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I'm visiting Don & Naomi's house on Long Island today and part of tomorrow. I just had my first falafel today for lunch; not bad! Right now we're chilling out to the ELP DVD-A of Brain Salad Surgery and exchanging media.

Don, Brian, Paul, and I are going to Radio City Music Hall tonight to check out Dream Theater! This is getting to be a regular thing... ;) Should be a great show; since they're filming it for an official live album release, it should be neat to see what unique things they might do at this show.

A review may show up in this space later...

Last night after the show (Dream Theater @ Radio City Music Hall, NYC) I was thinking I had witnessed the best DT show ever. It was a powerful performance, augmented by a full orchestra for about 2/3 of the material. They chose some rare tracks to play. Details and an excellent review of the evening by "hefdaddy42" can be found here.

I hadn't read about setlists or possible surprises before the show, so I was completely stunned when after an hour of performance and a 15-minute intermission, the curtain opened to reveal an orchestra assembled in what was previously empty space. That took some serious work to complete in that time and I was blown away. The person who pre-announced the band said something about "you won't believe the stage setup" and I was underwhelmed by the setup in the first set. Little did I know....

Some of the song choices were rare. After opening with "The Root Of All Evil" and "I Walk Beside You" from Octavarium, the band started a chronological journey, playing a song from each of their albums. I wasn't familiar with the selections from the Majesty demos or When Dream And Day Unite, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy them. The selections of "Under A Glass Moon" and "Innocence Faded" were fine with me. I don't recall ever having seen them perform "IF" live, since I missed the tours between Images And Words and Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence. The non-album track "Raise The Knife" was cool; I don't think I'd heard it before. "The Spirit Carries On" was a quick step on the Metropolis 2000: Scenes From A Memory "stone"; the band throughly captured that album live on DVD previously.

The performance of the 6DOIT suite, the first with the orchestra on stage, was amazing. 6DOIT is a DT album I've never really given a full chance to win me over; that might have made the performance a little more poignant for me. Next up was "Vacant", another short number that gave most of the band a breather. After that, they played "Sacrificed Sons" and the long "Octavarium", which was very fun to watch. Jordan Rudess was killer on this song, playing lap steel guitar, a touch-sensitive instrument I'm not familiar with, and a big analog synthesizer that, until he used it, seemed to me to be a prop. I guess I should know that Jordan's too economical about his onstage equipment to have excessive props. The band's encore was a full rendition of "Metropolis Part 1".

I had fun watching DT bassist John Myung. He smiled during the show more than I remember seeing in the past, and he had a number of solo fills that he pulled off brilliantly. He was definitely under-represented in the live video monitors; I hope he's not forgotten when they direct the DVD release of this show. I enjoyed the performances by all the DT band members, but seemed to watch JM, JR, and John Petrucci the most.

Don had told me that the new DVD/CD release of the "official" DT bootleg of their performance of Dark Side Of The Moon was going to be on sale at the show. When we couldn't get that at the merch stand before the show, we each settled for the CD. As we were leaving, I saw the DVD at the stand we were passing, so Don traded the unopened CD back and we each got a DVD.

Obscure setlist, orchestra, Radio City Music Hall, great playing, future DVD release... how could this concert be any better for the longtime DT fan? I was glad to see it live. Thanks to Don for getting the tickets and hosting me for my yearly concert trip!

Don's recap of the show is here.

Go wish Don a happy birthday!

We recently brought in a number of HP Proliant DL385s with dual-core Opterons and 16GB of RAM. I've borrowed one to do some testing for about week or so and I'm having fun.

I installed Fedora Core 5 for x86-64 and played around with that a little bit, tweaking and running my upcoming RSA-704 Python script to generate some load, creating a few hundred million randomly-generated possible factors of the challenge number. The default FC5 environment is laid out quite nicely, and might make a nice day-to-day machine if/when I can dedicate one to GNU/Linux. I plan to check out Ubuntu at some point as well, since I've heard good things about it.

I installed Windows Server 2003 x64 edition as well, and loaded up IronPython, .NET 2.0 (x64 native), and the ActiveState Python 2.4.2 distribution for Win-x64. ActiveState's Python ran my RSA-704 script faster than IronPython. On this config I've also loaded up the newly-announced (and free) Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64, which is pretty slim compared to VMware's ESX Server, but slick. However, VMware's upcoming free host-based product looks like it'll be better. It'll have support for x64 guests and will support dual-processor VM's. VS2005R2 doesn't.

These times between patching cycles are when I really enjoy my job. I like trying out new stuff.

Since I found out that RSA-640 was solved, I've been thinking about altering my script for RSA-704. I made a number of changes:

• Focusing on generating binary numbers with exactly half the digits of RSA-704. Both RSA-640 and RSA-576's factors had that property.
• Used join() to concatenate the binary number string elements instead of +='s.
• Used Python's native base-10 conversion instead of baseconvert.
• Decided to calculate the primes below 2000 and check these against the generated number, since that might save compute cycles versus trying every number against RSA-704. It seems like it makes things go faster.
• Improved the output.

Here it is: download text version

#!/usr/bin/env python

# rsa-704-rand.py:
# RSA-704 Factoring Challenge "Lottery Solution" by Alex Harden
# Version 1.0: 05-Apr-2006

# Copyright (C) 2003,2006  Alex Harden (http://alexharden.org/blog/)

# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.

# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.

# Find the GPL online at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

# Info about the RSA Challenge Numbers:
# http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring/numbers.html

# Interesting fact about the solutions to the RSA-576 and RSA-640
# challenges: both factors were 50% of the number of digits of the
# challenge number's total digits. (Both binary and decimal.)

# RSA-576 numbers: for reference and testing:
# x=18819881292060796383869723946165043980716356337941738270076335642298885971\
# 5234665485319060606504743045317388011303396716199692321205734031879550656996\
# 221305168759307650257059L
# y=39807508642406493739712550055038649119906436234252670840638518957594638895\
# 7261768583317L
# z=47277214610743530253622307197304822463291469530209711645985217113052071125\
# 6363590397527L

# RSA-640 numbers:
# x=31074182404900437213507500358885679300373460228427275457201619488232064405\
# 1808150455634682967172328678243791627283803341547107310850191954852900733772\
# 4822783525742386454014691736602477652346609L
# y=16347336458092538484431338838650908598417836700330923121811108523893331001\
# 04508151212118167511579L
# z=19008712816648221131268515739354139754718967899685154936666385390880271038\
# 02104498957191261465571L

# For RSA-640 (193 digits), I concentrated on generating random odd numbers
# that had 96-98 digits (est. 319-321 binary digits).  The solution numbers 
# each had 97 digits and were each 320 binary digits (the middle of the
# estimated range).

# For RSA-704 (212 decimal digits), I'm concentrating on generating 
# random odd numbers that have 352 binary digits. (106 decimal digits)

# Let's try to make likely prime numbers using a neat method:

# Reference 1: http://www.maths.abdn.ac.uk/~igc/tch/mx3015/notes/node157.html
# - create random bitstring of 352 binary digits (make first and last
#   values "1")
# - convert it to decimal long int
# - if it's not divisible by any of the primes < 2000, see if it's a factor
#   of RSA-704  (this step is optional - not sure how expensive the "z=x%n"
#   actually is)

# Reference 2: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/162479
########################################

from random import seed, random

outfile='./rsa-704.txt'  #if a factor is found, write it here
i=0
digits=352
N=2000
primes=[p for p in range(2,N) if 0 not in [p%d for d in range(2,p)]]
z=1
seed()
x=74037563479561712828046796097429573142593188889231289084936232638972765034028266276891996419625117843995894330502127585370118968098286733173273108930900552505116877063299072396380786710086096962537934650563796359L
while z <> 0 :
    i+=1
    slist=['1']
    pos=1
    while pos < digits-1 :
        if round(random(),0) :
            slist+='1'
        else :
            slist+='0'
        pos+=1
    slist+='1'
    h="".join(slist)
    n=long(h,2)
    checkme=1
    for p in primes :
        if n%p == 0 :
            checkme=0
            break
    if checkme :
        z=x%n
        if i%500 == 0 :
            print 'i=',i
            print 'n=',n
            print 'z=',z
            print '----------------'
        if z == 0:
            print 'found it'
            print 'factor1=',n
            print 'factor2=',x/n
            print 'challenge=',x
            file=open(outfile,'a+')
            file.write(str(n))
            file.write('\n')
            file.close()

I'm officially hooked on the new OSI album Free that'll be released in a few weeks. I like it so much that I ordered the European special edition from Burning Shed in the UK. A full review will follow in a few days.

Me in my linkblog (April 6th)

Due to a poor 2005 season and having no west-coast away games, the Bills are the only team in the league to play all their games at 1PM Eastern time this year. Will they do well enough to earn a berth to a late-season Sunday Night matchup? Time will tell.

Peter King: Sorting out the schedule

4. I think it has to be pretty deflating to be a Bills fan right now. Sixteen games, and all of them 1 p.m. Sunday starts. Not exactly a prime-time attraction the way the Bills of old were. How about this: The Bills do not play a game outside the Eastern or Central time zones. Weird. That's going to be one invisible team.

Like I mentioned, the Bills have the hope of not being "invisible" if they can score one of the new flexibly-scheduled Sunday Night matchups near the end of the season. Go Bills!

Hersheypark (no link because the site is obnoxious) continues its journey towards unfriendliness by charging admission during Springtime In The Park this year. It used to be a free-admission, ticketed-rides event. It was one of two or three times in the year (Halloween and Christmas being the others) that we would consider visiting the park (enduring the parking tax) and letting Ryan ride some rides. If we were going to be in town this weekend, they would have lost three customers.

My first impressions of Google Calendar are very positive. I like the fact that they've already implemented data export (Atom feed or iCal format) instead of delivering it later or choosing lock-in. I've put a few events in there and have liked the feature set. One immediate specific use I see is as a podcast-scheduling service. As long as all parties have a GCal account, they can coordinate times and resources, and possibly even use GTalk to conference. Check it out.

We're spending the weekend with my parents in Sterling, VA, leaving sometime tomorrow afternoon. It's so nice that they're just a two-hour drive away. We've been getting to spend a lot more time with them the last few years.

We came down amidst thunderstorms on Friday afternoon, but things were clear and warm as we made a stop by Crate & Barrel so that Melissa could get some wooden candle holders for our mantle. Mom and Dad got home a little early from work that day, so we hung out for a while and then had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Even though it was Good Friday, Melissa had made my mom a late birthday cake and we had some of that. After Ryan was down for the evening, we watched Prime, which was enjoyable. Definitely worth a rental if you're in the mood for a romantic dramedy that plays a little with age and religious differences.

We got up early Saturday morning so that we could head down to Crockett Park, near Warrenton, to meet up with the Szwejbkas for the first time since they'd moved from the Hershey area. I'd visited them in January; it was certainly nice to get both families together. Ryan and Lily (seven months' difference) acted like they hadn't been apart for almost two years; they played great with each other the whole time we were at the park. Owen (2 years, 8 months) had fun as well and played with the bigger kids a bit more as the day went on. We had a picnic lunch, went paddleboating on Georgetown Lake, and threw football and Frisbee until rain moved in a little after 3PM. We'd only planned to be together until about 4, when we were each due to head back to our respective parents' places (in opposite directions). We exchanged Easter gifts and then hit the road. Dad made an excellent chicken stir-fry for dinner. We watched Harry Potter 4 after Ryan hit the hay.

This morning Ryan found his Easter basket before Melissa and I had even rose. We all went to mass together at Mom's new church, Our Lady Of Hope. It's a new, very large church and it was difficult to get in and park, but the mass was respectful and musical. After lunch we went over to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Herndon; while it's certainly not fully in bloom, there was enough color around to please the eye. Melissa bought Ryan an ornamental bumblebee-on-a-pole for the garden she's planning to plant with him this season.

Just figured I'd get this all down before we eat our ham dinner. I found out from Mom that I have more extended-family readers than I thought; thank you all for giving her such a nice surprise birthday party last weekend! Happy Easter to all of you, and anyone else stopping by to read this.

Once again I'm participating in two Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball leagues this spring and summer. Unfortunately, the league I won last year, Pixel's All Star League, didn't re-form for this season. However, the Brutal Deluxe Baseball League is back, and Citrus created an intriguing experimental league. His "Money Ballz Experimental" league rewards some of the standard accumulated stats like home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, and saves, but devotes half of the stat categories to composite metrics like fielding, on-base & slugging percentage, WHIP ([walks + hits]/innings pitched), and some strikeout ratios. Good stuff.

Cyg's Bunters BDBL aren't on pace to defend our second-place finish of last year just yet; we're currently in last place. We've had some tough matchups so far and several batters are underperforming. Pitching is good but I've gotten sloppy and missed a few starts. We also don't have a lot of relief pitchers right now. We just recruited NL Player of the Week Craig Wilson from the waiver wire and hope for a good matchup this week against the Hanover Lost Knights.

Cyg's Bunters BDBL (as of 4/18):

• J. López (Bal - C)
• D. Lee (ChC - 1B)
• J. Kent (LAD - 1B,2B)
• S. Rolen (StL - 3B)
• O. Cabrera (LAA - SS)
• S. Podsednik (CWS - OF)
• J. Lane (Hou - OF)
• J. Dye (CWS - OF)
• C. Wilson (Pit - 1B,OF)
• C. Crawford (TB - OF)
• C. Utley (Phi - 1B,2B)
• J. Lugo (TB - SS)
• C. Capuano (Mil - SP)
• S. Kazmir (TB - SP)
• J. Valverde (Ari - RP)
• S. Shields (LAA - RP)
• D. Willis (Fla - SP)
• B. Zito (Oak - SP)
• C. Zambrano (ChC - SP)
• J. Patterson (Was - SP)
• T. Wakefield (Bos - SP)
• M. Prior (ChC - SP) (disabled)

Cyg's Bunters X are a new team looking for some respect; we've earned a second-place ranking through two weeks of play. We've got a few pitchers on the mend but have some decent talent on the mound. I've been very happy with our offense; they've carried us to back-to-back 8-4 matchup victories in our first two weeks.

Cyg's Bunters X (as of 4/18):

• R. Hernández (Bal - C)
• A. Pujols (StL - 1B)
• A. Soriano (Was - 2B,OF)
• R. Freel (Cin - 2B,3B,OF)
• R. Furcal (LAD - SS)
• B. Hawpe (Col - OF)
• C. Lee (Mil - OF)
• B. Abreu (Phi - OF)
• T. Hafner (Cle - Util)
• Mi. Cabrera (Fla - 3B,OF)
• G. Sizemore (Cle - OF)
• R. Sexson (Sea - 1B)
• C. Crisp (Bos - OF)
• F. García (CWS - SP)
• J. Contreras (CWS - SP)
• J. Westbrook (Cle - SP)
• J. Bonderman (Det - SP)
• A. Burnett (Tor - SP)
• E. Guardado (Sea - RP)
• B. Ryan (Tor - RP)
• B. Howry (ChC - RP)
• C. Cordero (Was - RP)
• T. Hoffman (SD - RP)
• C. Capuano (Mil - SP)
• K. Millwood (Tex - SP)
• C. Sabathia (Cle - SP) (disabled)
• K. Wood (ChC - SP,RP) (disabled)

Normally, I'm not that much of a baseball guy, but this does help to fill the void of the NFL offseason quite well!

Bloglines is the only online aggregator I've ever used (after having used Amphetadesk and Sharpreader), but its lack of full Atom 1.0 support is getting a bit annoying. I signed up for an account on Newsgator Online and I'm pleased with its Atom rendering, but it has a few interface quirks that might take some getting used to.

I like Bloglines' two-frame approach, especially now that they added a support for quick-closing (and reopening) the left pane. Newsgator Online's layout is good, but since they don't use frames, the scrolling of the subscriptions and the content isn't independent. I also would like it if Newsgator Online's blogrolling feature allowed you to select which folders/feeds you wanted to publicize. I have that control with Bloglines via their per-feed public/private setting, combined with the MT-Outliner plugin's support for focusing on specific Bloglines folders.

However, besides getting on board with the Atom 1.0 feed spec, Bloglines could take a few cues from Newsgator Online. For example, per-item rankings shared with other subscribers could add a new dimension to the service. Newsgator also has better, more dynamic support for favicons than Bloglines.

Both services have room for improvement, so I'm not moving just yet. Newsgator would have to support the all the Bloglines features I use and make a few interface changes before I would be comfortable moving.

I won't post the text of the scripts here, but I've improved the RSA-704 "Lottery" script with Phil's suggestion. I also created a variant that uses a Rabin-Miller-inspired module to try to more intelligently create the large possibly-prime numbers being used as trial factors. Think of it as "aim and shoot" as opposed to the massive amount of wild, flailing trial factors generated by the Lottery script.

The new scripts:

• RSA-704 Lottery v1.1
• RSA-704 R-M v1.0

I'm now contributing my clickstream to the GestureBank. Attention Economy, here we come!

I'm going to be riding in the Tour de Cure that's in our area on June 10 to help raise money for the American Diabetes Association. This will also give me a great athletic goal for the early summer; I plan to ride the long route: 62 miles.

Please visit my donations page if you'd like to donate some cash to the cause by sponsoring my ride. If your employer will match your charitable donations, please consider using that program. Thanks!

If you're also planning to ride, let me know and we can get together! My dad is coming up for the ride, and my next-door neighbor, Tom, is also riding. More details about the ride are here.

Update (4/27): Chuck's riding, too.

I was a bit disappointed when I found I wouldn't be able to see the Sabres/Flyers series on TV, except for possibly Game 5 on NBC. They took Game 1 in the second overtime period, but they are up 5-0 after one period tonight. The NHL is streaming the radio feeds from their site, so at least I have a way to follow live.

Philly will probably take one of their home games, but I think the Sabres will take it within five games. It's a good year to be a Sabres fan!

Well, I finally psyched myself up and got out on the bike for the first time this season. I was going to go yesterday morning, but a confluence of events (including the fact that I hadn't prepared the bike) would have delayed me longer than I like. When I go out on the weekends, I like to get out early.

My bike's saddle had developed an edge rip over last season. I still had Melissa's old saddle in storage, so I took that out and replaced it. It was the exact same model, since we have identical bike models (although mine is an XL frame and hers is an XS). Once that was on I hit the road.

I was out at about 7:15; it was in the low 40's and I had adequate clothing for everything but my fingers. About 10 minutes and numb fingers later, I gave myself another 10 minutes to warm up my fingers or I was heading back. Luckily my blood started pumping and my digits (and everything else) warmed up just fine.

I did my normal ride to the square in Hummelstown, which usually took me an hour last season. I shaved that down to about 45 minutes right before Bike Virginia 2005. My dad plotted the ride and it's a great, compact workout. For other, longer rides, I added a ride my neighbor Tom shared with me onto it to make it about a 30-mile ride that takes you past some great farmland. I should find a way to plot both rides into an online mapping service to share.

Well, anyways, this time the ride took me about 1:15-1:20. My computer is not working properly yet so I don't have the exact figures. Being my first ride of the season, I was pleased. I wanted to stop a little more frequently than normal, but I never walked the bike & I didn't ever feel like I was overloading myself. My legs were fine, but my cardiovascular system can use some tuning up so I'm finally going to get on the treadmill like I've been meaning to. I'll load up on some podcasts to make that kind of mind-numbing exercise tolerable.

My dad has shared some great biking wisdom with me, but here are the two things I always come back to (with my own corollaries):

• Keep your pedaling cadence at about 60 revolutions per minute. (Shift up, down, coast, or stop as necessary.)
• Never stop at the top of a hill; keep going! (Or you'll miss out on the full thrill of the rush you'll get on the way down.)

And, assuming you're ending up where you started: there are no dishonest miles.