Travel Tip: Wear flip flops

The last few trips I have taken have been made a tad bit more comfortable and pleasant because I wore flip flops.

First, going through security is a breeze since you don’t have to take off and put your shoes back on (I hate doing that.) Most of the time, they just let me walk through security with my flip flops, though in JFK I actually had to take them off, which wasn’t a big deal because of how easy the procedure is with flip flops. Second, when you’re actually on the plane, it is nice to be able to kick off the flip flops and walk around barefoot. Call me a hippy, but I quite enjoy the feeling of carpet on my feet.

I think any flip flops will do, but I am partial to Rainbow and Reef. They mold to your feet over time and are extremely comfortable. I believe Rainbow has a lifetime guarantee on the soles of their sandals. Once they are worn out, they will replace them for FREE — the part that is molded to your feet stay on the sandal. Don’t quote me on that though.

Give it a try.

Power To The People

I think we have reached a point where the technology that we have will allow masses of people to collectively solve problems that are yet to be solved by computers. I have seen some examples of this and am convinced that this concept will lead us to new frontiers in what technology can accomplish.

Computers cannot perfectly perceive and recognize what the content of a picture is. It would be difficult for a computer to see a picture of a dog and recognize it as a dog. However, this process is very easy for humans. These simple facts are the basis for The ESP Game and Google Image Labeler. These sites use a “game” interface to pit humans against one another. Each player is showed an image and they are asked to type in tags that describe the image. Players receive points when their labels match labels of other players and over time as more and more images are labelled by multiple players, the labels for the images can become more and more precise. With enough players, enormous numbers of images can be indexed. Imagine the possibilities here…

With the web being flooded with new blogs everyday, spammers have found an excellent place to spread their plague; in comments. In an effort to combat spam, many spam filters show users a word in scrambled print and require the user to type out the letters in the word. This prevents programs from spamming, since the programs cannot identify the words in the images and therefore cannot post. One such system is CAPTCHA. Relatively cool, but hardly worldly, right? Not so fast… Every time a human decodes the word in a CAPTCHA image, the response is entered into a database… The images produced by re-CAPTCHA are words that cannot be deciphered by OCR programs that attempt to scan documents into a computer and turn them into text. For projects like this, CAPTCHA helps to correct OCR mistakes and aids in the process of digitizing books, and you’re helping even though you don’t know you’re doing it.

This is brilliant. I wonder what will be next. What problems will the collective power of the people help to solve?

Poker Players are Unpleasant

I have found that poker players as a generic group are more unpleasant than the population as a whole. Keep in mind that I am making this observation this despite the fact that I grew up in New York and went to school in Baltimore, two of the more unfriendly cities.

I have observed that most (obviously not all) poker players are ruder, grumpier, and more arrogant than the general populace. For example, I have found that people who play poker seem to have a very inflated opinion of their poker playing abilities. How many games/sports do you know of in which absolutely no one is unskilled? How often do you meet someone who plays poker on even a sporadic basis that says they aren’t good? How is it possible that 85% of the people I speak to are “good” at poker? Everyone claims to be good at poker. What is up with that?

In the real world, how often have you seen civilized, moderately intelligent people who barely know each other, yell at each other and call each other stupid for no reason? Not too often I would suspect. It happens on the poker table all the time. The game may be for money, but it is a game and people have a right to play it any way they want, as long as they play by the rules. You always get those belligerent know-it-alls who start berating the fish (unskilled player) for making a dumb move. Sure, you just lost some money but get a grip and show some manners — we should just be adults!

For such a beautiful game, poker does attract its fair share of ugly people and degenerates. What a shame.

Appreciation of Weekends

It seems that I have a newfound appreciation for weekends now that I am out of college and out in the real world.

Ethics of Fantasy Sports

Today I will opine on equity and ethics in fantasy sports.

I am a big fan of fantasy sports. I also think that fantasy sports, like all games, should be played by the rules. Fantasy sports can be ruined if members of the league do not play by the rules. I do believe that there is a fine line between good strategy and cheating in fantasy sports. I’ve been thinking about how to define it and here is what I have come up with: any action in which all managers involved are not making efforts to improve their team’s position is cheating.

Rules vary from league to league and identifying nuances in the rules is critical to form an optimal team and an optimal strategy to perform optimally in the league. Ignoring the specific rules of a league is a sure way to stop yourself from taking home a league title. Again, strategizing based on the rules is very different than cheating. I will use some examples of excellent strategy that some people consider cheating (incorrectly, in my view).

Hording Scarcity

This strategy used to work much better in the good ol days when the only good shortstops were A-Rod, Jeter, and Nomar and Chipper Jones was a 1st or 2nd round pick because no other 3B could go 30-100. Additionally, the utility of this strategy is much lower nowadays since you see only 1-2 util slot as opposed to 2-3 various utility spots. The strategy was simple. Select the top players in scarce positions and get them early so other teams in the league would be forced to give you a beneficial trade if they wanted one of the premium players. This is smart drafting, hardly cheating. You’re trying to make your team better and no one else is trying to make their team worse by trading for a star in a scarce position.

Unconscionable Trades

You’ve all seen it at one time or another. One manager makes a trade with another player that clearly favors one side. The only questions that need to be asked are, “are both sides trying to improve their team?” and “Do both sides think that they are improving their teams?” If the answer to both those questions is yes, then there is nothing about the trade that constitutes cheating. Each manager in a league is an individual entity and they paid their entry fee to manage their team as they see fit. If they wish to make a trade that they think helps their team and the entire rest of the league disagrees with them, that is too bad I think. The league did not pay that manager’s entry fee, so they do not get a vote in whether or not that manager can make a trade they like.

Pitcher Streaming

This one’s a classic. In H2H category leagues without transaction limits and IP limits, this is a popular strategy (Anyone that plays in a roto league without inning limits is asking for trouble). Pitcher streaming is a simple process in which players drop pitchers and continually add new ones during a week when they are starting a game. If a team has a significantly higher number of starts than the opposing team, then it is relatively easy to win certain categories (W, K, S, IP, etc) and have a toss-up in ratio categories (WHIP and ERA). If you can guarantee a win in 3/5 pitching categories, you’re in great shape to cruise into the playoffs in almost any H2H league. Is this illegal? No. Do people get pissed off? Yep.

An Experiment in Murphy’s Law and Probability

I think I am unlucky. Not really, because I don’t believe in luck, but I figured I would try this experiment for amusement purposes. I have a little pouch with my 2 keys in it. The two keys are indistinguishable from each other at first glance, but only one of them opens the lock on my door. Every evening after work, I pick a key from the pouch at random and see if it opens the door. After 18 tries, one would expect around 9 first attempts to have been successful. But, naturally Murphy’s law prevailed, and that was not the case.

Of the 18 attempts, ONLY ONE succeeded on the first try. WHAT?

Google, Search Engine

Can you imagine what the internet would be like without search engines?  How often do you use google?  If google and all other search engines disappeared of the face of the planet, how would it effect your life?

Google has this neat little feature which is called “Personalized Search.”  It apparently optimizes your search results based on your clicks so when you run a search, articles that you’re more likely to want to read, come up higher in the search list.  Besides the privacy implications of this, it is a pretty neat feature.  According to Google, I ran 489 Google searches during the month of August so far.  That is an average of 18.8 times per day.

If search engines disappeared, I think my world might collapse.

Fantastic Things…

I have yet to see something that I can classify as “Fantastic” in the baseball season.  Chase Utley’s hitting streak just got to 33 games today.  I think it would be fantastic if he got to 40.

Let’s go Chase.

The Beginning, Again

This is approximately the 3439084th (or 5th) time that I have attempted to start a blog and 3439083rd (or 4th) time I have said “I’ll actually keep posting this time.” There have been a slew of reasons why I put up, took down, put up, and took down my blogs over and over.

But alas, I think this one is here to stay. Besides the obvious privacy implications, I see no compelling reason not to keep one. Nor do I see a real compelling reason *to* keep one. Nevertheless, on a whim I decided to create this site, and at least for now, I’ll keep it.

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