Ok, so I'll start out by saying that I'm not happy with the results of the Wisconsin elections. So, "52%"… you suck.

After checking the election map at http://news.yahoo.com/page/2010electionsdashboard this morning, I decided to try to find a source of of the raw election numbers by county.

Apparently this is super top secret data. But after a little playing with yahoo's map, I got it to spit out the URLs it's using as the data source. These are in JSON format, so don't expect to be able to open up the file and just read it. I might work on a small script to search the files.

US Senate: http://d.yimg.com/b/api/data/us/news/elections/2010/result/us_senate.json
US Governor: http://d.yimg.com/b/api/data/us/news/elections/2010/result/governor.json
US House: http://d.yimg.com/b/api/data/us/news/elections/2010/result/us_house.json

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[Update] How to get county data:
This took a bit more work. Each state has its own data file with the url in the format:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/elections/2010/results/11/02/[STATE_ABBR]_complete.json

Just replace [STATE_ABBR] with the abbreviation of the state you want data for.
For example, Wisconsin (WI) would be: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/elections/2010/results/11/02/wi_complete.json

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JSON is relatively trivial to convert into XML if you're more comfortable working with XML. Here's an example javascript that converts JSON to XML.

If you're a United Statesian, and legally able to vote… do it! Today.
We'll all laugh at you if you try to put this off until tomorrow.

Over 2 years ago I posted about my labeling of 10/10/10 as "Douglas Adams Day". At the time it, my post seemed to be the only page making such an announcement… today though, a lot of "Happy Douglas Adams Day" posts are showing up all over the place. Am I a trendsetter? Yes. Totally.
Ahead of the curve? You know it!

In celebration of Douglas Adams Day, if you haven't read "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", go check it out from your local library. If you have read it… don't forget your towel today.

Does anyone know what kind of flower this is?

Out of an entire area of wildflowers, only two of these came up this year… I'm curious as to what they are. Its purple color was a really nice contrast against the other flowers (before the weeds took over).

This morning I found a nifty bookmarklet at http://erkie.github.com/ that allows you to turn any website into an old-school game of Asteroids.
You control the little ship using the arrow keys, space bar to fire, and shoot at the various elements of the page – which disappear as you hit them.

I recorded a screencast using spudart.org as an example. It's a bit difficult to make out the ship. But if you change the video resolution to 720, and view it in full screen, it's a little better.

(If you click here, you can try it out on my blog. *gasp*)

This entire week I've had trouble remembering what day I was currently living.

Monday: was fine, I didn't work.

Tuesday: woke up and thought it was Monday. Mondays I work 11am-8pm, rather than my normal 8am-5pm. Luckily I realized what day it was at about 7:30 and was only a few minutes late to work.

Wednesday: thought it was Thursday. Panicked a bit when I checked my bank account and my paycheck hadn't been deposited yet (happens on Thursday).

Thursday: woke up and somehow thought it was Saturday.

Friday: I actually got this day right. WOOOH!

Oh man! If I waited until tomorrow, it would have been exactly 2 months since the last post on this blog. That's crazy!

What has been going on?
*Work
*Learning python
*Writing a python script that uses a genetic(ish) algorithm to turn 128 random circles into a target image one mutation at a time (slow, needs work, back-burner-ed for now)
*Writing an AIM chatbot at the request of spudart (right now it just repeats what you send it. add "sparxmind" to your buddy list if you'd like to have your messages parroted back to you)
*Lots of other stuff!

Now I just have to get back into the habit of posting stuff on a more regular basis. We'll see how that goes.