| AB 1121 |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|04:10 pm] |
1. Go to the CA Assembly website
2. Look up your Assembly member ("Find my district").
3. Go to their website and find their contact information.
4. Tell them to please support AB 1121 which would allow a limited number of non-charter cities use Choice Voting (Ranked Voting) when approved by the Secretary of State.
Here's the quick message I wrote:
Tom Ammiano,
I'm writing you to strongly encourage you to support AB 1121. AB 1121 would allow some general-law cities, such as Davis, California, to use Ranked Choice Voting in their local elections. The bill is limited in scope: only a select, small number of "trial" cities will be able to use Ranked Choice Voting as determined by the Secretary of State. The Governor may support it on these grounds.
In Davis, California, where I lived for a number of years, we wanted to adopt Choice Voting for our local elections but have been deterred by the prospect of enacting a city charter to do so. AB 1121 would allow smaller, non-chartered cities such as Davis to enjoy the benefits of greater representation that Ranked Choice Voting provides.
Ranked Choice Voting is, without a doubt, a better way of running our elections. Better representation means a better democracy.
--Philip Neustrom
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| Got mugged |
[Jan. 15th, 2009|12:16 am] |
I was mugged tonight. My phone and wallet were stolen. More later (potentially). I'm fine.
To contact me: email philipn@gmail.com until further noted. |
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| 2008 |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|02:24 pm] |
Goodbye 2008. Let's hope 2009 is better for everybody. |
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| Purely Function Data Structures, Chris Okasaki |
[Nov. 28th, 2008|02:53 pm] |
I finished Purely Functional Data Structures a couple days ago. It was a good book, and there's plenty of thorough reviews of it around. When I was first learning Haskell I was initially confused about how data structures like trees or even lists could be written efficiently in a purely-functional style. This diagram, from Wikipedia, made things instantly clear:
ys being the tree before an insert, xs is the tree after. Notice that lots of nodes are saved — that's kinda the core idea.
The use of SML in the book was a bit weird to me, but it's totally readable.
The one thing I was hoping to get out of the book was an idea of how to analyze the asymptotic / amortized running time of lazy purely functional programs. The book delivers, mostly-kinda, on this — we learn to use a system of debts and credits to prove amortized bounds.
The book makes a critical assumption that our lazy language does automatic memoization of all function applications (p59). Haskell doesn't do this, so it's unclear how to use the techniques without doing our own memoization. So, no dice, I guess? |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|02:03 pm] |
Now that the election is over, my work with Video the Vote1 is mostly done. I was the only person doing development and, thankfully, there weren't any major technical issues on election day.
We got well over 500,000 hits on Tuesday, our clips were all over the news (CNN, Democracy Now, boingboing, reddit, digg, probably other places but I didn't follow too closely), had something like 3,800 volunteers around the country, saw a constant stream of 20-30 video uploads at all times and managed to pull it off with very little money and resources (one VPS). We worked with YouTube to send out 300 "Flip" digital video cameras to people in areas likely to have problems. The effort was coordinated, too: there were regional leaders, dispatchers, videographers, runners and bloggers all being given leads. We worked with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Election Protection project to get tips and dispatch people around the country.
It was pretty stressful, but I'm glad we pulled it off. The guys I worked with were awesome. They'd done the project in previous years but never at this scale. As far as we know, it was the largest volunteer video production crew in history.
Despite the outcome of the election, the polls did not go well this year. In fact, this may have been, procedure-wise, the worst election we've ever seen. There were lines nearly everywhere and machine malfunctions around the country. It's inexcusable that in the United States our elections operate so terribly. While the current media angle on the lines is that there was "amazing turnout," it's much more than that: it's gross negligence and horrible planning, at the least. I hope that we won't forget about fixing these problems. No one should have to wait in line to vote, much less wait 2 hours (which seemed like the norm based on several hundred videos), or 8 hours (we have a few videos of 7-8 hour lines, like this Virgina Tech line)
Some videos:
Almost 1000 students vote at 7am at Penn State University
Over 7 hours and no vote cast
I can't vote in Brooklyn
And, your moment of Zen: Prisoners handle ballots in Florida
1. "Video the Vote is a nonprofit organization that employs a network of citizen journalists to capture polling place problems on Election Day. The organization works on both an assignment desk and platform model: people can submit videos to their website, and Video the Vote also contacts individuals in their network and dispatches them to document troubles as they arise in precincts across the country" |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 2nd, 2008|03:04 pm] |
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Anyone have an engineer contact you YouTube? This is urgent & really important — and for an organization that's partnering w/ YouTube! |
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| Video the Vote |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|05:34 pm] |
Video the Vote is an amazing project I've been helping out with. Please check it out and spread the word. If you're able, please sign up and volunteer on Election day! |
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| To Arlen's |
[Sep. 29th, 2008|01:28 am] |
The nighttime bike ride to Arlen's warehouse: a post-apocalyptic world where all people live under darkened freeways, the commodity glass and copper trade is the only means of survival, countless rats dart through your path and everything smells real, real bad.
[The funny part is the sheer amount of broken glass — it's everywhere so you don't even try to avoid it!
It's kind fun sometimes. If you go on the bike ramp you can watch the cars from above and it feels very city.] |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|08:42 pm] |
As mentioned previously, we were evicted (via Owner Move In) from our place. We were given 60 days to vacate. Of course, we didn't quite have two months to look for a new place: the combination of the delay in getting the mail, the discussion around whether or not to fight the eviction and the oddly-placed vacate day (the 12th of the month) added up to a less than desirable amount of time.
I miscalculated how difficult it would be to find new housing. Over the past couple years I'd met enough people and heard of lots of rooms in the city opening up. Surely I'd just know somebody who had a room opening up or knew someone who did? Well, not quite.
The most common thing I heard when talking to friends was something like, "Oh, hey! My friend James is looking for a place!" In most of my experiences in the past, including most recently, when teaming up to find a place most everyone bails out. After all, wouldn't it be smart to continue looking for a place for yourself on the side? And if you got a place, wouldn't you take it rather than just hope your friends could find something?
I'd decided pretty early on that I didn't want to try and find an empty place for a new lease for this and other reasons. Because of rent control, all of the inexpensive places are roomshares, not new leases. Additionally, I have an outstanding issue with my credit (no fault of my own) which, given the intensity of the rental market, doesn't help. Organizing an ever-changing group of room-wanting folks is too hard. I also kind of like the idea of meeting entirely new people and being in a different environment.
So began the craigslist room search. In short, it's been one of the most grueling and dehumanizing experiences of recent memory.
I knew I had to do something to differentiate myself from the hundreds of other emails, so I decided to make a silly webpage that contained most all of the standard boilerplate asked for in the emails. My emails then contained only the bare essentials and things that were unique to their posting alongside a link to my boilerplate webpage.
I think this method worked pretty well. I managed to get something like a 17% response rate to emails I sent out, which I think is pretty good. I also saved the text of all of the postings I responded to in a file with the url of the posting (posting ID). Many postings are taken down and it's hard to remember what they were. The craigslist emails all contain the posting ID in the email address.
In total, I sent out 200 emails. Out of those, I got something like 35 responses. I ended up going to maybe 15 open-houses and 10 interviews.
At first it was easy to be excited. Lots of people have really nice homes and it's pretty easy for me to get along with people. About half of the places I went to told me they "really liked me!" when they met me, giving me a false sense of security and confidence about the process.
After a few weeks of this, followed by the inevitable rejection, I started becoming jaded. People ask the same questions over and over and it's hard to not just get run-down. I liken it to going on a first date with a new person every day for weeks: no matter how great that 10th person might be, you're just not going to have the energy to really hack it with that standard introductory material. You've definitely got to be on top of your game these things.
Most people's decisions felt arbitrary and unfair. Lots of places picked someone before even speaking to me or ended up choosing a friend rather than someone from craigslist. Choosing a housemate is a big deal, though. A crap roommate can really drag your life down.
The open house dynamic is really unusual, too. Often there'd be nearly twenty people over someone's place and everyone would compete for attention. The "group interviews" were the worst, though. Feeling more like an Abercrombie and Fitch interview than a housing situation, they just cater to whoever is most excited and good at steering the conversation. Being able to walk into an unknown situation and be personable and extroverted isn't necessarily what everyone's looking for in a housemate.
I did okay with open houses and group interviews for the most part. There were some strange moments, though. At one group interview a fellow asked:
Him: "So, like, what if I was at a friend's place for a night.."
Her: "Oh, you mean if you had someone over here?"
Him: "No, I mean, uhh if I was at my friend's place, I mean would that be okay? Or would you call someone, you know?"
Me: "Do you mean 'How long could I be dead in my room until you'd notice?'" *laughter*
That guy had just stopped living with his mom or something.
I had a couple friends-friends connections. One was a case of the dreaded "female roommate only" - a friend of mine was leaving her room and was pretty sure I might be able to take it. The location: perfect. I went over to her place and briefly spoke with her roommate at a gathering of friends. He then made a craigslist posting a few days later, which she forwarded me, that said "Female only. Sorry guys!" There is, I believe, a widespread suspicion that if the balance of gender in a house tilts too far in either direction the place will transform into a frat house or a Sex in the City den.
In another case, my friend had a friend who was leaving her two (!) rooms. Having two rooms myself, and being in a great location, I was super interested. I was hoping so desperately that my first interaction with them wouldn't be in the confines of the traditional roommate-interview framework. Nevertheless, when I went over they showed me around and sat me down to ask me questions. It isn't that the sort of questions aren't valuable ("So what are you looking for in housemates? What do you do? What are your hours? Do you have an SO?," etc), it's that after answering them many times the excitement wears out and it becomes like rattling off a series of memorized syllables.
I really like that place, though. The people were fantastic and my time was running out. I had to do something so I wasn't just a semi-random guy who was interested. They weren't doing the craigslist thing, either, so I figured my chances of a personal connection were slightly better.
So, I baked them a fresh peach pie. I brought it over the next day (they'd invited me to come check out their backyard). It was totally delicious and it definitely helped, I think. If it was somehow a negative then I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live with them anyway (a harmless cute thing that wasn't imposing!) The most offensive part of it, though, was that when rejecting me they didn't even take the time to write me my own email:
"Hello!
Thanks for you interest in our home on South Van Ness. We really enjoyed meeting you, and appreciate your patience during the past couple of weeks. The decision has been a tough one since we met numerous amazing people who would make fantastic housemates. At this point we have chosen a person to fill the room, and we wish you the best of luck in finding a place to live. Hopefully we can all cross paths in the near future.
Take good care,
xxx, xxxx, xxx, xxx"
Then there was the woman who looked like she might have a meth addiction. When I spoke with her on the phone she talked a lot! A lot! I showed up to her place, which was pretty messy, and she was not talkative. Someone came out of the bathroom in a rob and started arguing with her. We stumbled into the kitchen where there were several cats, two dogs and a bird. No other housemates where there. She worked at Burning Man. I wasn't desperate enough to take that place.
The funny part about the whole process is that it's a remarkable way to meet new people. I've run into several people since embarking on my journey -- at bars, at critical mass and just in the course of walking around. |
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| End of an era |
[Sep. 13th, 2008|06:26 pm] |
Eli and I cleaned out the house last night. It took us until 6AM and we did a pretty fantastic job despite how insurmountable the task was. We left the place empty and spotless. I'm sore.
I packed all my immediately-necessary possessions into my bag and put the rest of my stuff in a storage unit in SF. I think this will work pretty well. I feel moderately more hobo than usual.
I'm staying at Arlen's place, which is only weird because he's away on a bike trip right now. I still don't have a room lined up! Not for lack of trying, though.
My brother is apparently up in the Yukon living with strangers and has only $300. If he can manage that, I'm sure I can deal without permanent housing for a couple weeks! |
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| Can I crash on your couch until Oct 1st? |
[Sep. 8th, 2008|02:43 pm] |
Dear SF friends: Can I crash on your couch until Oct 1st? I haven't had any luck finding a place, despite looking frantically. I will likely have a place by the first (that, or I'll kill myself). I seriously doubt my ability to find a place by the 12th, which is when I must be out.
I'm looking into putting my belonging into a storage unit someplace, but if you also know of space I could store the following let me know: two boxes of books, some clothes, a dell tower and a bed.
I would be willing to pay "couch rent" to offset electrical / water / space inconveniences. Alternatively / additionally, if you have space I could shove my shit, I'd be willing to compensate you for that -- it'd likely be cheaper than commercial space rental. |
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| Bike camping |
[Jul. 28th, 2008|12:46 pm] |
I went bike camping with some friends this weekend. We made panniers out of kitty litter buckets using more or less this design.
Here was our route (mostly — we went into Samuel P Taylor SP):
I had a blast! You really get a sense of your surroundings when you're out in the open and going at your own pace. Next time I'll get a triple crankset installed on my bike to make the hills easier. |
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| Camping |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|07:07 pm] |
I went camping at Salt Point a few weeks ago. It was really nice.
I'll skip to the good part. After getting all the way up there and parking the car in a dark, secluded parking lot, we joked about how horrible it we locked the key (1) in the car. Needless to say, a few moments later, when I went to throw the extra flashlight in the car, I threw the keys instead and slammed the door closed.
We paniced. Thankfully, a car began approaching us after about ten minutes of sitting in the darkness. It was a Ranger! We explained the situation and went back to the little cabin at the front of the campgrounds. Twenty minutes later and we managed to get AAA to send out a tow-truck that was slated to take about two hours to arrive (middle of nowhere).
The long wait in the tiny cabin wouldn't be very comfortable, the Ranger explained. He began taking us to the Fort Ross visitor center, where we could during the wait. During the windy, dark ride there he turned on his flashing lights and said "hold on, we've got some folks over here.." He drove over to some folks who were illegally camped on the beach, yelled at them, and got back in the car. He then turned his head and said, "Well, we've got two unsolved murders up here so we're on edge."
Wait -- what? "Yeah, there was this out-of-town couple, Swedish folks, they knew nobody. About two years ago they were camping on the beach and somebody, nobody knows who, just came up to them in the middle of the night and murdered them in cold blood. Didn't steal anything. We've got no idea."
It was Friday the 13th.
A moment later and we're at the visitor center. This moment of time can only be described as the most quintessentially Twin Peaks experience of my life. The place is empty except for us. It's wooden with a tall, arching ceiling and is filled with arrowheads, ancient canoes, and relics of dead natives and Russian settlers.
After walking around for a bit our tow-truck driver arrives much earlier than expected. His lights are on and obscure our view of him. We quietly get into the truck and I sit next to him without looking at him once. Some polite conversation is made as he speeds dangerously down the terrifying road. He slurs his voice while he talks and is off-kilter. I think, "is this guy fucking drunk?"
We'll, I think he's drunk but my friend doesn't. Nevertheless, he managed to get our keys out of the car and we had a great rest-of-camping experience. Except we didn't sleep very well that night. Some pictures. |
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| House media server |
[Jun. 24th, 2008|09:16 pm] |
I've wanted to set this up forever and I finally got around to it a couple days ago. We've now got a nifty house "media server."
After fudging with this piece of crap PATA card, I managed to get it to roll with two 400GB drives. It's running Ubuntu.
I tried to keep it simple. First off, the machine can only be accessed while on our network. There's a common house account with our usual password that you can use to SCP files to and from the machine. When you visit it in a web browser you see a simple directory listing along with some instructions.
We loaded all our music and other media on it. Then I set up mt-daapd to let us listen to the music from iTunes, etc. Then I set up torrentflux to let us have it download torrents for us.
Simple, but nice to have, especially since my primary computer is a laptop. |
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| I have slayed the email demons |
[May. 27th, 2008|10:34 pm] |
In some post someplace I remember seeing ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) evan mention sup. It's a terminal email client with a search-and-label/conversation-esque thread feel, a'la gmail. I've wanted to switch to local / offline email for a while now, so I kicked myself and set sup up.
It's neat, but the process of setting it up was a pain. While most desktop email clients "just work," the nerdy variety come in many little pieces.
After setting it up and downloading my gigabytes of gmail (locally!) I also set up, for the first time, some RSS stuff. I've tried avoiding RSS for a while because I largely enjoy the distraction of checking the web, I kinda figured that I'm wasting a bit too much time. I set up this rss -> email gateway (rss2email) and now I can use the same interface to read a bunch of stuff, label it, search it and so on.
The idea, I guess, is to get myself to stop breaking my concentration *too much* by flipping over to firefox, checking my email, and then checking a billion other things over and over again.
( Please don't actually read this ) |
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| Quote on my housemate's door |
[May. 11th, 2008|12:34 am] |
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We were here in the presence of another social potentiality of unheard-of importance for good and for evil.... It [technology] gives the human race a new and most effective collection of mechanical slaves to perform its labor.... However, any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor.... However, taking the second [industrial] revolution as accomplished, the average human being of mediocre attainments or less has nothing to sell that is worth anyone's money to buy. The answer, of course, is to have a society based on human values other than buying or selling. —Norbert Wiener |
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| Google App Engine |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|09:42 am] |
Neat implementation. I like how they've figured out a cool way to sandbox the Python code and provide a tight integration with all their other services. People may start to look at alternatives to the traditional "LAMP" model of writing web apps, which means more creative stuff. Nifty that people can write things to run on Google's boxes [roughly] the same way Googlers can.
Total lock-in, at least as far as I can tell. GFS, BigTable, GQL are all non-free and non-available. You could reverse-engineer them based on whitepapers (e.g. Hadoop & HBase). You would also need to implement the crud that ties the Python and that stuff together.
The way you deal with users is via the Google Account system, which means you have no access to the user database -- so even if you did manage to migrate your data, someone developed similar-enough APIs running on some free alternatives, and you had sufficient infrastructure to run your (potentially huge) project, you'd have no way of porting over your users. The best hope you have is that Google ends up supporting OpenID, but even then google will have all the credentials. It looks like you may be able to run your own code and skip out of the built-in user system, so, yeah, someone should do this.
So my suggestions: support OpenID in the API [relaying party and identity provider] so people can use external authentication for their users, release all the infrastructure code under a free license. Until then, anyone writing an application on this system is developing something that is potentially dangerously tied to Google. |
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| Cochlear implants are so awesome |
[Mar. 26th, 2008|11:06 pm] |
Cochlear implants are really awesome. Cochlear implants are a way to stimulate the cochlear to simulate sound directly to the nerves going into the ear. They're used on completely deaf people.
They work by having an external microphone that transmits, over radiowaves, to a receiver planted inside of the skull. The receiver takes these radiowaves and then figures out what electrical impulses to send down this tiny wire. The wire goes into the cochlear and has, spread over a small area, a number of output points.
So, this is really cool because the chip in there, well, we wouldn't have been able to make something so small and powerful years ago. But also, the signal processing -- turning those radiowaves into the right electrical signals -- is all based on the Fast Fourier Transform -- which was only properly described in 1965! |
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