SBP Editor

Stories from SBP Editor

How to play 10 GMs in chess simultaneously
SBP Editor
Friday, June 19, 2009

Here's a simple technique that guarantees at least a 5 point score (out of 10 possible) playing against 10 Grandmasters simultaneously in chess, should you ever strangely be given this opportunity!

Assuming you are black in 5 games and white in the other 5, simply pair up your opponents mentally, and then act as the conduit for their moves against each other.  In other words, take one of the games where you're white, and another where you're black, then play all of white's moves against the black player, and play all of black's moves against the white player.

Guns don't kill people?
SBP Editor
Saturday, April 4, 2009
I wonder if there's a problem with guns in this country?  This undoctored sampling of goings on from around the country popped up on my screen today...
AIG Bonus Folly
SBP Editor
Thursday, March 19, 2009

The furor over AIG's bailout payment seems to me like missing the forrest for all the trees.  $150 million is a drop in the bucket, and while executive pay might be a good question for society to address in general, it's hardly the pressing problem facing AIG right now.  Where was the outrage this bonus season when Wall Street paid one of the highest total bonus pools in its history?

Hamas Vs Fatah
SBP Editor
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The path to Palestinian peace and prosperity is so abundantly clear... Palestinians have land, they have access to the ocean, and they have a natural trading partner through their shared border with the region's most stable, democratic, and prosperous country, Israel. Israel currently has only one objective, which is to make the daily shelling from Gaza stop. The moment it stops, peace will resume, as Israel has no inherent interest in bombing Gaza, nor does it do so in any sort of "retaliation" -- it simply does so in an effort to stop the daily murder attempts based there.
Charity Doesn't Work
SBP Editor
Thursday, January 8, 2009
I don't like Obama's idea to give $3000 credits for every employee a business doesn't lay off -- what a short-sighted and horrible idea! If a business doesn't need you anymore, then it's best for everyone that you go and do something more useful. No one benefits from bloated inefficient employees who are only there for charity.
Biden the New Bush?
SBP Editor
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Oh jeez, just as we're finally ridding ourselves of our mentally challenged leader Bush, whose hazy thought patterns are embarrassingly on display whenever he speaks, now Joe Biden seems to be stepping up to fill the void. Today on CNN I heard Joe Biden, speaking about the stimulus package from prepared remarks, say this:

"The greater threat to our economy lies in doing too little, rather than in not doing enough."
Ruby each_char in String Class Broken
SBP Editor
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A quick tech tip... Ruby's String.each_char() method doesn't work in 1.8 because of Unicoding issues (Ruby isn't very Unicode-savvy yet).

But for those of us who ever might need to iterate over a String in an app that doesn't use or need Unicode, it's surprisingly hard to find a simple workaround to this stupid little problem!

Here's an easy workaround:

mystring = 'hello'
mystring.each_byte {|b|
c = b.chr
}
### variable c now contains the character
### you'd expect from each_char() if it worked
MASCII: Musical ascii
SBP Editor
Thursday, December 18, 2008

[UPDATE: This post is outdated. The complete mascii specification can now be found at mascii.org and a free implementation of it open to the public can be found at composersnotebook.com]

I'm very excited about an ASCII-based musical language I've invented called mascii, which stands for musical ascii. I'd love to see this adopted as I think it's way better than anything else I've seen out there.

BACKGROUND

Al Jazeera's Banned Words Contest
SBP Editor
Friday, November 28, 2008

This Thanksgiving what I am most thankful for is my freedom to live in a country with free speech and religious tolerance.

In practice of course Americans do not have entirely free speech either, but it is a helluva lot better than the situation almost anywhere else. That fact alone makes me never want to leave this place.

Holiday Harmonies
SBP Editor
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Some people get aggravated by all the holiday music blaring in the stores this time of year. Personally, I don't mind it, I generally like it in fact, except I only wish they would get the harmonies right.
Food Pyramid
SBP Editor
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
This is a chain of reasoning that I've been thinking about... see if you agree.

Recently I've seen several studies confirming what we all intuitively know anyway: that when it comes to feeling full after a meal, we have multiple satiation points for different foods. How many times for example have you felt like absolutely not another bite of the main course, but still somehow had room for dessert? That's because feeling full isn't a simple on-off switch, it's more like a set of switches, each targeted to a specific food group.
Presidential Election Guide
SBP Editor
Friday, October 17, 2008
Just in case it isn't abundantly clear by now, and in case your vote can be swayed by your blogger, here's how to vote in the presidential election:

Barack Obama/Joe Biden
John McCain/Sarah Palin Oh hell no!
Visit Iceland Now
SBP Editor
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A small appeal for my native Iceland... if you've ever thought of visiting but were turned off by the price, now's the time to go!
Perl, Python, Ruby
SBP Editor
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
If you're considering picking up a scripting language for admin tasks or for general programming, your main choices are Perl, Python, and Ruby. Here's my breakdown on each:

Perl
The White House, An EOP Employer
SBP Editor
Monday, September 8, 2008
After 8 years under possibly the worst and certainly the dumbest president of all time, I think there's some national contrition going on, and it looks like we're now guaranteed to have either a female vice president or an African American president. As if to say, OK, now that we plumbed the depths of depravity under the worst scumbag we could possibly find who was still a white male, now we'll finally give you other guys n gals a try.
Robotic Labor
SBP Editor
Monday, September 1, 2008
Today is Labor Day, a day to honor the workers who drive our economy. It's funny how everyone wants to work -- people say creating jobs should be the new president's top priority -- and yet nearly everyone dreams of the day they can retire, too.
Exercise in Futility
SBP Editor
Monday, August 25, 2008
Warning: this is not medical advice, it is merely a personal conclusion and not necessarily applicable to anyone else! Listen to your doctor, not your blogger.

I hate exercising; I view it as a total waste of my time, so I therefore never do it unless it is incidental to what I'm already doing. I don't mind playing sports, but I'd never play a sport simply for the exercise. I play despite the exercise, not for it.
Rockstar Syndrome
SBP Editor
Monday, August 18, 2008
Yeah, so maybe the cliche actually is true: money doesn't buy you happiness. I always figured that was just a lie that rich people spread to keep poor people complacent so they don't revolt against them. But anyone living in the United States is already extremely rich by comparison to people in other parts of the world, and anyone alive today in any part of the world is unimaginably rich compared to people 200 years ago in terms of the material luxuries they have, most of which had not even been invented 200 years ago.
Idle Bus Thoughts
SBP Editor
Monday, August 11, 2008
A collection of thoughts that floated through my mind as I rode the cheapie Chinatown-style bus to Boston recently:

"You have your ticket?" the agent standing by the curb asked me. "OK, just wait and I'll ask the driver what he wants to do, it's up to him. Just take care of the driver, OK?"
Another Celeb Encounter
SBP Editor
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Add former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to the list of semi-famous people I've stood next to... I just ran into him getting a drink at a popular rooftop night spot here in NYC an hour ago. And this time I talked! Besides our first name, we also share Vermont as a home state in common.

I asked him why he bailed on the 2nd term, whether it was related to any bad omens he felt coming on. He said it was just burn out, plain and simple. He was personable and friendly, and as he returned to his friends he told me it was nice to know there's another Ari in Vermont.