PENNY DREADFUL: The random musings of PhineasPoe

My son the chef.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:39:16 -0500

Made lasagne for my mom’s birthday and @MiniPoe helped me. He stood on his little stool beside the stove and helped me stir the bechamel sauce. I even gave him a small chef’s knife and let him help me slice up mushrooms. It was a little harrowing at times but he still has all his fingers… and hopefully a nice memory. I know I do.

(via iloveemmawatson)

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:18:38 -0500

(via iloveemmawatson)

devonmichelle: (via fragilish)

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:11:27 -0500

devonmichelle:

(via fragilish)

Photo

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:12:06 -0500

via fc05.deviantart.net

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:44:54 -0500

via fc05.deviantart.net

via fc00.deviantart.net

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:44:23 -0500

via fc00.deviantart.net

Is Aerosmith auditioning a singer? - The Boston Globe

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:41:09 -0500

Is Aerosmith auditioning a singer? - The Boston Globe:

Is Aerosmith already auditioning replacements for their wayward frontman? Band members Brad Whitford and Joey Kramer said this week they would consider carrying on without Steven Tyler, and according to a tipster, they were serious. So serious, in fact, that Aerosmith may be flying in a singer from Venezuela for an audition. A source close to guitarist Joe Perry called the rumor rubbish, but word out of South America is that Aerosmith wants a look-see at a long-haired screamer named Paul Gillman. According to his MySpace page, Gillman has fronted a couple of popular heavy-metal bands - Arkangel and the eponymous Gillman - that have sold out stadiums in Venezuela. Judging from video clips, Gillman, who’s at least 10 years younger than the members of Aerosmith, has a big voice capable of belting out the band’s material. The source close to Perry insisted it’s not true and told us the guitarist has “never heard of the guy.’’ Fans are skeptical that Aerosmith could be commercially successful without Tyler, but Perry and the others sound increasingly determined to press ahead. And there’s ample precedent for using replacement singers: Van Halen hooked up with Sammy Hagar after David Lee Roth; Journey hired singerArnel Pineda after Steve Perry; and Judas Priest toured with Ripper Owens after Rob Halford left. It remains to be seen what Aerosmith will do.

Linked In… To What?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:29:00 -0500

Linked In… To What?

The Economics of Pinball « Cheap Talk

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:18:54 -0500

The Economics of Pinball « Cheap Talk:

by jeff

There is a reason I live in Winnetka and not in Evanston. And it’s not because, as Sandeep would put it, I like to get up 30 minutes earlier than otherwise so that my daughters can put their hair up and dress like beautiful little dolls to match all the other dolls in their classes. No, its because after all the dolls are asleep we get to go to their parents’ mansions for parties and there’s always at least one parent who makes a living doing something incredibly interesting.

Tonight I met the guy who once made a living designing the classic pinball machines. And he designed the two pinball machines, Black Knight in 1980 and High Speed in 1986 that are bookends for a period when the most important stuff I was learning about life was learned within a few feet of at least one of these machines.

It turns out these were also major turning points in the history of pinball itself. In 1980, pinball went digital, multi-ball, and multi-media starting with the game Black Knight. Black Knight brought pinball to a new level, literally speaking because it was among the first games with ramps and elevated flippers, but even more importantly because it brought a new challenge that drew in and solidified a pinball crowd. In doing so it also set the pinball market on a path that would eventually lead to its demise.

In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match probability. All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score. Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software. High Speed changed all that. It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval.

The early versions of this algorithm were crude, essentially targeting a weighted moving average. But later implementations were more sophisticated. The goal was to ensure that a fixed percentage, say the top 5% of all scores would win a free game. The score level that would implement this varies with the machine, location, and time. The algorithm would compute a histogram of scores and set the replay threshold at the empirical cutoff of 5%. Later designs would allow the threshold to rise quickly to combat the wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem. The WGTTC problem is where a machine has adjusted down to a low replay score because it is mostly played by novices. Then anytime an above average player gets on the machine, he’s getting free games all day long.

The other tool is the match probability: you win a free game if the last two digits of your score match an apparently random draw. While adjustments to the high-score threshold is textbook price theory, the adjustments to the match probability is pure behavioral economics. Let’s clear this up right away. No, the match probability is not uniform and yes, it is strategically manipulated depending on who is playing and when. For example, if the machine has been idle for more than three minutes, the match probability is boosted upward. You will never match if you won a free game by high score. And it gets more complicated than that. Any time there are two or more players and they finish a game with no credits left, one player (but only one) is very likely to match. Empirically, the other players will more often than not put in another quarter to play again.

(The tilt tolerance, by contrast has always been controlled by a physical device which is adjusted manually and rarely in response to user habits.)

Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging.

Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways.

Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.

Today Williams owns Bally but they make slot machines and video poker. There currently exists one botique manufacturer of pinball machines but its fair to say that innovation stopped in 1992.

My new best friend has a basement full of Black Knight, High Speed, Defender, Pac Man, Asteroids, and everything else you inserted quarters into when you were 16. Now I just have to find a supplier of C45, Djarums, and gooney-birds and I’ll be ditching class to hear sirens and “Pull Over Buddy.”

From useyourdigits’s Etsy: I wanted to do something...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:11:00 -0500

From useyourdigits’s Etsy:

I wanted to do something different for the holidays, so I’m doing this set of ornaments. The shapes should be familiar to anyone who ever played a video game. Sold together as a set of seven.

Ships flatpack, does not include hooks or string. Each ornament measures between 3 and 4 inches wide.

Laser cut red acrylic. $20 for the set.

fish-n-chipss: indierawk: Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:12:32 -0500

fish-n-chipss:

indierawk:

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:08:19 -0500

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual bookmark #1025671

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:05:56 -0500

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual bookmark #1025670

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:05:31 -0500

See Like Me - Ghost / Waldemar Max on we heart it / visual bookmark #1025674

Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud | Wired.com

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:04:35 -0500

Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud | Wired.com:

By Aaron Rowe

A biologist walks into a sushi bar and orders some tuna. What does he get? Escolar, a nasty fish with buttery flesh that can cause bizarre episodes of diarrhea, accompanied by a waxy intestinal discharge.

It’s not a joke. It happened five times to the same scientists during a brief research project. The results of that study were published Wednesday in PLOS One.

“A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,” wrote the authors. “All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.”

The team of researchers from Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History ordered tuna from 31 sushi restaurants and then used genetic tests to determine the species of fishes in those dishes. More than half of those eateries misrepresented, or couldn’t clarify the type of fish they were mongering. Several were selling endangered southern bluefin tuna.

Although their results were shocking, exposing sloppy sushi joints wasn’t their main goal. The scientists were trying to improve on a new species-identification technique, called DNA barcoding. A coalition of labs has been collecting fish, reading their genes and uploading the information to a database called FISH-BOL.

Their goal is to build a catalog of every fish species on earth so that anyone with a handheld DNA reader could definitively identify fish within minutes. Wildlife officials could use that technology to spot-check fish markets, and fine people who are selling protected species.

Right now, the FISH-BOL database is roughly 20 percent complete, but zooligsts can’t seem to agree upon the best way to condense the genetic information from each fish into a concise signature. That’s where this study comes into play. By checking 14 carefully selected spots on a gene called cox1 and matching them up with the database, the scientists could accurately identify any kind of tuna.

Citation: Lowenstein JH, Amato G, Kolokotronis S-O, “The Real maccoyii: Identifying Tuna Sushi with DNA Barcodes – Contrasting Characteristic Attributes and Genetic Distances.” PLoS ONE 4, 11, 2009, e7866.

UNDERDOG: Google Android Smashes Apple iPhone in Reader Vote -...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:31:00 -0500

UNDERDOG: Google Android Smashes Apple iPhone in Reader Vote - Mashable

by Barb Dybwad

We’ve been matching up popular web services, applications and mobile apps against each other in heated one-on-one battles here in our weekly Faceoff Series. Last week Microsoft Office bested Google Docs in a head to head race for the title of office suite champion.

This week we turned our attention to a rather timely battle being waged on the mobile front, between Apple’s still wildly-selling iPhone platform and Google’sslower to boil Android mobile operating system. Apparently the latter has been gaining some ground, resulting in our first unexpected upset victory in the Faceoff series.

… Google Android is the winning platform by a more than 2:1 margin. Out of 5045 total votes, Android walked away with 3323 of them or 66%, while the iPhone platform only netted 1494 or 30%. The tie vote included 228 or 5% who just couldn’t choose between them. Many people cited the openness of the platform and third-party development process as well as Android’s versatility, being able to be put to use not just on phones but also netbooks, tablet devices, eReaders and more.

Still, given the popularity of the iPhone we were a little surprised by these results.

valalalalerie: (via casusbelli)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:26:40 -0500

valalalalerie:

(via casusbelli)

New Moon Reviews

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:10:00 -0500

The Twilight Saga: New Moon takes the tepid achievement of Twilight, guts it, and leaves it for undead….sitting through this experience is like driving a tractor in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem. - Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)

I can’t comment on the acting because I didn’t catch Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner doing any. They basically primp and pose through the same humdrum motions they did before. Late in the film, a real actor, Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon), shows up as the mind-reading Aro, of the Italian Volturi vampires, and sparks things up. You can almost hear the young cast thinking, “Is that acting? It looks hard.” So Sheen is quickly ushered out… - Peter Travers (Rolling Stone)

…the movie’s a drag - paced like a dirge and cursed with dialogue and a goopy musical score (Alexandre Desplat, how could you?) that bring out the book’s worst daytime soap tendencies. - Ty Burr (Boston Globe)

…the sequel is stuck right in the abstinence mud with author Stephenie Meyer. Meyer may be, as Oprah admiringly called her recently, a “black-belt reader,” but as a writer, she’s strictly Dear Diary, and Melissa Rosenberg, who wrote The Twilight Saga: New Moon, is nothing if not respectful of her vapid prose. - Ella Taylor (The Village Voice)

If nothing else, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is a slight improvement over its predecessor. It’s too long, it’s poorly acted, the story’s clunky and the dialogue is laughable. Which says something about the quality of the first film, “Twilight.” - Bill Goodykoontz (Arizona Republic)

Bad dialogue, like bad news, doesn’t get better with age. This movie moves like the line at the post office. “Twilight” — that culture phenomenon that resembles “Star Wars” much as the prime minister of Belgium resembles the president of the United States pushes its leads apart with thin contrivances that set up predictable last-minute rescues. - Kyle Smith (New York Post)

This episode is as repetitive as the first, with endless scenes of kissus interruptus punctuated by moody indie-rock songs. - Rafer Guzman (Newsday)

Though an improvement over the first Twilight film, this sequel (both based on Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling books) drags and sputters, even in scenes meant to be infused with passion. - Claudia Pulg (USAToday)

It’s slow and not particularly fulfilling — a half-an-hour or so of drama stretched out for about two. - Stephen Whitty (Newark Star-Ledger)

All three lovers are so joyless, it’s hard to imagine why any of them would want to spend eternity together. - David Germain (Associated Press)

“New Moon,” on the other hand, merely follows a dictated formula. It’s a cheap, shoddy piece of work, one that banks on moviegoers’ anticipation without even bothering to craft a satisfying experience for them. Its pandering is an insult. “New Moon” moons its audience, and makes them pay for the so-called privilege. - Stephanie Zachareck (Salon.com)

*Ok, so I definitely see what all the fuss is about now…

idontblog: mutations: captainkirk:centaine:starsthatshine:dorks...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:50:31 -0500

idontblog:

mutations:

captainkirk:centaine:starsthatshine:dorksquad:slutgarden:championawkward:loveyourchaos:amberfaz:heckyeahup:mickeyandminnie:(via cheapandjuicy)

MiniPoe having a Five Guys burger with me.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:18:13 -0500

MiniPoe having a Five Guys burger with me.