David Gessel
A week of tweets: 2010-04-25
- Wow…. use for an iPad! http://www.wimp.com/catipad/ #
- Mercedes E350! Thanks Hertz! Actually has an ipod interface too! #
- Awesome! beware the cloud: if you don’t own the hardware, you don’t own the data. All big targets will be p0wned #
- brilliant research technique! http://www.xkcd.com/715/ #
- At dorkbot, analee newlitz speaking against immortality. #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Facebook Open Graph
AWESOME! Facebook open graph lets you grab data from facebook with an oauth connection. They hand back some amazing data for your exploitation pleasure. You get automatic login with a default privacy set to allow. I’m sure they will carefully vet every site they give permit, just like they say they will, and so you can be sure they’ve visited the companies, performed background checks and submitted everyone at the applying company to a lie detector test.
;-)
Until then try the sample code so you can see what sorts of things you get back, like this query:
Then vary the object ID. (..com/objectid?acc…) Poking around to 4 I get:
{ “id”: “4”, “name”: “Mark Zuckerberg”, “first_name”: “Mark”, “last_name”: “Zuckerberg”, “link”: “http://www.facebook.com/zuck”, “birthday”: “05/14/1984”, “work”: [ { “employer”: { “id”: 20531316728, “name”: “Facebook” }, “start_date”: “2004-02” } ], “education”: [ { “school”: { “id”: 105930651606, “name”: “Harvard University” }, “concentration”: [ { “id”: 111394625549982, “name”: “Computer Science” } ] }, { “school”: { “id”: 108366532520435, “name”: “Phillips Exeter Academy” }, “year”: { “id”: 115476681798224, “name”: “2002” } } ], “timezone”: -7, “updated_time”: “2010-02-14T09:05:15+0000” }
Substitute any username for the query object and get that user’s profile (friend or not). Increment through all possible object IDs and collect the entire FB data set.

<http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v343/124/38/500082942/n500082942_899423_8366.jpg>
14 is a really lucky number
Catching up on back xkcd, I saw this absolutely brilliant gem of data presentation (though line charts inaccurately suggest the interpolated data is meaningful) and had to try it out myself.
I searched for “I’ve had sex with <x> people” and varied x from 1 (person) to 50 (people). After about 15 it gets kind of boring, but for some reason 14 is the 3rd most frequent answer after 5. 4 is the most common, 5 the second, then 14. 8 also stands out as anomalously frequent, more than twice the frequency of 7 or 9, but we already knew 8 is a lucky number; clearly 14 is the right answer for number of sexual partners.
Now this inspires another search for “<x> is a lucky number,” and there’s almost an inverse correlation. 8 is a lucky number, but 14 is much less lucky than 13. Perhaps with this illuminating data analysis, people will realize that 14 really is the luckiest number and drop the fascination with 13.
A week of tweets: 2010-04-18
- Tosh.0 is so very wrong I feel debased by every snorking laugh. But I can almost rationalize it as job-relevant research. #
- New ual comforters are pretty deluxe. Off to iad today, night at carolyn’s apt then DCA-YYZ at 0600, carolyn’s creative sol to late flgihts #
- Basically took a taxi from IAD to DCA with 2 horizontal hours and a shower on the way. #
- Excellent weather in canada, warmer and dryer than SF. Back there for a night, then LA. #
- First a bad hydraulic pump, now bad air conditioning. I just want my 12 hours at home this week! Need clean socks… #
- OMG. A woman complain hot air was blowing on her. Turned our plane around and now will deboard for tests. Seatmate and I: “man up, lady.” #
- Ugh. United 153 STILL on decision due to ac problem. Missed DCA flt by minutes, they couldn’t get ord-iad-dca-ord-lax… Dang #
- New rental: infinity M35, thanks Hertz! But no usb port for audio? What is this, 2005? #
- Twitter home page fail http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XcqO8oXJMk odd that it was stuck on one tweet. It seems fixed now. #
- LAX is dead due to icland’s volcano. It’s Tops tonight. #
- Crazy lady wanted boarding pass. She is on list, will get on flt, has to wait turn as list processed. This unacceptable. UAL win: PAX fail. #
- Excellent hamburger in a 1935 diner, watching a vintage street car go by, a good end to a busy week. #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Multi-Lingual Graffiti
The “Vulva” theme has faded, this is a thought-provoking replacement.
Wierd widescreen
My UAL flight had 4:3 side screens and a 16:9 center screen. The program material was 4:3 and dynamically distorted to fit the 16:9 screen.
Now I’m used to 16:9 screens showing horribly distorted video in hotel rooms; it seems every hotel has invested in wide screen TVs but, hey, broadcast is 4:3. So they’re fixed at “stretch” and only occasionally do you find a TV that you can reset to pillar box so it doesn’t look horrible. And I thought that was bad.
But this is amazing – the screen has a variable distortion field – stretch is zero in the center, but becomes more pronounced on the edges. That means that the necessary compensation is worse than 2:1 on the outside edges, just horribly distorted, while the center is undistorted. I suppose the theory was an analog of fovial vision… gone awry, but the result is just weird, disturbing when someone walks across the screen and seems to get twice as fat from center to edge. Who thought that was a good idea?
People: do not distort the image. Just because you paid for the pixels does not mean you must use them.
Air Canada Takes a Step Back In Time
Back to the mid 1990s before airlines realized that giving free wifi in their clubs would encourage people to become members and that they’d make more money on the membership fees than on screwing people for access charges. Besides, most of us have WWAN cards now.
$9.95 for 10 minutes of access before my flight. Sorry, no. Even if the WWAN roaming is more expensive, it is a matter of principal.
My nuts are cold
UAL Triple 7, three class plane, cross country flight (SFO-IAD): about as far as you can fly CONUS to CONUS, and I can’t get my nuts warmed?
I’d trade the puffy comforter for warm nuts any day.
A week of tweets: 2010-04-11
- United FA union on strike at SFO: apparently 7 years without a contract. #
- Thanks Hertz, for the fx35. Like the Gen2 NeverLost. Phone bonds easily, but “my car” is an odd I’d for a r #
- The cybersecurity act does suck. srsly But not the commentator… #
- Best easter egg hunt ever! http://www.flickr.com/photos/26639011@N06/4503641430/in/photostream/ #
- Looking forward to Its Tops in about two hours. @Semb? #
- Yum. California PIG, jack, med rare, o-rings. Anchor steam. #
- Oh no! Kotobuki on Piedmont Moved! Been going 15 yrs. #
Powered by Twitter Tools