So evidently there’s an underground club in Menlo Park where tech geeks can get together every couple of weeks and unload on each other. I have to say that I’m very interested. I won’t rule out the possibility of me tracking one of these places down and having a go. I’m sure it’ll be pretty mainstream (at least relative to now) due to this recent exposure.

I do agree that it’s quite healthy; here you have these highly evolved intellectuals who sit around and make other people happy all day through technical problem-solving. The human animal, however, demands a release of primal tension, and sex and violence are the natural ways to do this. When it comes to the violence piece, this type of organization is one of the very few ways to become ultra-aggressive in a … civilized way.

Given my love of MMA and my acknowledgement of the need for primal release, I think partaking (or at least witnessing) one of these events might be in my future. Very intruiging indeed.

Link: Bay Area Geeks Creat Real-Life Fight Club

Ice in milk.

Yes, some people put ice in milk. So you get watery milk, with ice floating in it. Not thick, substantive, milk, and not clean, refreshing water. It’s something in between, and it’s no doubt the source of infinite evil.

So I’ve been in New York (upstate) on business for the last week and tomorrow I’m ending the event with a trip to New York City. It’ll be the first time for me, and I am, of course, heading to the new Apple store.

I have the image capture device ready, so I’ll be making use of my highly neglected Flikr account upon my return.

Most think Matt Hughes is either going to knock out Royce Gracie or get submitted. I have another opinion.

I think Matt’s going to win by submission.

I’m not saying that Royce will tap — I don’t think he will — but I think he’ll either get choked out or the ref will call the fight due to impending breakage (if not breakage).

So that’s it then — Matt by submission. You heard it here first.

During a recent assessment I noticed that I was getting back (or, not getting back, as it were) a filtered response to nmap and hping SYN scans. That’s normal enough for sites that drop incoming scan traffic, but the weird part was that if I used a standard connect scan, i.e. one that completes the three-way-handshake, I would get back a ton of open ports on the same host.

So if I did a “regular” scan, I’d send a SYN, get back a SYN-ACK, and then respond with an ACK. Fair enough, but if I sent just the SYN from nmap or tcpdump, the host would not respond at all. Well, after a couple of minutes of head-scratching, logic revealed the path to the truth:

Link: Not All SYN Packets Are Created Equal

So I’m starting the Shangri-La diet today.

For those not in the know, it’s getting a lot of buzz lately, mostly because it’s supposed to be so easy and yield such great results. Who doesn’t want that, right?

Well, I finished the book yesterday and I have a couple of observations. First off, it’s not a diet to me. Meaning, it’s not a way to eat, per say.

To me, it’s little more than an interesting physiological technique for reducing one’s desire to eat. In short, it’s an appetite suppresant.

Lifestyle, not Tricks

In my view, this system is good for only one type of person — the person who wants to do a “real” diet but lacks the willpower to do so. When I say “real” diet, what I really mean is a lifestyle change when it comes to eating and excercising.

To put it another way, this Shangri-La system should be used as a tool to help one do the right thing — not be considered the right thing itself. Anyone who makes that mistake is going to get slapped back to reality sooner rather than later.

I find it interesting and useful for two reasons. First, I think that being overweight is all about lifestyle. And I think that changing one’s lifestyle while heavy is very difficult. Often times a boost at the beginning is very beneficial, and I think this system can serve as that boost. It’s a vicious cycle being fat — too tired to excercise so why not just sit on the couch. Since I’m on the couch I might as well eat. Since I just ate I might as well take a nap. Wow, nice life.

I find that the lack of energy is the most damaging symptom of being overweight; it’s the one that leads to the other bad habits. As such, I think a quick boost of energy resulting from some fast weight loss (then leading to motivation to do a couple workouts and/or eat more healthy), will lead to a good amount of positive momentum. That momentum can then be translated into actually living right, i.e. eating smaller meals, eating healthier meals, working out more, etc.

In short, I see this system as nothing more than an interesting catalyst toward a proper diet — not a diet in and of itself.

My Approach

So anyway, here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Sugar water (3Tbs/1 Liter of Water) twice a day.
2. Make a serious effort to reduce portion size. Not limit what I eat, just how much.
3. Head to my brand new grocery store and stock up on some healthy frozen dinners (do they make those?), as well as some fruit and vegetable snacks.
4. Try and get out and walk for half an hour at least every other night.
5. Head to the gym at least once a week. That’s not much, but it’s way more than usual.

Basically, I’m going to make some minor changes that I think I can sustain. Not major changes that are impossible to stick to, just minor ones that don’t take a huge amount of effort. I don’t think this is going to result in that much weight loss, but I think it’ll be enjoyable to see what it does do.

So, starting now, I weigh 250lbs (6′1”). It’s the 15th of May. I’ll keep you updated.

–

Update 1 (05.20.06) Things not going well. I can’t stand drinking that sweet water; it’s very strange. Not giving up yet, but I almost feel as if I can simply control my portion size and other eating habits without the need for this appetite trick. We’ll see, though. Heading to New York for the week. Will check in soon.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — San Jose Sharks fans loudly booed the Canadian national anthem Sunday night before Game 5 of their team’s second-round playoff series with the Edmonton Oilers.

I find this disgusting, and I can’t help wonder what the average I.Q. and level of education was in this stellar crowd. I’ll bet it was in line with an average small, third-world villiage with little electricity or potable water. They’re mouthbreathers (the people in the crowd, not the people in the villiage).

I’m growing very tired of ignorant people. I think they should identify those who did the booing (video?) and restrict every one of them from going to NHL games for a year. I say that only because it’s not legal to sterilize or shoot them.

The funny thing is that I don’t have to worry about the people who did this seeing this post and getting angry. Why?

Because they don’t read blogs.

If they did read blogs, or otherwise spent any amount of time online instead of watching DVDs and reproducing, they wouldn’t be booing during another country’s national anthem.

I’ve had a weird idea for many years now and never have got around to putting it on, er, paper.

The idea is that listening to off-beat tempos, rythyms, and especially drum signatures, does something positive to one’s ability to think. Or more specifically, those who try and learn these more complex alternatives to the standard, run-of-the-mill tempos will gain an advantage in the realm of problem solving. Or perhaps it’s even more powerful than that; perhaps it allows one to approach life from a different perspective in more applications than simply problem-solving.

Yes, it’s wacky — no doubt, but I can’t help but feel that it has some merit to it. My inner cynic tells me, however, that because I like Tool, and Rush, and a bunch of other bands that employ these types of non-standard signatures, and I also would like to think of myself as being above average at problem-solving, I am attempting to manufacture a relationship between the two when there isn’t one.

So that’s an option as well, to be sure, but I can’t help but still feel that there’s something to this idea. Thoughts?

I made it to the front page of Digg yesterday for the first time — very exciting stuff. What’s not so exciting is that my web server was not available for the few hours that it was being obliterated by Digg users. I can’t imagine how many tried to see the article but weren’t able to while my server was reduced to a foul-smelling liquid.

Anyway, I’ll be taking a look at the logs to see what the bottleneck was: apache, the database, bandwidth, or some combination of the three. Looks like I may be in for an upgrade to the server, assuming it’s not cost prohibitive. But first I have to find out which piece took the beating…

“To affect something is to change or influence it, To effect something is a rather formal way of saying `to make it happen’. Confusingly, either may produce an ‘effect’ or result.

Link: AskOxford