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[META] How can I receive NSX as a newsletter? [Jan. 1st, 2032|08:19 pm]

When I first began writing The Non-Sequitur Express in 1999, it was formatted as an email newsletter. That gave you, the reader, a hearty chunk of content in one delivery; but it took absolutely forever to write. Since my life is now more fragmented -- has been for years, just look at the update schedule -- I've resorted to posting in smaller chunks, i.e., as a blog. You'll still get emailed issues of the newsletter, but they'll be digests of the blog entries.

While you're waiting, the easiest way to be apprised of new articles is to use a so-called "RSS aggregator," a piece of software that checks for new postings and harvests them when they appear. Some aggregators are stand-alone software, and others are integrated into free personal-news web services like My Yahoo! Livejournal generates feeds in two standard formats:

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[TV][Review] Stargate Universe [Oct. 11th, 2009|09:05 pm]
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The latest iteration of the Stargate franchise is Stargate Universe (official, Gateworld), in which a mismatched group of Terrans fight to survive when transported to a near-derelict Ancient starship, far far far from home. There's some Star Trek Voyager in the premise, ramped up to post-Battlestar Galactica (2003) levels of stress. And since they can't control the ship's trajectory, Space: 1999.

The three-part premiere, which aired over two weeks, came perilously close to the Eight Deadly Words. There are no entertaining characters -- no sardonic O'Neill, no manic Rodney McKay. Everybody is care-worn, panicked or angry, or combinations thereof. The story didn't bother establishing any allies, antagonists, or sensawunda. Okay, so Dr.Rush promotes the importance of this scientific discovery, but that's kinda abstract; and they're still wondering who attacked the ship. As it stands now, they have three goals: return to Earth, survive the ship, survive each other.

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[CINEMA] Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs [Oct. 11th, 2009|08:51 pm]
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[Currently Reading |"Major Tom" by Shiny Toy Guns (as used in the Lincoln TV ad)]

This may be the best SF movie of 2009 -- certainly more entertaining than Revenge of the Fallen or even Rise of Cobra, and less pretentious than 9. No bombast or violence to dilute the humor and characterization.

The visual humor is very much in the exaggerated Invader ZIM mold. There's a scene with the corpulent mayor that feels like a Baron Harkonnen (Dune) homage. The operating principle of Flint's water-to-food machine reminds one of the Genesis Device from Star Trek II. Visually, Flint's lab is much cooler than Dexter's or Jimmy Neutron's (Flint himself has a habit of shouting the phases of his invention-montages, one of which is "enhancing coolness!"). As for Flint's reaction to weather girl Sam Sparks: she's a meganeko, and consider Kyon's line in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: "It turns out I have a pony tail moe, and your hair that day looked criminally good."

The animation in the first part of credits is... wait, checking Amazon Look Inside... nope, it's not in the style of the original 1978 picture book.
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Archival Technologies of Pern [Sep. 5th, 2009|10:29 am]
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In the 19-book Dragonriders of Pern series (1967 to present) by Anne McCaffrey (and of late, her son Todd), humans colonize the planet Pern to establish an agrarian society, but their low-tech ambitions are rudely accelerated when they're beset by a recurring exobiological threat, the ravenous Thread. They survive for over 2,500 years, but not without repeated and traumatic loss of technique and technology.

In several of the books, we find characters poring through dusty, decaying Records, searching for some key insight. The implication is that Records are logbooks -- weather, harvests, and Threadfall patterns are mentioned explicitly; one also expects human and dragon genealogies. But there's no data reduction: nobody's written monographs dedicated to critical subjects, such as "Human Plagues Through the Second Pass" or "Care and Handling of Watch-Whers."

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PBB Storage Options [Aug. 1st, 2009|11:10 am]
Once your collection of PBBs ("plastic building bricks" -- LEGO, Mega Blok, etc.) grows past a certain size, it's no longer practical to dump them all in a single bucket. Searching for that one part in a medley of 3,000 shapes and 50 colors becomes an exercise in frustration.

Some builders pick re-used or unusual containers that can be gotten cheap: paperboard shoeboxes, Chinese food plastic tubs, clear plastic mushroom bins. But if you're willing to spend some money (less if you wait for sales and coupons), you can buy specialized containers that are durable, visible, stackable, adjustable, and uniform. Here are three manufacturers whose products I've used effectively:

* Option(tm) (a division of Plano Molding Company) - www.CreativeOptionsCrafts.com, Plano IL
* Flambeau ArtBin(r) - www.artbin.com, Middlefield OH
* Sterilite(r) - www.sterilite.com, Townsend MA

Large "shoebox"-type bins are suited for large plates, tires, and awkward Bionicle pieces. Choose the right shapes and you can quickly sift through the mix without worrying about subdivision.

For small "crumb" pieces (under a centimeter in size), use flat compartmentalized containers (nominally designed for fishing tackle, hardware, sewing or beading) may be found in sporting goods, hardware, craft, and department stores. Look for a combination of fixed and movable dividers so that you can adjust each compartment for the volume of parts. Beware movable dividers that span the whole width of the container -- they may slip vertically, letting small elements leak beneath into adjacent compartments.

In both types, look for separate latches instead of lids that clip into place by virtue of their flexibility. The latter type are more prone to popping open if the container is knocked or dropped.
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[OBS & COGS] Dollar Stores vs. Price Differentiation [Jul. 4th, 2009|12:05 pm]
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Despite the TV ad with the exasperated clerk telling the customer "It's. One. Dollar," it turns out that the genus of "dollar store" actually includes a wide range of prices.

Dollar Tree® - "Everything's $1" "Thousands" of stores in 48 states, founded 1953 (under a different name), NASDAQ:DLTR.

Dollar or Two - 3 stores in southeast Pennsylvania.

Dollar General® - Ironically, with many items more than a dollar. Up to $18, in fact (ooh, leftover Transformers from five years ago). 8,400 stores in 35 states.

Family Dollar® - Founded 1959, with 6,600 stores nationwide.

Five Below™ - Up to $5, focusing on teen-fun merchandise. Founded 2002, 80 stores in 7 mid-Atlantic states.

Deal$® - Also up to $5.

After typing all that, the word "dollar" is starting to look funny. "I am Dol-Lar, tyrant of the Centaurids!"
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Lenders: They're in it for the money [Jul. 4th, 2009|12:00 pm]
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For years I received endless pre-approved credit card offers from multiple banks; in 2008 I received 40, half from ##### whom I already had a card with (no, I am not a small business, dummy), a different half as partner offers from leisure providers and non-profits. They stopped altogether in October; oddly, before I replied to one mailing with "PLEASE STOP SENDING!" scrawled in purple across the application form. Coincidentally, consumer lenders contracted sharply at about that time, as one of the many symptoms of the ongoing credit crisis.

So, this spring when I'm looking for a zero-percent intro APR (given some unusually large recent purchases, it would be helpful to spread out my payments), I check my credit score with MyFICO (it's excellent), and confidently apply online to #####. I'm refused. Say what? The system tells me I'll be receiving an explanatory mailing, and when I do so, these are the reasons:

* Revolving account balance(s) are too low
* New account balance(s) are too low
* Too few or no new revolving accounts
* Not a homeowner

The last reason seems reasonable (no other lender has cared in 15 years, but maybe standards have changed). But the first three can only be interpreted as "You're too conscientious and don't carry enough debt to be profitable."

Then I found an equivalent offer from #####, and they accepted me. Yay, somebody likes me! Ahem.
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Airline seating analyzed [Jul. 3rd, 2009|08:49 pm]
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While checking prices, I discovered that the B-777 aircraft used by American Airlines on their U.S.-Japan route have a 2-5-2 seating arrangement. Five seats in the center cluster? Yikes. So, in terms of how many knees you have to climb over, it's (4/9=0 4/9=1 1/9=2), or (0.44, 0.44, 0.11), or a weighted average of 0.66 seats. Or should that computation account for the middle seat having two equal alternative exit routes?

Conversely, B-747s usually have a 3-4-3 arrangement, with (4/10=0 4/10=1 2/10=2), or (0.4, 0.4, 0.2), so 0.8 on average.

But what if the B-777 arranged its seats as 3-3-3? Then (4/9=0, 3/9=1, 2/9=2) = (0.44, 0.33, 0.22) = 0.77. So the B-777 2-5-2 actually inconveniences fewer passengers, despite surrounding the unlucky center-seater with a bigger crowd. Interesting.
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[FOOD] Balance protein bars: Yogurt honey peanut [Jul. 3rd, 2009|03:20 pm]
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In my ongoing experiments to alleviate daytime sleepiness, I decided to add more protein to my carbohydrate-heavy morning diet. I picked Balance-brand yogurt/honey/peanut-type high protein nutrition energy bars, because they were portable. The verdict upon eating one?

It cannot be described and can barely be experienced. Therefore I encouraged family members to experience it, and will now describe it to you.

It was like eating a candle. Rather, like unleavened cookie dough compressed by a neutron star and dipped in a candle. Long ago, my mother made snacks consisting of peanut butter mixed with powdered milk; the interior had that fine-grained, airless texture. The outer "yogurt flavored" coating was nothing like yogurt-covered raisins (added sugar?), or even plain liquid yogurt. Instead, it was waxy. There's nothing odd about wax in food -- it's traditionally mixed with chocolate to improve its melting properties and to provide a sheen -- but this was another species of mouth-feel entirely. The bar was about 11x3x1 cm in size, and massed 50 g, giving it a specific density of 1.5 -- pretty darn dense for a foodstuff.

Foods it did not resemble, in taste or texture: chocolate, nougat-filled candy bars, yogurt-covered raisins, unflavored liquid yogurt, peanut butter, cookie dough, granola bars, sesame-honey bars.

Apparently the foil wrappers are now being collected for recycling by TerraCycle.
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International Coinage of Mystery [Jun. 29th, 2009|08:50 pm]
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I collect American coins, and my box of un-foldered coinage includes miscellaneous international currency. I can identify the origin of the Canadian coins (they diffuse over the border and into cash registers), the Japanese ones (I went to Japan), and the Somali (poor things, stuck to a donor-entreaty card with stickum and sent through the mail). But how did I acquire these other eleven nationalities of specie? And how much info can I glean (country, age, metallurgy), what inferences can I make, without consulting Wikipedia?

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Transformers 2009 promotional partners [Jun. 28th, 2009|05:46 pm]
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Although the TV shows are essentially long-form commercials for the toys, the live-action movies are not. Hasbro (and Japanese partner Takara) financially support their production, but the movies are made by DreamWorks (distributed by Paramount), who licenses the characters -- or character names, mostly. Visual subcontractor ILM designs the robots to director Michael Bay's specs, and then Hasbro has to catch up and make toys. This arrangement has created some strange mismatches between the movie and toy aisle.

Meanwhile, there are the third party companies who provide assistance to production and marketing (nowadays, for a summer blockbuster the budgets for the two are of comparable magnitude), with in-movie product placements and advertising. Paramount claims that such marketing agreements are not meant to defray marketing costs, but to reach otherwise inaccessible locations, e.g. within auto dealerships.

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[POLL] "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" Toy Buying Plans [Jun. 22nd, 2009|09:07 am]
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The second live-action Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen (TF:ROTF), opens in the United States on 24 June 2009. This poll was inspired by a post by "Zobovor" on the Usenet group alt.toys.transformers on 20 June, 2009. It does not include all of the questions Zobovor asked, nor does it cover all possible factors in a toy-buying decision.



For the scaled questions, please answer using the scale 1-5 where 1 means "disagree strongly," 3 means "not a consideration," and 5 means "highly applicable."

(It's also my first use of the Livejournal poll system, so I'm not sure how it'll appear. Aha -- you can't insert paragraphs within the poll (or rather, doing so is futile), so any special instructions must appear outside it; and although the LJ code appears when initially editing the post, you can't edit it subsequently.)


Poll #1419414 "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" Toy Buying Plans
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

Do you plan to see (have you seen) the TF:ROTF movie in theaters?

View Answers

Yes
2 (66.7%)

No
1 (33.3%)

Do you plan to buy (have you bought) TF:ROTF toys?

View Answers

Yes
2 (66.7%)

No
1 (33.3%)

Do you plan to buy (have bought) toys *before* seeing the movie?

View Answers

Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
3 (100.0%)

Do you expect your opinion of the toys will change after seeing the movie?

View Answers

Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
3 (100.0%)

Do you presently consider yourself a "completist" buyer of Transformers toys?

View Answers

Yes
0 (0.0%)

No
3 (100.0%)

Reasons to buy a toy #1: Character depicted in visual fiction (film, TV, comic)

View Answers
Mean: 2.00 Median: 2 Std. Dev 0.82
1 1 (33.3%)
2 1 (33.3%)
3 1 (33.3%)
4 0 (0.0%)
5 0 (0.0%)

Reasons to buy a toy #2: Interesting transformation

View Answers
Mean: 4.67 Median: 5 Std. Dev 0.47
1 0 (0.0%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 0 (0.0%)
4 1 (33.3%)
5 2 (66.7%)

Reasons to buy a toy #3: Visual design (shape, color)

View Answers
Mean: 4.00 Median: 4 Std. Dev 0.00
1 0 (0.0%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 0 (0.0%)
4 3 (100.0%)
5 0 (0.0%)

Reasons to buy a toy #4: Fun to play with

View Answers
Mean: 4.33 Median: 4 Std. Dev 0.47
1 0 (0.0%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 0 (0.0%)
4 2 (66.7%)
5 1 (33.3%)

Reasons to *not* buy a toy #1: Price (individual toy is too expensive)

View Answers
Mean: 3.67 Median: 4 Std. Dev 0.47
1 0 (0.0%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 1 (33.3%)
4 2 (66.7%)
5 0 (0.0%)

Reasons to *not* buy a toy #2: Budget (selective about which toys)

View Answers
Mean: 4.67 Median: 5 Std. Dev 0.47
1 0 (0.0%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 0 (0.0%)
4 1 (33.3%)
5 2 (66.7%)

Reasons to *not* buy a toy #3: Storage space (house is full)

View Answers
Mean: 3.33 Median: 4 Std. Dev 1.70
1 1 (33.3%)
2 0 (0.0%)
3 0 (0.0%)
4 1 (33.3%)
5 1 (33.3%)
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[CONS] Wizard World Philadelphia 2009 [Jun. 20th, 2009|09:31 pm]
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Wizard World Philadelphia 2009 was held, as usual, in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. It seemed visibly smaller than 2008, although I only have the 2007 program book handy for an objective comparison. There were fewer hall costumes, and many fewer anime costumes, but many characters I hadn't seen previously depicted. The DelVaLUG LEGO club did not exhibit, as most of the potential contributors were in Chicago for BrickWorld.

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A sense of scale: Sun workstations c.1992 [May. 17th, 2009|12:42 pm]
In my physical file of computing history, I found some sales brochures for Sun Microsystems professional workstations, dating from the early 1990s -- I'd collected them from RPI's campus computer store. There's a product comparison table in one book:

The entry-level SPARCstation ELC ran at 3 MFLOPS and 21 MIPS, had 8 MB of memory expandable to 64, no internal disk, and an external disk of up to 5.2 GB. The top-of-the-line SPARCstation 2 ran at 4.2 and 28.5, contained 32 MB expandable to 128, and internal/external disk of 848 MB and 20.8 GB. These were the quality of platform on which we ran SunOS Unix, X Windows with the Motif Windows Manager, the MAPLE symbolic algebra package, ProEngineer 3D CAD, and the Mosaic web browser. Well, not so much "ran" as "staggered," sometimes.

Consider that at this time, the Intel 80486 microprocessor family could run at up to 27 MIPS, and ten years later the Penium 4 was executing over 10,000 MIPS (Wikipedia). And that nowadays your average PC has a HDD of 300+ GB, and you can buy 8 GB of portable flash RAM for under $30.

Now, where's Ray Kurzweil and his chart of exponential S-curves of computer price-performance? (Here's a version of that talk from 2001.)

(Measurements of "instructions per second" are not comparable across architectures and are based on artificial benchmarks (claims Wikipedia), but the magnitude of the numbers gives you an idea. The Sun brochure's table also lists a "SPECmark" value, which given its 1991 printing is probably a predecessor to the SPECint test suite.)
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This margin is too small, and so is the page [May. 17th, 2009|12:28 pm]
While perusing my stack of "read these before deciding to discard them" historical materials, I found some notes I'd taken in the mid-'90s on the history of computing. I'd produced a set of branched timelines, drawn on 14-inch-wide form-feed printer paper. The diagrams suffer the fate of the physically constrained, i.e., some parts of the page are cramped, and the lines loop and twist in search of parts that aren't. Comprehensible the morass is not; I had been aiming for something like the information graphics sold at HistoryShots.

I now appreciate why notecards and pinned lengths of yarn are the preferred method of connectivity-plotting for TV detectives. On the flip side, you can't very well compact a bulletin board (or wall) and stuff it in a file folder.

The obvious alternative is a computer graphics program, but someone once pointed out that the "desktop" metaphor is really more of an "airplane window." Even the biggest screens are a fraction the size of a physical desk or wall-sized whiteboard -- doubly so given pixel resolution limits. To what degree has human thought been constrained over the past 30 years by squeezing through a viewport? And can human thought be compared to pasta dough?
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[ENUMERATE] Retail customer-response surveys [May. 2nd, 2009|06:09 pm]
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Many retailers gauge their performance with customer-response surveys. These are promoted on the sales receipts and entice response with sweepstakes prizes, but you have to remember to look at the receipt within the response window. Over the past four months I've encountered the following:

* Best Buy at BestBuyCares.com, $5,000 shopping spree per three-month drawing period
* Circuit City (defunct) "Customer First Survey" at CircuitCity.com/survey, five $1,000 gift cards
* GameStop at TellGameStop.com, PS3 and Wii
* Kmart at KmartFeedback.com, one $2,500 gift card; respond within seven days
* Rite Aid by phone, $10,000, 14 days
* Staples at staples-survey.com, $5,000 shopping spree, seven days
* Target at target.com/survey, $5,000 gift card
* Toys "R" Us at tru-surveys.com, $500, three days
* Ulta at survey.ulta.com, one $500 gift card per month
* Walmart at www.survey.walmart.com, one of five $1,000 shopping cards, two weeks

Now, if the retailers could just program their inventory databases and POSTs (point of sale terminals) with comprehensible abbreviations for each item on the receipt...
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[OBS & COGS] [May. 2nd, 2009|11:18 am]
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Have you ever considered just how odd the concept of "family pet" really is? Non-human animals that we permit to wander the house among us, and that exist on our sufferance. Consider these categories:

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[TV] Challenge of the Superfriends: The World's Deadliest Game (1978) [Apr. 23rd, 2009|10:09 pm]
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There are two ways to react: To say "the writers don't understand (or don't care about) scientific plausibility," or to take it all at face-value and consider the consequences, even if they're seemingly inconsistent with the milieu.

Consider these facts:

* Brainiac has a pistol-sized device that can "cloak" (Trek influence?) all of Earth.

* Hawkman and Black Vulcan are able to operate unsuited in space, and Wonder Woman needs nothing more than a helmet. (Later, the other Superfriends require the protection of Green Lantern's forcefield.) Moreover, they (hereafter ID'd as "the trio") are able to travel at high FTL velocities.

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[ANIME] Trailer for "Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0" [Apr. 23rd, 2009|09:46 pm]
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The latest iteration of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime franchise is a planned series of four theatrical movies, called Rebuild of Evangelion.

The first episode, 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone, premiered in September 2007, and I was able to see it in Japan while I was attending the Worldcon. It hewed closely to the trajectory of the original 1995 TV series; word is, it did so to ease new and returning viewers into the story, and the subsequent three episodes will diverge greatly from the familiar plot. Although it used the original storyboards, they were re-animated at cinema quality, and CGI was used for scenes of giant-monster combat and giant civil engineering. (Somehow, Japan still hasn't figured out how to effectively integrate CGI and 2D hand-drawn animation; certainly not to the level of Futurama.)

The second episode, 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, will open on June 26, 2009. A 95-second trailer is available on YouTube. As with promos for the first segment, there's an emphasis on the structures of Tokyo-3, with only tantalizing glimpses of the redesigned Angels (the antagonist-creatures of the story), and it looks like there's a major human presence on the moon.

In other news, a mysterious new character first seen in 1.0's TV-style preview for 2.0, and later in posters, has been identified as MAKINAMI Mari Illustrious. (As with many of the characters in the story, part of her name is based on a WWII warship.) Exactly how her insertion will affect the established dynamic between the teenage and adult characters is, of course, unknown.

The anime-import company FUNimation has licensed the film for R1 DVD distribution. Although the deal was announced in December 2008, it's not yet available on U.S. store shelves.
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[TRAVEL] Disney's Epcot [Apr. 4th, 2009|10:50 pm]
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Disney's Epcot (no longer "EPCOT Center" -- Disney abandoned the whole "prototype community" thing years ago) makes Universal Orlando look downright chintzy. The admission fee is higher, and you can see where Disney puts the money. Plants! World architecture! Polished wooden queue railings! Fountains and LED lighting! Rainbow-sparkling floors and fiber-optic pavers!

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