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Scrubs Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Reminder - Scrubs returns tonight (on ABC) at 9:00 EST and begins its eighth and final season.

Let's hope this marks the beginning of a funny and memorable final run, and that Bill Lawrence and the cast answer their critics and those at NBC who pulled the plug on the show.

Ravenweb 2008 Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:18:00 +0000

We're nearing the end of another year, and I wanted to highlight some of the major posts and blog stats from the past year.

Most Popular Posts

1. Scrubs Finale?
2. Configuring a Wireless HP Photosmart C4380
3. Seinfeld
4. Embedded Blog Comment Form

Most Popular Book Posts

1. How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill
2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

Most Popular RSS Posts

1. How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill
2. Slam by Nick Hornby
3. Seinfeld

The Sugar Fix by Richard J. Johnson and Timothy Gower

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:27:00 +0000

The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat and Sick warns of the dangers of eating a diet high in fructose and correlates excess fructose consumption to a number of serious medical conditions, including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and kidney disease.

The book covers all aspects of fructose in detail, including how it's absorbed into the body, the relationship between fructose and uric acid, how fructose doesn't satisfy an appetite, and the significance of high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener in which fructose is a key component.

One caveat/disclaimer: while the lead author (Richard J. Johnson, MD) comes across as sincere and presents a persuasive argument with ample data and research, he clearly has a vested interest in the success of his argument and even has developed a Low-Fructose diet and submitted several related patent applications. So, as always when at the intersection of an argument and a possible business venture, stay wary of the marketing and take what you can from the underlying data.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:06:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I attended a project kickoff meeting for a large website redesign project. There were many attendees, over two dozen if I remember correctly, from various business units and departments, and a vendor team was also present.

One of the recurring themes of the meeting was the importance of diverse groups in large, complex projects. To reinforce the point, the Project Leader distributed a copy of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki to every meeting attendee.

I was interested in the concept presented at the meeting and followed up by reading the book.

The Wisdom of Crowds very much endorses the notion that groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them or a single brilliant individual. But not just any group. As Surowiecki demonstrates, not all groups are wise and some become mobs. For a group's collective intelligence to rise and produce better outcomes than a single or small group of experts, four conditions must be met. Wise crowds need diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, decentralization, and a good method for aggregating opinions.

Surowiecki provides several examples of collective intelligence outperforming individual experts and looks at, among other examples, Google, voting, betting, and traffic.

Scrubs Returns on January 6, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Hooray! ABC is beginning to promote Scrubs and has announced that the show will premiere on Tuesday, January 6th at 9:00.

Official ABC Scrubs Site

Travis Belrose

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:12:00 +0000

I previously blogged about my friend Travis Belrose, who has recently completed The Samurai Poet, a historical novel set in Japan.

Since then, Travis has established a personal website containing more information about the novel, and links to further topical reading and images of the Shisendo temple in Kyoto that inspired the creation.

Check out the website of Travis Belrose at http://www.ravenweb.net/belrose/.

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:09:00 +0000

The Sociopath Next Door is a fascinating study of individuals who seem to be born without a moral conscience and make up 4% of the population.

Author Martha Stout describes the defining features of sociopaths, including superficial charm, deceitfulness, impulsiveness, and a lack of remorse, and offers three examples of such people.

In the final analysis, the text is interesting and arresting, and provides telling insight into sociopaths and some of their common behavioral patterns.

Embedded Blog Comment Form

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:47:00 +0000

I've gone ahead and incorporated the new Blogger feature that puts the comment form at the bottom of each post page, instead of on a separate page.

I hope the enhancement adds to the usability of this blog and makes it easier to comment.

For those of you who are fellow Blogger users, you can read more about the feature here.

We Did It

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:37:00 +0000

It was great to be an American tonight.

Election Day

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:15:00 +0000

Vote.

One Week and Counting!

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:00:00 +0000

There's only one logical choice, of course ....

Photo by Drew Friedman from the New Yorker.

Bad Money by Kevin Phillips

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:40:00 +0000

If you're angling for a frightening read this Halloween, instead of picking from the Horror genre, let me recommend Bad Money by Kevin Phillips, a long and hard look at the realities of our economic plight. Phillips examines everything from our mounting public and private debt, the collapsing housing market, the link between oil and our economy, the rise in financial services as a portion of our GDP at the expense of manufacturing, and the hubris and failures in the financial sector.

Though written in late 2007, the book might as well have been authored today, as Phillips clearly saw the consequences of the housing bubble on the overall economy.

Phillips' predictions for the future are grim, and he argues that the likely end of American domination of world markets parallel the declines of previous leading world economic powers, notable especially the Dutch and British.

Beyond Polling: Presidential Projections and Futures

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:58:00 +0000

I've comes across two interesting websites that project the upcoming presidential election in very different ways:

FiveThirtyEight.com - A monster polling tracker and aggregator, FiveThirtyEight.com accumulates and analyzes polling and political data and provides keen assessments of the likely outcomes of upcoming elections.

Iowa Electronic Markets - The Iowa Electronic Markets are small-scale, real-money futures markets where contract payoffs depend on economic and political events such as elections. Perhaps the most popular IEM markets are the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election Markets, where contract payoffs will be determined by the popular vote cast in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

Configuring a Wireless HP Photosmart C4380

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:07:00 +0000

So, we bought a wireless printer. After some initial back and forth, we settled on a wireless HP Photosmart C4380. I thought we did a fair bit of research before purchasing the product, but apparently not enough, as there were many issues and surprises that we discovered only after we setup the device.

I'm posting this to relate the significant difficulties we encountered setting up the printer and post workarounds I've implemented for the benefits of others who might be considering this product or who may have already purchased it and are looking for support.

The printer configuration was not easy. It took me over a dozen hours spanning multiple days to resolve all of the issues, and I was really forced to draw upon all of my IT experience to get everything working as expected.

Of course, operating system setup and configuration plays a role when installing any device, so let me preface everything by reporting that the system I was configuring to use the printer is a fully-patched, high memory and CPU Windows XP desktop that's connected to a Linksys WRT150N wireless router.

I've condensed the problems I encountered into three core issues and workarounds:

1. The HP Setup software (installed on my desktop) could not find the printer wirelessly.

Workaround:

Add the printer as a wired printer, installing all required drivers and services (minimum HP software).
Determine the printer's MAC address.
Add the printer's MAC address to the router's MAC address filter list. You may need to turn on MAC address filtering.
Install a new device using the HP setup software.
Now the software will find the wireless printer.
Add the printer as a wireless printer (remove the wired printer).
If you initially had MAC address filtering disabled, you can disable filtering again.

The wireless printer should now be working and you should be able to print. However, post-install, you will encounter other issues:

2. After getting the printer setup, the computer runs sluggishly, and the CPU eventually locks at 100%.

Workaround:

Remove or disable all HP software (if you installed any) other than the requisite drivers.
Change the Startup Type of the "HP Network Devices Support" service from Automatic to Manual.

3. The printer goes offline and will not come back online.

Workaround:

Change the Startup Type of the "HP CUE DeviceDiscovery" service to Disabled.

For further information, check out the forum link below, which delves into some of these issues in greater detail:

http://www.fixya.com/support/t239273-unable_complete_wireless_installation_hp

Rushkoff on the Economic Crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:07:00 +0000

For those of you who don't read Douglas Rushkoff, here's a great piece he authored about the credit crisis that offers perspective and analysis not found in most mainstream treatments on the subject.

Via BoingBoing.

The Chaneysville Incident by John Bradley

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:37:00 +0000

I read a lot of books, and sometimes even manage to comment about them here. More often that not, I enjoy most of the books I post about. This is probably because (admittedly) I look for books by authors I already know or that I have an inkling -- from word of mouth or reviews -- that I'll enjoy.

Still, you never know when you're going to read a book that you really like or that makes others pale in comparison. The Chaneysville Incident is such a novel.

I came to read The Chaneysville Incident after asking for suggestions for a big book for my long flights to and from Japan. One of my work colleagues suggested it, and though I'd never heard of it or author John Bradley, I decided to give it a try.

I'm really glad I did. On the surface, the novel is a well-honed and affecting story of historian John Washington's attempt to discover what happened to thirteen runaway slaves in Chaneysville, Pennsylvania. The protagonist's efforts to reconstruct the past elevate the narrative, through various rhetorical devices and an interesting contrast that plays out throughout the novel between historical detachment and historical discovery and recreation.

Googling the novel, I was surprised that the book has garnered only minimal praise and seems to have become almost forgotten. Certainly, as a novel of the black experience in America, I would rank The Chaneysville Incident alongside anything from the past forty years, including Morrison's Beloved or Song of Solomon.

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Bad Monkeys was my first introduction to Matt Ruff, and I was pleased.

Ostensibly a thriller about a self-confessed member of The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, Bad Monkeys is somewhere in between a parody of a thriller and an actual thriller. Ruff treads the line pretty well, and the result is a fun and weird concoction.

Palin's Environmental Record

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:05:00 +0000

The McCain campaign is characterizing Palin as a leader on climate change, but with a record like hers, they no doubt meant that she's a leader on accelerating climate change and species extinction.

After all, in this time of environmental uncertainty, who doesn't want a vice president who denies that climate change is man-made, disputes the findings of scientists, blocks moves to list animals as endangered species, opposes ballot initiatives to protect species from industry, and is beholden to big oil and development.

Sources:

Environmentalists can't corral Palin (Associated Press)

Palin's "toxic" environmental policy would even make President Bush blush (Newkerala.com)

The Samurai Poet

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:49:00 +0000

Travis Belrose, one of my best friends, has recently completed a historical novel set in Japan. The Samurai Poet follows Ishikawa Jozan, a man who turned away from the samurai to a contemplative life of poetry and calligraphy. Travis has uploaded the first chapter of the novel at Authonomy, a new community site for writers, readers and publishers, by HarperCollins.

I've been in touch with Travis through all stages of this creation, from the early drafts to the final edits, and I can state emphatically that the book has truly been a labor of love, meticulously researched and well-crafted.

Check out The Samurai Poet and Travis's author profile at Authonomy.com.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:29:00 +0000

I started Little Brother thinking it was light young-adult SF about smart, net-savvy teenagers getting over and outwitting intrusive surveillance systems. Boy, did I underestimate this book! While on some level it is just that, it's also much more, and really is an important book for readers of all ages.

Little Brother follows seventeen-year-old Marcus who -- along with some friends -- is apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security following a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. After being held for many days in a secret prison, Marcus is finally released, but to a vastly different America and San Francisco -- where personal freedoms have been revoked and the city has become a police state. Marcus deliberates and uses all of his technical skills to protest and try and reclaim a piece of the America in which he believes.

9/11 was obviously fresh in Doctorow's mind when he wrote Little Brother, and the questions the novel poses -- about freedoms, privacy, security, and surveillance -- remain timely and important even seven years after the event.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:04:00 +0000

The Book of Lost Things tells of a 12-year-old English boy, David, who enters a portal to a dark fantasy world where classic fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White) have all been inverted into unsettling derivatives. As David makes his way through the strange world, he learns to confront his fears and reconsiders his opinions about the life and family he left behind.

The novel is entertaining throughout and never feels derivative, even though the theme of traveling through a portal to another world is by no means original.

Back from Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:58:00 +0000

We're back from Japan. Still processing, but musings and pictures to follow.

Big Book for Long Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:18:00 +0000

So I'm traveling to Japan on Sunday and I'm looking for recommendations for a really long book for the flights. The kind of book that is fun and rewarding but might be intimidating to start due to its length. Basically, the kind of book you need to take a running start at.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Keep in mind that I'm looking for something that's fun and that will keep me riveted. I'm certainly not trying to fill in one of the many gaps in my reading of the classics (no Proust, thank you very much). The book also shouldn't be so huge in size that it doesn't pack well.

Wickedly Entertaining

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0000

I recently attended a production of Wicked at Shea's Performing Arts Center (in Buffalo, NY), and can't remember ever enjoying a musical so much. Everything seemed to work -- the music, the cast, the high-end theatrics, and, of course, the story and its rich link to The Wizard of Oz source material.

I was particularly impressed with Carmen Cusack, who plays Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West).

After the show ended, I couldn't stop thinking about it and kept coming back to the feeling that this was so much better than the second Star Wars trilogy and a far superior retelling of a story from the point of view of one of its villains. Perhaps Wicked revealed just how much you can do when you really shift the point of view and tease out the possibilities. Or maybe Elphaba is just more fun than Darth Vader. And more green.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

noreply@blogger.com (Raven) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:25:00 +0000

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a fabulous novel that is at once a chronicle of an overweight nerd and his cursed Dominican family and a sublime nerdboy paean.

The novel is richly narrated by multiple characters in English and Spanish, and the bloody history of the Dominican Republic provides the historic backdrop. What most distinguishes the book, though, are the many literary references, especially to Tolkien and comic books.

High marks to Díaz. I look forward to reading more fiction from him.