bullfroggy went a courtin'

2010.06.29
On this Thursday, on this particular walk to school, there was an old frog croaking in the stream behind the hedge as we went.

"Can you hear him, Danny?"

"Yes," I said.

"That is a bullfrog calling to his wife. He does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp."

"What is a dewlap?" I asked.

"It's the loose skin on his throat. He can blow it up just like a little balloon."

"What happens when his wife hears him?"

"She goes hopping over to him. She is very happy to have been invited. But I'll tell you something very funny about the old bullfrog. He often becomes so pleased with the sound of his own voice that his wife has to nudge him several times before he'll stop his burping and turn around to hug her."

That made me laugh.

"Don't laugh too loud," he said, twinkling at me with his eyes. "We men are not so very different from the bullfrog."

Roald Dahl, "Danny: The Champion of the World".
What a charming book! Funny how I mostly remember the darker parts of it from way back when- now it's a very quick read, highly recommended.
Language is convincing. Seeing is believing. Touching is reality.
Alan Kay

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks!
Animal Crossing: Wild World

Err, about "Jorts"- are these the same as "denim shorts" from like the early 90s? Or is there an unfortunate bit of 'Daisy Dukes' influence?
It is always dangerous to make assumptions about people's basic philosophies, and those assumptions tend to (quite conveniently) track with the way you, yourself see the world, so maybe I should limit the scope to myself purely for safety. I tend to think of technology as a force. It's not so much a physical object as it is a manifested capability. Having serviced technology, and having loved it for years beyond that, and now utterly dependent on it for both my livelihood and leisure, my relationship with it has an (ironically) pre-industrial quality. When I actually think about it, of all the ways it intersects with my being, I wouldn't know what else to call it but worship. I'm not trying to be a poet. I believe that statement to be accurate.

There's a pragmatism there. If you're going to have a god, you want to be able to call on Him; it stands to reason that you might want to make a call on Him.

http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/what-apple-needs-to-do-now/ on Apple's skeuomorphic sins, giving me a name for that "make it look 'real world'" aesthetic I dislike too.
My favorite least favorite example of terrible skeuomorphic design: drop shadows. They just don't need to exist. (2019 UPDATE: hearing about 'dark mode' on MacOS - something I will never love because light text on dark generally is less pleasant for folks with astigmatism - Gruber et al point out that you lose the ability to see the layering of windows a bit, because they rely on darkening/shadows. So maybe there is at least one place where they are useful.)
HERMAN Miller does chairs. HENRY Miller did books, and Anaïs Nin.

Copley Square via iPhone 4...

In the last 2 hours, 15 minutes I've received 4 calls from recruiters. Does my resume on my site have mad google mojo, or what?