Well, I'm back from the second grappling tournament entered so far. Last time I lost my only match, but this time I won once!

I fought in two divisions. In the beginner division (1 year experience), I beat my opponent by points and it really wasn't close. :-) Unfortunately in the next fight I got caught in an armbar and lost even though I was ahead by points again. In the novice division (6 months experience) my opponent submitted me from a guillotine. I hate those. :-(

So my record at NAGA is 1 win 2 losses. Another grappler told me that is good since 50% lose their first match but I'm still unsatisfied. Next year I'll improve my record. Good news is that I didn't lose due to conditioning (I never got really tired), so I just have to learn the counters to those submissions... :-)

The tourney was also a very humbling experience. There was another fighter the also in the Beginner division with the same experience as me who got third place out of 20 people! There was also the college wrestler who, which almost no grappling experience, placed third in the Intermediate division. Props to both fighters, of course. I got a long and interesting road ahead to compete with them. Here's to the journey!

So from the latest MEME-go-round (its not a meme!!!- Oh STFU and GBTW!) it seems that none of y'all have Fake ID'd.

Frankly, I'm surprised. But then again my history is not your history.

My first fake ID usage came while visiting my sister in Rhode Island. I was lent an ID from a friend of my sisters. I was Armando, from NJ!@ I memorized the facts on the card face, and even knew that ARMANDO was a Libra. The bouncer at the club barely looked at the id. I then got throughly drunk, flirted with my sister's boss's wife, and later threw up on my sisters couch. All in all, a good time.

However my story does not end there. NY had licenses with a bluish-whitish background, and the DOB in RED for those just under 21. Since I was born in the spirit of '76, it was child's play to take some chalk, "white-out" the cross bar of the 6, and then use red color pencil make it into a 0. Thats right; through the magic of 3rd grade arts and crafts, Mr. BABY-FACE himself was now Born in 1970. And this ID worked like a charm in the seedy parts of Charm City (i.e. ALL of it), a good 4 hours away from NY.
(note: I had forgotten I'd 'chalked up' when visting an 18 to party/21 to drink bar in NY. The bouncer took one look at my id, wet his thumb, and wiped off the chalk. I apologized and said "I forgot I had that! I'm just here to see the band! It works in Baltimore!")

The scariest experience was getting carded by a cop in Baltimore. He asked my age and I squeaked "26!" Incredulous, he asked for my Id. And then the seconds turned to minutes. "They take you to jail for this..." But once he flipped the id to look at the back (yes, I WAS an organ donor!), I realized "this guy has NO IDEA what he's doing!" He handed the ID back and called me "sir."

That was pretty awesome.
Carry on with your puddle-jumping tea parties and broken-hearted snow angels.

/for the record, I still look like I have a baby face. - Dorian

I don't like memes and chain letters, but this sounds cool in a juvenile way. I'm feeling juvenile and silly tonight, so reply and... I'll respond with something random about you. (source)

1. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
2. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in. (I perfer girls. ;-)
3. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
4. I'll tell you my first memory of you.
5. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
6. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.

I don't like chain letters, so you may or may not post this on your journal. Your choice. It is written somewhere, probably here. ;-)

Check out this comment in a story about Design Patterns. That person makes no sense whatsoever! I have moderator points, but I won't waste them on his post. Instead I'll respond here. However if he gets modded up I will be very upset!

The quite possibly most useless book in the history of computer science gets an award. Somehow I am not that surprised, considering that everybody hails it as the end all of object oriented design and everything.

Nobody seriously thinks Design Patterns is "end all" of OOD. Design patterns are an active research topic and much new material is published about them both in academic journals and your local bookstore every year.

To be honest, modern computer science curriculum seems to be wasting a lot of bright young potential on buzzwords. Patterns, paradigms, bleh. People somehow manage to get masters degrees in CS from Berkeley without even knowing what "turing complete", "Karnaugh map", "Rice's theorem", "Goedel's completeness theorem", "planar graph", "functional language", "church-turing thesis" are. But you ask them about a singleton, model-view controller or Java's security model in reflection and they're the fucking expert.

This is not true. I know what every one of those terms are except of "Rice's theorem," and I'm not even a computer science major! At my school they are covered in much detail. I know from taking the Digital Logic, Intro to Programming, and other courses offered there. Our computer science curriculum really does iterate though those topics, as does our computer engineering school.

Well that's barely computer science, that's just OO banging. Just because it uses paradigms and object oriented terms doesn't make it anything other than advanced code banging.

That is nonsence. He keeps using that word - paradigm - but I don't think he knows what it means. Then there is "code banging." Computer science is not just advanced mathematics even though the two fields are related. I guess actually writing programs is beyond him.

Really... I pity him for taking the time to write up such nonsense. I - on the other hand - wrote this reply to prevent misinformation and to vet some frustrations. Edit: A good reply was posted by an anonymous contributor. That's what should be modded up. Why do people intentionally try to sabotage communities like /.?

Its near the end of the build, deadlines are tight, and while getting help from our Lab Goddess, I noticed how loud her keyboard was. Knowing that certain folk around here swap-out their standard issues for the IBM Clack-o-Trons, I snuck a peak at her keyboard make and model.

Dell Quiet Key.

Riiiiiiiight.

P.S.- I hurt my right pinky last night. From all the shift, ctrl, and esc work. Everytime I saw her fingers hammer that poor piece of plasting my pinky twinged in sympathy.

"Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying text editor." -- Maddox ;-)

Either all of your friends are lame or you just have none. Either way this page is blank.

Over at Anne's journal there is a debate about using DOCTYPE declarations as versioning information. For example, the external subset for HTML 3.2 is different from the external subset for the HTML 4.01 family. There are also different external subsets for each "subversion" in the HTML 4.01 family. i.e. Transitional, Strict, and Frameset versions. Some people think this doesn't work. My opinion is that DOCTYPE declarations can be used to specify version information for the following reason:

1. Say you have two documents with identical DOCTYPE decarations. Both the internal, external, and root element declarations are the same. Then you can say their syntactic doctypes are identical. The structure of each document must conform to the same SGML rules.

2. The two documents could have different semantic doctypes though. That is, the meaning content in one document could mean something totally different in the other one even though they both conform to the same syntax rules in the DTD. For example, say the "rel" attribute is defined with character data content in the DTD. One document may specify that the rel attribute specifies a relationship and should be a character string; the other could specify that those attributes specify links and should be URI references.

3. There could also be syntatic differences not captured by the syntatic doctypes. For example one spec may indicate that "name" and "id" attributes MUST have identical content if both are present; however, this is impossible to specify in a DTD.

4. Therefore, the content of the external and internal subsets can not be used to differentiate between languages or versions of a single lanugage like HTML. There could be different syntatic or semantic meaning not captured by the doctype.

5. External subsets are specified with either a Formal Public Identifier (FPI) or a URI reference to a DTD. However in practical applications a FPI uniquely identifies a resource just like a URI, so I'm going to assume both are the same for this line of reasoning, and I'll call both DTD names. DTD names have the following property: the owner of the name gets to determine what it means. For HTML's DTD names specified by the W3C, only the W3C gets to say what they mean, for example.

6. Therefore, it is legal for a DTD names to indicate the doctype for a single language including semantic and syntatic requirements not captured in the content of the DTD. The meaning of the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype string is unambiguous even though the DTD's content may not specify all of the semantic or syntatic requirements of HTML 4.01 Strict.

7. If you change the external subset's DTD name, it may or may not refer to the same language. Even if the external subset contains the same content, other requirements not encoded by the DTD could be different. Therefore, you can ONLY use the cannonical DTD names for unambiguously identifing the resource with third parties.

8. Even when using cannonical DTD names, if you change the root element then you might no longer conform with the specification. For example, changing the root element while using HTML 4.01 strict's DTD name violates the global structure semantics of HTML 4.01 strict. Therefore, the document is not valid HTML even though it is syntatically valid SGML. Note that the DTD name still specifies the particular language you are using even though the content of resolving the DTD name is not enough to validate the document as HTML.

9. If you add an internal subset, then the meaning of those changes is undefined even though the syntax of those changes specified as well as can be by the content of the subset. The content of the internal subset simply cannot capture the semantic or all the possible syntatic requirments you specify. Therefore if anything in the internal subset conflicts with the HTML 4.01 strict's external subset, or additional elements or attributes or attribute lists are defined, then the resulting lanugae is not HTML even though it is valid SGML for example.

10. There is an exception to the above point. If the internal subset contains entity declarations with valid HTML content as its content (even though the entity by itself may not be valid HTML content), and those entity declarations don't interfere with the HTML DTD, then the meaning of those entities is clear (it is defined by SGML) and the specified syntax of the external subset is unchanged. Therefore, it is still HTML of the specified version for example.

Thus if you use the same internal subset content (with an exception), the same external subset declaration, and same root element declaration as the HTML language version you are declaring, then your document is HTML. If you change anything (with an exception), then it can never be unambiguously determined to be HTML by a computer.

If you can specify different languages using the above rules, then you can specify different versions of a language family using the above rules. Every version of a language family is a different language. They may share certain semantics, but they are not compatible except as explicitly defined by the language family's specification.

Therefore, you can use DOCTYPE declarations to specify version information. Q.E.D.

As quick as you are to tear down, I resist you and your mongrel hordes. And I say that with stead fast confidence and the ability to build rapport you can move mountains!
And I weep for the sheep without the will to power.

Yü-Gung kann Berge versetzen!

Thank You Very Much Semedia and Google.

My life, except that I shamefully haven't graduated yet.

Not to overload sw@w3, I'm going to propose answers to my questions on URI References in RDF. Any comments are greatly welcomed, since I don't know if I am correct!

1) RDF describes URI references - not URI strings themselves - in anticipation of IRIs (AKA a 'URIRef') URIRefs are always encoded in UTF-8 too. Correct?

Correct. (of course ;-)

2) My main question concerns converting a URIRef into a URI. Say we have the URIRef:

<data:,Hello, World>

Is that legal? Would that be converted into the URI:

<data:,Hello%2C%20World>

Since the comma is illegal in the URI after the first one?

Not entirely. The comma is legal in both the context and in RDF, so that URIRef would properly be converted to the URI:

<data:,Hello,%20World>

Note that I think (hope) that only the RDF semantics section applies and not the context in the scheme.

3) If there was an ambigious situation, how would it be represented as an URIRef? For example take the URI (yes, it is an unusual case where the name contains a slash - it is just an example):

<http://example.com/name%2Fslash/>

Would that be converted to the URIRef:

<http://example.com/name/slash/>

(I don't think so). But wouldn't the URIRef:

<http://example.com/name%2Fslash/>

be converted to the URI:

<http://example.com/name%252Fslash/>

That is all true, so the URI:

<http://example.com/name%2Fslash/>

Can not be represented as a URIRef. However that's not a problem, even though that means the scope of URIRefs is smaller than the scope of URI strings. RDF concerns URIRefs and not URI strings. So this is a non issue.

As of today I am 179.5 pounds - exactly twenty pounds less than I was two months ago! Yes, I was getting quite fat and I still have a lot to lose. However, I feel great and am finally down a weight class for the tourney. Realistically a target of 175 is required to improve my speed (less dead weight to carry around), but I'll try for 169 if I can. How did I do it?

Note: I am not a doctor. This is what I did and it could be harmful to you (or even me without realizing it). I am not a professional. Get professional advice and a doctor's help before attempting anything. Use at your own risk!

1. First few weeks (lost 3-5 pounds for me):

   See a dietitian and eat according to how much you spend. You are a bank; to lose weight you must bounce your checkbook! :-p So keep track of what you eat and how much you exert through exercise (use machine or use estimates). Healthy food (fruits, vegetables) improves your "energy" so you can exercise easier. I used to go to Subway, but I stopped recently for other reasons. Limit your bread, cheese, and portions; increase your cereal/milk, fruits/vegetables, and number of meals. Eating only a few meals makes your body go into sleep-mode.

2. Next weeks (lost 5-7 pounds more for me):

   1. Continue the previous stuff.

   2. Run run run. Do 25-35 minute workouts two-three times a week Use an elliptical if your joints hurt or you just don't running in general. You get a similar workout yet they feel much better! Use the "weight loss" workout - oscillating between high and low inclines - with some resistance (start low). Make sure you stay within your target heart rate zone. If you don't, then you will tire easily and quit.

   3. Lift weights. A strong upper body increases your metabolism and also helps make running easier. Make sure you don't hurt yourself and always use a spotter, but try to ramp up the weight to 90% or failure during reps. (Most people don't lift enough.) Try to do it two-three times a week between running days. It helps to work with a few friends, as it is safer and you push each other harder.

   4. Do a martial art one-two times a week. I joined a wrestling club at my university then did some introductionary jiu-jitsu at the one next door when the other club adjourned for the summer. You will suck at it if you never did it before (or are out of practice). That's OK!

3. Next Weeks (lost 7-9 pounds):

   1. Continue the previous stuff, if you can. Remember to eat more as you exercise more. You need the energy, but your body will burn food more quickly rather than conserve it in fat stores. I modified my schedule to allow other stuff, but I want to add in more running/weight lifting.

   2. Train at your martial art school two days a week.

   3. Train at your martial arts club two days a week too (or go to your school). They won't be as good, but the sparring will give you a workout.

   4. Do your martial arts drills two more days a week in two minute periods. (i.e. two minutes one, two minutes rest, two minutes second, two minutes rest, etc...) Do it by yourself or with your group. This improves both your art and your conditioning.

   5. Friday is fun day!

That's what I did so far. Right now I'm working out six days a week with Friday off to party/have fun. I don't do everything as much as I can, and I'm far from perfect (missing days, not doing something, slacking off, overeating). The important thing seems to be to go back into the rhythm before falling into couch-potato mode.

Time is a problem, but I try to force exercising. I'm 10x more productive after working out, and my computer programming has increased in quality I think. Abstract algebra just doesn't kick in the fight-or-flight response! :-)

It might not work with you, and I don't think my workout is anywhere near either a scientific nor great thing. It seems to be working for me right now, so I hope it gives you ideas or inspiration to lose weight.

Note: I am not a doctor. This is what I did and it could be harmful to you (or even me without realizing it). I am not a professional. Get professional advice and a doctor's help before attempting anything. Use at your own risk!

DAmn! Belgian Waffles on BassDrive is spinning my childhood!!!

Like, EVERY TRACK could be found on my old DJ's mix tapes from 1995-6!!

Too bad I don't have streamrippa' at werk.

14:02:16 belgian waffles hosted by Motion Theory : aim : vinc3sterrr

/. loves me! In the last three months, I have recieved moderation powers about 14 times. In the last three weeks, about seven times. In the last week, three times. In fact I used up my moderation points this morning and recieved five more this evening! As my power grows so does my ego.

I just wish there were more interesting stories. The moderation of most stories is horrible if my judgement about topics that I know something about is any indication. However, I usually moderate only in those stories since I can't fairly judge the worth of a comment outside of my field. So people, I implore you to submit fascinating articles about engineering, physics, programming, science, the semantic web, etcetera!