available amigos

budding buddies

choosable chums

feasible friends

hypothetical homies

suggested soulmates (you can tell that this is where I went to the thesaurus)

workable well-wishers

obtainable otomodachis

imaginable intimates

reasonable regulars

nearby neighbors

... that's all I can come up with at the moment.

Hmm, my third katamari post. This is not going to turn into a
katamari blog, but at least the katamari tag will get more
results. Anyway, Namco produced this 2d Flash version of Katamari
Damacy, it's sort of amusing:

http://katamaridamacy.jp/qa_data/katamari.html

If you don't have Japanese fonts, you might see little boxes
everywhere. Just click on the 1-play camel (or the top of the
pyramid for 48-play insanity) and roll up as much as you can!

On Tuesday morning, when travelling to work, Tim and I ran a little experiment.  Or maybe you could call it a race.  I needed to visit the south bay in the evening, so I had to drive.  I offered Tim a ride, but he responded "nah, I'd rather take the train, it's faster."

Now I've always thought of Caltrain as being much slower than a car.  Most of my Caltrain experiences have been travelling from Sunnyvale or Mountain View to 4th and King SF and back on the weekend, a tediously long hour or hour and a half ride.  By car, the same weekend trip is about 45 minutes.  So I figured a claim that Caltrain could be faster than a car needed to be challenged.

I dropped Tim off at 8:10am.  The train was at 8:16am, giving me a 6 minute head start.  The Potrero to Palo Alto drive has previously taken me 35 minutes (+8:10 = 8:45) , and the 8:16 Baby Bullet schedule said it would hit Palo Alto at 8:48, plus ~5 min walking time.  I said to Tim, "Hmm, with that much extra time, maybe I'll stop at Peet's for coffee and then meet you at the office."

Fast forward to 9:25am... I finally got to the office, feeling grouchy and tired after start/stop traffic on the 101 (see icon).  Tim was happily sitting at his desk, working, with a newspaper next to him (that he probably read on the train)  Having arrived at 8:48 (those Baby Bullets are punctual!), he said "Yeah, I went to Peet's to meet you, but you didn't show up so I came here."  I had never made it to Peet's.

I took Caltrain on Wednesday.

All right, since I keep googling for this and since "Everybody loves Katamari Damacy", here is a link to the live action Katamari Damacy commercial.

http://gameads.gamepressure.com/tv_game_commercial.asp?ID=681

The greatest thing about this commercial is that it pretty accurately depicts the game play.  So much so that I imagine myself critiquing the player, being like "No way is the Katamari big enough to get that couch", and "ooh, the cart, get the cart.. good one" and "Why is he wasting time getting the plant, grab the door, you're big enough to get the door!" and so on.

While the sequel "Everybody loves Katamari Damacy" is out in Japan, we unfortunately have to wait until October.  Oh well.

I think it's hilarious how many search results I get when I search imeem for "asdfsadf".  (some of these are in private meems, and thus may not show up for you)  This is what people usually type when they are testing something and need to make some text.  I get a lot of chat messages that are "asdfasdf" and similar permutations of those four letters.

The google results for "asdfasdf" are also pretty funny.  A sponsored link shows up for "test test test test" which links to a TOEFL site for some reason.

That's all I wanted to say for now.  I guess this is actually a test post after all, because I am testing blogs.  But my normal asdfasdf test post would have a body "asdfasdf" and a randomly chosen picture from my Sidekick.

Hmm, it's been a while... I'll should post more often.

The different places I've worked have had interesting computer naming schemes.  From memory (hopefully I won't get these wrong), Gigabeat and Napster both had machines named after favored bands.  Imageworks had machines named after classic movie stars.  Here, we couldn't really decide on one, and ended up with about three different schemes.  I hear Simpsons characters is a popular one; there are so many to choose from.

My naming scheme for my personal machines is a little obscure, and hard to find candidates for.  It has the following requirements:

1. Must be the name of a fictional computer from a book or movie.

2. The computer must have no physical body or humanlike avatar associated with it.  It is just a computer.

3. The computer must somehow exert its influence over people in the physical world, either physically or politically.  It must be aware that humans don't agree with what it is doing, and yet do it anyways, outsmarting the humans despite its being little more than a box.

Pretty obscure, huh?  Some examples of fictional computers that satisfy the requirements:

- HAL 9000 is the example you already thought of.  But HAL is so well known, he's cliche.. I can't use him.

- The trio of Rampant AIs from the Marathon Trilogy: Leela, Durandal, and Tycho.  Durandal was my last machine; Tycho is my current one.  (Hmm, but if I name my next one Leela, people are sure to think I have a Futurama naming scheme)

- While I have not read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I have heard of its computer Mycroft, which might be appropriate.

- Wintermute from Neuromancer

- "Bob" from Zeiram/Iria

Computers that almost satisfy the requirements, but don't:

- The MCP from Tron.  It was a program, not a computer, fails #1.  It just doesn't make sense to call your computer a program, does it?

- Cortana from Halo, Brainiac from Superman.  They have bodies/avatars, thus fail #2.

- The defense computer from The Andromeda Strain isn't aware that it's doing anything wrong, so it fails #3.  I don't think it has a name anyway, but it was the only example of #3 I could think up.

(You should not read this if you have not seen Star Wars.  Bleah.)

Now that Star Wars is done, if you had to introduce Star Wars to someone who has never seen it before, what order would you suggest they watch it in?

One idea is to watch them in chronological order, from episodes 1 to 6.  But then, when the big revelation comes in episode 5, (see thumbnail) it would not be a surprise at all.

Another idea is to watch 4-6, then 1-3.  But then, they'd be watching 1-3 while already knowing how it ends.

I thought up another possible ordering, which may be overly elaborate, and goes something like this:

- 4, 5 (maybe followed by reading Shadows of the Empire)

- 6 but only up to the point just as Obi Wan says "When I first met your father, he was already a great pilot".  Stop there.

- Then watch 1, 2, (optional: Clone Wars cartoon here) and 3.  That way, up until the very end of #3, you still don't know that Luke is a twin.  Then watch the rest of #6.  Obi Wan talking in #6 will be like a 6 hour flashback. 

- Then read the Timothy Zahn trilogy.  And watch the upcoming TV series.

Bah.  Too complicated.  And I didn't even consider any of the video games.  Just do chronological order.