the people from that party friended, and I bet they all have Livejournals. So those of you who do have me on your list, get those other folks to come comment here so I can friend them, but be lazy and not have to go search for them. ;-)

12:17 pm: Buyer Beware
Does anyone have any experience with the "U3" hardware/software? Apparently many flash drives come with it now. It's basically malware; when you insert the drive into a Windows machine, it creates an emulated CD-ROM drive with an autorun.inf file (to get around the lack of USB autorun), and autoinstalls the "U3 Launchpad software". There's no way to blank the drive (remove the emulated CD portion) without using the "U3 API" -- it's not a partition, it's a blob of data which is apparently in ROM somewhere on the device. There are removal tools for Windows and Mac, but according to a forum post I read, the Mac one installs a kernel extension, so I'm not willing to run it, and I'm hesitant to insert the drive into a Windows machine because 1) it will autoinstall the spyware, and 2) I'll still have to run the Windows removal tool, which is probably just as bad.

Fortunately I haven't infected anything yet, since the software doesn't run on Mac; but I'm not willing to use the drive with the software on it, because someday I will have to insert it into a Windows machine for something.

I suspect I'm just going to have to take this Christmas present back to the store, unless anyone out there knows how to get rid of this crap without infecting any machines with it.

Conclusion: Never buy Sandisk. (They invented the U3 technology, and it sounds like all their drives are now infected with it.) :-\ Apparently other manufacturers have licensed it too, so I don't know what brands of USB drives are safe to buy.

ETA: Another forum post suggested running the uninstaller in a fresh VMWare image, and said that worked. I'm not sure whether I'm willing to go through the effort just for a stupid flash drive, but it was a Christmas gift so I hate to return it.

09:55 am: Any CMUers going to the MIT Mystery Hunt and wanting to reside in Buddha Lounge (or if you don't know what Buddha Lounge is), please reply here at once, mentioning whether or not you have already emailed the hunt housing alias with this information. I'm trying to help them work out whether they can fit us all. (Also mention whether you need housing before, after, or both. For the record at least a couple of us are staying with rlambert after instead.) If you have questions just post them, I can answer those. :-)

11:06 am: I don't know if anybody I know uses Diskeeper, but I think in light of recent events, any of you who do should reconsider where your money is going.

10:52 am: Me -> Los Angeles
Hi Livejournal,

For those of you who don't already know, I will be in the Los Angeles area (Redondo Beach of course!) from Dec. 20 - Jan 2. (I'm going to arrive tonight around 9PM.) So let me know if you want to do anything while I'm out there! :-) I mostly don't even know who reading this is still around that area...