On Firefox, I am able to use Tab Mix Plus so that when I press “v” in Google Reader, the item will open in a background tab. I’m the sort of bloke who likes to open a lot of tabs before reading them.

Now, however, I found this extension: Google Reader Open entry in background tab

With this extension, hmm, Chrome might just win.

I hope everyone likes them…because they are staying! (Read, pricey.)

I apologize that there aren’t any pictures, but, well, FOOOOOOD. However, I hope to below list the order of food with my impressions of it. The “names” of the dishes are what I can either glean from the menu or remember from my head. There is also a chance I’ve missed a dish, but I think I got them all. Now, the food:

1. Three BBQ Meats/Marinated Delight/Platter: A platter of mystery meats. Our guesses were roast pork, roast chicken, and intestine/stomach/something. All quite good and yummy.
2. Watercress with Clam Soup: A soup chock full of clams and watercress. The broth was very good as was the watercress. The clams? Well, I’m not the biggest fan, but I was told these were good.
3. ByBa Duck (aka Pipa Duck): Perhaps the best roasted duck I’ve ever had. So good.
4. Fried Sliced Fish, Salt and Pepper Style: Slices of a white fish, coated with a crispy breading and fried. The breading itself had salty, spicy kick to it. In fact, it was probably the hottest dish of the day, spice-wise. Served with some preserved anchovies and jalapenos.
5. Oyster with Ginger & Scallion Roast Pig in Casserole: The first casserole of the day. Again, not the biggest shellfish fan, but the oysters I tried were yummy. The best part of this dish were the onions at the bottom. They had absorbed all the sauce and flavor…mmm.
6. Sauteed Abalone with Chinese Vegetables and Chinese Mushrooms: I really liked the veggies (mustard greens?) and mushrooms. The abalone? Eh. Still not a fan of its weird texture.
7. Braised Eel with Roast Pig Garlic Sauce: This too was very good. One issue I had was that the eel was not boneless or bone-cut, but rather just chopped. The eel had great flavor, but the picking the meat from the bones (the many, many bones) was annoying. However, see that “garlic” up there? In this dish were the most flavorful garlic cloves ever. I kept picking them out, perhaps to the consternation of my tablemates.
8. Salted Fish, Diced Chicken, and Eggplant Casserole: A classic of Cantonese casseroles. I’m a big fan of all the ingredients, add them together and you get a happy Matt.
9. Sauteed Kingdom Mushroom, Braised Tofu, and Snow Pea Shoots: The final dish of the day was a “on the board” special. It’s about what it sounds like, except the mushrooms were…odd. I have *no* idea what species they are, but the whole mushroom must be enormous. The slices of mushrooms were bigger than an Ike dollar. Still, a very good dish.

All in all, an amazing feast. The cost, while not cheap, was still a great bargain for the variety of dishes. In fact, the whole meal per person was probably about the same cost as one order of that abalone dish. And the kids held their own, let me tell you. They had their own table with, while not all this food, not exactly just a few dishes.

Now? Now I’m going to sit like a bump on a log and try and digest the feast.

I know, I know, not that exciting, but, man, is it fascinating! The object of my focus this afternoon is the LA Public Library’s online Menu Collection. Just give it a whirl and I dare you not to be sucked in.  Marvel at what ten bucks would buy you 30 years ago compared to today.

I’m not the first to find this site, but I’m damn sure not going to be the last!

However, there is a bit of an issue with its integration, I believe. Namely: they give different answers!  I know this because I tried out an example in the first link up there, that of 2^2^2^2^2.  It turns out the answer to this is a bit vague, so differing solutions are not unexpected, but still…

Why? Exponentiation is not associative, unlike addition or multiplication (it might satisfy the Lie algebra equivalent of the Jacobi identity, I dunno), so the order matters. A lot.  Thus, while 2+(3+4) = (2+3)+4, and likewise for multiplication, 2^(3^4) !=  (2^3)^4. This being exponentiation, it really doesn’t. The latter is 4096, the former is 2417851639229258349412352. Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit different. So without parentheses, things are vague.

Now how about the example in the article? We’ll get to that. Let’s start with 3 2′s. (2^2)^2 = 16, 2^(2^2) = 16. Phew safe. So, 2^2^2 is fine.

2^2^2^2? Given that, Bing outputs the “bottom-up” answer: ((2^2)^2)^2 = 256. W|A outputs the “top-down”: 2^(2^(2^2)) = 65536. Ah ha.

The disparity is growing, but not bad. So adding one more ^2 shouldn’t be too horrible, right?

Wrong.

Exponentiation grows quickly so order reaaaaaallly matters.

2^2^2^2^2? As expected from above, Bing should do 256^2=65536 and it does. W|A? Well, it does 2^65536. This is a big number. How big? Well…

20035299304068464649790723515

602557504478254755697514192650

169737108940595563114530895061

308809333481010382343429072631

818229493821188126688695063647…

…8091458852699826141425030123391

That is a 19729 digit number. Big.

Therein lies the difference, but which is right? Hmm. Most mathematicians think of repeated exponentiation as “top-down”. So, my main question is why isn’t Bing using W|A as it says? Or is there some extra option I need to assemble?

Oh well. Just an odd thing I noticed.

For many moons, I’ve been a member of both the ACS (American Chemical Society) and APS (American Physical Society), the former for ten or more, the latter for a few.  As a theoretical chemist, having a membership to these societies was quite useful. You get a subscription to a very good “popular” magazine, Chemical and Engineering News and Physics Today, discounted registration at conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, access to the respective job banks.

All this, though, comes at a cost. When you are a grad student and recent postdoc, the membership cost isn’t too expensive and the benefits well outweigh the costs.  But once you are a “professional member” the costs double–I think–at least to $140 and $118 per annum.

Okay, that’s not bad, not great, but not horrible. *But*, I am no longer a practicing chemist/physicist. I’m a code monkey. A membership to IEEE or ACM would make more sense, really. Heck, I’m kind of attending SC09, the supercomputing conference, next weekend.

But, but, but. I am a chemist. I am a physicist (according to Feynman, no less). I still think of myself as such and I suppose a part of me thinks one day I might be a practicing chemist/physicist again.

I’m not sure what to do.

Okay, that’s redundant.

Sometimes, when I’m in my apartment…

…

…

…I make car noises as I walk around.

Vroooooom! as I move forward.

Vreeeewww! as I turn a corner.

Skreeeeee! as I stop.

Sometimes I sound like an F1 car, sometimes a Cup car, sometimes a World Rally Car.

Yup.

See what you are missing, ladies?!

Yours in you know you do it too,

Matt

Okay, yeah, it was an easy puzzle.

Okay, a really easy one.

Yes, I am doing the Jumble next. The really hard Jumble!

Shut up.

Hugs,
Matt

ETA: Completed the crossword in ten minutes as well. Woo! Gotta love Tuesday puzzle easiness! (Easiosity?)

ETA2: Found the 12 differences! And it was an advanced puzzle as well!

This weekend is SPX, the famed Small Press Expo, where independent comic artists (and a few super-famous webcomickers) gather to show their wares.  As an admirer and consumer such art, I say: “Woo hoo!”

I am a bit concerned, though, about what Saturday morning will be like when I get there. No advanced tickets sales…eek.  I know from previous visits that SPX is not unpopular so my mind is filled with images of terror. Plus, I think a one-day is ten bucks, so I hope they bring a *lot* of tens because they’ll end the day will many, many twenties.

I’m also debating in my head on the best way to get there: Metro or car. By car, the trip is, oh, 30-40 minutes if there isn’t a big traffic incident. Plus, if I buy a lot of swag, I’ll be able to bring it home rather easily. Cons: parking, though I think I know a way to beat that, and, well, it is the Beltway. Traffic will happen as will asses in BMWs (always Beamers, always) weaving in and out of traffic that is already moving about 15 MPH over the speed limit.

Metro isn’t a bad choice either, though. SPX is held at the Marriott pretty much adjacent to the White Flint Metro station. Traveling by Metro isn’t as stressful as by car either, so, nice. But, but, but: the trip from my place in Alexandria to White Flint? Try, oh, 75 minutes. Yup. One end of the system to the other with a transfer in the middle.

I can’t quite decide yet which to do. The Metro option depends on where WMATA is doing their track work this weekend. If it’s on my route, that can add a good 30-40 minutes on that time, so that’ll dissuade me.

And now for the ennui portion of our post. I know what you are thinking, it’s a freaking trip to White Flint for a comic expo…ennui? Well, you see, I haven’t been up White Flint/Rockville way for many months. Part of that is because there hasn’t been a great need, but I’ll admit there is another reason. The fact is, the last time I headed up toward Rockville was during my happy days. Before the break-up.

See, back then, a trip up to Rockville was one where each mile traveled made me that much happier. I was either driving up to see her or drop her off which meant it was one extra mile sitting beside her. I never knew before then the joy that a bit of a drive could be. I miss that, you know. Miss her, miss those feelings, miss being happy like that.

After the end, I suppose I just didn’t have much motivation to make that trip again, by car or Metro. And, I suppose now I’m afraid that by either mode I’ll spend my time getting more and more depressing because, well, I am me.

I guess it is a good thing, though, to go to SPX. If nothing else, I’ll break that rather-ridiculous psychological barrier that, yeah, I know, shouldn’t be there.

Still, I hope that no matter what happens, I have and *you* have a great weekend.

That’s right, tomorrow night I am going to a lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright at the Pope-Leighey House, one of his Usonian houses on display here in Virginia (moved to the site of Woodlawn).

The lecture is being given by Thomas Schmidt, Director-Emeritus of Fallingwater, usually considered Wright’s masterpiece–and rightly so. (One of these days I’m finally going to tour Fallingwater, though its distance from me is just enough that I’d probably have to make a weekend of it. It’s about a 4-hour drive from DC to southwest PA, which isn’t bad, but if I tried to do it in one day…hoo boy, that’s a lot of driving.)

When I saw this come up, I thought it’d be fun to attend.  As an architecture fan, and a fan of Wright, it was a no-brainer.  Wright is not my favorite architect (that’d be Niemeyer followed by Salmona–discovered at an exhibit I attended here in DC), but he is way up there.  I’ve always had a dream of living in a Wright house, even if I’d be whacking my head on every doorframe and ceiling. The “if I had all the money in the world” Wright house for me? The Ennis House, Wright’s textile block apotheosis, which would be a money pit to restore, but it’d be worth it.

And, yep, give me textile block over the Prairie or Usonian Wright works. (I also like his commercial works like Johnson Wax more than most of his homes.) In fact, that’s probably why I’m so enamored with Salmona, who was a master of using bricks. Something about that sort of modernism-meets-solid-stone that lights my imagination and wonder.