Anyone else seen the news about the Somali pirates falling ill and dying after capturing an Iranian ship?
If it was my boat I'd let them keep it. The perfect crime?
Spook a:"Oh no we have some "minerals" that we need to dispose of. "
Spook b:"Hire a put it on a boat and ship it"
a: "send it where and what once its there?"
b: "anywhere cause we will hire some pirates to take it, they can keep it and the cargo will kill'em anyways... no longer our problem its the merchants and pirates problem then"
a: "cool"
Maybe it didn't go down like that but I dunno seems to Hollywood for me. Perhaps a bit of slight of hand or some else sinister, ah but will we ever know? Doubt we will know the whole scope.
Or maybe it was just those sneaky ninjas again.
Went all about Elijah Bristow State Park. Over some bridges and through a creek. The ride was pretty fun. Certainly something to do again when the opportunity arises.
So fairly recently I've started to run with my ipod with a short but potent playlist. I know some people who refuse to run with no music. I can go with or without but do like some music. Music can help the pace for sure.
So whats on your running play list if your a runner? Comment and let me know.
Arrived in Sacramento just after 5pm. Proceeded to drinks and then to Davis for hanging out with some people and more Drinks and some food. Highlights include a round of pool, a Czech bar, and burgers.
Friday was a hike just outside of Calistoga then to the Napa Valley for wine tasting and having of a bottle of wine with some cheeses and bread. Then to Sonma for an Irish pub for food and beer.
Saturday was wondering San Francisco and then in the evening Sushi.
Sunday was wondering around Downtown Sacramento and the area before my flight back to Portland.
The weather was clear skies, sunny and warm the whole time. I came home to typical Oregon, overcast skies and rain.
It was a busy vacation. I got to reconnect with a dear friend who I don't get to see nearly enough.
Played Dodge ball at work today. Good times. A few years ago they attempted to get it going but nothing ever happened with it. This time they just said to when to be where if you wanted to play rather than a lot pre-organizing and who is interested queries. Turned out pretty well it's supposed to be going on for the next couple weeks so I've got something to look forward to at work for the next couple weeks. Woo.
Went to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest last night, with a bunch of friends. Even though prices for entry to the various drinking venues is up they now have just one entry fee so for $10 you can go to any of the three vs previous years where you'd have to pay five bucks per venue to get in so in theory it could save someone a five spot. I think beer prices were up a bit too.
Despite the rising prices I have more fun each year. Good company, good beers, good music, good foods making for a great time at least for me. Best part is despite having plenty of beers I didn't have a hangover this morning, I was a bit sore from sleeping on a hidabed thing but otherwise felt fine...
So yesterday after all the hype I went and upgraded my iTunes to 8 and the firmware on my iPod touch to 2.1. Enabled Genius, played some music, all things seemed fine, AirTunes still worked fine unlike some people.
Everything was great until I attempted to play a track or two from a playlist from the remote app on the touch...When the remote app said "An unknown error occurred. Please check your library and try again" Ok weird, so I check the desktop see if iTunes has thrown an error, nope. Played the song from the desktop it played fine, I thought nothing more of it until today when I bumped into the problem again. Again it plays fine from the desktop. So from the remote app on the touch I try playing something from another playlist and it works fine, back to the 1st play list, no go, by artist works, by album works it all works just not this play list or any newly created playlists. WTF?
After google and the apple support/discussion pages didn't help. I went into super geek mode and head right for the packet capture maybe to see a reasonable error on the wire that the touch just doesn't know what to do with. I see that its using the DAAP which I thought was interesting but it does make sense. But it was throwing a 500 internal server error, but only for those tracks in the unplayable via remote playlists. Nothing useful other than iTunes seems to freak out when a track is requested from the playlists...
I decided to check the preferences. I get to the sharing tab and see that I'm only sharing a few playlists, however everything else plays just fine from the remote. So I change it back to Share entire library and problem solved. Woo.
Over the last week or so I've been playing quite a bit with the flickr interestingness system. Attempting to figure out how it works and what factors figure into the formula, what doesn't and getting an idea of how they are figured and weighted.
The factors I think flickr uses that determine how interesting a photo are. The number of views, the tags, number of comments, notes and number of favorites. Not the actual content of the photo.
Views
The number of views plays a roll but it seems to be one of least important or lightest weighted of the rules. I believe this to be due to the passiveness of and gathering views. It is possible a great number of views in a short period of time could move an image up in the ranks of interestingness but as most images that get a great number of views in a short period of time usually also gather comments and favorites.
Tags
The tags used to describe an image also play a role in the interestingness. The tags are weighted higher than the number of views and image has. The tag it self plays a factor in the score. Which can be observed by adding and removing some words to an image and observing the interestingness move up or down. Some words do not appear to have a measurable effect on the interestingness while others do. A tag may negatively or positively influence the interestingness of an image.
In many cases removing a tag can change the rank of an image, however adding the tag back does may not result in a change, the same can be observed of adding a tag and removing it. I believe to be caused by the activity on the photo causing a refactorization of the overall interestingness score and if necessary re-ranks the image.
Favorite
When a user "faves" an image it increments a counter and essentially bookmarks the image for that user and increments the favorite count for that image. The weight of someone adding a photo as favorite is greater than that of views or tags, but less than the weight of a comment.
My basis for this is the fact that images with the same number of favorites and a similar number of views the one with more comments is found to be more interesting by flickr. In some cases the one with more comments less views and less favorites may be considered by flickr to be more interesting.
Comments
Carry the highest weight. My theory on this is because the user is interacting with the photo and saying something it counts for more, as others will see the comment, rather than just counting as view or marking it as a favorite.
Notes and Time
I haven't play much with the notes and finding their role or weight of notes by self or others on an image. I suspect Notes are similar in weight to the tags as the notes are also used to show or illustrate something in the image with words while highlighting an area of interest.
Time seems to play a factor as well. Images that get several comments and/or faves in a relatively short period of time in many cases can end up as more interesting than others with more views, comments and/or favorites, that have been accumulating more slowly.
Description and Title
Description and Title do not seem to play a major or direct role the interestingness of a photo.
A description and or title of the photo may indirectly influence the interestingness of a photo as they can draw people in from search engines or just by the title or descriptions associated with an image. The Descriptions and titles may draw people in which would increase views and possibly activity on an image, thus changing the interestingness.
Done
I cannot be certain I have identified all the factors of interestingness on flickr but I do believe I have identified the major factors and basic workings.
The factors I have identified, I identified by experimentation and observation of my photo stream and most interesting photos.
I think September is going to be a busy month. Spent Labor Day Weekend at the coast with some friends. This weekend I've got nothing but I can use it to do laundry and get my place picked up a bit. Next weekend is Oktoberfest, the weekend after I'm planning going to visit Kala as its been far too long since we've seen each other. Then the last weekend of the month is still up in the air but chances are something will be coming up, and if not a break wouldn't be all that bad.