uruloki's lair

An interesting paper from the University of California-Berkeley has some nifty conclusions:

“Disruptive lane changing,” they add, “might also be reduced in some cases by sorting drivers (and vehicle classes) across lanes according to their preferred travel speeds; or in other cases by inducing a more even distribution of flows across lanes.”

I’m enough of a nerd that it immediately called to mind Code Three by Rick Raphael as well as some other scifi driving experiences that dealt with variable speed lanes.

Tags: Entertainment by uruloki
No Comments »

Via /., I found this nifty examination of the whitehouse.gov site

Description. You want to read about the code structure of the new whitehouse.gov website on this historic Inauguration Day of the 44th president of the USA. The site is built on ASP.NET.

What follows is a lot of good discussion about how the site is built, how it could be done better, and even some nifty easter eggs in the form of links hidden in the JavaScript. The really fun part was the last line:

Finally, remember that the administration and President Obama were not the ones who wrote the code here.

Seriously. Either a) you’re not nerdy enough to notice all the stuff that was detailed or b) you’re nerdy enough to know that the Big Cheese never writes that stuff. Why do we need to start making excuses about who is doing what already?

Tags: Politics, Stupid people, Technology by uruloki
1 Comment »

Who cares? All of these people are going on about what a historic day it is but it’s not in the way they think it is. Today is the orderly hand-over of power from one guy* to another for the 43rd time in our history, which is miles better than anyone else on the planet. Everything else is incidental. All the other aspects that people are having religious ecstasies over is just packaging. We have yet to see what is in the (well-wrapped) package, but I have a feeling more than a few people will be disappointed in what they got.

*I’ll use guy on the day the first woman gets elected too.

Tags: Politics by uruloki
No Comments »

Or at least this lady is:

When a 5-foot, 275-pound woman found out she had a tumor on her spine, she was told by her local hospital to go the zoo to have a MRI because a regular MRI machine could not hold her weight, MyFOXKC.com reported.

If you read the story though, she wasn’t told by the hospital to do that. After her fatoverly generous ass couldn’t fit in the regular MRI, one of the guys who was trying to help suggested an alternative. If she got some kind of recommendation from a doctor that said go use an animal MRI bed, she might have a beef but she doesn’t here.

I was going to laugh the whole thing off until I read the last line of the story:

“They should have machines that fit most everybody,” she said.

Guess what, they do!

Tags: Stupid people by uruloki
No Comments »

I just learned this little tidbit today:

While it’s fun to watch someone scoot around in the looting position, it’s not too good when it’s your main tank. At the time the only real way to get out of the glitch was to carry a clam with you, open it and close it without looting.

I always relogged…

Tags: Gaming by uruloki
No Comments »

After the BCS game last night, I don’t think I would ever want to win the Heisman unless my team was not playing in the championship game. After Bradford loses, that’s a 2 and 7 record for Heisman winners in the big game.

On a related note, I was listening to Mike & Mike on my way to work and Greenie was going on about how the one voter in the AP poll shouldn’t have voted for USC to be #1. Golic took the opposite view since the whole bowl system is arbitrary, there is nothing to prevent that voter from saying he thinks that USC would beat UF on a neutral field. Greenie then let loose this gem:

Having an opinion is fine, but…

And went on from there about how there is only one clearly right answer. Sorry, not true when it comes to opinions. If you’re arguing about a subjective system such as the BCS, anything can and should go because there are no guidelines to follow. Either having an opinion is fine, or it’s not. Greenie doesn’t seem to think any differing opinions are acceptable, which about sums up how most people approach life today. People are stupid.

Tags: Sports, Stupid people by uruloki
No Comments »

Four days late. Not bad I guess. Maybe it’s the staying in one spot that makes me get all sedentary and lazy. I vow to change this! Maybe… All I know is that 2008 was actually pretty fun and I think 2009 is going to be to.

Tags: Life by uruloki
No Comments »