"I suggest you choose your next witticism wisely, it may be your last."

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, Mister Bond, I expect you to dye!"

Gurggl! Gurggl mrrphghl!

You only live twice

If you’re not sure why Bond must dye, this may help.

A recent study found that 87% of US undergraduates are on Facebook for an average of 93 minutes daily. At 11 hours a week that’s nearly as long as many of us spend in class. If 12 hours of classroom time is supposed to not just teach us facts but also train us to become more complex thinkers why do we pretend that 11 hours of Facebook won’t have an affect, too? Facebook asks us to constantly sift through posts, skim, evaluate, and make microscopic comments. By using Facebook we are training our minds to condense all issues into easily “like”-able one-liners, rather than complex essays.

During finals last month many of us turned to Facebook to relieve stress. Many students, including myself, found that Facebook became not a limited relief valve but a means of procrastination. By the night before an exam we thought our only recourse was to block Facebook. Then, finally, our true academic selves would shine in blissful focus and productivity.

If only it was that easy. The distraction and inability to focus that led us to block Facebook wasn’t because we were using Facebook that night. It was the result of our brain adapting to excel at the Facebook friendly tasks we demanded of it, at the expense of less frequent tasks, such as deep reading. After so many hours on Facebook over so many months the Facebook way of shallow thinking was dominant. The focused contemplative mindset became a difficult to achieve anomaly. The night before a paper was due was simply too late to change anything. Even though we were offline we carried Facebook’s in our cognition.

Any new intellectual technology, including Facebook, encourages certain ways of thinking and discourages others. The invention of writing allowed humanity to easily store and retrieve information, a laborious process in oral cultures, and in turn led to an explosion of knowledge. However Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, warns of the cognitive downside to writing by retelling the legend of king Thalmus, who, upon receiving the gift of writing from the god Theuth immediately questions the tradeoff it requires. Readers, Socrates says, will “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant” because there was no oral instruction, and therefore, in his opinion, no deep learning. Writing fundamentally changed how we think. Today Facebook is changing it again. It encourages us to think in terms of connections, which may be advantageous in an increasingly interdisciplinary world, but it discourages deep reading, analysis, and debate. We must acknowledge these changes, and then adapt to them.

Facebook has many advantages, such as staying in touch with friends & family. However research, and common sense, suggest that large amounts of unfocused Facebook browsing damages our ability to concentrate, to understand complex ideas, and to develop our own ideas. Must we choose to either concede our thought patterns to Mark Zuckerberg, or abandon Facebook entirely? Neither is a great choice.

Instead of simply embracing or abandoning Facebook take the opportunity presented by the new semester to assess your use over the long run. What benefits does it provide you? How can you maximize those benefits, while reducing the costs? By becoming a conscientious user today, by finals at the end of the semester your brain will be better trained to focus and think richer thoughts.

Being deliberate about Facebook isn’t easy, but hopefully a few of these techniques, which helped me, will help you. Schedule a concentrated block of Facebook time rather than browsing whenever the urge strikes; this shifts Facebook into a hobby rather than a shameful timewasting habit. When you’re off Facebook, be off Facebook; avoid the siren call of a quick status post, “Studying sooooo hard at Butler!” Adjust your Facebook settings to reduce notification emails; it’s much harder to resist temptation when it thrusts itself into your inbox. Don’t use Facebook as a study break; it forces you into the skim-evaluate-quip mindset rather than read-analyze-write. Plus, just like potato chips, it’s awfully hard to limit it to “just 2 minutes.” Experiment with different ways to control your use, and see what works for you.

Facebook will one day be passé, but whatever replaces it will affect our cognition, just like speech, writing, email, and Facebook itself already have. By first understanding the medium, and then deliberately engaging with it, we can attempt to capture the benefits and avoid the harmful effects.

I’ve attempted to create a map of the route we took here, but it’s based on my recollection and certainly inaccurate on the details of exactly which streets we took. If anyone knows corrections, let me  know. If I was thinking properly I would have taken my Garmin GPS!

It was really fun  I chugged a can of Illy espresso at 10:30, which helped a lot. Only getting ~3 hours of sleep the night before really didn’t help. Stupid University Writing draft.

The whole class starting out at once on bikes was intense. Many of us were on rented and borrowed bikes and irregular bikers, so many weren’t very comfortable/confident. It’s really hard to bike slowly in general, especially in a crowd where you can’t turn much. The result was lots of weaving, dodging, and near misses. Plenty of minor bumps, but only a few people really fell down, and nobody needed serious assistance.

We pretty much just went and kept going, rarely did anyone, even the first people, stop for red lights. One of the Columbia Ambulances was bringing up the rear, flashing its lights the whole time. That came in really helpful in giving us some legitimacy, especially in midtown.

Around 1:30ish (I think…) we stopped at Washington Square Park (location of NYU, our wanna be rivals downtown). I went off in search of some food, and ended up having tacos from a cart, and then beer with several grad students, including the TA for my discussion section. A part of the group (1/3rd?) turned back at this point, hopping on the subway or taking cabs back uptown.

From there we went south, around Battery Park City and Battery Park. We were within a few blocks of the WTC site, and could see the incredibly over illuminated new Tower 1 going up. Another bunch (1/4 or the original group?) turned back around here, where the last subway stop for the 1 train (which Columbia is on) is.

Broad St & Wall St were pretty locked down (due to the OccupyWallStreet protests nearby), but we walked up and in front of the NYSE and Federal Hall.

From there we went along to the Brooklyn bridge, went through brooklyn, and I ended up taking the Subway most of the way back (biking from 96th St -> 116th St because the transfer would have taken a long time).

The experience was really cool. Especially the contrast between Central Park, time square, and the side streets. You’d go just 3 blocks and it would have a very different feel at 3AM. It was fun causing a little mayhem for taxis, especially since it was just minor. We regularly got honked at, and over a dozen volunteers would stand in front of the cross traffic, preventing them from even trying to go.

There was some school pride, which was fun (and not hugely common at CU). Seemingly nobody remembers the words to our fight song (because it’s stupid), although everyone knows “Roar, Lion, Roar.” A few people chanted it out, and the rest of us mumbled along.

From the Brooklyn Bridge on was a bit rough. We crossed around 4AM and were walking, rather than riding, a fair amount at that point. It also turns out it’s really hard to find a bathroom at ~5 in the morning, even in downtown Brooklyn.

Keep Calm and Study On

For those interested I’ve uploaded PDF (if you want to print or have a larger copy or something) and SVG (if you want to modify) files. It’s in the original size/aspect ratio for the Keep Calm and Carry On posters, 19¾ x 29½. If you’d like I can resize it to whatever dimensions you want, and post alternate colors (light blue text, etc); just leave a comment or email me.

Basically, sort a list of integers by spawning a new thread or process for each element then sleep for the value of that element then print out that element. Here’s the original bash example, but I’d love to see other crazy languages.

#!/bin/bash
function f() {
    sleep "$1"
    echo "$1"
}
while [ -n "$1" ]
do
    f "$1" &
    shift
done
wait

First, you can read all sorts of strategies. Basically they come down to this: immediately get 2 side missiles, then get 2 drones. Whenever you loose a drone, replace it first chance you get. Then everything else should be bombs. (Any drop goes through a sequence, so wait until it’s the one you want). Use bombs liberally to prevent death and loss of drones. They make you invincible for a few seconds, in addition to clearly crap away. You’ll have basically all the bombs you need. Press space as fast as you can to shoot faster.

So it’s mostly a question of staying alive, and keeping your drones alive. Except for the bosses/mini bosses there’s not a ton of strategy. After a few attempts yesterday I beat it once, then hit 245k points, then 279k points (getting Silver). That only left gold (500k points), and I didn’t have the energy. However I knew there was a macro on the Windows side to hit space for you. In that case all you’d have to do is navigate around, which isn’t too hard. A few attempts to track one down on the Mac failed. Mac OS X is nice, but it definitely lacks some of the rom emulation tools so popular on Windows. I wanted an OS X program to simply pres the space bar over and over and over again forever, quickly, while not interfering with the rest of the system. It was useless if I couldn’t

However I figured there must be a better option, perhaps Objective-C? My Obj-C is super rusty, but I stumbled across a StackOverflow hint suggesting how easy it would be to do in plain C. Here’s the C program I wrote that uses CG Quartz Events to simulate pressing the space bar every .05 seconds (In retrospect that’s probably way faster than it needs, could probably easily be .1 seconds).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>
#include <unistd.h>
 
int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
    CGEventRef spaceDown = CGEventCreateKeyboardEvent (NULL, (CGKeyCode)49, true);
    CGEventRef spaceUp = CGEventCreateKeyboardEvent (NULL, (CGKeyCode)49, false);
    int sleepTime = 50000;
    printf("Pressing space every %d microseconds\n", sleepTime);
    sleep(2);
 
    while (1) {
        CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, spaceDown);
        CGEventPost(kCGHIDEventTap, spaceUp);
        usleep(sleepTime);
    }
 
    CFRelease(spaceDown);
    CFRelease(spaceUp);
    return 0;
}

It can be copied to a file like “cstroker.c” and compiled with this gcc command (you may need to install Xcode if you don’t already have it) from Terminal.app:

gcc -o cstroker cstroker.c -O -Wall -framework ApplicationServices

You then execute it by simply calling ./cstroker

Update: Because some folks asked I’ve uploaded the binary. Might work for you, in which case you can skip the gcc compilation.

Finally nailed Lost Viking Gold!

The tasting menu he arranged was (in a sort of historical order, with his descriptions in italics):

1. Oud Beersel Oud Kriek. Brouwerij Oud Beersel. Traditional Fruit Lambic. Blegium. Tart & Funky. I thought this one was fantastic, giving it ★★★. It was elegantly pink to look at, smell and taste. Definitely had a sour, funky taste but in a good way.
2. Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen. Brauerei Heller-Trum. Bamberg Rauchbier Märzen. Germany. Smoke. ★ This was the most interesting beer, but probably the one I would least like to have a whole glass of again. Rauchbier means “smoke beer,” and this is very smokey. It’s a bit like drinking your beer while standing in front of a smoking BBQ. Before kilns the fire smoking would have been employed frequently in beer making, but apparently this is somewhat unique because they use modern lager (?) techniques to remove most of the other flavors, which would normally yield a very smooth clear flavor, but in this case just overwhelmingly highlights the smoke flavor.
3. Orchard White. The bruery. Witbier. California. Fruit & Spice. ★★ Pretty good. It was wine-like to me, in appearance and flavor. A bit fruity, with spices like coriander, lavender and orange peel.
4. Porterhouse Oyster Stout. Porterhouse Brewing Co. Dry Stout. Ireland. Roast.★★.5 This was a nice stouty flavor. I didn’t write much about it. Apparently the name comes from a long, convoluted process that basically means this beer was made for the poor (such as porters) and they also ate oysters.
5. Aventinus. Brauerei Schneider. Weizenbock. Germany. Fruit & Spice.★★★★ This was probably my favorite. It was a brown, tasty beer that didn’t seemed fairly light tasting. Could imagine drinking a bit of it.
6. Insanity. Weyerbacher Brewing. Barrel-Aged Barleywine. Pennsylvania. Malt. ★★ I was kinda meh on this one. It was fine, but nothing I would particularly want to return to. A bit bitter, perhaps, but he said it wasn’t.
7. Unearthly. Southern Tier Brewing. Imperial IPA. New York. Hop. ★★★ A good, hoppy beer, if that’s what your into.

He recommended gravitating toward Sierra Nevada Torpedo, Anything by Victory Brewing, and Saisons in the beer aisle. Afterwards there were some tasty hors d’œuvre and glasses of whichever beer you wished for. Overall a fantastic event, and very informative.

Marian took me to the lovely Columbia Room on Friday. We arrived at ~5:05 and left ~7:30, and for about half of it were the only patrons in the bar. They do a tasting menu of cocktails, with 2 prescribed and one up to each patron & their bartender. The staff was very warm and friendly, and while I can see how at its worst (particularly if it was “crowded,” which they seemingly strive to avoid) it could come off as a bit pretentious, we had an excellent time.

Derek, JP and Katie all made us feel well tended to and seemed genuinely excited about drinks & sharing drink with the world. We spent most of the time chatting with them about various ingredients behind the bar, getting free sniffs & sips of a few different things. (Oh, and they do have awesomely large ice blocks they cut down to size. Apparently the come from a local ice company that mostly makes them for ice sculpture).

The first drink we had was Chatham Artillery Punch. Classic southern punch w/ lots of booze, kinda sweet. Definitely packs more of a punch than you expect, given the small serving size. My recollection + googling says this has bourbon, cognac and Jamaican rum plus sugar, lemon juice and sparkling wine.

Second was a whiskey and coke, but it was a light whiskey (3-6 months aged), kinda like moonshine he claims, from Texas (True Blue). JP/they made their own hickory smoked cola and carbonated it there. Some lime juice as well, plus some other random stuff. This tasted like a mix between the most delicious whiskey & coke ever and BBQ sauce. Surprising, and tasty. They served that with bourbon vanilla gelato (from Dulcezza), boiled peanuts (hard to eat with a spoon…) and a seasame sugar wafer thing.

Third I had a gin basil smash, because they had fresh basil sitting in front of us on the bar and it kept smelling delicious. It had a strong basil aroma, but wasn’t overpowering in the drink.

Marian’s Third was a passionfruit gin fizz (but it had egg white & sparkling wine, which wikipedia suggests is like a passionfruit silver diamond gin fizz or something) that was delicious. Fruity, but not too sweet. I only got a few sips of this one, so you know it must be good.

The last drinks were served with salty truffle oil marcona almonds & these really fresh, not salty, olives.

We had a fantastic time, and would strongly encourage you to go if you’re ready for an evening of over engineered, tasty cocktails. We were nervous about going so early, but in the end I think it was more pleasant having an even smaller scale experience.

Now it’s time to detox my poor, poor liver.

A while ago I heard about Instapaper – a tool that was supposed to solve that.  I could save articles and they’d go into Instapaper, where I could read them later at my leisure. Instapaper would also strip out some of the extraneous shit on the internet and make the articles more readable. After a few days I realized I would never actually go back to the instapaper site to read them, so I sort of gave up. I installed the iPhone app, but that wasn’t quite right either.

Then a few weeks ago I discovered that Instapaper can now push articles to Kindle!

Instapaper on my Kindle. This is the most useful article overview for me.

It turns out this is the perfect delivery mechanism for me. The articles I Instapaper aren’t time sensitive, and they’re long enough that I strongly prefer the digital screen. With WiFi the articles are delivered free, generally a day or two after I hit the button in the browser without me having to do anything else. Click, wait, read on kindle. This is fine, and means there are often little surprises for me.

Instapaper is well integrated into other parts of my life, namely Twitter for iPhone. I’m rarely interested in reading a whole article in iPhone twitter, but I often am curious to read more. I just hit the Instapaper button and it syncs over, easy as pie.

I strongly encourage anyone else who’s found it hard to sink your teeth into a good article online to try out the Instapaper + Kindle delivery option. It really legitimizes longer form content on the web.

An article!