Greg Maddux passes Roger Clemens in wins!

In yesterday's Dodger game, Greg Maddux got his 355th career win, to move him past Roger Clemens on the all-time win list. I don't know if Maddux will play next year---though I certainly hope he does!---and I am extremely pleased that whether or not he does that he has passed Clemens. I simply like Maddux a lot better. Amen.

In other baseball news, there AL Central and NL Wild Card races are still going. Today is the last official day of the baseball season, though there may be short playoffs to decide these races and the White Sox also have a rained-out game to make up.

In still other news, CC Sabathia is tied for the league lead in shutouts in each of the two leagues. That's just bloody awesome! I doubt that's ever happened before, though I haven't checked to make sure.

Tonight's Plans

The plans for tonight include seeing a performance in the Vienna Opera House. The opera I'll be seeing is by some guy named Wagner... :)

200 strikeouts in a season!

Yesterday, the Diamondbacks' Mark Reynolds struck out for the 200th time this season, becoming the first Major Leaguer to accomplish this "feat." As you can see here, several players have come close during the last few years and the Phillies' Ryan Howard might be joining Reynolds in a couple of days...

In other baseball news (besides the most important one about the Dodgers' clinching), the Brewers won in dramatic fashion to remain in a tie with the Mets for the NL wild card and the Twins finished a sweep of the White Sox to take over first place in the AL Central. I would definitely prefer for both the Twins and Brewers to make the postseason. I would love to have an Angels-Dodgers World Series (a so-called "Freeway Series"), and for the Dodgers to kick some ass!

The Dodgers have won the National League West!

With the Diamondbacks' loss to the Cardinals yesterday, the Dodgers have now clinched the National League West! Go Dodgers!

Of course, now we have the major stumbling block of trying to actually win the first round of playoffs, which we haven't managed to do for quite a while. In fact, we haven't won a single postseason series since 1988, when we won the World Series. In fact, we've only won one postseason game since then, and Jose Lima of all people was the winning pitcher in that game...

Let's see how far we can get this year...

Kickin' it old school: Knight Rider is back

I just saw an advertisement that a new version of the series Knight Rider premiers tonight. My brother was a fanatical follower of that show back in the day, so I watched a few episodes. (My favorites were the battles between KITT and KARR.) I remember hearing a few years back about a movie version. Maybe that's still happening?

Anyway, right now I need to turbo boost into some more work before I do some more exploration later.

RIP New York Yankees (1995-2008)

Well, the Yankees have officially been eliminated and won't be playing in baseball's postseason this year. About fucking time.

(Note: I had the RIP idea on my own, but apparently the folks at ESPN had similar ideas, given the graphics they're using for their headline for an article by Buster Olney.)

Hello from Vienna

Today I was walking some of the coldy-efficient streets of Vienna. There's actually a nice pretenious coffee place right next to my hotel and, as a big added bonus, it actually has iced espresso drinks on the regular menu (unlike the coffee bars in some of the really nice European cities I've visited...also unlike the other coffee bars here, as far as I can tell). I also found two gelato places and---here's a big shock---lots of restaurants that serve schnitzel. (I had a good weinerschnitzel today. My mother made that for me many times as a child, and I definitely have a particular fondness for that dish. Finding good examples of it will be pretty easy for the next few days.) None of the menus have had any English translations so far, so I'll need to figure out which words correspond to which other types of meet.

I walked a few miles, but I didn't get to the city center. I also had an early flight this morning so given the need to get a bus from Oxford to Heathrow, I only got about 4 hours of not-too-restful sleep last night. Hence my explorations today weren't very expansive and much more will have to come later. I have all of Saturday, for example.

Madonna seems to be following me around. She had a concert in Montreal during my visit and has one here tonight. I like some of her music quite a lot, but I'm still cross from her performance at Coachella and I'm tired anyway (as I mentioned). On the bright side, Leonard Cohen is performing here both tomorrow and the day after, and I might very well go see him.

Finally (for now), the damn Y and Z have been swapped for the keyboards here (I don't currently have internet access from my own computer), and this is causing me grief in my typing.

Vienna Calling (aka: What happens in Vienna stays in Vienna)

I seem to be doing just about everything possible (including finishing unpacking from my recent apartment change!) to avoid finishing the .ppt slides for my talk on Wednesday. I really ought to be much better about this, because I leave tomorrow morning for Vienna and if I don't finish the talk today, I'll need to eat into some of my exploration time tomorrow. (Granted, I'll have plenty more exploration time on other days...)

I am attending a workshop at the Wolfgang Pauli Institute called The Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its application for Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices. There are only 9 talks, though I think there were originally going to be around 25 of them. This could make the workshop either really good or really bad. Lots of discussion time has been allocated, and with the small number of people I suspect we'll even be able to calculate some stuff and get going on some projects. That would be really great! However, I can also envision things backfiring by everybody just going their own way and not interacting enough. Let's see how it goes. Even in the worst case, it would also just mean more time to explore Vienna, which isn't such a bad thing either (to say the least).

Anyway, my hope is to have a very exciting trip both academically and culturally. I am particularly excited about exploring the city's fine musical tradition! If I get a chance, I might even try to make my way here to pay my respects.

This will be my first trip to Austria. As for when I get back to Oxford, on Sunday I'll be back (so to speak).

Calculemus!

I recently read a very interesting article called "Calculemus!" in American Scientist. It was written by Bryan Hayes, who maintains the blog bit-player.

In this article, he discusses what he calls "inquisitive computing" and the types of programming environments that best promote it. (At the end of the article, he enumerates the features he considers desirable. I won't discuss them here, but I don't know if there is anything horrible surprising on the list. It might be interesting to discuss that as well, but I'm going to go in a different direction in this entry.)

Some of the example problems Hayes discusses remind me a great deal of the programming nuggets Lemming was mentioning to me a while back. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if these showed up in the list Lemming was following.)

One of them involves "more sums than differences" (MSTD) sets: Take a set of integers (both signs are possible) and calculate first all possible sums from pairs of integers in that set and second all possible differences from pair of numbers in that set. For which sets of integers does the set of unique sums have more entries than the set of unique differences?

Another involves what are called ABCs: Consider the equation a + b = c, where a, b, and c are all positive integers that have no common divisors (besides 1). Now consider the product abc and find all the prime factors of this product. Get rid of duplicates so that each prime that you find occurs exactly once. The product of these remaining primes, denoted rad(abc), is called the radical of abc. (Dude!) The question is the following: When is c > rad(abc)? Also, how much greater can c be than rad(abc)?

Brief summary o' today

Today, o' course, be International Talk like a Pirate Day. Despite me promise, I didn't conduct any o' today's oral examinations in pirate. Sorry!

I finished helpin' out with t' oral exams for Masters students today. Then t' other Examiners and I needed t' determine their fate, which be not somethin' that I be particularly comfortable doin'. Then we gave them their results in person one-by-one, which o' course includes both good and bad moments. (T' amusin' incident was when we forget t' give somebody information and then needed t' call him aft. Then we called him aft yet again t' give him another piece o' information that we forgot t' give him, though t' second call-aft was done partially because it was funny. I was crackin' up and couldn't keep a straight face at that point; all t' students---includin' t' one in question---seemed t' enjoy this bit too.) After that I was finally able t' go home and change out o' sub fusc (sorry, no pictures---but eventually I'm aye someone will take pictures o' me in that get-up). We had t' leavin' party for t' students a little while later; this may well be t' first and last Masters leavin' party I attend because one o' t' students decided that that would be a good time t' come up t' me and tell me off. This has port a pretty bitter taste in me mouth, so I think next time I will just not be part o' t' troupe sayin' I'm shovin' off t' t' students. (I have a year t' get over this, so don't hold me t' not showin' up.) I think most o' them didn't want t' see me thar anyway, so I might as well oblige them.

Later in t' evenin' I had a party at me place t' celebrate t' fact that t' Yankees be not goin' t' make t' playoffs this year. (T' secondary reason was that it was a house-warmin' party and t' tertiary reason was that I was done markin' dissertations and examinin' students for quite a while. I've become too fatalistic about t' Dodgers these days t' celebrate a National League West division victory until it's a done deal.)

Lyman Bostock

Tuesday September 23rd will mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock. I first found out about this incident many years ago when I read Rod Carew's autobiography. Today, ESPN.com posted a fascinating article by Jeff Pearlman on the subject. It's well worth a read, though obviously the story is far from a happy one.

New apartment

I have moved one floor down to the 0th floor of Penrose (the 'garden set') in Somerville. I have 50% more space now. I started packing yesterday and finished it up in real-time while things were being moved down here. With the help of a couple of porters [bringing the total number to 3 :)], everything got moved today and I have actually unpacked a good bit of stuff.

Among the things I inherited from the previous resident (besides a dirty apartment, which will be remedied soon enough) were two unused pale green candles. I have used these to help create an altar for Summer Fun Cthulhu above the center my living room bookshelves. I don't have a digital camera, but I am having a party on Friday, so I'll get one of the attendees to take a picture so that I can post it. I must say that this is the best altar I have ever created.

Tampa Bay Rays = Muppets?

According to Bugs & Cranks, the Tampa Bay Rays are muppets.

To be honest, I can't see much of a resemblance except for one case which is so awesome that I have to do this post: Check out Matt Garza versus Sam the Eagle. Separated at birth, Man!

(Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer, who posted the link on his blog.)

My vote is in the mail.

I was worried when I didn't get any response from the bureaucrats when I filled out my overseas voting form, but I found my ballot in my mailbox this morning and I have now voted and sent things out.

If the Democrats don't win California (and we're in very big trouble if that happens!), it won't be my fault. (Well, unless the ballot gets lost in the mail or something, but we won't talk about such things.)

Palin Numbers

There is currently an active discussion on SOCnet (a social networks listserv) about Palin numbers. Shudder.

I didn't have the heart to bring up either Schroder numbers (which apparently bear a small bit of similarity in the definition of links) or connections to Monica.

That discussion started becoming political, so it's probably over---though I think I'll be shuddering for a little while.

'Overseen' in Oxford

In this blog entry, I'll incorrectly use the term overseen as a visual analog of overhead. But I like it, so I'm going to do it anyway.

As many of you---perhaps most of you---know, I've spent the majority of my days since Monday September 8th marking Masters dissertations. Today I got down to the last two ("Not more than two...") dissertations and the final one, which I just finished, had a very pleasant surprise. Namely, it included the invention of a new chemical element: criterium.

Words of Warning

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep for 10 minutes in the Shea Stadium bleachers. Wow.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer, who posted the link on his blog.)

Annoying experience in Super Mario Galaxy

I was playing some Super Mario Galaxy after yet another grueling day of reading Masters dissertations. I decided to start with the 'secret' star on the second level of the Toy Box galaxy, which involves going to a secret planet and turning all the blue question mark panels into yellow exclamation point panels and then picking up the star you're allowed to get once you do so.

I find this particular part of that level annoying because I find the game's camera very annoying in this particular spot. (I find it annoying in some other spots as well, but this one really irks me. In fact, the parts where the game's camera goes a bit nuts make me dizzy in real life when I play them. This is one of the spots in the game that does that.) OK, so I fought the camera and turned all the blocks in a way that would make Q*Bert proud and then I tried to make my way to the star (while fighting the camera again). Certain spiky platforms no longer move after all the blocks are turned. I got greedy and decide to get some star bits and I accidently bumped into the edge of a non-moving spiky platform because of my carelessness. The deflection from this knocked Mario prone in between two of the turned platforms. He tried to get up, but was caught in between so automatically ended up prone again. This turned out to be an infinite loop, as no form of jumping registered. Fuck. I thus needed to leave the level without my coveted star, and now I'll need to redo my efforts for this particular star. Bloody Hell! I'm not doing it now though because I play such games to reduce frustration, not to add to it. I'm just going to go read or something, but this will be pleasure reading rather than another dissertation.

K-Rod breaks Bobby Thigpen's single-season save record

Yesterday, the Angels' Francisco Rodriguez ("K-Rod") recorded his 58th save of 2008, breaking Bobby Thigpen's single-season mark. Bobby Thigpen---who has an awesome last name, by the way---was a decent reliever who had a couple of very good seasons, but given how many significantly better closers there have been (including Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, and Dennis Eckersley, to name just a few), it's nice that a much better reliever now has this record. (Just thing what it would be like if Juan Pierre held the record for most consecutive games with a hit. It's kind of like that, though not quite as bad.) Obviously a lot of luck is involved---being on a good team really helps for this particular record, for example---and the save statistic is rather problematic anyway.

Given this blog entry, the other thing I wanted to mention is the origin of K-Rod's nickname. Alex Rodriguez had the nickname "A-Rod" going back to before he entered professional baseball and because of him, basically every baseball player with the last name of Rodriguez was dubbed "\alpha-Rod", where \alpha denotes the first letter of their first name. However, K-Rod is the one exception to this rule and the only one of those nicknames that is in any way creative. K-Rod came up late in 2002 during the Angels' Word Series run and blew everybody away with lots of strikeouts (which are denoted "K" in box scores), and that's where the K comes from.

Anyway, with all due respect to Bobby Thigpen, I'm pleased that somebody appropriate now holds this record.

Massive Media Roundup

Time for the long-promised set of massive media reviews, which will mostly be short and sweet. I kept the tickets so that I could actually remember what I saw. The order below is simply the order in which I pick up the ticket.

Hellboy II: Great movie! I approve. The German phastasm was amusing. Was the elven princess in Stardust? (Apparently not, but for some reason she seemed similar to me.)

The Wind in the Willows (theatrical version): I saw this at a small theatre and I enjoyed it very much. Now I finally understand where Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attraction comes from... Highly recommended!

Bugsy Malone: In this play, British teenagers (and sometimes younger) attempt to do gangster noir. It was very good overall, but it definitely didn't work at times.

Get Smart: I had been waiting for this film to come out ever since I first heard about it something like 2.5 years ago, given that I really enjoyed watching reruns of the original series as a kid. The casting was excellent! Steve Carrell was the obvious choice to play Maxwell Smart (Agent 86), although nobody will ever duplicate Don Adams in that roll (not even Inspector Gadget, who was based on Agent 86 and was voiced by a Don Adams sound-alike). Anne Hathaway did well as Agent 99, though the dynamics between Agents 86 and 99 in the movie were a bit different than in the show (where 99 was madly in love with 86, who was completely oblivious to the whole thing---at least at first; by the time of the failed return of the series, I believe the characters were married). Duane Johnson and Alan Arkin were also excellent. The film included several catch phrases (which I appreciated) and in general was quite good, even though I prefer the original series (which was a Mel Brooks creation, by the way, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I like it so much). Also, the shoe phone played a prominent role in the film. That was extremely important.

Hello Dolly (musical): Unfortunately, I was not very impressed, though I admit that it did have its moments. However, once I saw Wall-E, I became happy that I saw the musical given that it played an important role in that film. (The clips being shown in the movie were from Hello Dolly.)

Wall-E: Another excellent Pixar film. I'm shocked. It's amazing how they conveyed such emotion in the characters with so little dialog.

Kung Fu Panda: I really liked it! I tried unsuccessfully to get people to see it with me, but se la vie. They thought it would be silly---their loss. (Or maybe it's more precise to say that they assume that "silly" means not worth watching?)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: I enjoyed it, although I was a bit annoyed that they were hitting harder with the religious overtones in the film than they did in the prequel. The older daughter was a frosh (or "fresher", as it's called here) at Oxford last fall. I forgot which College.

The Pirates of Penzance: This was awesome! I recognized a very high percentage of the songs, which is not surprising given that many of the songs in there show up all over the place. I am the very model of a modern applied mathematician---or something like that. It could have been worse: I've been planning since I saw the musical (for the first time, amazingly enough) to write a parody of a certain song that I plan to call "Condensed Matter". Stay tuned...

The Forbidden Kingdom: I really liked this film as well. I could have done without the token white boy, but it didn't detract too much from what I actually paid to see (so I guess this is sort of like a milder version of AG's opinion on this point).

Oklahoma! (musical): This was a production by Oxford students that I saw at a small stage in Wadham College. I should have blogged about this earlier because then I could have mentioned that I ran into Lloyd alum Joe Jewell '04 (I think that's the right year), who was also in the audience. He will be starting as a grad turkey at Tech in the fall. I think he'll be in aeronautics. Oh, and the musical was really good! There was a recognizable vignette that I didn't realize came from this musical that I had seen parodied in a cartoon (I think in an episode of Bugs Bunny). There was also a very recognizable song ("Oh, what a beautiful morning") that I had no idea came from this musical.

Two Hobbit-Sized Parodies: Harry Potter and the Generic Adventure and Swords & Saucery: The second of these had a Lord of the Rings Theme. These plays were also performed by Oxford students and many audience members knew some or all of the people in the plays, so there was some audience participation at appropriate points. The Harry Potter parody was first. One of my friends played Snape, although I was already planning to go even before I found out about that. The guy who played Valdemort was booed lustily every time he came on "stage" (the performance was in the Wadham Gardens), including when he played a different character (a good guy) in the second parody. That was awesome! There were also lots of private jokes, and I even caught a couple of them. Think of these things as roughly like Lloyd movies, but as live performances. That was the basic ambience, which I liked very much.

Stuff at the Montreal film festival: I'm now wishing I could have gotten tickets for the new Woody Allen film (they sold out, so my debate whether I should go to that one versus having dinner at a normal time ended rather quickly) because I really want to see it and the UK is not presently listed in its IMDB entry as somewhere it's being released. Damnit! Satellites & Meteorites was an excellent Gondrey-esque film was an Irish director, who was there to answer our questions after the film ended. (A short film called The Ranger was shown before the main film. This was meh.) It was a bit rough around the edges and in a couple of situations could have been more subtle, but it is definitely on the short list of my favorite films of the year.) The Japanese film One Million Yen Girl was enjoyable, but it was merely good. Lissi and the Wild Emperor was a very funny German cartoon (with very high animation quality) which would probably get a PG-13 rating in the US. It made fun of Emperor Ferdinand. (For what it's worth, I picked the order randomly except for the ones at this film festival. I did these last on purpose.)

Alright, now I've finally caught up on one of the entries I had been meaning to write for a while.