I'm Sorry Dave - Dave Spencer's Weblog http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog David Spencer's personal weblog Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:29:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 “I am impossibly, wonderfully alive.” http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/03/15/%e2%80%9ci-am-impossibly-wonderfully-alive-%e2%80%9d/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/03/15/%e2%80%9ci-am-impossibly-wonderfully-alive-%e2%80%9d/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:24:01 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=183 Joe Kittinger, 1959, after falling 60,000 feet in a training parachute fall for his record setting 102,800 ft jump in 1960.

“I am impossibly, wonderfully alive.”

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/03/15/%e2%80%9ci-am-impossibly-wonderfully-alive-%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 Great 1976 article on Walter Browne, Chess, Poker, and Backgammon master http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/01/20/great-1976-article-on-walter-browne-chess-poker-and-backgammon-master/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/01/20/great-1976-article-on-walter-browne-chess-poker-and-backgammon-master/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:16:42 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=166 The article came out when he was 27 and the conclusion is brilliant and shows oh, the energy and optimism of youth

“I’m going to cultivate my own school of learning. I could be another Leonardo da Vinci. I want to do everything. I’m reading a lot now. Books like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I want to find out about everything that was bad and great. I want the straight stuff. I’m going to buy musical instruments. Drums! I’m going to play the drums! I’m going to do everything in my life. I feel I’ve got a thousand, a million lives inside me. I’m gonna be a lot more than a chess champion. When I’m 70 I’m gonna look back and say, whatever else I was, I was really alive!“

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1148103/1/index.htm

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2010/01/20/great-1976-article-on-walter-browne-chess-poker-and-backgammon-master/feed/ 0 “I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” the girl replied. http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/19/%e2%80%9ci%e2%80%99m-ready-to-die-but-i%e2%80%99m-going-to-wait-for-the-movie%e2%80%9d-the-girl-replied/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/19/%e2%80%9ci%e2%80%99m-ready-to-die-but-i%e2%80%99m-going-to-wait-for-the-movie%e2%80%9d-the-girl-replied/#comments Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:30:16 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=164 Pixar grants girl’s dying wish with home viewing of ‘Up’ | pixar, up, movie, home, show, girl, cancer, die, huntington, beach – Entertainment – OCRegister.com.

This is touching and heartwrenching :(

I remember another story in the news 5 or so years ago about a girl who had some serious disease and she was going to die but she was just focused on learning things in school and getting into the next grade.

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/19/%e2%80%9ci%e2%80%99m-ready-to-die-but-i%e2%80%99m-going-to-wait-for-the-movie%e2%80%9d-the-girl-replied/feed/ 0 Well – Better Running Through Walking – NYTimes.com http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/03/well-better-running-through-walking-nytimescom/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/03/well-better-running-through-walking-nytimescom/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:05:05 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=162 Depending on one’s fitness level, a walk-break runner might run for a minute and walk for a minute, whether on a 5-mile training run or the 26.2-mile course on race day. A more experienced runner might incorporate a one-minute walk break for every mile of running

via Well – Better Running Through Walking – NYTimes.com.

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/06/03/well-better-running-through-walking-nytimescom/feed/ 0 How SQLite Is Tested http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/05/29/how-sqlite-is-tested/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/05/29/how-sqlite-is-tested/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 04:42:53 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=158 How SQLite Is Tested.

Nice well written article.

Section 9 is especially interesting:

Our experience, then, is that static analysis is counter-productive to quality. In other words, focusing on static analysis (being concerned with compiler warnings) actually reduces the quality of the code. Nevertheless, we developers have capitulated to pressure from users and actively work to eliminate compiler warnings. We are willing to do this because the other tests described above do an excellent job of finding the bugs that are often introduced when removing compiler warnings, so that product quality is probably not decreased as a result.

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/05/29/how-sqlite-is-tested/feed/ 0 China http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/china/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/china/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:26:30 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=156 From Business Insider: China Is Not Another Ascendant Superpower, It’s Just Another Nation with Structural Problems

“…when the United States catches cold, China gets pneumonia…”

“…the opportunity to put a better face on complete catastrophy will always be taken…”

“…nothing is as it seems in Asia…”

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/china/feed/ 0 That was Zen, this is Freud http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/that-was-zen-this-is-freud/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/that-was-zen-this-is-freud/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:18:30 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=153 Great NYTimes article on a long time Zen Buddhist monk who undergoes psychotherapy: Enlightenment Therapy.

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/04/26/that-was-zen-this-is-freud/feed/ 0 13,000 year old caveman tools found in Boulder, CO http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/02/27/13000-year-old-caveman-tools-found-in-boulder-co/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/02/27/13000-year-old-caveman-tools-found-in-boulder-co/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:16:29 +0000 dave http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/?p=143 …with remains of a Camel on the tools! Pretty cool. The NYTimes has an article w/o pictures.
See this for a video:
13,000-Year-Old Stone Tool Cache in Colorado Shows Evidence of Camel, Horse Butchering
and this for
a detailed photo of the tools.

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2009/02/27/13000-year-old-caveman-tools-found-in-boulder-co/feed/ 0 Python’s multiprocessing module is the new hottness http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2008/12/05/pythons-multiprocessing-module-is-the-new-hottness/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2008/12/05/pythons-multiprocessing-module-is-the-new-hottness/#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 05:38:15 +0000 dave http://www.tropo.com/dave/blog/2008/12/05/pythons-multiprocessing-module-is-the-new-hottness/ The new multiprocessing module in Python 2.6 and 3.0 looks pretty cool. It gets around the whole, um, design for low performance where the dreaded Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) makes multithreading difficult, by making it easy to spawn python subprocesses, communicate with them, and share data. They even have a form of security on the sockets so that bad guys can’t send any data to any of the processes w/o knowing a secret key.

Note to self: explore writing a toy multi-core mapreduce with ‘import multiprocessing’…

]]> http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2008/12/05/pythons-multiprocessing-module-is-the-new-hottness/feed/ 0 Let there be Challah http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2008/08/07/let-there-be-challah/ http://www.chencer.com/dave/blog/2008/08/07/let-there-be-challah/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:58:52 +0000 dave http://www.tropo.com/dave/blog/2008/08/07/let-there-be-challah/ We like the Challah from Trader Joes, and one of the advances of this century is that you can buy it almost any day of the week, whereas in the ole days it seemed to be a Friday/Saturday bread. We usually make french toast out of it on weekends or just plain toast during the week.

In a moment of inspiration I decided to dig into a recipe from Anne Willan’s Cook It Right and four or so hours later I had a loaf that turned out amazingly well.


Challah closeup

The finishes wasn’t quite perfect – I didn’t know how much egg wash to put on. I put it on fairly heavily and it didn’t end up even in spots – noone complained, but next time I’ll drench it more.


Challah and cookbook

The next day we had it for french toast and it was good, and there was still half a loaf left when we finished.

Big, fun, yummie and impressive. This will be repeated.

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