Huffman Coding

I started this blog (same software, but at a different URL) at the end of 2002. When I first mentioned it to my family, I referred to it as my “web log” because I didn’t want to bother explaining the word “blog” to them. Today I embrace the term because it seems to have entered the vernacular.

But family and friends have mentioned to me that it is an “ugly” word. I don’t know what causes a word to seem ugly. Perhaps because it ends with a hard ‘g’ sound. But, regardless, there seems to be a consensus with this one. Geeks and non-geeks alike seem to agree that the word is disagreeable.

It has made it into the Oxford English Dictionary and, according to that source, it originated with Peter Merholz who later admitted to someone “I like that it’s roughly onomatopoeic of vomiting. These sites (mine included!) tend to be a kind of information upchucking.” For my blog, it’s that… minus the useful “information” part.

And blogs, in general, are ugly. They are meant to be spur-of-the-moment, don’t-think-twice, get-it-out-quick messages. The other parts of my website (the parts no one visits) are lovingly hand-edited HTML because they stay the same for months on end. But almost every blogger, myself included, is too lazy to hand edit the HTML on their blog page. It’s all maintained by databases and web scripts, so all you have to do is fill in a text box and press the [Save] button. The only time wasted is that of your readership.

Same thing with the word “blog.” Only the laziest of people would bother abbreviating something that is only two syllables and six letters in the first place.

Meanwhile in meatspace (another ugly geek term, this one meaning “the real world”), one of Chris’s relatives sent a pleasant handwritten note to us today. She is from a generation that still cares enough to do such things. She also happens to not have a computer and quite some time ago Chris snail mailed her a printout of some of my blog entries. Mildly amused, she wrote back thanking us for the gesture.

Since she mentioned my blog droppings again in today’s note, I am compelled to reach back into the archives and pick a few newer entertaining entries to mail her. Anything to increase my audience. Perhaps something non-vomitus.

Amazon.com allows you to keep a wish list of things you want to have people buy for you. Sorta like a wedding registry, but for everyday begging. I reluctantly allowed Chris to register us at a local department store when we got married and I think this kind of nonsense is even more egregious when it is for no such life changing event.

I’ve seen bloggers, especially teenage girls, put links to their wish lists on their blogs.  They basically believe that if they appear cutesy or suggestive enough on their website, total strangers will buy them the latest Christina Aguilera CD.  Pretty blatant.  To me, this is one step up from solicitation. Blech.

With that formal disclaimer out of the way: I am going to admit to having an Amazon.com wish list too.  I don’t however, tell anyone where it is.  I use it to keep track of things I want to buy for others.  That way, when a birthday rolls around I have a better chance of getting something they might like.  Oh yeah, aunt Marcia mentioned she wanted an electric loofa a few months ago. More often than not, I don’t end up getting wish list items at Amazon.  It’s just a way of reminding myself.

While rubber-necking the deals scrolling by on techbargains.com, I was spotted a good deal on a wish list item for an April birthday girl.  The downside was that I would have to hassle a rebate to get the 37% off, but it was from a website that knew pretty well and the shipping would be free.  I put the gift item in my shopping cart and in another browser window went to remove it from my Amazon wish list.

While winnowing the gift from my wish list, I was reminded of another item on the list.  At this point I should mention that I also use my wish list to keep track of things I might someday buy for myself.  Turns out, the same vendor had a wireless notebook mouse for 40% off (with another friggin’ rebate).

If I want something badly enough I’ll just go ahead and get it, so my wish list ends up being a purgatory for the things that I don’t really need or might not like if I indeed did get them.  Well the wireless mouse is no exception.  Wireless mice offer these “advantages” over their wired brethren: you gotta feed them batteries, you gotta remember to turn them off to prolong the life of said batteries, and they can’t be, by nature, any more reliable/responsive than the simple wire they are replacing.  Besides that, my current notebook mouse (which had acted up a lot last year) has been uneventfully reliable for the last few months.

So despite being 40% off, there was no logical reason for me to get the replacement mouse.  I knew it would be a dubious purchase prior to check out, so my mouse sat in the buy.com shopping cart for the longest time while I mulled over throwing my money away.

Sometime next week when it arrives I will have to explain to Chris why she needs to start unplugging the mouse transceiver when she is done with the laptop.

You saw that coming didn’t you.

Gary Brolsma is a 19-year-old pudgy geek with glasses. He can also lip synch to a Romania pop tune. Sitting at his computer desk, he captured a video of himself on a webcam singing Dragostea Din Tei while waving his arms and making faces. It is now on the Internet courtesy of a friend. Millions have seen it. So Gary is now famous. Except he, being a self-conscious 19-year-old pudgy geek with glasses, doesn’t want to be famous.

Having read the article, I had see first hand how bad it was. And yes, it is funny and embarrassing.

As the techno music played through my laptop’s speakers, Claire came running over to see what was going on. She stuck her face in front of the LCD and yelled “Daddy singing! Daddy singing!”

My co-workers enjoy my “Back in my day..” anecdotes. It makes them feel young.

But when exactly did a simple handle no longer suffice for a toilet?

My testes are revolting.

Wait… that didn’t come out right. Let’s try again.

The twins aren’t partial to the heat generated by my laptop. I thought I could live with it, but I eventually realized that there was no reason to remain uncomfortable day after day so I went ahead and got the Lapinator. (You have to pronounce it with the accent of a Californian governor.)

The top surface feels like a mouse pad, in fact, I wish they had a wider version so I could put my notebook mouse on it instead of having to grab a sofa pillow.

A little overpriced, but I like it. The name alone is worth half the price. :-)

So what does it say about you, if out of the Top Ten PDA Failures, you’ve actually owned two of them (#4 & #10)?

Weeks after I bought my current PDA, it went on the endangered list too.

Because I’m in a cathartic mood, I could also mention that I’ve owned computers from these defunct manufacturers: Columbia, Micron and Trash-80.

I now own a Dell and an HP. Sell your stock now.

My web host keeps usage statistics for my little website. It has oodles of information broken down by month, day, hour, etc.

It tallies which of my web pages are hit the most: Usually it is my game or this blog. No surprise there.

It tallies the domain where they are coming from. I get alot of users from Canada (family) and Finland (I assume the game). A few months ago there were alot of game players from Pakistan, but they seem to have petered off. Or moved to Finland. There are stats on which browser and operating system they are running too.

But the most interesting statistic is the website that they came from. Most people have either bookmarked this blog (or are playing the game), but there are links from other web pages. A chunk of the links are from search engine results. People are reaching me by searching for “Huffman algorithm,” “China adoption,” and “French military game.”

There are links from other bloggers too. Some high schooler apparently searched for “cute baby girls” then embedded a link to a picture of Katie in one of her blog entries. My usage temporarily spiked because, unlike my blog, she has a following.

I am in at least one other‘s blogroll. I feel compelled to subscribe to the blog of anyone who admits publicly that they read mine. I also perused the other bloggers that hold his interest. And so I am now reading a blog dedicated solely to an Intro to Java course some college student is taking. I am kibitzing too. Forgive me: it reminds me of my days at Ohio State.

This friends-of-friends investigation also lead me to Dooce. She is a former web designer who is now a stay at home mom. She is a riot and as such, she has much more of a following than the rest of us posers. Today she (and others) were on an NPR segment talking about how they were fired for blogging to the world about their jobs.

Perhaps I should have known this yesterday.

Marissa’s birthday was Friday. Grandma made chocolate cupcakes and Chris took them into school for her fellow first-graders. Unfortunately her classmates had to celebrate without her because she had pnemonia and had to stay home herself.

Apparently she opened her presents shortly after I left for work. At 9 o’clock, Marissa calls me at work to request that I help her install her Zoo Tycoon 2 program on my PC right then. Marissa is adept at installing programs on her own older PC, but this program requires her parent’s beefier machine and I have no plans to make her an administrator on the newer box. Heck, I reluctantly made my wife an administrator so she could use the scanner. I told Marissa I would install it when I got home. She had to cool her jets.

It was bath night for the girls. And because all three of them don’t fit in the bathtub at the same time anymore, it was too late to install the software after the multiple bathtub cycles. Last thing I wanted to do was to install a program for her then tell her to go to bed. She had to cool her jets again.

So at 6:50am Saturday, Marissa appears at my bedside to request computer support. Not wanting to put her off again, I installed the program and she went to town. Daddy went back to bed.

She and her sister played the game pretty much non-stop all Saturday while I enjoyed running to the hardware store and cleaning out clogged sinks. By Sunday noon, I was requesting time on the main computer from Marissa. I needed to pay the bills. Reluctantly she acquiesced after lunch.

Expecting it to be a five minute process, Marissa kept on asking when I would be done. As I was doing alot of year-end stuff in Quicken, Marissa was disappointed to hear it was going to be all afternoon. I mean really disappointed. She was in tears. She had to cool her jets again. So unfair! I reminded her of all the other games that she just got for Christmas that do play just fine on her old computer, but to her they paled in comparison to Zoo Tycoon 2. She did feel better after I mentioned that I was going to work Monday and she was staying home for MLK day and could use the computer all day.

Around dinnertime, I completed my bill paying and relinquished the main computer. Marissa’s grin went from ear to ear. I could put off my recreational blogging/surfing until after the girls went to bed while I watched some mindless soap. But just as the program starts, my wife comes out of the bedroom with the laptop. She had work to do. It took her all evening.

I had to cool my jets. So unfair!

Some endeavors are worth pursuing even if they are time consuming and difficult.

Others are an colossal waste of time.

There is a pastime called Google Whacking where you try to search google.com with exactly two words and try to get exactly one result. With Google’s indexing of 8 billion web pages, it is pretty difficult. You have to use real words and you cannot use quotes because that would be cheating. Even searching for oddball words like turgid schnitzel results in way too many hits.

Over the holidays Scarlett Johansson Googlewhacked on the Today show (see December 27th), so it must be socially acceptable to do in public. It must have been a slow newsday.

Because my main “time waster” website was undergoing weekend maintenance, I killed a few minutes whacking. I thought I found a winning combination but it turned out to be a false alarm because I had misspelled the second word. The website found was not in English.

But I did get lucky after 10 minutes and here is the proof:

Google-Whacked

I can now retire.

My Christmas HP computer is one hot laptop. Physical temperature hot. The CPU must be on the bottom left side because that is where the fan and vents are and where the heat comes from. After about an hour it gets almost to hot to use on top of a lap. I’ve got a TV tray with legs, but at a foot tall it is not at the appropriate height to use while seated.

I thought about getting a nice laptop cart but those are too bulky to store when not in use.

While I was flipping channels over the holidays, I saw an ad for a Table-Mate II on some channel I never watch. This thing folds flat for under a bed or sofa. It is half the price of the other cart, but its cheapness shows. It is three bent metal tubes and a plastic tray. It looks likes you could buy the thing for about $10 at Big Lots. Except you can’t. It appears you can only get it from the factory for three times as much plus shipping. I wasn’t convinced.

But over at OfficeMax, you can get a LapDesk. I like it better, because it appears to be a little more thought out, but we’re still talking about a slab of plastic. And at the same price, this doesn’t even include the legs. I wasn’t sold on this either.

Until I find something better, I’ll just accept a warm lap and adopt my kids.