The Kindness of Strangers

In the car the other day I mentioned that I was going to start practicing the guitar for real, in such a way that implied that I knew, in some deep sense, how to practice an instrument. A friend inquired about it, and with a little thought I realized that I did in fact have a notion of practicing well.

I developed this notion back when I played the trumpet — far more seriously and often, and with much greater rigor, than I now play the guitar. Of course, I was still lazy back then, so I didn’t always follow the rules, but at least I knew what they were. At any rate, here’s how what I think it takes to practice an instrument well:

1. Warm up. A good warmup routine achieves a few things: it helps you improve fundamental techniques through repetition, it prepares your body physically for the current practice session, and most importantly it prepares you mentally. By forcing you to focus on a task that’s both challenging and familiar, it helps clear your mind.
2. Use a metronome. You never know how badly out of time you’re playing until you use one. Find a comfortable tempo for the exercise you’re playing — and then slow it down by 10-20%. It’s always harder to play slow than it is to play fast.
3. Focus, and reject mediocrity. This is the most important and hardest rule to follow. One good hour of practice is worth ten bad ones, and what separates the two is focus: how hard you concentrate while you’re playing, and how unwilling you are to let minor infractions pass. Few mistakes are minor enough to truly let go.
4. Keep moving. It’s easy to become comfortable with a set of exercises and, eventually, your mastery over them. Keep moving on to newer, challenging material, as soon as you’ve nailed the current stuff — but no sooner.
5. Listen to yourself. Record yourself any way you can and listen to how you sound. A microphone is ruthlessly honest.
6. Get a teacher. Expensive, but necessary. I’ll have to do this eventually for guitar if I ever want to be any good.

Okay, that’s all I have.

My friend Grant posed the following interesting question to me:

Say you could go back in time to 1999… and you were to show/tell something that shows how much “progress” humans have made in the past 10 years — something that would amaze somebody — what would it be?

A great question, I think. Here are some answers we came up with, with a bit of justification for each:

• Wikipedia: launched in 2001, it now has 3.1 million articles in English and 14 million overall. The #1 information source on the web and a massive testament to user-generated content. (Remember Encarta?)
• Nexus One (or any suitably advanced smartphone): The first gigahertz chip didn’t even come out until 2000, and now you can get one in the palm of your hand — with near-universal connectivity and a beautiful touch-screen that nearly matches the 800×600 resolution of most common full-size monitors in 1999. It also comes with a built-in 5 megapixel camera to boot, and those babies weren’t even available to consumers until 2001.
• Avatar: CGI on an obscene, marvelous scale. Art+technology.
• Obama: a black president so soon? Amazing.
• 32GB microSD card: In 1999, the largest hard drive you could get was 37.5GB. Now you can get 32GB in a format the size and weight of your fingernail — about .0005th of the volume and weight of that big old hard drive.
• YouTube: Only started in 2005, but already has over 100 million videos of all varieties and origins. People watch over 10 billion videos a month — near 10 hours of video per user. All video will be streamed eventually, but it’s staggering how quickly the transition is happening.
• Usain Bolt’s 9.58 in the 100m: Maurice Greene makes things complicated here. He ran a 9.79 in 1999, but he’s since admitted to buying (but not using… hrm) PEDs. If we take him out of the equation, the 100m world record improved by 0.08s from 1989 to 1999, from 9.92 to 9.84. From 1999 till now, Bolt has taken off a remarkable 0.26s. For a similar improvement from 1989, we’d have to go back to the mid 50s and the era of hand-timing. Even with Greene in the picture it’s an amazing feat.
• TiVo: pause, rewind, record TV. Seems like magic. (Actually came out in mid-1999, but I couldn’t resist. PVRs are so pervasive now.)

Runners up: Newspapers going out of business (drag timeline to the left), iPod (2001) + iTunes (7B songs sold), eInk/Kindle, Google Street View

Clearly, since we’re both computer nerds, this is a limited, biased selection. Which of these is best? What else is out there? Medicine, the arts, the sciences, sports, politics…

Also: predictions for 2020?

The late, brilliant Douglas Adams co-authored a book called The Meaning of Liff. From Wikipedia:

It is a “dictionary of things that there aren’t any words for yet”; all the words listed are place names, and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word. Examples are Shoeburyness (“The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else’s bottom”) and Abinger (“One who washes up everything except the frying pan, the cheese grater and the saucepan which the chocolate sauce has been made in”).

I acquired this book many years ago because I loved Douglas Adams, but never really got it. After finding a (typo-ridden) copy online, I’ve a newfound respect for it. Part of the genius, of course, is that the “made-up” words are all place names.

Here are my favorites entries from just the letter W:

WEST WITTERING (participial vb.)
The uncontrollable twitching which breaks out when you’re trying to get away from the most boring person at a party.

WINKLEY (n.)
A lost object which turns up immediately you’ve gone and bought a replacement for it.

WORKSOP (n.)
A person who never actually gets round to doing anything because he spends all his time writing out lists headed ‘Things to Do (Urgent)’.

WRABNESS (n.)
The feeling after having tried to dry oneself with a damp towel.

WYOMING (participial vb.)
Moving in hurried desperation from one cubicle to another in a public lavatory trying to find one which has a lock on the door, a seat on the bowl and no brown streaks on the seat.

You get the picture. It’s a great concept. Here are a few more I’ve recently come up with myself:

LANSING (participial vb.)
Saying the wrong lyrics while singing along to the radio, especially in the presence of someone else.

EAST LANSING (participial vb.)
A form of lansing in which one errs by singing the bridge or chorus a verse too soon.

REDDING (participial vb.)
Gingerly raising a hot liquid to your lips in anticipation or fear of it burning your tongue.

(Some might consider this a SPOILER)

In the last two days, I saw District 9 and Avatar, two movies with several similar characteristics: large aliens, oppression by humans, not-so-subtle commentaries about imperialism, DNA mixing, and a crossover human. Both were uber-awesome, though in very different ways. Highly recommended!

For better or for worse, there’s a fairly well-established status hierarchy for professionals in the US, with doctors near the top, and janitors near the bottom. Is there a similar status hierarchy for celebrities?

I happened across this old interview with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, in which the following exchange was made (irrelevant parts elided for clarity):

IGN: What do you think of people who start dating actresses when their bands make it super big?

Ben Gibbard: What’s my opinion on that? You know what’s really strange is Death Cab played in Washington last May. Coldplay headlined the thing. So, all these guys from Death Cab  were in the backstage area getting ready to go on and the bus pulls up and Coldplay gets off and of course Chris Martin is towing Gwyneth Paltrow through the crowd and everybody’s trying to do that thing where nobody wants to look, like everything’s normal, but this is probably going to be the only time that we’re ever going to get to see someone like this up close. She makes her way through the crowd and back and our friend Jed that works at Sub Pop had the best quote of the entire evening, “Great, the one chance I get to meet Gwyneth Paltrow and I’m in a f@#king bunny suit.”

I feel that levels of a celebrity are like similar to military rankings, you know? If you’re like a movie star, that’s like being an officer, but if you’re a rock star, it’s still like being enlisted. You can only go so high in the enlisted side of the Army. Even if you’re the biggest rock-star and you’re dating a movie star, even if it’s a low rent movie star, you’re like way lower than them. It’s a weird way to date up, but you’re still not ever going to be on their level.

Now, Gibbard’s view may be slightly biased — the people backstage at the show, being in the music industry already, are probably not going to be as impressed with seeing Chris Martin as you or I might be — but I think it hits home pretty well.

Among celebrities, who has the highest status? Let me rephrase this question to make it more concrete: if you were to run into several celebrities in a mall — a movie star, a rock star, a reality TV star, a sports star, and a supermodel — who is the first you’d mention you saw to your friends when you got back home?

Of course, individual preferences may vary, but my guess is that if you took a national average, you would find the following order:

1. Movie star
2. TV star
3. Sports star
4. Rock star
5. Supermodel

Movie stars get the edge over sports and rock stars because they have the unique combination of broad public appeal, longevity, and face time — everyone knows what they look like up close, so actually seeing them up close is more of a validation.

What do you think?

Trick play is controversial
by David DeBolt
From the Daily Post, Monday, December 7, 2009

With seconds to go in a game that would help take them to this week’s national championship tournament in Florida, the Palo Alto Knights pulled a trick out of their bag of plays.

After hiking the ball, a coach on the sidelines started yelling to one of the players on the squad of 8- and 9-year-olds that he had the wrong ball. The player walked casually toward the sideline and, during the confusion, suddenly took off, running in the decisive touchdown.

The wrong-ball trick gave the Knights the 8-7 victory and after another playoff win the team reached the national championships in Orlando where they played in a game this weekend.

“That’s football”
The trick was questioned by an opposing coach yesterday, who called the move unsportsmanlike. But Mike Piha, the Knight’s longtime president, who is with the team in Florida this week, defended the play call yesterday. “That’s football,” he told the Post yesterday.

The call came against San Jose’s Oak Grove Rampage on Nov. 1 in a playoff game. Jess Barreda, who coaches the Rampage, said his players are taught to respect authority and stopped playing once the coach started yelling about the ball.

Players were devastated
“It was just devastating,” Barreda said. “All my kids were crying… because they felt cheated.” After the game, Barreda heard complaints from parents, including one who asked, “How can that coach sleep at night?” Barreda appealed the game, arguing the play was illegal. The league agreed, but Barreda said the game couldn’t be rescheduled.

The loss would have kept the Rampage out of the tournament, but another team dropped out, leaving room for them in Florida and a chance for redemption. The Knights lost their opening game 40-0 and if they lose against a team from Jacksonville, Fla., tomorrow they could wind up playing the Rampage in a rematch. If they meet, they’ll ironically play for the Sportsmanship Award.

Hall of fame induction
The Knights, which offer football for kids ages 6 to 14, beat Oakland to reach the national championships. Two of the teams reached the championships, a first for Piha, who coaches the team for 10- and 11-year-olds and will be inducted into the league’s Hall of Fame this wek.

When asked about the trick play, Piha said his teams use them often. In fact, Piha’s squad used one in their 20-0 loss yesterday to the Tampa Bay Saints.

In this play, the players acted as if they were in a huddle discussing the next play when a center tossed the ball to one of them. The huddle then acted like a massive blocking device for the running, who went all the way to the 10-yard-line before he was tackled, Piha said.

“It was cool,” Piha said.

Pretty hard to believe.

In other news, I finally did it. I finally splurged on a purchase I’ve been waiting a long time for.

That’s right: 24 pairs of socks. 24 identical pairs of socks. No more grabbing up to 7 distinct sock singletons (I’ve done it) with nary a pair in sight. According to my calculations, this purchase alone will reduce my stress level by 23%.

* Don’t worry, I’m donating all the old socks.

I have an iPhone 3G, but I want a Motorola Droid, partly for its awesome screen, physical keyboard, and open, multitasking OS. However, I mostly want it for its network, Verizon, which I’m hoping will allow me to make calls from my house reliably. The iPhone is especially bad at this (worse than my old crappy AT&T phone), and it’s frustrating since I axed my landline a few years ago. Dropping calls every couple of minutes is borderline embarrassing.

But there’s the problem: I’m only 9 months into my two-year AT&T contract, and would have to pay an early termination fee were I to switch to Verizon now. No doubt many other people are facing this same problem, including lots who want to switch to AT&T to get an iPhone.

So I had an idea the other day: phone-swapping. It involves a nifty bit of technology provided for free by Google called Google Voice. Among other cool things, Google Voice lets you get a “Google Number”, which is a new telephone number that you can give out to everyone. You then have Google Voice automatically forward calls to this number to any number or numbers you choose, including your current actual cell phone number.

Here’s what I suggest. I want to get on Verizon, so it’s sufficient for me to sign up for a two-year Droid package, and have my Google Voice number point to my new Verizon number. That’s easy. But what about my existing AT&T plan?

Well, let’s say someone wants to get an iPhone 3G. Normally he’d have to sign up for a two-year contract with AT&T and pay $99 for the phone. Instead, I’ll sell him my existing iPhone, which only comes with a 15 month contract, for $50. Shorter period and less money. And then he would use his Google Voice account to point his Google number to my existing AT&T number, which would ring at the iPhone I’m going to sell him.

It all works out perfectly! Instead of paying an ETF, I’d get $50, and he’d get a phone for cheaper and with less of a commitment than AT&T would offer. And AT&T would never know the difference. (There may be some billing issues, but with online auto-billpay from any credit card, I don’t think this would be a huge problem. There might also be a Terms of Service violation; anyone care to check?)

I think this kind of switcheroo would be very useful for lots of people; ETFs are a pain for everyone.

So I want a “phone-swapping” site where Google Voice users post when they are trying to get onto a new carrier and/or leave their current one. They could then match up and do the swap. For all I know, there may be a disgruntled Droid user who’s looking to ditch Verizon in a month or two, so in addition to ditching AT&T without paying the ETF, I might be able to get a Droid on Verizon for less money and time commitment than Verizion would offer. Good times!

Is anyone else interested in this? I think a simple site could be thrown up in a a week or so, but I don’t have the time to do it right now.

Edit: snafuuu has pointed out Cellswapper, which pretty much does exactly what I want. Thanks!

One of my writing-style pet peeves is the incorrect use of the word “infinitely”. As in “OMG, this math test was infinitely harder than the last one!” No, it wasn’t.

Of course, there are a few legitimate uses of the word, and props to people who use it correctly. But for the most part, people use it to mean “a lot”. Even Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest New Yorker article about football players:

At one point, while he was discussing his research, Guskiewicz showed a videotape from a 1997 college football game between Arizona and Oregon. In one sequence, a player from Oregon viciously tackles an Arizona player, bringing his head up onto the opposing player’s chin and sending his helmet flying with the force of the blow. To look at it, you’d think that the Arizona player would be knocked unconscious. Instead, he bounces back up. “This guy does not sustain a concussion,” Guskiewicz said. “He has a lip laceration. Lower lip, that’s it. Now, same game, twenty minutes later.” He showed a clip of an Arizona defensive back making a dramatic tackle. He jumps up, and, as he does so, a teammate of his chest-bumps him in celebration. The defensive back falls and hits his head on the ground. “That’s a Grade 2 concussion,” Guskiewicz said. “It’s the fall to the ground, combined with the bounce off the turf.”

The force of the first hit was infinitely greater than the second.

So either the second hit didn’t happen, or else the first hit was executed with infinite force, which I guess is pretty impressive at the college level. NFL scouts, you watching?

From a laptop computer efficiency paper.

Laptop displays consume 30% of the total energy supplied by the power supply or the battery and represent a substantial efficiency paradox by themselves. On the one hand, they cut power use and physical size by perhaps 50 to 80% relative to the external cathode ray tubes (CRTs) that preceded them. On the other hand, they still exhibit profound, fundamental inefficiencies in their basic design. The power that feeds the display starts at the AC wall plug and is converted in the power supply to DC. But displays require AC power to operate their fluorescent backlights, so the portion of the power that runs the display must undergo a second inefficient conversion from DC back to AC in an inverter, at an efficiency of perhaps 80% to 90%. Of that AC power, about 30% to 40% is successfully converted to visible light in the cold cathode fluorescent backlights, with the rest becoming heat.

Then, because of the inherent opacity of most liquid crystal technologies, 95% of that light is absorbed in the crystals themselves, rather than passing through them to emerge as useful visible light of a particular color.38 In total, then, perhaps only 1% (84% * 30% * 85% * 35% * 5%) of the energy content of the electricity drawn from the wall is actually available in the pattern of visible light emitted from its display that we call “information.” If, to be generous, we consider only the efficiency of the entire chain of components in the display system, rather than the computer as a whole, we would still have to conclude that the system only converts about 2% to 3% of the electrical energy consumed by it into visible information.

(ThinkPad love: ThinkPads were the most efficient laptops tested by the NRDC. In particular, the T40 had the highest performance and the lowest energy usage. The IBM power supply was the most efficient among those tested; if everyone switched to IBM power supplies, the savings would be between 210 and 520 GWh, depending on usage. Apparently, ThinkPads also have unusually efficient screens; switching to ThinkPad screens would save an additional 260-550 GWh.)

I am of course going utterly gaga over Usain Bolt’s recent performances at the World Championships in Berlin.

First, there was the mind-blowing 9.58 in the 100m. Keep in mind that before Bolt started running the race for real about 18 months ago, the record was 9.72. He beat his own world record by 0.11s – totally ridiculous.

His astounding performance leads to perverse charts like the 100m world record progression:

He’s the last three little x’s in the bottom right.

Okay, and then he ran the 200m in 19.19 last night, beating his old world record there by another 0.11s.

Keep in mind that those other guys he’s roasting are (with one exception) the other fastest guys in the world. This isn’t a high school track meet.

Now, that one sprinter who’s missing, Tyson Gay, is actually the second fastest man in the world in the 200m. But his best time is a mere 19.58, so… not in the same league. It’s hard to imagine one person being that much better than everyone else in the world. But it’s happened.

Bolt is a freak of nature – the first really tall guy (6’5″) with enough coordination and footspeed to run fast. The crazy thing is that he’s only going to get better. He turns 23 today, and apparently sprinters really hit their prime at around 27.

Furthermore, and this is something I haven’t seen anyone else point out yet, his 200m time is slow. For the first time since the advent of electronic timing, the 200m WR is more than twice the time of the 100m WR. The sprinters in the 200m are at top speed for longer: the first 100m starts slow, from the blocks, but the second 100m is at a full sprint. Thus, the 200m is the only track even in which the increased distance also increases the average speed. So you’ll find the best 200m times are faster than 2x the best 100m times. You can see for yourself here and here.

Not the case now, as Bolt’s 9.58 and 19.19 attest. My hypothesis: he is simply not in good enough shape to sustain his top speed for 200m. In fact, you can see him visibly tiring in the last 20-30m of the race in the video above. As he gets better, we’ll see that 200m time drop to fall in line with historical expectations. Before Bolt ran, the records were 9.74 and 19.32, a difference of .16s. So based solely on his 9.58, a 19 flat or so is in the cards.

But he’ll get faster in the 100m, too. So sub-19 (fantasy-land, now) is on the horizon. I’m calling it here: Bolt will run a sub-19 200m.

I really like optical illusions, and have posted a few in the past, such as this one:

Those snakes aren’t actually rotating; they just look like they are. Anyway, I came across a really cool one recently:

In this case, those green and blue spirals are actually the same color. No, I’m not kidding. Feel free to open up Photoshop to check for yourself, or head here for a detailed look and an explanation. More color illusions of this ilk here, and more illusions in general at the top page of Akiyoshi Kitaoaka’s amazing site. Enjoy!