In the wake of a myriad of doping scandals in this years Tour de France, it’s nice to see someone like Geoffrey Wheatcroft put it all in perspective. This is short expository at is best.
The eclipse of French cycling, combined with this other dégringolade, the cascade of doping scandals, might seem to make the Tour a reflection of the malaise and morosité that have supposedly been afflicting France. Yet plenty of visitors to France may wonder what the French have really got to be morose about.
Here is a country with superb roads and railroads, glorious cities and landscape, and food and wine that don’t need my praise. That’s not to mention an excellent health service, or industrial productivity quite as high per hour worked as it is in the United States (it’s just that the French don’t care to devote quite so much of their lives to working as the Americans).
Maybe the Tour should look at France as its image, rather than the other way round.
At the end of last semester, I had a giant tub of books I’d read through my four years at Olin. I didn’t want to schlep them anymore: they weren’t going to fit in my new apartment, they weighed about sixty pounds, and what was the point? I had already read these books: they were of little use to me.
How wrong I was.
From The Freakonomics Blog, I fell upon Swaptree, a book/CD/DVD/Video game swapping site. The interface is well done, the ability to add books is smart (though not as smart as Olinbuster, Sean) and there’s a plethora of books out there. Two hours after quickly adding a few books I don’t want anymore (I tried to list Washington’s Spies, but no one wanted it. Damn!) I had completed one trade and had another pending. I’ve always wanted to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, and now I’m only paying the shipping for The Tipping Point (which, astute Oliners will note, was given to me by the college last year.)
It’s not for everyone, or every book: I wouldn’t trade my copy of Paper Prototyping for anything. But if you don’t mind trading used book for used book, and not having a static library, check it out.
Now I kinda wish I still had that big tub of books….
Thursday is Bagel Day here at ATG: each member of the bagel club brings in a couple dozen bagels and a few types of shmear, and we gather ’round the toaster and chat about things. It’s a great way to have non-work conversations at work (and for newbies like me to meet lots of great people), and of course, who doesn’t like bagels?
Mostly, we get big chain bagels (Brugger’s, Finagle, and Panera compete for the most-often spot), so I was pleasantly surprised when we got our bagels from Bagel Rising in Allston.
The trick to finding a good bagel place, according to my girlfriend who knows these things, is their ability to do a salt bagel. Most places won’t try it: it’s a difficult thing to do well. Apparently, the salt makes it difficult for the bagel to remain edible (and not a hockey puck). Bagel Rising delivered: their salt bagel was coated in pretzel-like salt, but still managed to be chewy and delicious.
Unfortunately for you non-Bostonians out there, Bagel Rising is only available in Allston. But the next time you’re in town, consider your salt bagel on me.
Pulled up the good ol’ GReader this morning, and the firstthreelinks were about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Two were from National Public Radio, and the third from the venerable Gray Lady herself.
I’m going to guess that this is a gosh darn big deal. Huge, if you consider that the book is still some news cycles away and the Times is already running its review. Ginormous, if you remember that it’s been two years since book the sixth, and the countdown has been going since. Keeping the momentum for two full years? Even the iPhone might not manage that.
Granted, it’s not like I didn’t see this coming. I mean, holy shit, Harry Potter is bigger than Jesus. (Remember the last time something from the UK was like that?) But I guess the wizard boy that entertained me a decade ago (I own a first edition thanks to my mom) is a tad bit bigger than he used to be. I think the Boston Globe has been talking about HP for months.
My two concerns are: how will book the last be received, and is this really book the last? For the former: I assume well, but the latest in a wholebunchof franchises haven’t been exactly trumpeted.
As to the latter: I’ve never heard anything to the contrary, but Harry Potter is a pretty lucrative franchise….for a select few. HP isn’t exactly a thrill for booksellers, especially after Warner Bros. decreed no profiting parties for Potter. And since bookstores have long lost their claim to exclusivity for selling HP books (I’ll be buying mine at my local Shaw’s supermarket, gas station, or Costco….), and they don’t make a profit on the book anyway, who knows if they’ll be prepared for possible book 8.
What do you think? Will you be going to a Potter Party? Going to hang out in Hogwarts Square? Will there be a book 8 or 9?
It’s not often I do a follow-up for a previous story (and especially so soon), but to those of you not-watching-but-following, those daffy Twisted Misters have advanced to the finals of the 2007 World Series of Pop Culture, easily defeating Chicago based 3 Men and A Little Lazy. *Sigh*.
It’s unfortunate, because I think the TMs are going to walk away with the trophy (and the quarter million payout). They’ll face either Almost Perfect Strangers 2.0 (my pick) or Wocka Wocka. APS2 and WW compete in the second semifinal tonight at 9 on VH1.
Both APS2 and WW are too weak in the common categories to compete against TM, and they’ve missed some easy questions throughout the tournament. But even if it comes down to tie-breakers, TMs still have an advantage. As one opponent said: “Yes, they trash talk, but they can back it up.” I agree.
For those of you obsessed with the Twisted Misters, Victor Lee (the Spinal Tap skeleton shirt wearing one) has got his own blog in Victor Sells Out. Which is sort of how I feel after posting two stories about a team I hate.
Is it possible to break your leg answering trivia questions?
Like to bum games of Guitar Hero off of your friends, but don’t have the money (or desire) for your own PS2 or XBox360? Don’t fret (horrible pun intended): with the open-source Windows/Linux/Mac OS X/FreeBSD version of Frets on Fire, you can get your Free Bird on faster than you can say “And this bird you cannot change”.
You actually heft your keyboard (check out the YouTube video for an example) or get a supported guitar controller (or if you’re a tool, generic joystick). There’s a decent user community out there, writing songs for the Python-based app. You’ll need a “fairly fast” OpenGL graphics card to get going. The screenshots look pretty awful if you’re a hardcore Guitar Hero, but with all that money you’re saving, you could go out and buy a real guitar.
I wouldn’t recommend using your laptop to play, but I suppose you could….
Right now, I’m struggling to finish Washington’s Spies, the topic of which (espionage in the times of the Revolutionary War) has been on my mind since I toured the International Spy Museum in DC last summer.
The book is well researched and the topic engaging: my problem lies in the density of the material. A lot of names and supplemental anecdotes leaves me grasping to remember who the “important” people are, and who is merely side-story.
I want to like this book, but I can’t help but find it work to finish it. I’m just not in the mindset right now to truly appreciate it. I really want to put the book down and start in on The Economic Naturalist, but I find the idea of leaving a book unfinished somewhat abhorrent.
To me, books should be the last bastion of devoted attention. I’ll turn off a crummy movie or terrible TV show, and I’m even willing to walk out of a bad play, concert, or sporting event, but I can count the books I’ve left unfinished on one hand: and a few of those are only because I left it on a plane.
I’ve given Washington’s Spies a fair shake, reading a hundred pages or so. And I suppose I would be more amenable to finishing it if I actually had the time to read it. (Any tips?) But the loads of other, more interesting books on my list (birthday in two weeks!) make me itch to wander.
What do you think? Are you willing, or even able, to put a book down?
If you’re anything like me, you might get a bit distracted during your work day and, say, publish 5 entries to your redesigned blog. If you find yourself wasting the better part of your day, try to rein in your playtime by either using the (10+2)*5 method or the 48 Minute method.
I know that when I’m really off track, using a simple timer (anyone have noms for a good Win version?) can help me at least get something done: racing against the clock is a powerful incentive. I was a little dissatisfied with the (10+2)*5 method last year at StreamSage: the too-short breaks really messed up the work cycles. I’m going to try the 48 minute method for the next fortnight, and I’ll report on my results here.
Does anyone have any other time hacking tips for getting stuff done?
As many of you know, I enjoy pop culture trivia. Immensely. So, of course, I’ve been following this year’s World Series of Pop Culture tournament on VH1. It’s good fun, and like Jeopardy!, I love to play along at home. Who doesn’t love to shout at the TV. St. Elmo’s Fire! The Vapors! Lark Voorhees!
How I would do on a show like WSOPC or Jeopardy? To be honest: I don’t think I’d do really well. These are really intense, high-pressure situations (the likes of which have made me sick in the past), and though I know the answers at home, it’s an entirely different question up on that stage. As one contender said in Monday night’s episode: “They could ask you your name up there, and you’d probably blank.” Too true. It takes serious brass balls to compete in a national TV tournament of any kind, let alone an “intellectual” one.
But while I have nothing but props for most of this year’s contenders, there is one team that I love to hate (and I suspect I’m not alone on this): the Twisted Misters, a group of youngsters from NYU. They’ve advanced to the semifinals of this years tournament and are just two wins away from a quarter-million dollar prize. Crap.
It’s not just their trash talking that gets my goat, it’s the fact that I’ve played (and usually lost to) these guys in some tournaments at Boston University over the last few years. If you’ve watched any of the episodes with the Twisted Misters (tonight, 9PM on VH1), I can confirm: yes, they’re that socially awkward in real life. Just as much trash talking goes on in an untaped BU TRASH (Testing Recall About Strange Happenings) meetup as when the cameras roll for VH1. If anything, it’s a different kind of trash talk in real life: more directed at the writer for coming up with such an easy question (“Honestly, who doesn’t know about the redshirts! God!“) than directed at you for not answering it.
Still stings a bit though.
I will say this though: it’s a really weird feeling to see someone you know (even only casually) on TV, especially for an extended period of time. It’s one thing to be featured in a news clip or the like, but it’s something entirely different to be, in a sense, a recurring character on a TV show as the TMs are. I keep asking myself: were they really this bad when I played them? Do I really know these guys?
Most likely, no, I don’t. A couple of quiz-bowl meets makes for the thinnest of acquaintances. And they certainly don’t know me. I might look familiar, but beyond that, who knows? I’m not a very memorable person, especially on the quiz bowl circuit: I don’t pull answers from thin air more than anyone else, I don’t trash talk, and I don’t blow questions.
Which may be another reason I wouldn’t do well in a TV game show: At the end of the day, I’m closer to trivia mediocrity than amazement. I might be the one holding and showing all the random facts in a cocktail conversation, but against folks like Ken Jennings, or even Nancy Zerg, the woman who famously beat Ken in his 75th episode, I’d probably come up short.
After all, the Twisted Misters are good. And as much as I root against them, there’s a good chance they’ll be holding up that trophy. But not one of them ranks among the top 5 TRASH players I’ve seen, and remember: I’ve only played tournaments here in the Northeast. So even though I’ve beat the Twisted Misters (once, in a fluke game), I’m not holding my breath for an extended shot on one of TVs game shows.
Though I’m certainly enjoying shouting out these answers. Go Go Gadget!
This appeared on LifeHacker (such an excellent resource) two weeks ago, but it’s worth mentioning here, if only because I just went through the process: If you have >1 Win/Mac computers, and run Firefox on each, you need to do this for yourself. I spent the better part of a day customizing my Firefox profile at work: the thought of tweaking it again for home made me gag. FolderShare took a little jiggling (you’ll need to open some ports on your NAT/Firewall and disable History, a regrettable loss), but now I’m using and syncing between work and home.
Unfortunately, FolderShare has some limitations that need to be resolved: I’m a bit of a desktop packrat at work, and I wanted to grab some files. Since the documents are free-floating on the Desktop, I can download local copies (individually, ugh) to my machine here, but I can’t since the entire Desktop folder for some reason. I suppose I could downThemAll, create a local folder, and sync my work machine with that before making some changes to the documents, but that seems kinda hardcore. I guess this just means that I’ll be cleaning up my Desktop tomorrow.
Filed by Adam College at 1:41 pm under Everything Else
1 Comment
Thursday is Bagel Day here at 
Pulled up the good ol’ GReader this morning, and the 
It’s not often I do a follow-up for a 
Right now, I’m struggling to finish 
If you’re anything like me, you might get a bit distracted during your work day and, say, publish 5 entries to your redesigned blog. If you find yourself wasting the better part of your day, try to rein in your playtime by either using the 