Forgotten Friends

So I just got a FW from my boss that is some touching poem of a girl describing her father who was killed on 9/11 during Bring Daddy to Work day, which is completely fictional and takes credit away from the original author (Snopes Report). Now since I assume automatically that all forwarded messages are frauds, this didn't surprise me. What bugged me, however, was the last paragraph:

"If you don't send it to anyone, it means you're in a hurry and that you've forgotten your friends."

I can deal with the bad luck, or hating America, or whatever punishment comes from not forwarding fraudulent emails, but being accused of forgetting my friends because I don't want to forward them a plagiarized, manipulated, coersive poem? If that's what forgetting friends means, I hope all my friends forget about me.

Kenneth Cooper and Aerobics

I just got back from BYU's monthly Forum (the non-religious devotional). The speaker was Kenneth Cooper, the inventor of "aerobics". First of all, it never occurred to me that aerobics was invented and the term was coined by this guy in 1968 with his best-selling book. I've never known life without the term. He gave a fascinating lecture, first about the positive effects of exercise and then about the negative effects of obesity. The statistics are very convincing. Staying in shape dramatically increases health and life-span, while obesity contributes to everything from diabetes to cancer to lower test scores.

He also mentioned the enormous effort of Pepsi and its subsidiaries to produce healthier snacks for kids, such as Baked Lays and Tostitos. Starting next year, they are rolling out new classifications for all their snacks, calling them either Fun, Better For You, or Good For You Snacks and will be changing all their vending machines in schools to sell only the last two. Perhaps this a company that deserves our support.

In short, his words of wisdom condensed: Do regular aerobic exercise, do not smoke, drink or do drugs, avoid saturated and trans fats, learn how to deal with stress.

Weekend activities

So apart from applying to grad school, I tried to enjoy my weekend a little. Friday night I opted out of watching BYU lose a heart-breaker to Boise State (our best player, the kicker, missed a game winning field goal well within his range) and instead went to the women's volleyball game against the U (BYU lost 3-1). Ally's brother-in-law is the assistant coach, so he got us front row tickets. Adam and Marisa and a friend of hers came as well and we topped off the evening with ice cream and a movie (Rush Hour).

I spent a multitude of hours in the computer lab on Saturday, but had some fun that evening by going to the women's soccer game. Unfortunately, it was not a good weekend for BYU sports, and they also lost, 2-1, to Washington St. They played well, but it was one of those games that could have gone either way and it went the wrong one.

BYU Grad School

I just realized I haven't blogged for a whole week. Shame on me. There has been an interesting turn of events however. On Wednesday, I spoke to one of my current professors about his research area because it really interests me. The class is image and signal processing and we're talking about photoshop type stuff like histogram equalization (auto-levels), edge detection (magnetic lasso), and kernel/mask operations (filters). He and his grad students were the ones that developed magnetic lasso ("intelligent scissors" at BYU) and sold it to Adobe. So in short, I finally found a graduate topic that really interests me, and I applied to BYU's grad school mentioning that topic, with the endorsement of my professor. It would require staying in Provo a little bit longer, but I think it would be worth it to have a research topic I really like and a cool professor as an advisor.

So I spent a lot of time getting recommendations, writing letters of intent, and paying fees towards the end of the week. The application is actually late, but my professor seemed hopeful that it could be included in the stack of apps that get considered for Spring term. Applications for most other schools are due around Oct 15, so I'll be getting those in soon.

BYU vs. USC

The good news: I got to see the #1 team in the nation play, live. The bad news: The #1 team in the nation is USC, not BYU...

BYU played surprisingly well in the first quarter and most of the second thanks to a spirited defense and some sloppy play by the Trojans, and managed to get an imposing 3-0 lead. But the whole act was precariously balanced and when the tide turned near the end of the first half, it was a long fall. BYU managed to score a touchdown on a set play at the beginning of the second half, but otherwise it was all USC. They were bigger and faster, and BYU still hasn't learned how to wrap up and tackle. All in all, I'm not too disappointed. John Beck got some good time in, playing the whole game for once and solidifying his spot as starting QB. The offense moved the ball pretty well (in the air) and the defense came up with some big plays. And of course, BYU has the best punter around. He launched an 80 yard punt that nearly stopped at the 1. Always a silver lining...

Top of Utah

My roommate has been training for a marathon for the last couple of months and Saturday was the day. It was the Top of Utah marathon in Logan. The race started early in the morning, and Ally has some friends in Logan, so we drove up Friday night and stayed at their place so Adam wouldn't have to drive from Salt Lake. We dropped him off on Saturday morning, then went back to bed. We went back to the end a couple of hours later to watch. We picked a spot close to the end where we could see him, then cut across to the finish line so we could cheer him on twice. It was pretty amazing to watch the runners come through - people of all ages and sizes - it almost inspired me to try it myself someday. It was a beautiful day, so we didn't mind waiting for him. He finally came jogging by and finished in 4 hours 24 mins. He was surprisingly coherent afterwards and didn't throw up or anything. Pretty impressive.

Need a bike?

You might want to reconsider using U-locks to secure your bike after visiting this page. Watch the video and read the comments. Interesting stuff.

Hardware Removal

I went to the orthodontist today and he took off the bands around my molars, so I have a little bit less hardware in my mouth. He also "discontinued" the "elastics", so I don't have to have those stupid rubber bands in my mouth either. He did make some adjustments, however, so he will check those next week. If it's OK, it all comes out, if not it will be one more appointment. I can't wait to have my teeth back again :)

Funny Bush Video

Warning: This video light-heartedly makes fun of President Bush (it's Will Ferrell).

Watch It (19 MB)

(You might want to right-click and choose Save Target As to save it to your computer first.)

Zombo.com

The funniest most useless site I've seen in a while: Zombo.com

(Make sure your speakers are on. Don't bother to follow the links.)

What's your name?

OK, this is a rant more than anything, but with the new semester starting and having to introduce myself to dozens of people it's an issue that has resurfaced and is again high on my list of peeves.

Whenever people ask me "What's your name?", I respond "Steven". Invariably, the the next words out of the mouths are "Do you go by Steve or Steven." [Dramatic pause] Um, if I went by Steve, don't you think I would have said my name is Steve??

Now don't get me wrong, I honestly don't care if people call me Steve. People have all my life and I'm totally used to it. Just don't ask me after I've already told you what my name is. If somebody said his name was Richard, would you ask, "Do you go by Richard, Rich, Richie or Dick?"? If you met a girl who's name was Jennifer, would you ask if she went by Jenny, or Jen?

Perhaps it's too much to expect people to utter two syllables when addressing me. Perhaps it's my fault because I feel uncomfortable making an issue out of it when I know it will be impossible for people to restrain from calling me Steve. In any case, my free advice for the day: If someone tells you their name, just use the one they give you.

School Update

School is officially in full swing and I have finally accepted my fate and resigned myself to a life in the computer lab. It was sad to let go of the carefree summer, but this is the way it must be.

School is going pretty well so far. Despite the fact that I work all day and do homework all night, I must admit I still like my major and I get kind of excited to do some of the cool labs. I'm taking three CS classes and they're very interesting:

In my security class, my first lab was to implement the Vigenere Cipher (encryption algorithm), and then crack it. It's a cool feeling when you come up with the encryption key and are able to decrypt what was once gobbledygook.

In my signal processing class, the first lab was to read in a color image and convert it to grayscale. That one was also really fun, but we used this really simple image format (ppm/pgm)that made it easier. I might try to figure out the jpg format in my free time so that I can actually use what I learn on real pictures.

In my artificial intelligence class, we're learning how to use "potential fields" to guide an "agent" through a capture the flag game. I haven't done much with that one yet, but I plan on starting tonight.

I wish I could show you these programs, but the CS department here is very anti-Windows and so everything I do only runs on linux. If any of you have linux and want to see what I've done, let me know :)

National Deficit/Debt

Quotes from a good article on the national deficit/debt:

"It goes without saying that if any private corporation had behaved the way the government has, it would soon find its executives being sentenced by a federal judge. It is illegal for businesses to keep their books the way the government does, hiding their long-term liabilities from shareholders the way the government disguises its indebtedness from voters."

"At least when a corporation misbehaves, there is an ultimate market check in the form of bankruptcy. Creative accounting can only go so far in covering up transactions that are fundamentally unsound. But national governments never go bankrupt and don’t have to worry about customers buying their goods and services for revenue. They just raise taxes or print money and keep on going. 'As a result, temptations for the government to engage in creative accounting may be even greater than those in the private sector,' Block suggested. It’s worth keeping this in mind the next time some congressional demagogue denounces corporate dishonesty."

BYU Undefeated

Football season is here!! I went to the BYU v. Notre Dame game and well, we won. Barely. It was looking great in the first quarter as BYU took an early lead, but then our starting quarterback got injured (will be back next game) and our inconsistent quarterback from last season was back to his old tricks. It was kind of an ugly game, with only 33 total rushing yards (both teams combined), but BYU had just enough points to hold back Notre Dame and go undefeated at 1-0. Somehow it didn't seem like a victory after giving Notre Dame practically every chance to win, but at this point I'll take it.

WMP 10 update?

So I downloaded the new and improved Windows Media Player 10 today. What a disappointment. Leave it to Microsoft to make an inferior copy of an Apple product. Apparently Microsoft thinks it can force its way into the digital music industry (and unfortunately it probably will). The new WMP just copies the functionality of iTunes and of course its release was timed to coincide with Microsoft's new online music service.

When I installed it, it automatically tried to get me to sign up for Microsoft's online music, not by asking me, but by putting small text above a large "end user license agreement". So I declined their service, which then caused the program to display an error picture in place of the service, but which later seemed to install itself, because an MSN butterfly later appeared anyway.

I downloaded it because I thought I could use it like iTunes to organize my music. What I didn't know was that it was going to strap my hands behind my back. You add all your songs into the library, and you think you should be able to order them by whatever you want. When I tried to organize them by filename, instead of title (the title embedded into the file) I found out that title can not be moved or removed. So you can't sort by artist unless the artist is embedded in the file, which is not the case with the majority of my files, and you use the built-in (non-editable) groupings.

So download it if you want. It doesn't do anything WMP 9 couldn't do except annoy me. Looks like Winamp 3 is still the winner.

Atkins Boring

Never having been a believer of the Atkins diet myself, I was amused to see some other reasons for its success in this article.