Pekkle pointed out a very entertaining article from the NYTimes about how manliness is correlated to the ability to find parking spots in lower Manhattan Chinatown. One of the funnier quotes from the piece:

Sons in many cultures learn how to behave as men by observing their fathers, often in rituals that may seem odd or even fetishistic to outsiders. There’s a tribe in New Guinea, for instance, where the fathers gather together and masturbate into a river while their adolescent male offspring watch. In a similar way, I learned from the back seat of my father’s 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic that Raskin men find good parking. Quickly.

I actually laughed out loud.

The Japanese are known for their whacky inventions and whatnot, but this Capsule Inn in Akihabara is definitely not for the claustrophobic. Even I wouldn’t stay there, even if it costs 4,000 Yen per night (approximately $40 US). Well, maybe if it was the only room available in Tokyo.

Pekkle sent me a link a while ago to an article at AMS about how Google determines the importance of a page, also known as its pagerank. It’s actually a very interesting paper and a pleasure to read, especially the first few pages where the author takes you through some elementary logic to arrive at an elegantly simple representation of the entire world wide web’s pageranks as the eigenvector of a square matrix described simply by the number of links on each page. If you’re like me and derive gratification from seeing real world problems reduced to abstract mathematical constructs, you’ll have a blast with this one. I also found this short review of eigenvalues and eigenvectors helpful, as it’s been a while since I’ve touched any linear algebra.

At the end of last year I decided to splurge on a new laptop. I was biased against anything Sony from the outset, mainly because I wanted something different from my previous laptop, and Sonys are generally overpriced. However, the more I researched, nothing could beat Sony’s SZ series of laptops (which are customizable much like Dell’s) for my specific needs. What I really cared about was getting a decent Core 2 Duo (i.e. T7400) with something other than lackluster on-board video (i.e. nVidia GeForce Go 7400) in a lightweight package (i.e. under 4 lbs). The Dells, Apples, and Lenovos all couldn’t fit this bill, so I went with the Sony SZ480.

Screencap of my desktop		My current wallpaper

Continuing my tradition of naming computers after anime characters, I named my new laptop Rukia after the character from Bleach, because she’s lightweight and packs a big punch. She also has black casing, which resembles Rukia’s black hair, and you know how rare black hair is in anime these days. ;) Besides the essentials, she also has a built in camera, convenient wireless and “stamina/speed” switches, a multi-card reader, a fingerprint scanner, and much awesomeness. :)

The NYTimes has a fascinating article on Korean men who use brokers to find brides in Vietnam. The interesting thing about the article is that it covers the experience of a practice most of us see as sad, degrading, and even comical, in a matter-of-fact manner with a seemingly objective voice. It definitely provides more details than I’ve ever heard before on this subject. Below are some excerpts:

Ahn Jae-won, a Korean broker who has long been based in Hanoi and is married to a Vietnamese woman, began: “The women have come out looking their best for you. But don’t expect them to look as pretty as Korean women.”

Ouch, I don’t think Vietnamese women would appreciate that. It’s interesting to note the author of the article is a Korean woman by the name of Su-hyun Lee.

“The parents know that their daughters will marry a Korean man. The authorities know this is happening, but there’ll be trouble if we do it in front of them. So I seek your understanding. Once we land in Hanoi, even though it’ll be very late, we’ll go meet the women right away. It’s safer to do this at night.”

You’d think it’d be safer to do these things during the day, but what do I know?

But Ms. Thuy’s father, Bui Van Vui, 52, was displeased that his daughter was marrying a man just one year younger than he was.

Now that just elicits a collective, “ewwww.”

Drawing up a network diagram of my home LAN has been on my to-do list for a while now, and tonight I finally got around to it. I drew this up using Visio while watching the Nuggets get steamrolled by the Spurs. Any device with an IP address is included here, along with display devices for the heck of it. IP addresses have been x-ed out for privacy and security reasons. (Even though it’s on a LAN, I’m paranoid like that.)

Some of us have suspected this for ages, but Reuters has just published an article citing a study from the February issue of Archives of Surgery which suggests a strong correlation between a surgeon’s past gaming experience and their ability to perform laparoscopy and other similar surgeries.

Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.

But at the same time,

“Parents should not see this study as beneficial if their child is playing video games for over an hour a day,” Gentile said. “Spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child’s chances of getting into medical school.”

The WSJ published a behind the scenes look at the type of negotiations and tactics employed by Apple’s Steve Jobs prior to the iPhone launch. Here’s a snippet from the article.

Mr. Jobs once referred to telecom operators as “orifices” that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers. While meeting with Cingular and other wireless operators he often reminded them of his view, dismissing them as commodities and telling them that they would never understand the Web and entertainment industry the way Apple did, a person familiar with the talks says.

Ya, I know I’m a day late. I don’t really keep up with this stuff, and it’s not like I get any Hong Bao anymore (or ever did). In any case, Happy Chinese New Year. It’d actually mean something to me if we got a day off of work or something– otherwise, it’s just like any other day to me. If I sound like a grouch, it must be the Monday effect, coupled with the lame-holiday-that-lazy-ass-workers-get-off-but-not-normal-people-like-us effect (no offense to bank or government workers out there, or anyone else who got today off because of President’s Day).

Well, one thing that brought a smile to my face today was looking back at this Houston Institute E-culture Newsletter archive. It’s quite amusing, to me at least, because the “Internet conversation” cited by the article is actually a thread from an online forum I used to frequent back when I was still a happy teenager, and my online pseudonym is quoted in the piece– in effect, unexpectedly digitally immortalized. I got a kick out of it when I stumbled upon the article for the first time, and it still makes me smile to this day– one of those simple things that shines a little happiness into an otherwise dull day.

I went snowboarding yesterday at Hunter Mountain with some friends. I’m pretty out of shape, so this morning I woke up with the entire lower half of my body sore, plus a sore neck from a fall where I heard a distinctive cracking sound from the neck area. Hopefully it’s nothing serious, and the soreness will go away by tomorrow.

Snow conditions were great yesterday, which made for a very fun day. I used to hate cold weather, and thus any alpine sport. But these days I’m learning to embrace the chill. The crisp, cold air against your skin makes you feel alive, and snow covered mountains create beautiful backdrops.