Blessed by the Potato

For my birthday, Wayfare picked up a copy of “What Eats Wasps?”, a book by New Scientist magazine basically containing a selection of their last page reader question/answer articles. It was a pretty good choice: I like books full of weird and vaguely useful facts, and wasps are scary so it’s well suited for just before Halloween.

From New Scientist’s point of view, this had to be an incredibly easy book to put together: take a bunch of articles that are already written, and combine them into a book to sell again. However, they didn’t seem to do a very good job with that. Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the articles were originally published with metric units, and for the book these were converted to units that would be “more familiar to Americans.” It’s mistakes like these that keep costing us Mars probes. The unit conversions seem to have been completely screwy, because I can’t make sense of most of the examples given: one talks about how big a person would have to be in order to have enough fat around their internal organs to stop a bullet before it hit anything vital. “For a man 16 [sic] feet tall…”. About 2/3s of the way through the book, they seem to have given up, and left everything in metric.

It was a bit of an interesting read, but I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone. Maybe if you can find it in the library and just want to flip through, or if you can just read the articles right out of the magazine…

I really don’t understand what the heck has been up with the Simpsons’ Halloween episodes the last few years. I really expected there to be an episode this sunday (Halloween sunday), especially since the season already started over a month ago (with no notice, no fanfare, and a big stretch of reruns since the first 3 new episodes). November?! Foolish humans, we already have our Christmas decorations up by then!

Anyhow, I found it online, so all is right with the world again.

All the crazy people are making a break for it today. We’ve had a code red (fire), two code whites (violent person) and two code yellows (missing patient).

Our Halloween party this year was pretty lame. Wayfare, formerly renouned for throwing THE Halloween party to addend, had hardly anyone respond to her invitation. Of those who did come, none really dressed up, and no one wanted to go out as per the original plan (not even to Rol San, which is extremely surprising for Joce). There was lots of junk food, though, and Shaun of the Dead, so it wasn’t a complete write-off.

Worst of all, though, is that we ended the party so early that we never got around to getting our extra hour, which was half the fun of having a Halloween Saturday party night!

The next day, Wayfare & I had completely forgotten about the time shift, and hadn’t changed any clocks (oddly enough, my laptop didn’t give me that “your time has been changed…” popup). We wanted to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, so we rushed out to the theatre, and it was only when we were in the car that the radio reminded us about the whole daylight savings thing. That gave us some time to hit the Shoppers Drug Mart for some discounted candy and more Halloween decorations (I believe we are now up to 11 file boxes full of Halloween decorations. Our apartment is fairly thickly decorated, and we’ve only touched 4 of the boxes; none of them was completely emptied).

Anyhow, so eventually we get to the theatre in the middle of nowhere to see NBC3-D. And I’d like to say that it was really, really dumb of the theatres to not release this cult Halloween classic on any screen in the downtown area on Halloween weekend. Even way up in Woodbridge the theatre was packed for a Sunday matinee: how much business could they have got from the pre/post Halloween Saturday club crowd if they showed it at Paramount? But nnoooooo, Paramount was showing Open Range in 3-D instead. I wonder if anyone bothered to go…

Back to the point, the theatre was fairly full. Wayfare & I sat near the back and watched the show. There were two empty seats beside us, but garbage had been left there from the last show, so no one wanted to sit there while the lights were up. 40 minutes late (just about the halfway point for NBC), two people show up and plop down beside us with a tonne of food. They had nachos, burger king, popcorn, and a strong smell of beer (though I couldn’t say for sure whether they were just unshowered from the night before, or had snuck beer into a matinee). They talked through the whole movie, and made a giant mess of their seats when they left, right down to spilled nacho cheese. It was just astoundingly rude, and I was really close to actually telling them off, except the kids behind us were kicking their seats with reckless abandon, which was pretty entertaining (until they started kicking mine, too).

A day later though, and I’m still left wondering: why show up to a 2:30 movie at 3:10? Why not just wait until 4:45 and actually see both halves of your $13 movie? And if you walk into a theatre that full, that late, and with that much food, why not bite the bullet and plop down in the neckbreakers up front rather than running up and down the stairs for an aisle seat, or pushing past people who are trying to enjoy the movie?

As for the movie itself: I don’t think the 3-D aspect added anything to it. It was already claymation which does tend to “look” 3-D even on flat screens (at least, a bit more than much cel animation), and those 3-D glasses are a little nauseating when worn overtop of my regular glasses. However, it was nice to see it up on the big screen for Halloween weekend, and I’m rather surprised that sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. Rocky Horror gets shown every year like clockwork, but fall is usually a somewhat slow time for the theatres (usually they see the desperate, re-edited/re-shot dregs that couldn’t quite manage a summer release), so I think they might actually do better putting some classic Halloween movies like this (and other horrors) up on one or two screens of the multiplexes… and in areas that are actually close to the demographics that enjoy that sort of thing (i.e.: not woodbridge).

So I just finished telling someone that I was going to stick with Bell rather than Rogers for my phone service because there just wasn’t any price advantage with Rogers for a basic line, and that I had excellent service/sales reps with Bell the last 4 or 5 times I had to call.

The process of moving my line however, is making me reconsider that.

For those that don’t know, I’m going to be moving out of my halfway-to-res (including food fights in the hallways and monthly fire drills!) apartment into a very nice looking house that’s closer to the hospital. That’ll happen around the end of November. I had heard rumours that you could get stuck with last-minute hassles if you don’t give the phone/cable/hydro companies at least 30 days notice of your move, so last week sometime I called and let them know.

The first call went smoothly enough: “Sure thing, November 27, we’ll move that line over for you and it’ll be operating at the new address around 8 am, guaranteed by 5 pm. Would you like wiring insurance for the new place?”

Then, they call back a few days later and were very rude to Wayfare (her summary “hey bitch, you called me!”), and demanded that I call them back without really saying why. When I called back I got a pleasant person who explained that there was a problem with my move order because there was a line already in use there without a move-out order. I said “Hey, it’s a month away, but trust me, they’re moving.” Then I kinda put my foot in my mouth just a little bit by giving them more information than their tiny brains can handle “They should be moving out on the 18th, and I’ll move in the 27th or so.” “Ok sir, I’ve changed your order to move the 18th now.” “Whoa! No! Bad phone monkey! Keep it the 27th of November [at this point I still wasn’t sure of the date we’d move, and figured later was better than early, since we’d probably have to spend a fair bit of time cleaning/painting/repairing the old place after we moved]” “Ok, November 27th it is…”

Sure enough, today, October 27th rolls around aaaaaaaand my phone’s been cut off. The message when I pick up says the phone can only be used to call Bell at 310-BELL, so I do. After dealing with “Emily” I get a tech who speaks very little english with a heavy Indian accent and a fuzzy phone connection. She says that it shows on her screen that my order to move is for November 27th, and also that my line’s been cut off. No idea why that might be, but she can’t do anything about it… I need to call back in the morning for the day staff.

Grr… what happened to leaving a few people on the phones at night with the power to actually do something?

Update: I phoned in this morning, and got a decent person. Turns out the move is November 27, but the cut-off date had been mistakenly entered as October 27. To turn it back on, all they have to do is flip a switch in the central office, which I’m told will happen today… but Wayfare’s having conniption fits because she’s got an important teleconference at 1…

I love Halloween, and I don’t think anyone doubts that (though I’m a little troubled myself that I didn’t bother to make a new Halloween page layout… though my current theme is black all year long… :)

Anyhow, Halloween’s just a great time of year to be a kid, and I get kind of jealous of ones who are real kids (and not just pretend like me), and also feel like I’ve got to help the kids I see have a great Halloween. So it was so incredibly cute when Wayfare & I went to the Shriner’s Haunted Mansion this year and it was full of little ones.

The Shriners do a great job: lots of cool effects, including the ghost effects with split mirrors, an indoor waterfall with a projector, singing skeletons, a swami, a rotating tunnel, a tilted room, and lots of professional touches throughout. While most of the stuff is cool and freaky, not very much is actually scary, so it’s a good place for kids. This year they stepped it up a bit to make it a little scary, but still tolerable for families. At one point they had a long, cave-like tunnel with bats hung around. Then…

Spoiler warning!

… then, a screen came on at the far end and showed a movie of thousands of bats flying across the full moon. The room then went completely dark, and a stick with dangly bits of fabric flew over our heads, got to the other end and came back over us. It was really cool, and while I’ve been to many scarier haunted houses, I haven’t seen that effect before.

So just before we get to that part, two kids come running backwards through the place, telling us about the fright ahead, and that it might be too scary. “Bats! They fly in your hair!” “They might eat your ears!” When we went to go in, they came through with us. What was so cute was that the boy grabbed Wayfare’s hand to go through, and then the little girl sort of got a lock on her elbow… and we’re complete strangers! Wayfare’s just simply that kid & Halloween-friendly :)

So I had a nice weekend in Niagara Falls. It was a little chilly, and a little rainy, but we never got soaked, and it was never so cold that we needed a scarf or hats. And, for the first time, I actually won money at the casino! I hit a $100 payout on one of the slot machines, and it rang the bell and everything.

The casinos are looking a little sad over there. Fallsview is brand new and all, but really all they have going for them is the slot machines: the tables are so expensive that I just simply can’t play them. We were hoping that a cool weekend in October, late at night and early Sunday morning would be quiet enough that they might try a $5 table, but the cheapest we saw was $15 roulette. There were lots of empty tables, so I don’t quite see why they didn’t bother to put someone there to take my money. They can easily get a few hundred an hour even from a $1 table, so the economics seem to be there. And if all there is to do are slot machines, then why go all the way out there? London has slot machines; Woodbine has slot machines… And speaking of slots, they’ve gotten more ridiculous since I was last in a casino. There were some that were so complicated that we just couldn’t figure out why we were or weren’t winning, and we had no idea what to hope would show up. Some had up to 20 different “lines” which is just getting ridiculous. I really didn’t find them fun at all.

I’d recommend the Hilton Garden Inn again: it was a bit out of the way, just about equidistant from St. Catherine’s, Niagara Falls, and Niagara-on-the-Lake. It was no problem to drive into Niagara Falls, park for free at the casino, and walk around from there. Plus, the hotel restaurant was actually great for breakfast, which is a pretty rare thing in a hotel restaurant. I had a waffle with fruit topping and whipped cream, and Wayfare got pancakes, bacon, and hash browns (lots of each), and our total bill came to under $10. Usually, I find hotel restaurants are really over priced because of the “convenience factor”, so this was a really nice surprise. Especially since we ate at the Golden Griddle the day before for twice as much, and it really sucked.

I also had a costume idea: dress up as a ghost and follow people when they turn their back, then look away when they turn to look at me.

I was just reading an article the other night about how random celebrity walk-ons usually signal the impending doom of a TV show, particularly when said celebrities aren’t even guest characters, but merely faces in the background, or themselves. Usually, I agree with that point of view: when you get down to throwing random people into scenes just to try to maintain interest, you’ve probably jumped the shark.

Corner Gas however, seems to be an exception to that, since it’s had random, self-conscious inserts of Canadians pretty much all along. Not an hour after I read that article, Adrienne Clarkson popped on the show to help tear down a barn. After all, what self-respecting Canadian wouldn’t want to help wreck a barn? Anyhow, it just really worked for me, in a way celebrity cameos never really have before. I laughed and laughed, and had just barely stopped laughing by the time they cut back to the former Governor General with a sledgehammer in hand…

I ran into this logic puzzle the other day, and have been thinking about it a lot between Nyquil comas. I will try to explain it as best I can here, but be warned that there are pages of discussion and argument on this as people try to wrap their brains around it. If you want to think about it on your own for a while, then stop reading here.

So, to start with, I’m going to drop the numbers down from what is presented on the xkcd page: let’s say there are 20 people in this weird tribe of logicians, and 5 of them have blue eyes. This better matches the forum discussion, and makes the numbers easier to follow.

A group of people with assorted eye colors live on an island. They are all perfect logicians — if a conclusion can be logically deduced, they will do it instantly. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. If anyone has figured out the color of their own eyes, they [must] leave the island that midnight. Everyone can see everyone else at all times and keeps a count of the number of people they see with each eye color (excluding themselves), but they cannot otherwise communicate. Everyone on the island knows all the rules in this paragraph.

On this island there are 5 blue-eyed people, 15 brown-eyed people, and the Guru (she happens to have green eyes). So any given blue-eyed person can see 15 people with brown eyes and 4 people with blue eyes (and one with green), but that does not tell him his own eye color; it could be 16 brown and 4 blue. Or 15 brown, 4 blue, and he could have red eyes.

The Guru is allowed to speak once (let’s say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:

“I can see someone who has blue eyes.”

Who leaves the island, and on what night?

The answer, [Spoilers!] to start with, is that the blue eyed people would all leave the island together on the 5th night.

The logic looks inductive: if there was one person with blue eyes, they would see a sea of brown eyes, and the gurus words would speak to him, and him alone: he does not see anyone with blue eyes, so therefore he must be the one with blue eyes the guru was speaking about; he would leave the first night. If no one leaves the first night, then everyone knows that everyone else saw at least one other person with blue eyes, so they could not conclude that they were the only one and leave. If there is anyone who only sees one person with blue eyes, then they know that they must also have blue eyes, because otherwise that lone blue eyed person would have left (i.e.: the blue eyed person must have seen someone else with blue eyes, namely them). For every extra blue eyed person, the departure date is delayed one day. If no one left the second night, then there must be three blue eyed people, so anyone who only saw two blued eyed people would leave on the third night.

There are then a few more questions. The first: what information did the guru really add? The guru made it so that not only did everyone see people with blue eyes, she made it so everyone knew everyone knew that there were blue eyes.

The logic proceeds thusly: A person with blue eyes (say #5) sees 4 other people with blue eyes, but may assume that they have brown eyes. So #5 thinks that #4 sees 3 other people with blue eyes, and thinks that #4 thinks #3 sees 2 others; #5 thinks that #4 thinks that #3 thinks that #2 only sees one other, and thus #5 thinks that #4 thinks that #3 thinks that #2 thinks that #1 sees only brown eyed logicians.

The chain of logic is absolutely insane, since #5 knows, directly, that each of #’s 1-4 must see at least 3 others, because he can see all 4 of them. But nonetheless, he knows that each makes those assumptions down the chain. The trick is that at the end of the chain, someone thinks that someone only sees brown, which doesn’t help them guess their eye colour, since they don’t necessarily know that there is at least one blue present [or rather, they don’t think that someone else thinks that they think that they know… ok, it’s making my head hurt follow those chains of reasoning]. Once the guru speaks up, everyone knows that everyone at the bottom of their chains of reasoning knows that blue exists, and thus would deduce their eye colour if the twisted logic played out. It starts the countdown so that by day five, the 5 blue eyed people up and board the ferry.

It really makes my head spin to try to follow all that, especially since I sometimes have problem with the “a pencil” problems to begin with. But here’s the thing that I wonder: following the chain of logic, you know that if no one leaves the first night, it means that the blue eyed people all saw at least one other blue eyed person. Following the chain of guessing what you think the next guy thinks the next guy thinks, you get to the point where the last person hanging in that chain might think they were the only ones and actually leave the first night. So if no one does, that’s new information to act on. But, you also know, in addition to the crazy deduction, that everyone else sees at least one other blue. So no one expects anyone to leave that first night; in that case, is the fact that no one does leave actually new information? Does the chain of reason really continue night after night until they call all leave on the fifth? In fact, with 5 blues there are enough that you can know that not only does everyone else see at least one other blue, but you can know that they know everyone else can see at least one other. Can you move to the next step of waiting for someone to leave on day 4 if you knew nothing would ever happen on day 1?

About a year ago, Rogers cut its newsgroup offerings from the high speed internet service, first using the retarded excuse that it was a den of child porn (perhaps trying to shame people into not complaining?). They quickly retracted that explanation from their website, and instead said that usenet is an outdated, arcane corner of the internet, and that by cutting it they could bring us more high quality services such as free Yahoo 360 blogs (which would have been free even if we weren’t Rogers members).

Anyhow, putting the acrimony in the past, us Rogers users were stuck trying to find an alternate newsgroup provider. I looked around for a while and found that most services were expensive. Some offered unlimited downloads at speeds that could max out the cable connection, but rivalled my cable as a monthly expense. Others offered limited downloads, or limited speed (or both) for less. After looking around for a while, I settled on Astraweb. They seemed to have the best value for money at the time, and most suited my needs: I could buy a block of data transfer, and use it until it ran out, no matter how many months that would take me. Their reputation for reliability and retention was fairly middle-of-the-road on the reviews I read, which was good enough for me.

It’s been over 10 months now, and I’m just coming to the end of my first block of data: I bought 90 GB of transfer for $25 (US), which works out to an average of 8.2 GB/month (I’m on track to finish it at around the 11 month mark), at a cost of about $2.30 (US)/month. That’s pretty damned decent if you’ve tried looking at some of the monthly billed “light” plans that have roughly the same transfer: I think the up-front billing saves them some administrative costs.

I’m also now in a good position to comment on the service. In case you couldn’t tell by my tone above, I think it’s been great value-for-money, and when I use up my last few bytes in the next few weeks, I’ll be buying another 90 GB package (they also have a 280 GB package for $100 US, and I was briefly tempted to jump on that and not have to worry about a usenet server for years… until I did the math and saw that buying 4 90 GB packages is beter. That mathematical oddity is due to the fact that the 90 GB package is usually a 65 GB one, but there’s been a “special” on for the last year or so).

However, saying it’s great value-for-money isn’t quite the same as saying it’s fanstastic. The uptime is very good, there was only one big outage I was aware of, and it only lasted for a day or so. The transfer speeds are adequate, but if you’re impatient or a big user then they will probably not work out for you: I average about 50 kB/s, and let most of my downloads do their thing overnight. At peak times the transfer can dip below 20 kB/s, but that could also be a problem on Rogers’ end. Either way, that’s good enough to get a CD-sized chunk of data before morning, and a DVD-sized chunk of data in about a day or two. In addition to the steady-state speed, there’s also a noticeable delay when opening a connection that’s been idle (loggin in?). They advertise their retention as being 25 days, and it appears to be at least that good. There are some issues with missing parts, a bit worse than I remember on Rogers’ Giganews service. It’s never been so bad that a par2 file or two couldn’t patch it up though.

All-in-all, a good service that should be adequate for most people’s needs, but there are some limitations there for really serious users.

Update: I feel kind of dumb for not thinking about it before, but you have the ability to run more than one thread with some nntp software. I just opened two connections to Astraweb, and they’re both running smoothly at 60 kB/s at the moment, so using more connections may be a way to get better speeds out of Astraweb.

The leaves are barely halfway through changing for the fall, and already we’ve got a snowstorm here:

I actually took the photo fairly early on in the snow, when I thought it was a freak thing we’d never see again. Since then, it’s gotten dark, and the snow is accumulating out there.