Max Gibiansky

I made a post about what and who I'm thinking of voting for in California. https://medium.com/@ftl_ftw/what-im-thinking-of-voting-for-8f0860b7b78d .

There are 11 statewide propositions, 10 statewide positions, 10 justices, 15 regional/local positions (from my Representative in congress down to two members of the local school board) and four local propositions.

Appreciate any feedback/comments.

Paper in Science:
Abstract: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/330/6001/197
Fulltext: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/330/6001/197

Popular news summary of the coolest bits: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/07/5250671-bacteria-can-walk-on-legs

I'm v. excited.

Crossposted everywhere, because srsly.

Oh noooooo. The paper is a zombie now. I thought it was dead, but it's coming back! (The brevia got accepted, but now Gerard ALSO wants to make the rest of the long version into its own paper, and submit it to somewhere less ambitious.)

It is undead. It lives a tortured existence.

Today is a Sunday. Every single member of my lab group was in lab today, myself included (and also Prof. Wong). Grad school...

I figure I should update this with my latest toy! Or two, depending how you count.

I'd started playing Echo Bazaar (fallenlondon.com). I like the atmosphere. I don't like the fact that it is trying to do to twitter what apps did to facebook. But I like the cool little snippets and storylines. (Take a look at the front page for a sample, or search twitter for #ebz if curious. They give minor bonuses for posting about them on twitter, though you can preface the post with "d [alt username]" to make it a direct message to yourself that nobody else will see.)

It was kinda cool for a while - storylets and opportunities and fun things. But it got quite grindy at higher levels, because of their leveling mechanic; advancing from level x-1 to level x takes x experience points, and experience gain does not speed up at higher levels. Also, because of the way they spread out their actions, they try to encourage logging in many times per day, and that was distracting.

So I got tired of that and spent a few evenings playing with selenium (RC) (seleniumhq.org) - supposed to be a web application testing system, lets me write things things like "$sel->click_on_link('ACCEPT')" or run javascript in a firefox browser. So now I have the majority of that game entirely automatable! Much of it runs on fairly transparent javascript - "showmap(); travel(4, "ladybones", "Ladybones road");" do exactly what it looks like they do.

Unfortunately, actions are all coded by IDs. "beginEvent($eventid);" to pick an event (or card), "loadMainContentWithParams('/Storylet/ChooseBranch', {'branchid':$branchid });" to choose which branch. I've been mostly using this script to grind repetitive events - I tell it to run the "Donate your body to science (for an hour or two)" storylet 50 times, I come back from UCLA in the evening to find my watchful leveled twice. Easy enough. I have to look up the IDs manually, though.

Cards are trickier - there's so many, I can't just look up the IDs of a few useful ones. If I have time/feel like it, maybe I should figure out how to parse out the card text/description/id, or something... but that may not be worth the time, the grinding is what needs automation.

This is really annoying. I've gotten into the pattern where when I get enough sleep, the next day I can't fall asleep until it's way too late, so the day after I don't get enough sleep, so the day after I sleep in (and therefore get enough sleep), and so then I can't fall asleep at a reasonable time...

...I should at least pick up some computer games to make good use of that not-asleep time :-p

Mixed update.

First, the AWESOME! Had the AWESOMEST tennis match in FOREVER! If I had gotten around to posting about it on Saturday I would have made some joke like "had an amazing time with Calvin last night!" but I was late.

( Tennis )

But in other news, I screwed up today and got a parking ticket :( Traffic, parking, LA... It was Donlee's birthday, hence driving and parking in weird places and times and messing up. I don't like birthdays. Birthdays never go well for me.

Oh! Also watched Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog. I didn't like it as much as perhaps I would have expected, but I liked some of the songs a lot and I am now listening to the soundtrack. Is catchy!

Still have no idea what the hell is going on with my research or my paper or... :(

Sleep schedule totally broken, still need to take car to get oil change. Have been lazy about that, but it's starting to blink lights at me and is not happy. I will wake up tomorrow EARLY and fix both of those! Rly! Rly! Tomorrow's a brand new day! (Well, since it's past midnight now, not really, I guess.)

Had a few visits back to Mudd recently. Funball a few weeks back was quite fun. Did not spend much time on the dance floor, spent much time catching up with all sorts of people. Found one more person to bug for board games or Smash in the San Diego area ;)

Looks quite the same as it was back when I left. Same lounge, same courtyard, sans tree.

The right way to get from UCLA to HMC is *so* 405N->101E->134E->210E rather than 405S->10E. The 10 is evil. It managed to be crazy both on the way there and back for funball. Even though it has more numbers in it, the first route is just as fast, and the roads don't go through the middle of downtown LA.

Alumni weekend felt more straightforward, somehow.

Spent most of Saturday hanging out with Heather and Adam, actually - and had a game of RoboRally with them and Alan Davidson (1 more board game contact in the LA area, though not for long and I think I have enough of a list up here via the West LA Board Game Geeks meetups.) It was pleasant to catch up with everyone and everything.

I still miss the place. East Dorm, the lounge, the community. Need moar puns!

But I do have my own board game and tennis setups, so life's ok.

This is a post. My eljay is at savfan104.livejournal.com . Perhaps I should look in to how to import posts, or to getting a sanely updated version of charm and making it post here, and make a friendslist, and so on and so forth. But I am lazy.