Author Archives: molecularbear
Problems with PHP’s get_browser() on openSUSE 11.2
I just spent way too much time trying to debug PHP’s get_browser() on an openSUSE 11.2 server. All I wanted to do was display a funny little note about what web browser a user was surfing with, as in, “You … Continue reading
Image resolution in pixels vs DPI
When working with the print shop to create a poster out of a 3174 x 2153 pixel digital photo, I managed to get completely confused about DPI (dots per inch). I read a blog post called The Myth of DPI … Continue reading
My favorite technology of the aughts
The 2000s have been the first decade where I’ve actually had some serious purchasing power. While I rarely splurge, I have managed to accumulate some excellent technology over the past ten years. Here are my favorites from each year: 2009… … Continue reading
Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge
Across Realtime encompasses two stories: The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. As you might guess from the titles, the latter is much cooler than the former. Having read Marooned in Realtime first as a separate paperback, I already knew … Continue reading
Fantasy football lessons learned in 2009
Last year I wrote Fantasy football non-lessons learned in 2008 so maybe this is becoming an annual tradition. My sorry draft this season has hopefully taught me a few lessons that I can learn from going forward: Avoid one-hit wonders … Continue reading
How to compile bandwidthd 2.0.1 on OpenBSD 4.3
I ran into numerous problems when trying to compile bandwidthd 2.0.1 on OpenBSD 4.3. The first problem was that, even though I had installed all the dependencies via ports, ./configure was still erroring out with: checking for png_read_info in -lpng… … Continue reading
OS X for the Linux user
About 1.5 years ago, I made the switch from SuSE Linux to a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5. Here are some brief notes I made regarding the transition: OS X’s Spaces gives you virtual desktop functionality. I don’t think … Continue reading
Valkyria Chronicles vs Eurogamer
After being amazed by Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3, I was surprised to read this somewhat critical review on Eurogamer. The review starts out promisingly, but ends with a list of grievances about the combat system. Having loved the game … Continue reading
Group think among fantasy football experts
In my last post, I talked about grading the rankings of fantasy football experts using the root mean square error (RMSE), and listed some results for Week 9. This time, I took the data from ten analysts and examined their … Continue reading
Grading fantasy football analysts with the root mean square
UPDATE: added the ESPN guys. Last year I considered writing some code that would grade the performance of fantasy football analysts. This year I’ve actually finished up the code and can post a few results. What I am doing is … Continue reading