Hung Truong: The Blog!

They Might Be Giants Podcast 27A: John Henry Demos!

They Might Be Giants used to be my favorite band. I say “used to be” because their last few albums have kind of sucked. I mean, there's still some good songs coming out, but I think they've jumped the shark (seriously, a kid's album!?). Anyway, I subscribed to the TMBG Podcast since it's free, and they occasionally play some rare stuff from their old glory days.

I just listened to their podcast 27A today, which has a crapload of demo versions of songs from John Henry. The songs are: Dirt Bike, No One Knows My Plan, I Should Be Allowed To Think, No One Knows My Plan, Out of Jail, Lullaby of Nightmares (which I think appeared on Long Tall Weekend), and A Self Called Nowhere. Unfortunately, nowhere does End of the Tour or Destination Moon show up. I guess they can't put the whole album up…

The first real TMBG album I ever heard was John Henry. Or maybe it was Flood, but I liked John Henry more. I'm probably the only person who actually likes John Henry (it's criticized a lot!). So it's very cool to hear demo version of the songs that I'm really familiar with. It seems like the horn players haven't really gotten their inflections into the songs yet, and the Johns also sing a bit more reserved.

If you're one of the few TMBG fans that actually likes John Henry, I suggest you go grab the podcast and give it a listen. Incidentally, I've heard that their new album is good, but that might be only compared to the last two albums (Mink Car and The Spine) which were passable at best. I really do hope it's good, but I'm not really in any rush to be disappointed.

For now, I still pledge my Nerd Rock allegiance to Jonathan Coulton.

Threadless Shirt That Doesn’t Suck! Boredom.

Threadless has been on a sort of non-roll of sorts. Or maybe you could call it a roll of sucking. Anyhow, this week they've got a shirt that doesn't suck! It's one of a genie in a lamp. Being bored as hell.

I actually feel bad for genies. Being locked away inside of a small lamp, released for maybe once every thousand years. Then having to give wishes to stupid people. Plus that TV is outright ancient!

Perhaps it's not the actual content of the shirt that I like, more than the colors. Maize and Blue? Hmmm, perhaps a certain university is brainwashing me. Ah well, anyway, this is a “definite buy if a $10 sale was going on” shirt. For $15… I dunno. Maybe.

iPhone Impressions: Neat!

So I drove on over to the Apple Store today (it was on the way back from some other place I was driving to) and I tried out the iPhone. It's neat! I tried out all the applications and they work fairly well. The typing is alright, but when you type words that are uncommon in the dictionary, for instance, “truong,” the keyboard kinda compensates in the wrong direction.

Besides that, the applications are pretty fun to use, but they seem a bit more jerky than the commercials would have you believe. For instance, I was using the google maps app and it took forever to download the map tiles! The zooming in and out using the multi touch was way cool, but it also seemed to lag behind a bit as well. I know it'll take lag to move stuff around, but it was… how should I put it? Slower than I expected.

The iPhone certainly is a cool gadget. I just don't know why it needs to be a phone. Apple's created a pretty sweet PDA that includes a phone, which requires a subscription fee. If they had just called it the iPDA, maybe I'd be more willing to get one. That, and if they lowered the price, made it snappier, made the battery life longer, etc. I actually had one die while I was using it in the store. The battery ran out and I had to switch to another one.

Oh well, maybe in the next generation/iteration I'll be able to afford one. And convince myself that I should pay the price for it.

Amazon.com Wishlist => Huge River Wishlist

So I got a message from Amazon.com about my facebook app called “Amazon.com Wishlist.”

Basically, Amazon doesn't want me to describe my Amazon.com wishlist using the word Amazon… I asked if an exception could be made but the lawyer politely declined. I can understand Amazon's reasons for wanting to protect its name, but seriously, I can't use “Amazon” to describe an app that displays an AMAZON.COM Wishlist!?

So I renamed the app “Huge River Wish List.” I think Amazon.com is developing a wishlist app for Facebook of their own, which is the real reason for forcing the name change. It's the risk that one takes when developing using an API, though. I guess I should've read the terms more closely. It's completely within Amazon's rights to request that I change them app's name.

It's also completely in my rights to develop an app for a competitor to Amazon.com. Hmmm…

Google Developers Day US – Theorizing from Data

So before I got on a plane to fly from NM to RH, I prepared myself for boredom. One of the things I did was encode some of the Google Developer Day videos on Youtube for my Sony PSP. I think it was one of three times I've actually used my PSP!

Anyway, most of the videos were pretty fluffy and didn't hold my interest, but the talk by Peter Norvig about statistical analysis was pretty darn interesting. Funny sidenote: when I went to Google for an interview, Peter Norvig was the special speaker dude. He had a pretty cool Hawaiian shirt on then too, as I recall.

Anyway, the talk brings up some pretty interesting things, like how if you feed enough statistics to a computer, the actual algorithm matters less and less. I've been interested in AI and machine learning, but I never really took any formal classes.

The stuff in the talk has sort of stuck in my head now. So I'm tending to see a lot of problems as being solvable by statistical analysis/classification. Like that Spock Challenge thing I blogged about earlier. Anyway, I've got an idea for a wacky application of Naive Bayesian Classification, but I won't mention it yet (in case it's an actual good idea, or in case I decide to bail after I don't want to figure out the probability math).

Stay tuned?