blog [mike atlas]

Someone’s got a sense of humor on MassWrestling :)

Have you ever thought to yourself, “what the frig am I doing with my life,” and not had a good answer? Ever wonder what you’re going to do with your new degree in sociology? Do you parents and other family members worry about this as well?

The whole notion of graduating from school, getting a job, getting married, and settling down after college is outdated, and we’re the first real generation where the lack of absolute direction is more common to all of us then ever before.

This is only strange, though, when you look at our situation through the lens of decades popular culture and traditional values. Global free trade and the internet has put the world at our fingertips; our parent’s generation hardly dreamed of trekking through South America with a best friend from Germany that they met in a video game, or doing a year of work in Singapore. The information economy that has replaced manufacturing and traditional labor jobs has given way to jobs where you’re looked at as a weirdo if you’re at the company for more than a few years.

Sure, you probably eventually want to settle down and act like boring adults and raise a family, but the gap in the number of years between now and then is far greater than your parents likely had.

I’ve recently embraced this idea as a manifesto of sorts - embracing the lack of direction, rather than fret over it. There was an op-ed piece recently that has really helped me validate what our generation is experiencing:

Ed Brooks: The Odyssey Years

So to everyone who doesn’t know where they’re going or how to go about it, don’t worry - it’s par for the course these days. Don’t let your parents convince you otherwise that your lack of direction will be your downfall. Embrace it and live your life as it comes…there isn’t a better time in the world to get out there and get on with your odyssey.

I wrote this to check my pen-and-paper FFT (Fast Finite Fourier) problems for my Algorithms and Data homework. It follows a pseudocode implementation given in my textbook, from which I have no idea where it was derived from.

#!/sw/bin/python
i = complex(0,1)
ni = complex(0,-1)

def fft(a,w):
	if (w==1):
		return a
	s =  fft([a[z] for z in range(0,len(a),2)], w**2)
	sp = fft([a[z] for z in range(1,len(a),2)], w**2)
	n = len(a)
	r=[]
	for j in range(0,(n/2)):
		r.insert(j, (s[j] + (w**j * sp[j])))
		r.insert(j+(n/2), s[j] - (w**j * sp[j]))
	return r

def mult(poly1, poly2):
	a= len(poly1)
	b= len(poly2)
	if a > b:
		for x in range(0, a-b):
			poly2.append(0)
	if b > a:
		for x in range(0, b-a):
			poly1.append(0)
	fftval1 = fft(poly1,i)
	fftval2 = fft(poly2,i)
	multip = [fftval1[x]*fftval2[x] for x in range(0,len(fftval1))]
	inverse = [ (1.0/(len(multip))*x).real for x in fft(multip,ni)]
	return inverse

#test
assert mult([1,1,2,0], [2,3,0,0]) == [2,5,7,6]

Apparently there is a fully featured FFT library in scipy, so really I am just happy to have something on my own that works for my needs.

HSBC Direct has adjusted your Online Savings Account interest rate to 4.50% APY.

Adjusted? That’s just a nice way to say, “lowered by half a point”.

Too bad no the other major players (ING) in high yield savings accounts aren’t offering anything better.

I guess this should have been expected with the fed lowering the interest rate by half a point 10 days ago.

First, let me preface this that I’ve wanted a PowerMac (and then subsequently a Macbook Pro) ever since I arrived at college. It’s clear that they were powerhouse mobile computers, and they were sexy at that.

I finally got myself a MacBook about year ago. It has replaced my PC, which is now in pieces in the closet. It’s totally amazing, and for the few things that I’ve still needed Windows for, Parallels desktop has filled the void.

A year later, though, I started running into some issues. My Mighty Mouse fell off the coffee table (about 20″) and broke. That was a quick $70 down the drain. Then the LCD backlight started flickering randomly when on low brightness. And then the power supply refused to charge the battery. And then the top panel that rests over the keyboard started to warp, and it cracked on the edges.

I could not believe all this. So I took it in to the local Genius Bar, and had it serviced. I also brought in my broken Mighty Mouse.

A week later, for the total cost of $0, I have now:

- New keyboard installed, bonus
- New trackpad installed (1 year of finger oil stains gone), bonus
- New keyboard panel installed - replaced cracked edges
- New PMU installed (Power management unit, fixes battery charging issue)
- New MLB installed (Main Logic Board, fixes LCD backlight flicker)
- New Mighty Mouse

I’m so happy…my laptop now looks and feels new again for free (one week without the laptop was painful, though). If I choose to sell the laptop, I can now advertise it as being in excellent condition, rather than fair. I wouldn’t mind upgrading to a Macbook Pro as a graduation present to myself, perhaps.

Cheers, Apple. I’m still a happy customer now. My faith was shaken in the quality, but the service was exceptional. Thanks!

I was unable to find any Python samples for using the PayPal NVP API, so I went to work writing a helper class for my needs. Hopefully this should be enough to help get others started at least.

This is not a complete reference! Be sure to understand what this class is doing before you try it on production servers! …use it at your own peril.

http://python.pastebin.com/f782d48d9

Also be sure to check the complete reference doc for any error codes returned, as the doc is very helpful.

Update April 3rd, 2008: I’m pleased to discover that this has made its way around the internet:
The Freesound Project based out of Belgium is reimplementing their site in Python and they are using my reference.
A Google Code project called PyPayPal is using it as a reference.
GoCept, a German based company, seems to have implemented it in their content management system.

For those who have read the book, the recent news article about a cat that rides the bus to the fish market in London is the closest living literary reference that Bulgakov’s Master and the Margarita characters Behemoth (and Satan) have arrived in London as it could possibly get!

Ivan was so struck by the cat’s behaviour that he froze motionless by the grocery store on the corner, and here he was struck for a second time, but much more strongly, by the conductress’s behaviour. As soon as she saw the cat getting into the tram-car, she shouted with a malice that even made her shake: ‘No cats allowed! Nobody with cats allowed!’ Neither the conductress nor the passengers were struck by the essence of the matter: not just that a cat was boarding a tram-car, which would have been good enough, but that he was going to pay!

from The Chase, ch4

Woland is also described as having two different color eyes!

Right eye black, left - for some reason - green.

from Never Talk with Strangers, ch1.

MassWrestling.com gets about 90k requests to its RSS feeds every month, which eats up about 3GB of bandwidth transfers and puts extra load on the web server.

I saw a tip on Coding Horror Blog that it is a great idea to rewrite your RSS feeds to be syndicated by Feedburner. Unfortunately, the example given doesn’t quite work for MassWrestling.com’s e107 feed URLs:

/cms/e107_plugins/rss_menu/rss.php?forumposts.2

So I spent some time relearning Apache’s mod_rewrite, and came up with the following lines to add to my .htaccess files:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^forumposts\.1$
RewriteRule ^rss\.php$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/masswrestling/posts_rss? [R=301]

This rewrite sends all requests that are not FeedBurner’s http agent to Feedburner’s copy of my feed. The problem was figuring out that the question mark after the rss.php? is actually not matchable in the RewriteRule condition. Instead, you have to match it in a RewriteCond against the %{QUERY_STRING} variable. The replacement pattern requires a question mark at the end of it to ensure that mod_rewrite does not pass on the extra paremeters to the new URL.

So now:

rss.php?forumposts.2

redirects (301, permanently moved) to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/masswrestling/posts_rss2

Let’s hope it knocks out the extra RSS traffic I have.

Looking back at my post on April 14th^th 2006, entitled Dilbert Fodder, I described a short interaction at my last coop job. Did Scott Adams get his idea from my blog post?

I often get random emails from people regarding MassWrestling.com. Sometimes I even get emails regarding the New England Prep School Wrestling website I allow to be hosted for free on our server (NEISWA Site). I don’t have much to do with the guys who run the NEISWA pages on my server - they run their portion independently.

Anyways, here’s the strangest email I’ve ever gotten. I’ve bolded the outrageous claims. If this person is genuinely telling the truth on all accounts, then I apologize for my insensitivity. But this is just too crazy not to share.

Preface: I checked with the Prep administrators, and this person has a penchant for causing all sorts of trouble. Check this out for example. Good stuff!

=====
Wednesday, 12/6/06
Subject: hi mike; asking for a 2nd chance on NEISWA site

Mike:

Late last year, my computer link-up was blocked from the NEISWA website because of some postings by my 2 nephews. My computer ID number or computer Link (or whatever you call it) was blocked, and that’s where I’ve been: out of touch regarding my grandson’s wrestling progress and his New England wrestling friends/partners.

As my nephews’ havoc caused this rift, I’m asking for a 2nd (and final) chance to be allowed to check the NEISWA site, forums, rankings and such, because it gives me the opportunity to follow my old school (redacted) and my grandson’s current school, along with their competitors.

I’d greatly appreciate the opportunity to link up again with the NEISWA website, as this is his final year in prep school. As I have terminal cancer, I will not likely be able to see or enjoy him at the collegiate level, assuming I’m still alive in 2008. the doctor’s won’t make any promises.

You won’t have to worry about any problems from me, again. My nephews are now (thank God!) away at college, and I won’t be hosting them over Christmas break as I did last year, which is when they raised a ruckus (somehow) on your site. I assure you that you’ll NEVER HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME ON YOUR NEISWA SITE, ever.

And if you don’t want me to post, I won’t. I just want access to follow my grandson and his team’s progress, and to support the wrestlers and your site for its coverage of the great sport of wrestling.

Please reinstate me/my computer, and lift the “block” to my ID number/or ID link, or whatever it is that cuts off my access to the NEISWA site.

Kindly respond to this email ASAP, as the season’s already started and I feel terrible about not knowing how he’s doing. Thanks for giving me a 2nd chance.

Cordially yours,

[redacted]

ps: Tomorrow’s the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. My father was one of the Navy men who survived this sneak attack that forced us into WW 2. many of his buddies/friends died that Sunday morning, died for the freedoms too many Americans take for granted.

I never take my freedoms, especially freedom of speech, for granted. If you’ll be kind enough to “lift the block” on my access to the NEISWA site for just the next four months, I can not express to you how profoundly grateful I’ll be to you, Mike Atlas. Please, from this old man to you—a young, vibrant student at Northeastern University—have a little mercy on my for the “sins” of my irrepressible (and yes, sometimes irresponsible) nephews.

Do the right thing, and let me follow the last year of my grandson’s New England prep school career on the NEISWA site. thanks again. Godspeed!