Audiosurf album "review" : What's Going On

Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is a tremendous album to listen to that seems to have been overlooked by the really good Audiosurfers, probably because the tracks are mostly uphill and less "difficult". That just means there's lots of opportunity for a third-tier player like me to top the high score lists.

1. What's Going On. This track goes uphill and is then levels out, with some bumps along the way. Not a terribly interesting visually, but a great song.
2. What's Happening Brother. Uphill climb followed by a gradual bumpy downhill. Pretty busy (traffic 200). None of the good audiosurfers have played this song, so I'm top dog.
3. Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky). A small normal-ish curve followed by a level-but-bumpy section followed by a loooong uphill to end the song.
4. Save the Children. Traffic 155 - mostly uphill with a little dip before the final ascent. A little confusing at the end because this is one of the songs that leads right into the next, so the track break is a little artificial. Gonna have this problem with the Abbey Road album, too.
5. God is Love. Straight downhill, traffic 255, but apparently I'm the only person in the world to play this song. This is what happens in an iTunes culture. Nobody has albums any more. This song also runs right into the next.
6. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology). Traffic 181. Shaped like Flyin' High, but smoother and with a shorter level spot. It took my three runs, but I got the top spot -- where the heck are the good surfers? I would have thought that they'd all be out for this one.
7. Right On. 7:30, smooth, uphill, relatively low traffic of 170. Only one person has played it on elite, but I have no shot at beating their score... maybe I do? After three plays, I managed to claw over 300,000 and within striking distance of Murky's 318K. 22 minutes is more time than I wanted to spend on this.
8. Wholy Holy. No one else has played Elite on this, so I let Connor play it.
9. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler). Traffic 111. Uphill, but only steep at the beginning and end.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Not a great film, especially after having read the book, but how does Marilyn Monroe manage to wiggle her hips in that outfit she's wearing in the opening number? Jane Russell looks stiff by comparison in those first seconds. That's all I remember from the opening number. In fact, while there must have been other musical numbers, the only ones I remember are "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" and "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". The point of the latter seems to be to get Monroe to lift her arms above her head, and the former *should* be to show off Jane Russell, but all I remember are the guys in flesh-colored bathing suits... and Russell falling into the pool at the end of the number.

It's annoying that all the musical numbers are REALLY LOUD in comparison to the spoken dialogue, especialy Monroe's breathy little squeaks that are so, so wrong for the character -- Lorelei is not insipid, it's... how best to put it? I think Lauren Graham with a blonde wig and a script by Amy Sherman could nail it.

With a few exceptions, the new dialogue is mostly forgettable, and they flub the use of some of the best quotes from the book, most particularly the one about Lady Beekman's hat.

== spoilers ==

It's not worth going into all the changes, because the musical is not intended to be a faithful adaptation of the book, but I'll take a passing shot at the detective, who was particularly weak.

Then there's Lorelei's statement: "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it." This is sort-of funny, but it should be unnecessary. We should *see* Lorelei being smart, not *told*. Up to this point, we've seen far too little of Lorelei really being smart. In fact, all I can think of is her conversation with the maître d'. That's a problem.

So, what did work for me? Henry Spofford making an appearance as a small boy was dippy but actually funny in both scenes he was in. They played it just right. Monroe's delivery of the line "It'll take an hour and 45 minutes." Just about all of Russell's performance, but most particularly when Dorothy is pretending to be Lorelei in court. It's a hilarious spoof of Monroe's delivery.

Audiosurf album "review" : ABBA Gold

It's first alphabetically in our collection, so it'll be first here. Right now I'm playing Pointman Elite, which means I suck on all downhill runs with traffic > 200. ABBA is also very popular, so little hope of reaching the top any high score lists here.

Overall, my favorites were Dancing Queen, Knowing Me Knowing You, Lay All Your Love on Me, and Waterloo. Take a Chance on Me and the ones like S.O.S. were also good runs, but I think my opinions on Dancing Queen and Take a Chance on Me are biased because I particularly like those songs. Individual comments follow:

1. Dancing Queen. Downhill, traffic 237, mega-popular. I do manage to crack the top 11 (for now) with 173,074.
2. Knowing Me, Knowing You. Wavy, mostly downhill, traffic 170. Less popular, but GeoLuz and gerontious are way out of my league. Still managed 3rd (every once in a while I can top AVengerROcks, but I'm probably more in the same skill class with FrenchLady101)
3. Take a Chance on Me. Overall no incline or decline, but bumpy, traffic 212. I managed 10th, but I think I flubbed the run a little.
4. Mamma Mia. Missed a clean finish, out of top 10. I never did like this song.
5. Lay All Your Love on Me. Maybe there's something to liking the song, though it certainly helped that this was uphill. Great run, I'm 4th on the list.
6. Super Trouper. Another uphill track, and I had a good run despite changing the lyrics to "Pooper Scooper" in my head. Don't know if I'll make it through the whole album; I'd forgotten how marginal some of these hits were.
7. I Have a Dream. A downhill but mostly gentle ride with relatively low traffic (147).
8. The Winner Takes it All. It starts as a bell curve, but pulls up short for a final incline before the final downhill run.
9. Money, Money, Money. Didn't finish clean and yet ended up in the top ten. I could probably even get into the top five, but I really dislike this song.
10. S.O.S. Mostly downhill with a few pauses between each run. I actually should be able to beat gerontious's score on this one, but the effort wouldn't be worth momentarily being on top.
11. Chiquitita. Ack. This is one where there's no chance of catching gerontious, but I missed the clean finish and could have placed higher on the chart.
12. Fernando. Sort of like the S.O.S. run with larger uphill pauses between each downhill run. Another one where the very top players are out of reach, but third is actually achievable.
13. Voulez Vous. Another downhill run, more like Knowing Me, Knowing You than Dancing Queen. It's getting to the point where, going in to any song, I know that by Clean Finishing I'll end up with roughly double the value of the gold medal score.
14. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). Mostly uphill with a few mini-valleys. Bumpy, jarring. Not much fun.
15. Does Your Mother Know. No overall incline or decline with a couple of small valleys, until a final downhill run at the end. Bumpy, jarring, not much fun.
16. One of Us. An initial uphill and then overall level, but bumpy, first place is within striking distance. Not an inspiring run, except for placing 2nd, 20,000 points shy of gerontious.
17. The Name of the Game. The half of an S-curve after the inflection point. Too many starts and stops for my taste.
18. Thank You for the Music. Shaped roughly like S.O.S. and Fernando.
19. Waterloo. Downhill run, traffic of 187, no chance of beating gerontious, so I'm just trying to crack 100,000... and... woo-hoo! 108,702, good for 5th place, and most importantly, top Pointman score in the Elite column (uh, scant hundreds ahead of the next player, but Tirulii has some awesome scores on other songs, so I'll take it)

Audiosurf

My BIL gave us Audiosurf for Christmas 2008. Well, technically he gave it to Sarah, but Connor and I are the ones who play it. Here's the game:

1. You give it any mp3** to analyze.
2. It creates a track based on the analysis of the song.
3. You ride the track along to the song, picking up various-colored blocks to score points.
4. At the end, your total gets compared to every other person IN THE WORLD who rode this song, and hopefully you land on the high scoreboard.

There are a number of different "personas" you can play, from Pointman (pick up blocks and stack them in groups of 3 or more, different block colors are worth different amounts) to Mono (avoid grey blocks and pick up single-colored blocks), and three different "levels" (Casual, Pro, and Expert) at which you can play, with a high-score board for each.

It's a bargain at ten bucks.

** or whatever other formats audiosurf supports

Island (MacLeod, Alistair) 2000

This is a collection of short stories by the Bard of Nova Scotia (or so I'm lead to believe by the jacket). I read everything through "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood", then began skimming through the next two stories, then skipped ahead to "Island". The themes running through just about every story are about generational change in the people of Nova Scotia, usually fixing upon the generation in which many of the children leave for Montreal or Toronto in order to lead a "better life" than the traditional Nova Scotian careers of fishing, lobstering, and mining can provide, and also about the awkwardness for their remaining family (especially the parents) who find the continuity of their lives disrupted/altered by these leavings. The problem is that the first story, "The Boat", and the fourth story, "The Return" cover this ground perfectly, and the rest (at least the parts I've read) feel a bit recycled.

Still, you should all go out and read "The Boat" and "The Return".

Counting change

Dinesh recently turned in 13 years of accreted change to the bank, and offered friends the chance to guess how much 121 pounds of change was worth. How could I resist?

To start, I collected pennies for 20+ years and had about 120lbs of them when turned in to the bank in 2001. It was north of 20,000 pennies, so without thinking more about it, I would have guessed about $2000 in Dinesh's change bank. Why that number? Because if 120lbs is roughly 20,000 coins and each occurs with equal probability, then the average value of each coin is (1+5+10+25)/4 = 10.25 cents, or about 10 times more than the $200 of pennies I'd collected.

However, the weights vary by type of coin, with averages as follows:

• Penny: 2.5g
• Nickel: 5g
• Dime: 2.268g
• Quarter: 5.670g

121lbs = 54884.68g (thank you, Convert!), so even if every single coin was a quarter, the total would come to roughly $2400; if each coin is equally likely, then Dinesh's change bank is worth $1457.62.

So, let's think a little more (but only a little!) about this. Maybe assuming that each type of coin is equally likely isn't a good assumption. Maybe we should assume that each possible amount of change from $0.01 to $0.99 is equally likely. In that case, approximately 31.9% of the coins are quarters, 17.0% are dimes, 8.5% are nickels, and 42.6% are pennies. Using this distribution of coins, the value of the change bank is $1324.37 (crude R code below to reproduce this). So that's what I guessed.

quarters <- 0

dimes <- 0

nickels <- 0

pennies <-0

for (i in 1:99) {

change <- i

quarters <- quarters + change%/%25

change <- change%%25

dimes <- dimes + change%/%10

change <- change%%10

nickels <- nickels + change%/%5

pennies <- pennies + change%%5

}

54884.68 * (.25 * quarters / 5.67 + .1 * dimes / 2.268 + .05 * nickels / 5 + .01 * pennies / 2.5) / (quarters + dimes + nickels + pennies)

The so-called weakest division in the weaker conference

It seems like every year I read articles at the beginning of the season talking about how the NL West is the weakest division in a weak conference, and yet, if the season ended today, the Rockies would be the NL wild card. And in line behind them? The Giants (granted, with the Marlins half a game behind them). And I could see any of the top three NL West teams getting creamed by the Yankees in the World Series.

In the AL, Texas just passed Boston for the Wild Card. Would the Yankees would rather steamroll the Tigers or Rangers in the first round? And would they prefer the Angels to have to face the Red Sox or Tigers? These are the questions the hindbrain ponders on Monday mornings.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Loos, Anita) 1925

(completed reading 8/11/9) Anita Loos is my hero of the week! This fictional diary of a young lady in the 1920's is hilarious, skewering its vivacious heroines, their besotted suitors, stuffy society ladies, various gentlemen of Britain, France and across the continent, and a number of famous people of the day, including a guest appearance by Freud, who advises Lorelei to "cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep."

Loos does so much with an economy of words, using mispellings to demonstrate her diarist's lack of education and her inability to appreciate anything beyond the material to show her lack of culture. But our heroines aren't stupid; in fact, they seem to be able to out-think most of the people they associate with, nor do their values appear to be out of place by comparison.

I highly recommend reading this; still haven't seen the movie based on the musical based on the book.

I also found the following quote interesting: "...kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever." This book was published in 1925; Frances Gerety wrote the famous "A Diamond is Forever" adline in 1948 -- both The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (Tom Zoellner) and Hope diamond: the legendary history of a cursed gem (Richard Kurin) note the connection, but neither suggests plagiarism.

Historical higher fares for overweight passengers

I've seen some of the articles about overweight passengers having to pay higher fares to fly, but the ones I'd read had given me the impression that this was some sort of new idea. Imagine my surprise while reading Anita Loos' excellent Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which mentions at the beginning of Chapter Six that Mr. Eisman "decided not to bring them [his starving relatives in Berlin] to America because there was not one of his starving relatives who could travel on a railroad ticket without paying excess fare for overweight."

U.S. expenditures on children through age 17...

… as estimated by the USDA. I think there’s a big problem with assuming that each child has their own room if housing accounts for a third of the cost of raising a child. Thanks to the Motherlode blog for pointing to this report.

Glitz (Leonard, Elmore) 1985

The inside cover mentions the Time magazine article that proclaims Leonard the "Dickens from Detroit". What, did they go through all the famous authors with last names starting with "D" and pick out the one they thought wrote most closely to the crime genre? Sure, you can make the argument that Dickens is one of the forefathers of the crime genre, but Leonard's work bears as much resemblance to Dickens' as you and I do to an Australopithecus. Leonard is a clear successor to Chandler (note: I haven't read Hammett), though he's actually less "shocking" for his time because so many barriers have come down. At any rate, Glitz was entertaining and well-written, but I don't feel the need to read any more Leonard. I saw Out of Sight and Get Shorty; those films and this book all felt like they were populated by roughly the same characters put along a different plot, so if I've read one Leonard novel, I've read them all, right?

15 Significant Movies

1. Star Wars : This might be my earliest movie memory; I saw it the summer of 1977 at the Eatontown drive-in (which no longer exists). I saw it again on the big screen in 1980 as part of a Star Wars / Empire Strikes Back double feature in San Diego with Rob and my cousin Sean (which was AWESOME and far more memorable an experience). We had a projector and a short clip of the film showing the escape from the Death Star (the "Here they come" music) that we watched over and over at home, until VHS allowed us to watch the whole thing over and over at home. Saw it again on the big screen in January '92 at Frick. It was the showing of Empire Strikes Back the next night; however, at which I met Sarahmac for the second time and we hit it off. Saw it for the last time on the big screen in 1997 in Durham.

2. Orca : We were supposed to see Pinocchio, but they were sold out, so dad bought us tickets to see Jaws with killer whales. Strangely, I wasn't traumatized by this, and I was just filled with a sense of justice as Richard Harris was eaten by the killer whale.

3. Attack of the Moon Monster : I don't think I have the title right, because I can't find it in the IMDB, but there was definitely a "moon monster" involved. We had one TV : I wanted to watch Lassie, my dad wanted to watch this stupid movie (do we see a trend here?), and my little brother (who was too young to understand one way or the other) sided with my dad. The scene I remember is one is which a couple is having an argument through the front door; the husband has "come home late" again, and the wife won't let him in. We cut back and forth between their POV, focused on their argument, and that of the moon monster, which is stalking the husband from the bushes. We cut to the wife, who hears horrible sucking noises outside. When the noises stop, she opens the door, and the body of her husband falls through, with his face looking a bit like Greedo's. I was terrified, slept badly for years, and avoided any movies that might have semi-graphically violent, horror or "gross" elements (I avoided Raiders of the Lost Ark for years and was nervous about seeing E.T. because I'd heard it was scary!).

4. Robin Hood : Yes, the Errol Flynn one is superior, but this is the version we had a short clip of to watch on the projector; the opening scene, where they rob Prince John's coach. The movie is really strong until the end of the archery tournament, after which it wobbles and finally falls apart, but I still enjoy it.

5. I remember a World or 3-2-1 Contact magazine whose feature article was about the movies that had computers as the heavy, notably Tron in 1982 and Wargames and Superman III the following year. The first two are still great movies; Superman III sucked even in 1983. At any rate, after Max Dugan Returns, Wargames, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Glory, and the Freshman, I'm still struggling to understand what happened to Matthew Broderick's career.

6. The Pirate Movie : It's a spoof of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. It's really not a very good movie, but my brother and I thought it was hilarious and watched it dozens of times in the mid-80's.

7. Destroy All Monsters : I think it was WPIX that regularly showed Godzilla movies on Saturdays. We loved the Godzilla movies, but I think Destroy All Monsters was our favorite.

8. The Secret of NIMH : the Fox and the Hound, while a good movie, was the only new animated Disney film released in the early 80's, and it isn't nearly as good as the Secret of NIMH. Yeah, Bluth plays hell with the original story (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH), but I can live with it.

9. Back to the Future : This is a nearly perfectly constructed movie. It's a good thing they never made any sequels, because they would never have approached the quality of the original.

10. The Terminator : What really sticks with me is the promo they ran on HBO / Showtime for the The Terminator, which was the scene in which you see (from inside the car) Arnold punching through the windshield. Remember, I was scared of graphically violent movies, but that image was so *cool* that I had to watch it. My first 'R'-rated film.

11. T-Day Specials : Every year, we'd watch part of the Macy's Parade at home, then drive down to my mom's parents' house to finish watching the parades and have snacks before moving on to Thanksgiving Day dinner (shortly after noon), then watch a bit of the Wizard of Oz, the Sound of Music, King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, or whatever happened to be on, then move on to my dad's parents' house for dessert. Eventually the routine ended, but eventually the MST3K Turkey Day marathon came along.

12. Hamlet : The Branagh version. Sarahmac and I saw it in a small theater Chapel Hill; it was awesome. I might actually like Much Ado About Nothing a little better, but the setting in which I first saw Hamlet gives it the edge for this list.

13. The Tango Lesson : Sarahmac and I were interested in taking argentine tango lessons, and I actually had the soundtrack to this film for months, perhaps a year, before we saw it.

14. Mononoke Hime : Saw this in Chicago in when it was released in the US in 1999. Billy Bob is horrible, but most of the other English-speaking voice actors were good choices, particularly Crudup as Ashitaka.

15. Howard the Duck and Fletch are on this list for all the wrong reasons. I'm not sure I've seen Howard the Duck all the way through, but my brother and cousin Sean watched it about 23 times the summer it was first on cable. I've never seen Fletch, but after some students freshman year at college watched it waayyy too many times, I made it my mission in life never to see it.

Honorable mentions: to Lord of the Rings (the extended version) and the Dark Crystal, which might be the two best fantasy films I've seen (depending upon whether the Secret of NIMH is counted as fantasy); also to the Incredibles and the Dark Knight, which are in fact the two best superhero films I've ever seen.

Just don't do anything to void the warranty on your body

Great post at http://tauntermedia.com/2009/07/28/unconscionable-math/

This is why I'm interested in an experiment where health insurance is really insurance -- you pay a premium against acquiring some chronic condition -- and for the rest to be covered by HSAs. Now, according to the post, the vast majority of people aren't using as much basic health maintenance as they're paying in premiums. I do get the vague impression from other sources that there is a sentiment that if we simply gave the average Joe the money they're paying in premiums, they wouldn't spend it on basic health maintenance. If we really can't trust people to take care of themselves, we could mandate that everyone put enough money into their HSAs to cover basic health maintenance.

The question is whether to let individuals choose for themselves or try to nudge them into doing the "right" thing... though actually, major medical problems should be covered by the actual insurance, but the insurance company wouldn't pay out unless you've been getting regular checkups, where "major medical" and "regular" are defined in the insurance policy. Just like if you make a homeowner's claim because the roof caved in and the insurance company rejects it because the tiles haven't been replaced in 40 years.

Peavy to White Sox

The trade that was supposed to happen in May, when Peavy was actually pitching, if not particularly well, went through last week while Peavy was on the DL. He'll be on the DL until the end of August, perhaps just in time to come back and get hammered by the Yankees that weekend, stay barely above water against the AL lineups, and then blow his one playoff start against the Yankees (assuming the White Sox make it that far). The Sox will then be on the hook for $48M for the next three years. Not sure how the option for 2013 fits in. Meanwhile, the Padres slash payroll, and maybe one of the prospects will work out.

Battlestar Galactica, season 4.5

Those of us without cable just finished the new BSG series earlier this week. What started out in seasons 1 and 2 as a great little pressure cooker exploring tensions between military and civilian government while serving up great space battles (which, btw, Star Trek Voyager should have already done, but they flubbed it) turned into a relatively inchorent mess in seasons 3 and 4.

==spoilers==

I'm not really bothered by Kara being an angel who simply disappears at the end of the show and is never seen again; I'm not bothered by Caprica and Baltar being angels who close the series for us in somewhat trite fashion. However:

• I'm bothered by Adama doing an endless 2 steps forward, 2 steps back dance w.r.t. the cylons. The straw that broke my back was after he'd agreed to ally with the cylon renegades, after he'd agreed to put cylon goop onto Galactica's beams to try to save the ship, after he'd agreed to take his flag command to the renegade cylon base ship, after he uses Anders to find out where Hera is, he balks at having Anders plugged into the CIC. Give me a freakin' break! This is false drama the writers are creating.
  
  
• I'm bothered that the final cylon was a really irritating character that I'd been glad to be rid of. When Helen first comes back and interacts with Cavil, she's actually interesting, but as soon as she's back with Tigh (someone we could have done with a lot less of), she's obnoxious and irritating again.
  
  
• I'm bothered by everyone trying to solve their problems with drink.
  
  
• I'm even more bothered that most of the problems are finally dealt with by saying "god says so".
  
  
• I'm bothered that the opera house is just a shootout in the CIC, and that Caprica and Baltar "do their job of taking care of the human/cylon future" by dropping Hera right into Cavil's hands.
  
  
• I'm bothered that the writers think that 38,000 people will all agree to leave their medical technology behind, or that Lee Adama thinks in the first place that leaving all their technology behind will allow their descendants to avoid problems in the future. Since when is ignorance strength? I'd gotten the impression that Lee was a little smarter than that.

Now, if the writers had posited that the ships and equipment were so crapped out by the end of these four years that they were near-useless anyway, that I could deal with. And I did really like how they showed us the events in the colonies that led to the characters escaping the holocaust in the first place (except for Adama drinking in a strip club and vomiting in an alleyway) and I really liked Anders' interview with the sports reporter.