Category Archives: Brainwagon Radio

All the episodes of Brainwagon Radio, the podcast of brainwagon.org.

Brainwagon Radio: Blackjack, Hold’em and Gambling

Where your host expounds about his largely academic interest in games of chance.

Links:

::amazon(“0394703103”, “Beat the Dealer, by Ed Thorp”)::
The classic, pick up a copy and read on the flight to Vegas. You can and should read his Mathematics of Gambling as well, especially since it’s available online for free.
::amazon(“0929712137”, “The Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin”)::
Want to understand the mathematics behind card counting? This is the book to have, terrific for those of us with a largely academic interest in blackjack.
::amazon(“0743249992”, “Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich:”)::
The story of how a group of MIT students used team play to win millions from Vegas. I found it to be a pretty interesting look into a world that is probably best viewed from the outside.
::amazon(“1880685000”, “The Theory of Poker by Skylansky”)::
I was hoping for a book as good as Griffin’s is on blackjack. The book is good, but really doesn’t ground you in the mathematics you might think you need. It does teach you how to think about poker (and to some extent gambling), but I would almost take those as gimmes.

Brainwagon Radio: Opening Day for the Athletics

Opening Day PodcastIt’s been a couple of days since opening night for the Athletics, and it’s taken me a couple of days to stitch together the bits of audio I recorded into an Opening Day Podcast. While the A’s were smacked around, I did have a great time and you might find some of the sounds of the game to be interesting. Enjoy!

I have a bit more audio that I recorded that I’ll link here in a day or so. I decided not to lengthen the podcast for those who don’t find it interesting. Despite the fact that it is recorded with my Dell Axim x50v and its internal microphone, I don’t think it turned out half bad.

Brainwagon Radio: World Poker Tour Game, Sin City, and Acronis True Image

Where your host reviews a cool $20 video game, World Poker Tour by Toymax, gives his mixed (even muddled) opinion on ::google(“sin city”,”Sin City”)::, and a thumbs up for Acronis True Image disk cloning software.

Still have gmail and Yahoo! 360 invites available, mail me if you want one.

Additional gratuitous links:

  • I bought the World Poker Tour game because Wil Wheaton recommended it after getting one as a consolation prize for competing in the World Poker Tour Invitational.
  • Oh, when I said “video game” above, I meant “video game”, not “video game software”. It’s a hardware gadget. $20. Wow, economies of scale.

Brainwagon Radio: April Fool’s Day and Sweet and Sour Bitter Melon

Where your host talks about his experience with Chinese calligraphy, relates a timely story about MIT hackers Gosper and Greenblatt and their attempts to get a good chinese meal, and reviews a couple of plugins for WordPress.

Links:

dynamic-text-replace is a plugin that you can use to automatically insert useful links using simple macros. Check out the documentation, but using it you can create links to Google, Amazon and Flickr searches, such as ::flickr(“chinese”, “this bunch of links to Chinese things on Flickr.”)::

You can read the story I’m talking about in Steve Levy’s ::amazon(“0385312105”, “Hackers“):: or online here. Buy the book though: it was one of my early inspirations.

Brainwagon Radio: SCOTUS on Grokster, Copyrights and itsyBSD

Where your host records another podcast on his way to work, and encounters a particularly gruesome bit of road kill along the way.

Still, I have time to give you updates on the Supreme Court’s review of the Grokster case, the ongoing debate over copyrights on orphaned works, and a brief update on my success with itsyBSD.

Oh, and a Scrappy the Cat update.

I’m also willing to send out Yahoo! 360 invites. Drop me an email if you’d like to see what all the fuss is about. My initial impressions: it’s more useful for creating small cliques than wide publication. If that’s what you need, it’s probably a good thing. And the price is right.

Brainwagon Radio: Robogames 2005 and the ATI X700 Pro

I haven’t gotten a lot done this afternoon, but I did record a podcast which described some of the fun we had at Robogames 2005 (check yesterdays blog entry for pictures) and a brief description of my new graphics card: an ATI X700 Pro which replaces the old X300 SE card in my Windows Media PC.

Hope everyone had a nice Easter. My ham turned out delicious, as did the sweet potatoes.

Brainwagon Radio: Scrappy Update, The Schiavo Case, and Barry Bonds…

Using my Dell PDA to record podcasts while on the way to work is strangely addicting. Here’s another one that features an update on my cat Scrappy and his recovery from his fisticuffs with another cat, my thoughts on the Schiavo case, and my disgust with Barry Bonds. Barry, you’ll get no huzzahs from me this year.

Oh, here is a picture of Scrappy rolling around on the ground in our front yard this morning. The sunlight apparently feels good to his recovering body…
Happy Scrappy!

Brainwagon Radio: Scrappy, Live CDs and Misc…

Well, today’s mobile podcast is dominated by a report on the health of my kitty. I know, I know, podcasting about your pets, how cliché is that? But I’ve spent the last 48 hours worrying about the little fuzzball, so this is what you get for subscribing… 🙂

I do have a few tiny bits of geek news though…

  • pwyky is just about the simplest Python wiki I’ve found that’s worth running. For those of you who don’t know:

    A wiki is a program, often a CGI, which enables you to edit a website using an HTML form. You can limit the editing priviliges to a single or group of users, or let anyone in the world edit it.

    They are often used for documentation where the user community is expected to update and correct information, and I’m thinking about using it on my LiveCD project.

  • Dred242 recorded podcast entirely on a Pocket PC using Vito Sound Explorer, a recording program for the Pocket PC which includes the important ability to edit mp3 tags.

Brainwagon Radio: Live Linux CDs!

Business card CD blanks can hold 50Mbytes, enough to boot Damn Small LinuxAnother mobile podcast, recorded with my Dell Axim x50v PDA and Resco Audio Recorder. This morning I chat a bit about various LiveCDs on Linux, and muse about the possibility of a specialized LiveCD for podcasting.

Links from the show:

  • Knoppix is probably the best known Linux LiveCD. Daniel Barlow’s Linux Journal article talks about mastering your own version of Knoppix.
  • Damn Small Linux is a bit more petite, and therefore a bit cuter. It fits on one of those business card sized CD blanks like the one pictured on the right.
  • dynebolic is more idiosyncratic, but targets music and media applications.
  • geexbox turns your PC into a media player.
  • I’ve also had good experience with Ubuntu, which also has a LiveCD.

Brainwagon Radio: Robots, robots, and rigid body simulation

This week I was too busy over the weekend, so I recorded this podcast using my Dell Axim x50v PDA while driving to work. It was recorded using the Resco Audio Recorder which was recommended by Josh over at TinyScreenfuls, and I must admit: it kicks ass. It allows me to record in .mp3, .ogg or .spx format on my PDA. It’s a pity that it doesn’t support mp3 tagging, it would be nearly ideal for mobile podcasting. Let me know what you all think of the quality, I think it isn’t too bad given that I was just using the built-in mic.

Other links:

I still have gmail invites, so go ahead and send me an email and I’ll send you an invite.

Thanks to Jason for helping me get this mp3 file off my PDA.

Brainwagon Radio: Sans Wife, Robots, Junk and Books

Well, my wife is in San Antonio for her niece’s wedding, so I’m back to my normal nerd talk. I spent yesterday in Sunnyvale/San Jose looking for junk to help with my robotics project, and picked up a couple of books.