dennis yang dot com

google does maps now… and from what i can see right now, it does it very, very well.. it’s super fast, the maps scroll when you click-and drag.. and it has local data integrated with a wonderfully clean looking UI. masnick thinks that this is just like keyhole, with maps. now… if i could only flip to the keyhole view… so so cool..

google has successfully trained me to search for an address in google to get to maps.. so all they have to do now is fully integrate this maps link, and voila.

haha… google labs has this launching on 2/8/2005.. i’ve beat THEM by 6 minutes!!! w00t!

but yah, this is by far the nicest looking map site to date…

so i watched the game at kezar pub yesterday.. we got there at 11am (4 hours before kickoff).. we got ourselves a sweet table in the middle of the action, and gorged ourselves on buffalo wings and coors light in an icy eagles bucket. my cousin stephanie was the only patriots fan in the whole establishment, so while she quietly cheered her team to victory, the rest of the bar was full of rowdy hope…

it was a great game.. and i think the energy of the bar was captured in this video.. aj’s friend vince took the movie footage, and i assembled it with muvee, of course..

good times.. good times.. aj says that there will be a rematch next year.. same teams, and the eagles will emerge victorious..

buy my couch! ultrasuede. ultraswank.

whoa… bloglines bought by askjeeves? congrats to mark, if it’s true.. bloglines rocks.

[from zawodny]

ok… so the kleptones are back at it with more masterful mashup… this time, it’s From Detroit To J.A. — bootlegg’in motown and hiphop… sweet! only available as a torrent, thus far… but i guess if you come find me, i can make you a cd…

don’t like the standard look of dennisyang.com? well — you’re in luck.. i just finished installing alex king’s wordpress style switcher.. i had to make a slight change to accommodate for the fact that wordpress itself is installed in a different directory, but i won’t get into that technical mumbo-jumbo.. on to the fun!

along the side, you’ll see a new “styles” menu — from there, you can pick from a wide variety of styles (most of which were stolen from the wordpress style gallery)..

Right now.. i think the default style still needs a little work.. dots is probably my current favorite, although evil duck is a fun alternative…

wahoo… so i just ordered a brand new laptop for myself… i really, really wanted a PowerBook — but apparently it won’t play well with some of the applications i’m looking to use, so windows it is… i decided on an IBM T42 — which I’ve been using for the past few months through work… I’ve been very happy with it.. It’s not too small, not too big, plenty fast enough, and I like the sleek, black look of the thinkpads….

the new toy should be here next week.. wahoo!

ok.. back in the day, i did manage to put in quite a few hours playing soul calibur… but, i never quite got this good at it… absolutely amazing… i mean.. it’s choreographed and everything using just the actual gameplay. voldo was always a weird character to play, i guess that’s cuz he didn’t want to fight, he just wanted to get his groove on…

So, last night, masnick, grier and I went to a presentation, “The Magic of Markets, Market Efficiency and Informational Arbitrage” by Professor Charles Lee from the Johnson School of Business.. it was quite interesting, satisfying my hobbyist interest in economics that I’ve picked up lately..

In any case… also attendance were Andy Kessler (Cornell BSEE ’80) and another smart Cornell banking dude with a big beard. I think the room was full of mostly MBAs and people who work in the finance district since that was the most ties I’ve seen in San Francisco since my friend Pang’s wedding.

So professor lee started off the talk with the “Guess 2/3 the average” game.. The idea is simple — write down an integer between 1 and 100 that you think 2/3 of the average guess will be… So.. if you think about it.. the answer HAS to be less than 66 (although, apparently one person did guess 80… yup.. we’re ivy leaguers…) — if you say that the average guess would be 50.. then 2/3 of that would be 33.. but that’s what everyone would guess… which would make 2/3 of THAT to be 22… and so forth… So.. theoretically, the average should actually settle at zero (according to the Nash Equilibrium) — but, since people are irrational (obviously, since one of them guessed 80) — it won’t get there..

I guessed 19.. and I won.. wahoo!! I was feeling quite proud of myself, having bested all of the MBAs and bankers in the room.. but i suppose it was just lucky. I’m the monkey whose stock picks beat the street.

Anyway.. the time allotted was way too short for the talk, and the panel discussion afterwards with Profressor Lee and Andy Kessler and the bearded guy only skirted some of the issues… Needless to say, I continue to be intrigued by this economics stuff and have re-started my reading of The Worldly Philosophers..

interesting.. gamespot picked Halo 2 as the commercial of the year.. at first, I thought that it was for *game* commercial of the year, but in looking through their list of nominees, it looks like they’re branching out..

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