ctrl.altered.mind

A meta-chart representation to help pick the correct type of chart. Interestingly, tree maps are missing from the list.

flowchart for selecting the correct chart type

I just upgraded my blog to the new Wordpress 2.7 release. Took all of three minutes (just a single click to reconnect the database, most of the time required was for uploading the new files to the server).

The new version of Wordpress (my blogging platform of choice) has a very cool new social news aspect to it. The dashboard shows popular blog posts from around the world that are related to the content on your own weblog. This is exactly how I found this interesting photoblog post by Matt Mullenweg, who apparently just visited the Taj Mahal in Agra with Om Malik, a well-known web and technology writer (and founder of the GigaOm network of technology blogs).

I found this comparative piece via reddit, but it has been floating around on the internet and a multitude of blogs for a while.

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight….

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re ‘exotic’ and ‘different.’

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re an American story.

If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you’re a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, then you’re well- grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, help register 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, 8 years as a State Senator of a district of 750,000 people, chair the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, sponsor 131 bills, and serve on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.

If your resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town of 7,000 people, 2 years as governor of a state of 650,000 people, you’re qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, left your ill wife, and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the use of birth control, you erode the fiber of American society.

If you staunchly advocate abstinence-only education, while your teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, you don’t represent America’s family values.

If your husband is called ‘First Dude’, has a DWI conviction, didn’t register to vote until 25, and was a member of a group that advocated secession of Alaska from the USA, yours is the quintessential American family.

And, finally, if you’re famous for your quick temper, you’re the one to have your finger on the red nuclear button.

OK, much clearer now.

This video is the opening sequence of the movie, Lord of War.

Music: Buffalo Springfield “For what it’s worth”

With the Republican National Convention wrapping up in St. Paul last week, the experience of playing host to one of the most criticized political group has left behind all kinds of taste in the minds of the people of the Twin Cities. The worst part about the police proactively rounding up innocent citizens and journalists and charging them as ‘terrorists’ under the Patriot Act (seriously, do you guys even know what terrorism means?), is the fact that the mayor and media have remained mum on the journalism crackdown. There are severe cracks developing in this pillar of democracy.

Here are a couple of pictures from a friend’s Flickr photo stream. The first picture depicts riot police prepared to take on a peaceful march about poverty and homelessness.

The most interesting fact I learned today, is that eggs get cooked as a function of temperature, and not time - which means that boiling an egg for about ten minutes is actually the wrong way to cook your egg. Cooking for Eggheads, featured in Discover Magazine, has the details.

Recall that when an egg cooks, its proteins first unwind and then link to form a rigidifying mesh. But not all its proteins solidify at the same temperature. Ovotransferrin, the first of the egg-white proteins to uncoil, begins to set at around 61 degrees Celsius, or 142°F. Ovalbumin, the most abundant egg-white protein, coagulates at 184°F. Yolk proteins generally fall in between, with most starting to solidify when they approach 158°F. Thus, cooking an egg at 158°F or so should achieve both a firmed-up yolk and still-tender whites, since at that low temperature only some of the egg-white proteins will have coagulated.

The gastronomic experience varies widely with the actual temperature at which the food is cooked. Understanding protein chemistry could possibly improve the experimentation process that is carried out in my kitchen in the name of cooking.

If the title of this post was not enough as a hint, I got the following text as an email forward from dear family. Some of these present wise advice, and therefore, I shall share them with everyone chancing upon this blog.

(Text has been cleared of all obnoxious font typography, size, and color for your reading pleasure)

If a dog was the teacher you would learn stuff like:

When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.

Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.

Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.

When it’s in your best interest, practice obedience.

Let others know when they’ve invaded your territory.

Take naps.

Stretch before rising.

Run, romp, and play daily.

Thrive on attention and let people touch you.

Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.

On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass.

On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.

When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body.

No matter how often you’re scolded, don’t buy into the guilt thing and pout … run right back and make friends.

Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.

Eat with gusto and enthusiasm. Stop when you have had enough.

Be loyal. Never pretend to be something you’re not.

If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.

When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.

For those not in the know, a meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. The rest of you would be aware that memes can either trigger bloggers block or induce feverish and passionate mashing of input keys on a digital computing appliance. Known factors affecting response to stimulus include time of day, caffeine content, length (and width?) of pending tasks list(s) for the subject. Side effects to remain undisclosed until FDA approval.

If all that sounded like gibberish, you must be new to the internet. Check this link for a quick tutorial on the neo-cultural phenomenon that is a meme.

Alright, if you haven’t guessed by now - yes, I have been tagged for reciprocating to a meme. It doesn’t happen often, but when one does get flung my way, it usually is followed by a few moments of pause, which are followed by thoughts revolving around the theme, “how should one go about responding to this meme”. Well, fortunately this particular one appears to be not too complicated, so here goes -

First things first - I was tagged by the Bluelicious blogger.

Next, to lay out the rules -
- Link the person who tagged you.
- Mention the rules in your blog.
- Tell us about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
- Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
- Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Unspectacular Quirk #1:
I’m slightly compulsive when it comes to text formatting (in addition to spelling, but that has been covered before). Before sitting down to peruse a digital document, I must go through a set of re-formatting tasks to make the text more pleasing to my eye (caveat: the document has to be editable, of course.. if it isn’t, I am sure I won’t be giving it 100% attention). I have to right-justify paragraphs, insert whitespace as appropriate (or remove redundant line breaks), and switch fonts if necessary to a personal favorite. If I’m dealing with computer code, I will go through additional routines like replacing tabs with spaces (depends on the computer language and currently active text editor).

Unspectacular Quirk #2:
This one is fairly new, and I hope it does not become an impulsive habit. If I am at the computer when I come across a new interesting word or phrase (or personality), I tend to google it for etymological references and usage. I am likely to also check the wikipedia link for additional trivial knowledge accumulation.

Unspectacular Quirk #3:
In restaurants, I tend to choose corner booths by the window (even if the weather is dreary).

Unspectacular Quirk #4:
Speaking of quirks, I am intrigued by (and often even go looking for) easter eggs and unusual usages in computer programs and hardware. As far as microcode programming is concerned, I regularly realize usage quirks for C that I picked up as a graduate student, which conflict with the way the ARM compiler likes its code. I’ll spare the details in the general interests of this weblog.

Unspectacular Quirk #5:
In large parking lots, quite often I park my car at farther distances from the entrance. Surprisingly, I don’t consciously do this at work. Perhaps I should start tomorrow.

Unspectacular Quirk #6:
I am officially addicted to getting my world and offbeat news from Reddit. I have even found myself guilty of opening Reddit in a new browser tab, only to realize that I already had it open in an older one. More proof that I’m getting old.

There (phew). I can’t believe how unspectacular those quirks of mine are! If you’re still reading this pointless passage, you might as well go on to read the hopefully more captivating lists the following people-who-are-about-to-be-tagged are going to make. You can even call it a sociological experiment, if you want to sound important.

Mike
Murali
raison d’etre
Sean
Rohit
// placeholder*

* That’s five. Note to self - befriend more bloggers for the sole purpose of dissemination of vital cultural exchanges such as this one.

This has got to be the most uplifting video I have seen this week (or perhaps this year). The outro is especially outstanding.

With no one to count on. Yet.

Image from the ProseBeforeHos weblog