Erick Rudiak. Songwriter. Singer. Human.

When I was first getting started in network security (back in the late '90s), I attended a SANS conference where Marcus Ranum spoke about firewalls. Of all the things he talked about that day, the one that made the most lasting impression wasn't about firewalls themselves but about finding interesting events in your logs. He called it "artificial ignorance": since you don't know in advance what an interesting event might look like, by eliminating uninteresting log items (known false positives, informational entries about benign events, etc.), you inherently highlight the interesting ones as a result. This eventually informed the basic design I used in writing a security event management solution for our network perimeter devices (it was cool for 2000, albeit thoroughly needing retirement by 2004).

Fast forward to this spring, when I began looking to replace my '99 built-from-jets sedan with something a bit newer. I could quickly tell from checking the dealer ads on craigslist and cross-referencing them against carfax that there were going to be few, if any, good deals available: anything that was being sold close to Kelly Blue Book value -- and especially below -- was previously in a collision or otherwise had a troubled, potentially haunted history. That's where an ounce of artificial ignorance (and a kilo of Yahoo Pipes) came in handy.

I wound up creating a pipe that took craigslist search results as input and eliminated all ads matching regular expressions that were likely to be dealer ads. Were it a command-line regex, it would have looked something like this:

visit our website|internet sales|stock (\#|number)

I eventually added a couple of other search terms that matched the dealer names that were most consistently posting the models I was interested in, tested and re-tested, and eventually wound up with a pipe I was happy with. Several days later, I had my new-to-me sedan. Now my biggest problem, besides the car having a manual transmission and my commute being in Chicago, is that I am no longer driving any car mentioned in I Will Rule Your World. I'll have to update the live version for the next show (7/30 with Steve Poltz).

I'm sure every college had one: the guy who would ask out every single possible girl he encountered (including random people at streetlights, in line for the bathroom at the Cubs game, or at the local Planned Parenthood), citing the Law of Large Numbers: "if only 1% of the girls I ever ask out says yes, then I only have to ask out 100 girls to get a date." I never conducted any sort of study to validate the claim (I suspect the fundamental assumption ignores key decision-enabling factors to the granting or rejecting of a date request, such as lips and/or creepiness), but whereas I'm confident that my inclusion in NPR's All Songs Considered online open mic was no fluke, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to be too boastful about WBEZ's selection of one of my recent photos (taken from the Navy Pier ferris wheel) as their Chicago pic of the day. Just goes to show that, if you take enough photos, one of them will randomly turn out to be good. Thanks, WBEZ!

Erick.

P.S. This really isn't a statistics blog, I swear.

This nostaligc Wired Magazine article points out that

According to a list on Floodgap.com, over 250 active gopher servers are currently online, serving documents ranging from lawyer jokes to the text of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill. Almost half these servers are affiliated with American colleges and universities, but servers are also located on every continent but Africa and Antarctica.

Yes, that's right. Every continent except two, and one of those is only an honorary continent anyway. Thank you, Interweb!

Never one to be content with a fast-loading, easily-accessible website, I've begun tinkering with something that I always thought would be interesting: an atlas for my songwriting. I can't remember if Ralph Covert ever actually taught a songwriting lesson specifically in use of places, but both in his own songwriting ("Someday I'll see you -- maybe Paris, maybe London, sitting in a cafe, smoking in the sun, you'll stand and smile") and in that of the examples he hand-picked for us ("And so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston"), the power of geography -- even if you'd never set foot in the place -- shone through to our impressionable young minds. Some of my songs, like Ardoyne mention a place but don't necessarily transpire there (note: there's been some heated debate about that specific song); most, though, are quite real ("the runways at Midway" - been there, done that). Yahoo! Maps may have the dopest routes, and you may prefer Mapquest - that's a good one, too. For my money, though, the atlas had to be Google Maps. It's the best.

The atlas, much as the rest of the website, is about 80% baked right now, but don't let that stop you from tinkering. Check it out, and enjoy.

http://erick.rudiak.com/songmap.php

Cheers,

Erick.

P.S. Leaving no detail unattended.... those of you who look carefully will notice that the masthead for the atlas page is a photo of the famous -- to me, at least, since there were periods of my childhood where I saw it daily -- statue in Odessa of two men, in the Greek classical style, holding up the heavens. As a kid, I think I just liked the stars on the sphere. Having gone back to see it, I'm startled much more by the fact that such a memorable piece is merely part of an apartment building. A much clearer, more professional version of the same scene can be found here.

Hi, folks. The first weblog entry isn't going to be spectacularly interesting, unless you find my reemergence online after the rudeyak.com fiasco interesting. I promise, there will be an obscenity-laden post about that sometime this winter, once I get someone pretending to be a lawyer to make me feel better about posting the whole, expletive-ridden cautionary tale online. For the time being, welcome back, and check this space (particularly if you have one of them new-fangled RSS readers) often for updates, including news of new shows, new songs, Chicagoland open mic news and reviews, and items of general interest to rile up the Righteous Indignation of The Masses on occasion.

Peace,

Erick.