DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Bringing Down the House is a nonfiction story that reads like a modern-day adventure. Its appeal to programmers and engineers is undeniable: how often can a bunch of math geeks metamorphose into celebrities, playing high-stakes blackjack every weekend and walking away with millions? If the story weren’t true, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting, because nobody would believe it.

The book’s author, Ben Mezrich, published an adaptation and preview in Wired last year: Hacking Las Vegas: The Inside Story of the MIT Blackjack Team’s Conquest of the Casinos

Blackjack team? Now that’s a productive extracurricular. I spent most of my college years in the marching band; I got blisters, bloody knuckles, and back pain. I got to travel to rural Pennsylvania by bus. I don’t think anybody is basing real-life adventure stories about it. Oh, also, I didn’t make a million dollars.

Mezrich’s book is a great, quick read. If it doesn’t turn into a big Hollywood movie, I’ll be surprised; it has the requisite elements: scrappy underdogs, sinister casino staff, paybacks, greed, sex.

Some reviewers (e.g. at Amazon) complain about the “pulpy” writing style, both diction and characterization. I am sensitive to lousy writing, but nothing here bothered me. I’m sure Mezrich took license in his recreation of events. I don’t consider that “news.”

Some people might want to read this as a how-to manual on gambling. Although the MIT Blackjack team’s method seems to be clearly explained, I doubt the Vegas casinos are vulnerable to such attacks any longer. Mezrich explains some of their counter-measures, e.g. continuous reshuffling machines. The MIT team’s approach was genius, in that it targeted a specific vulnerability, but now that that vulnerability has been exposed, it’s unlikely to be exploitable again.

I recommend the book to anyone who reads escapist fiction — this is escapist nonfiction, and somehow more thrilling for it.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)

The city of Oakland, California has a “Sustainability Director.” How cool is that?

Mayor Jerry Brown hired Randy Hayes, the founder of the Rainforest Action Network to a part-time, paid position to draft a plan to reduce the city’s impact on the environment.

Hayes envisions an Oakland that recycles all of its trash by 2020, is fully powered by alternative energy by 2030 and has drastically reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Here’s the original press release describing Hayes’ appointment.

Months in the making (or, mostly, months in the waiting)… SmartyPants-PHP v.1.5.1 is now available.

The Victoria Legislature building, by night.

The stage was nearly 20 feet square, large by any standard. But we filled it. We brought four truckloads of gear.

My gig inventory included:

• 1 carpet (with cage leg position marked)
• 1 kick drum, in a road case
• 2 heavy duffle bags of pedals, hardware, sticks, charts, water bottles, etc.
• 1 drum cage with 4 toms and 11 cymbals mounted (we loaded it into a pickup truck, whole, and drove it to the gig that way)
• 2 snare drums
• 1 hi-hat stand with cymbals
• 1 throne
• 1 crate of mics and cables
• 1 drum machine
• 1 ancient headphone amp (with 1 blown channel)
• 1 pair headphones
• 1 mixing board
• 1 video camera, with tripod
• 1 bar stool, just in case someone happened by with a keg of beer and an empty glass for the drummer, I guess
• 2 mic stands
• 4 mic clips
• 1 camera, which which I would shoot exactly 2 photos, only 1 of which came out
• 1 music stand
• 1 imperfect memory, guaranteed to forget at least a few song endings

Setting up the drums was a breeze, although it took five guys to haul the cage off the pickup truck and walk it around trees, over benches and shrubbery, up to the stage. Placing the kick drum and pedals, the snare, hats, and throne took little time. This is the beauty of using a drum cage, and having a band big enough to carry it.

Positioning the mics and routing the cables took longer; the rest of the band was hanging out in the grass, and I thought I might still be tightening thumbscrews with one hand while counting off the first song.

The soundman’s mixing board and snake had only 16 channels, so we couldn’t justify using nine of them to mic the kit. Therefore we sent only the kick, snare, and hat mics directly to the main board. I still wanted to mic everything individually, to make sure every nuance of every mistake I might make would be clearly broadcast to the audience. The solution was for me to create my own stereo submix of the toms and overhead mics, using a second mixing board. I sent this mix to the main board, using up just two channels. This gave the soundman the ability to put some of the tom and overhead sound into the mains, even if he couldn’t adjust the volume of individual toms or cymbals.

When we were done with soundcheck, I marveled at the number of instruments and cables and devices we’d strung together: the work of six guys for most of three hours, a mind-boggling tangle of complexity that made the simple act of walking around the drum kit a stumbling hazard. “Acoustic drums are loud enough,” you might say. No, they’re not!