obfuscated.org

McSweeney’s Pros and Cons of the Top 20 Democratic Presidential Candidates is pretty funny.

11.

ALLEN IVERSON

Pro: Instant offense. Con: Selfish with the ball; may have lost a step.

12.

IRA GLASS

Pro: Thoughtful; self-effacing; like many Americans, enjoys cable television. Con: At present, no budget line item exists for moody introspective music to underscore every statement president makes in order to make it sound more poignant.

16.

JESUS CHRIST

Pro: Could draw some initial interest from the Christian right until they research his actual positions in a deeper way; likable; strong leadership qualities. Con: Unkempt; pretty far left; messianic complex.

[Via]

COULTON’s “thing a week” and the “Jonathan Coulton Project” are available as podcasts. Subscribe.

After years of happy pet-free living, we finally gave in and got a cat. Meet Tommy:

I’ve pre-ordered a year’s supply of Claritin, but being completely zonked out 24/7 will totally be worth it to have a little feline companionship around the house. Plus I get to blog about my cat, which is braggable.

For a good time, play both videos at the same time.

A recent email from the 1947project tipped me off to Esotouric, offering “Bus Adventures into the secret heart of LA.” Stephanie and I went on their Black Dahlia tour last winter and it was amazing. Kim and Nathan put on an exceedingly entertaining and informative tour.

As it turns out, they now have a tour called Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place. Chandler is the definitive author of Los Angeles hard-boiled crime fiction. Getting the lowdown on his view of the city sounds nothing short of fascinating.

I’m totally going to extend my sports betting streak.  In this Saturday’s KU v. UCLA game, I have KU by a point and a half against Stan.  A pitcher to the winner.

Stephanie is getting a bunch of her pictures uploaded to Flickr. To which I say: backgrounds! Enjoy.

19×12 32×12

19×12 32×12

19×12 32×12

The LA Derby Dolls are having an all-ages bout this coming December 2nd. CLV is a co-captain of the “Glam Reapers” team. Should be a fun event. Stephanie, The Kid and I will be there.

My favorite kooky preservationists over at the 1947project updated their site recently. Everybody loves a good redesign, and it’s got the obligatory Powells advert, so you know it’s cool. The best part, for me at least, is that they now seem to have a full RSS feed so I’ll actually, you know, read their stuff. There’s little that’s more infuriating for me than an RSS feed that gives you like nine words and then “[…]” or “read more” or “I LIVE IN SILVER LAKE FOLKS MORE AFTER THE JUMP.” (Hi, Blogging.la!) I’m really excited to have access to the 1947project’s content in a convenient format. Thanks, guys!

Their Pasadena crime bus happens in July. The ticket prices are crazy high — $47/person — and I really should be saving money right now. Still, if the Pasadena tour is put together as well as their amazing Black Dahlia tour, it would totally be worth it. Plus it’s the ‘Dena, so bonus points for crime history in the city where I spend most of my waking hours.

Well, either way I’ll actually read their stuff now. Which is braggable.

The Kid and I went to the open house at JPL today. It was pretty cool. They had all sorts of sciency stuff out to look at and sciency people out to answer questions about the sciency stuff.

There was a machine learning booth towards the top of the campus where they demoed some of the technologies that I worked with at Yahoo Research. They had an SVM hooked up to the audio input of a Mac, and when you spoke in to it it built a model of your speech and used it to determine who was talking at any given time. Not surprisingly, it worked really well. Those wacky kids at JPL and all their science. It was a lot of fun to show The Kid a live demo of the sort of stuff that I worked with.

Also worth noting: big ups to public radio for letting me know that this event was on. Hooray for community news that focuses on science from time to time.