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nomen est omen

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Stomp is more interesting to me... because they're not blue.

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Don't delude yourself. It's Idi Amin level corruption

presidents use to try to avoid even risking appearing corrupt with their finances. The NY Times on Using AI to create frames from Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1976 version of "Tron" a film that never existed.



This stuff is getting scary.

Also it mentioned Jodorowsky's influence: "the Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff. He taught that we are born without a soul and that our task in life is to help our soul to grow and develop: Souls aren't born; they're earned."

Now, it's ALWAYS morally fraught to appoint yourself arbiter of which people have souls and who might not (a potential first step to giving your blessing to atrocities) But I do think whatever a soul is, it has to be embodied, even if it is potentially emergent rather than just being there.

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Live every moment as not to regret what you are about to do.

Is that an actual quote? I am really wondering what the context of that possibly was! I just finished reading the sci-fi novel Situation Normal by my friend Leonard Richardson... "The galaxy’s two multi-species superpowers stand on the brink of yet another pointless war, enmeshing ordinary lives in the messy conflict."

This was the first fiction in a while where during the day I was really looking forward to get back to it and see where it goes next. For me the biggest delight is in Leonard's reframing of things I take for granted, either in a character speaking the truth about something or by switching around the context and having the aliens do something parallel to one of our mundane things, letting me the fundamental oddness or arbitrariness of it.

God speaks to con artists because God is a con artist.

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Every war in history there's some joker tying it to freedom, and even when it's true, it's a lie.

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Providence aligns cause and effect without regard to our feelings.

Leonard sets up several religions in this book, most of which have adherents from across the 20-30 or so types of aliens (including humans)... my conceptual favorite was Hasithenk - the central icon is Merciful Providence shrugging at you, and use cuss phrases like “Oh f***ing coin-flipping Providence”. (Though weirdly, they're one of the more ritual/ceremony heavy groups. I guess that grounds it and makes it less of a "cool and jaded astronaut religion" ala Heinlein...)

Also Leonard is posting author's commentary at his site Crummy.com

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trebek: the sound of the front door in your childhood home

the smell of the inside of your father's hat

the part of the roof you could access via the trellis

each family member's distinctive footsteps in the hall

the smell of woodsmoke

contestant: what was lost

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Headline whiplash of the moment (via Kaiser Health News)

On Trump's last full day,

:-) :-) :-)

nation records 400,000 COVID deaths

:-O :-O :-O

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President Trump's Top 15 Lies. Trump lies about enough small things that it lets him know who will believe him with the big lies.

From Daniel Dale's list:

1. The most telling lie: It didn't rain on his inauguration
2. The most dangerous lie: The coronavirus was under control
3. The most alarming lie saga: Sharpiegate
4. The most ridiculous subject of a lie: The Boy Scouts
5. The ugliest smear lie: Rep. Ilhan Omar supports al Qaeda
6. The most boring serial lie: The trade deficit with China used to be $500 billion
7. The most entertaining lie shtick: The burly crying men who had never cried before
8. The most traditional big lie: Trump didn't know about the payment to Stormy Daniels
9. The biggest lie by omission: Trump ended family separation
10. The most shameless campaign lie: Biden will destroy protections for pre-existing conditions
11. The lie he fled: He got Veterans Choice
12. The Crazy Uncle lie award: Windmill noise causes cancer
13. The most hucksterish lie: That plan was coming in two weeks
14. My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year
15. The most depressing lie: Trump won the election

An idea will seem self-evident--once you've forgotten learning it!

Finally getting through his "Society of Mind", which also has this great thought on formal rules and attempts to nail down ideas like birds can fly

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trebek: the fact that this might not exist w out despair is a case in point

contestant: what is irony

trebek: late summer, nighttime, before the internet, giant trees ushering you home, bugs in the porch light

contestant: what was lost

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rally before the Boston Women's March
Today's random playlist shufflefruit:


"Papas Fritas" (Spanish for "french fries", also a pun for "Pop Has Freed Us") was a pop band from Tufts, their drummer Shivika was in a poetry class I took. This song was also used in a Dentyne Ice commercial.

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HOW TO COOK SOUP
First, you need some water. Fuse two hydrogen with one oxygen and repeat until you have enough. While the water is heating, raise some cattle. Pay a man with grim eyes to do the slaughtering, preferably while you are away. Roast the bones, then add to the water. Go away again. Come back once in awhile to skim. When the bones begin to float, lash together into booms and tow up the coast. Reduce. Keep reducing. When you think you have reduced enough, reduce some more. Raise some barley. When the broth coats the back of a spoon and light cannot escape it, you are nearly there. Pause to mop your brow as you harvest the barley. Search in vain for a cloud in the sky. Soak the barley overnight (you will need more water here), then add to the broth. When, out of the blue, you remember the first person you truly loved, the soup is ready. Serve.

The realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.

I can't figure out if it's effective or the other bird is just like "whatever dude, I don't want to get involved."

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Trying to fight a bad case of post-stomach-bug angst and ennui by taking down the Christmas Decorations and generally improving the Feng Shui of my sleeping and work/entertainment areas. I think the number one thing is putting my bed (a decent-ish IKEA daybed) back to twin-bed size mode; at double size it's too big for the space. Also hanging up some languishing art and getting stuff ready to move out to thrift donations.

Kind of enjoying the mindlessness of sports radio. It's kinda like an audio version of Mac+Cheese comfort food. this space left intentionally blank For tonight's Klik of the Month Klub I collaborated with Leonard Richardson to make an online version of his surrealist card game Crazy the Scorpion. The idea is taking turns building up a grid of headline bits and trivial concepts, reading and interpreting the horizontal and vertical results as exciting news headlines after every turn. You can read a longer description of the original game at his site crummy.com.
--via. Fun accent!

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Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

I AM...


Just a little test of concept prototype I made during planning... I think it's a fun alternative to the usual boring dropdown box.

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The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

This is one of those entries I always feel the need to apologize for... there's nothing geekier and sadder than a nerd listing out hardware he has or had. But still, I realize I'm on the verge of forgetting some of this, and my future self might be interested, especially now as I might switching from a desktop to a laptop as my "main machine", the one that has the "official" copy of C:\data\ ...

Desktop Computers

Atari 800XL, ~1984-1988

Around the time of the Great Crash, some dealers were liquidating Atari stuff to give to the Salvation Army so I got this system. You know, this was a great computer for a kid geek to start with - it played games about as well as a C=64, but its BASIC had a lot more zip to it, in terms of graphics and sounds. (Only the Apple II seemed to be a better hacker maker.) Plus I loved its version of Logo...

Commodore 64, ~1988-1991

But this is the computer I really wanted, mostly because more games seemed to be made for it (at least it had more piracy going on at school.) This was a terrific Christmas hand-me-down for my uncle when he switched to PCs.

"Monk", ~1991-1994

My first PC, senior year of high school. I begged my mom for it, justified by college, but really I saw Wing Commander in a magazine and NEEDED to play it. "Lworks", this odd thing by Lotus, was my main word processor on it. Its design was a cool kind of "pizza box" that fit right under the monitor.

"Monk 2", ~1994-1997

A 486 in a giant tower and with a giant monitor. Mostly I wanted it for games... and it was great for that, at least 'til the dorms got networked and freshmen started kicking my butt with their much faster Pentiums.

"Monk 3", ~1997-1999

An ok "PCs for Everyone"-built Machine. I think Dylan figured out his sexuality thanks to the availability of sites and porn via modem when he was subletting from me.

"Monk 4", ~1999-2002

Toshiba desktop, another "pizzabox" style - man, I forgot this machine was problematic, its USB was never quite up to snuff. Foisted it off on some cousins.

"Monk 5", ~2002-2006

Monk 5 and Monk 6

HP tower. I still like the stickers I put on this one.

"Monk 6", ~2006-2009

An HP microtower. Cute, not a bad machine

"Monk 7", ~2009-2010

Pretty much a direct replacement for Monk 6. Both are two small for their own good... Monk 7 every once in a while starts shutting itself off for no reason, and I fix it by dropping it a few inches.

2017 Update: I guess once I started with "Brute" as a Desktop replacement (see below) and then switched to Macs, I gave up having fixed Desktops

Laptops

Tandy 1100FD, ~1992-1995

Oh man, I loved this. No hard drive, gameboy-type (but somewhat larger) CGA 4-shades-of-spinach screen, but a good keyboard and a hard-wired text editor that was ready to go in seconds. I think this was $500-ish when I persuaded my mom to help me get it for college- I was an early adopter for taking notes in class with this thing, and it did its job well.

"Matic", ~1995-1997

Tufts Connect Logo

Amazing slim laptop made my Mitac, 486- greyscale screen - ran Windows 3.1 like a champ. I shelled out for it (in the $800-1200 range) because I needed to take down diagrams in class- ASCII art on the Tandy wasn't always cutting it. With its trakball I doodled the logo they adapted for the Tufts dorm wiring project. After college I gave it to my mom but stupidly slapped Windows 95 on it, making it well-nigh useless.

Gateway 2000 Handbook, ~1996-2000

I didn't use this much, but for $50 I bought this adorable DOS machine off of Paul - it's kind of the form factor I had wished the Tandy had had. Never thoguht of a use for it though- even though it had a harddrive, I didn't have a way of getting stuff off and on it except maybe a serial cable.

"Eggdevil", ~2004-2005

A great little iBook I got an ebay. It kind of taught me that Mac didn't really work for me, alas. I gave it to Peterman when he helped me get the house ready for sale. The name comes from its egg-color and a devil BSD sticker he put on it. I think I got it back from him at some point, but then it got soda spilled in it.

"Sliver",~2004-...

I had have this Averatec laptop for like 6 years at least - nice moderate size. The power adapter on it got too wonky, despite my Uncle Bill taking a soldering iron to it... pretty good for DVDs in bed.

"Frank",~2006-...

Ugh, this was meant to be a straight on replacement for Eggdevil but I cheaped it on Ebay, and got this stinky-ish Franenstein machine (the lid seems to be of a different material than the bottom). I keep getting Macs 'cause I want to get into Garageband music making software but never get around to it. I think this guy doesn't have enough memory to be actually useful, so it sits on a shelf.

Fujitsu Lifebook (x2), 2006-, 2009-

I can't say enough good things about this laptop! Touch screen, netbook-size before "netbook" was a concept, durable... been with me to Japan and Portugal. I actually have two of these now, I bought a spare when I realize I could get a refurbished backup for $250 on Ebay. (A Newegg receipt makes me think the original cost me $1324 in 2006)

OLPC laptop, 2007-...

More of a toy, at least the way I use it, a One Laptop Per Child laptop I bought for the heck (and charity of it)

"24", 2008-2009

Bought a kind of cheap but big Acer laptop as an experiment (I think this was just before laptop prices started getting dragged down.) "24" is named after the Jeff Gordon sticker I had JZ get for me at NASCAR. Currently on loan, not holding up all that well.

"Boilermaker", 2009-2010

A heavy duty Macbook Pro I bought off of JZ... served me well by running WinXP under VMware as a developer machine. Currently on long term loan to a cousin. Named after a redneck car detail I got at the Topsfield fair for it.

"Yoooouk!", 2008-2012(?)

Oh boy. This is one of those HP touch ones that I had, and kind of have, high hopes for, but it's never felt 100% reliable and robust- had a bit of virus issue, the power plug seems a bit wonky like it was for "Sliver"... named for a "Yoooouk!" bumper sticker it wears that I got at a Red Sox game.

"Brute", 2010-2013ish

My new purchase, the Toshiba P505, a 18.4 behemoth of a machine, meant to let my "main machine" be a laptop, and make living at Amber's make more sense - so it could mark the end of the "Monk" era

2017/2020 Updates:

"The Axehead", 2010-2013

My first at home switch to the Mac side, that weird 11" Macbook Air form factor... diminutive but great and portable, not quite enough HD/SSD space.

IBM Touch Thinkpad, 2011-2012ish

Got this for cheap at Micro Center, and for a while put it with a trackball as a dedicated Centipede MAME machine for my girlfriend

"My Macbook Air", 2013-2020

My work machine that I bought off them when I left the company. Still going pretty strong.

"The MonkBook Air", 2020-2021

Apple did a decent update to their venerable classic. This one saw me through the main year of COVID, easier to swap workspaces with my work Macbook Pros (see this entry for some reveling in stickers as I got my new MacBook Air...)

SmackBook Pro, 2021-

Time to get back to a big screen (not quite as grand as Brute was but still) and the new chip... a little calmer with the stickers.

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Handhelds

TI flat thing, 1995-1997

Man, I wish I could find some record of this! It was a cool, flat PDA I bought off someone at Tufts - rubberized grey and maroon, it had holes so it could be placed in a 3 ring binder. I first started jotting down quotes in this thing, but I couldn't connect it to anything. (UPDATE: It was the Texas Instruments PS-9500 TimeRunner )

Palm Pro,1997-1999

the decorated IIIc

Its hard to explain how cool this was. When I first heard about graffiti, and humans having to learn a new way to write, I was skeptical, but man, having a powerful notebook/calendar/todo in my pocket was just astounding.

Palm V,1999-2001

Like the Pro, but slim and trim and awesome. I think this is when I started using "Landware GoType" keyboards which along with "PocketC" let me program on the go at a time when laptops seemed too extravagant a luxury to bring on vacations or cart around all the time.

Rexx, 2001

Heh, the laptop PCMCIA card-sized wonder was a bit too limited for recording notes and quotes, otherwise mighta been an ok PDA.

Palm IIIc, 2001-2003

Like the Pro but color... I kind of liked the minimalism of b+w but the text was so much more readable.

Sony Clié SJ22, 2003-2006

A nice little machine running PalmOS but with a double resolution screen. Nice soft flip case it came with.

PocketPC phone, 2006-2007

Oh dear. What a piece of crap this was. The slide out keyboard was nice but the OS was junk, despite kind of almost delivering on the promise of "an app where I can both doodle and write text" - in other words, why I bought a trackball laptop in 1995. It didn't just "butt-dial", it "sitting on the shelf by itself" dialed.

Palm Z22, 2007

I had forgotten about how much I loved this last gasp of Palm PDAs - it was so comfortable to hold, and cheap and cheerful. It deserved a better fate than to be drowned while kayaking.

iPhone, 2007-2008

I didn't mean to be an early adopter of this, but I was, and haven't regretted it. Even when it didn't have things I took for granted on the Palm, like "add programs" and "copy and paste", from its home screen on down this felt like the Palm, plus music, plus a great browser.

iPhone 3G, 2008-2010

What can I say - I needed more than 8 Gb for the music I wanted with me.

iPhone ??? 2010-from here on in?

I'm saying this has now reach the commodity stage. Great phone, a replacement for the Power Shot camera I started toting in 2001 or so, smooth transfer from one homescreen to another... no longer worth keeping track of

I remember how annoyed and nervous I was at the old "PDAs are dead, here comes smartphones", before I realized how PDA-ish the smartphones would be. Heck, an iPod touch is a tremendous PDA, and that's just an iPhone minus the phone and camera...

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Is driving a car out of where it's stuck in the slush and slow Taoist? You have to follow the natural path of where the car wants to go...

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Everyone who had a talent for it lived happily ever after

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Rex is going to the vets to get snipped today. I feel a little bad but I guess it's just part of the deal cats and humans made on the species level.

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MA FOLKS- don't vote for Republican filibuster today... we don't need a tyranny of the minority party!

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Did you know that the Germans call duct tape "Panzertape"? Germans have cooler names for everything.

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Really thinking I should have paid more attention to Processing.js; having access to all javascript in a browser-based sketch is great.

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How are you all enjoying your new lives as biological robots? If the process went smoothly you should not have felt a thing.

So, the 2009 MIT Mystery Hunt is history. We still have to find out where our team "Left as an Exercise for the Reader" ranks.

It's a humbling time! I gotta remember, though, that the people I'm with are at the far side of the bellcurve for both general smarts, and probably love of challenging puzzles. So I should be happy to be able to contribute to some puzzles and then brute force my way through other things, like 3D minesweeper and certain types of clue-free crossword challenges. I'm curious about the team that won, "Beginner's Luck", if it was a new team, and what size... bigger teams definitely have many advantages.

And man, these puzzles! Brutal. "Here's a collection of pictures and words, figure out what to do with them" kind of things. They're kind of like super-devious cryptography exercises, each a totally new and obnoxious way of disguising a simple word, and there were few limits on what they wouldn't assume you could find a knowledgeable helper on.

There were also some events, I participated a mixer based on the game "Set", and a scavenger hunt based on "Scattegories", where you got points only if no one in your sections of groups (each section was based on if you said breakfast lunch or dinner.. ideally it was in your interest to try and guess which response would be the least popular, so of course it was a hall of mirrors exercise in prisoner's dilemma type thinking.)

Overall I liked it, but I'm glad these only happen like once a year...

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Video of the Moment

--Recommend by HarveyJames...

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The font of #s on the Raven's uniform is pretty awful... is that a drop shadow? http://tinyurl.com/9nu73w

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Also, wikipedia says that the name "Ravens" works because the poem is a tale of loss, ala the Colts? And doesn't mention the "Orioles"?

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Books are to my efforts to declutter what NEA programs are to budgeting Republicans in the 90s, the easy target; valuable, but vulnerable

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HAHAHAHA - Bush might be a victim of what he did to the job market and the economy in general! http://www.slate.com/id/2208936/

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Superiority of Dvorak over QWERTY a myth? http://tinyurl.com/86oj3c - but good if you don't like others using your keyboard, and vice versa

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kerri9494 Mall Cop was shot at Burlington Mall? Wow. Now I feel .000003% more famous, plus it explains the eerie "I've seen this" trailer. I'm thankful to Kate for defending Gimp, the open source image editor, when it was totally getting on my nerves. She points out that there is a consistency to its UI approach, a kind of dogged literal-mindedness. And I know I've been a bit programmed by the way other programs work. And it scares me that I have trouble switching mental gears to get along with it.

Still... no damn excuse for not having a basic "shape" tool for making rectangles and ellipses. Seriously. Look at all these buttons! They couldn't spare one? From , from "Rectangle Select" to "Dodge/Burn", not one for making a damn square.

Kate argues that I am using the wrong tool, should use Inkscape or something, but I thought I was just doing some basic screen mockup hacking, so didn't want to get into vector-y things...

Job interview today.

My neck issue seems to be going away. The trouble is that by the end I was trying multiple strategies and now I'm less certain about what's most useful to do.

Professional massage only seemed to help for a short while. I'm still less certain about my old stand-by of strict back sleeping. An anti-inflammatory Advil before bedtime seemed correlated with the improvement, along with finally getting around to using that grinding/kneading massage chairback cushion My Ever Lovin' Aunt Susan gave me a few Christmases ago. Possibly it was just a matter of time, though the discomfort level fluctuated before this.

My Doctor/Yoga Instructor gave his blessing to popping a bit of Flexeril if I thought it would help. I was thinking that the way it both lets muscles relax and fuzzes you out might help me sleep, but by the time I saw him to ask about it, other stuff was working, and it seemed like overkill.

The funny thing is my doctor doesn't think the scattershot approach is such a bad thing... he says that the goal is to just be feeling better. Still, I'd not to develop a ritual of 5 things to do every time I get this kind of pain, if only 2 of them really help.

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Project of the Moment
Ok, admittedly this is nothing innovative, but assembling my "bestof" pages, plus this one montage wall I'm working on for in front of my desk made me look into making a few more of these:



The photo is in the old, Taxware parking lot, but I got clever with layers, and was able to extract this version as well:



I do dig the shot, strength with a hint of whimsy. I'm not sure which version I like more.

(I may also have been reminded of these things by a similar project by local SmartRoutes reporter Jeff Larson. At Krazy Karry's (local burger place), he has some posters up advertising his Toons for Miracles fundraiser for Children's Hospital.)

It was a lot easier using a tablet PC for this one, drawing directly on the screen, but I've been messing quite a few up, and realizing that most photos don't convert well into this format, and even when they do, I really need to think carefully about penwidth and stuff like that. So I'd say my works take a tad more skill than just tracing, but not much. (Larson's stuff is making more sophisticated use of color boundaries.)

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Anecdote of the Moment

Launching a new children's book, Dr. Dan the Bandage Man, Richard Leo Simon decided to include a free gift of six Band-Aids with each copy. He cabled a friend at the manufacturer Johnson and Johnson: "Please ship half million Band-Aids immediately." Back came the reply: "Band-Aids on the way. What the hell happened to you?"

I don't know if it's Texas, the Dallas area, or just Addison, the town I'm in, but I don't like the tapwater. It's...murky tasting, I guess I'd say.

One of the guys I'm travelling with suggest: get a suit. Not that I'm dressed inappropriately, but he says clients always listen to him and he tends to win arguments when he's wearing a damn suit.

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Quotes of the Moment

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

--All quotes from Bertrand Russell. I love that guy!

Quote of the Moment

There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.

Go Pats! Superbowl-bound.

And today we pause to remember Martin Luth--aw, forget it. GO PATS!

But seriously. A Russian co-worker didn't know much about MLK jr. He said he actually thought less of him when we told him he was a fighter for the rights of black people, not some universal human rights guy. I tried to explain a bit about the particular issues of race relations in this country, but it was an uphill battle.

What's funny about MLK jr. is how you're "not allowed" to mention certain issues that make him seem less than perfect, like that he might've been an adulterer. Our country is so simple minded when it comes to our heroes; they can't be flawed humans.

Aw well...onto today's links...a pretty decent set, especially Joe's Brain and Worldbuilder.

• When I was a kid, my first computer was an Atari 800XL...pretty decent computer with lots of stuff to do in BASIC and Logo. One great magazine for it was Antic magazine, one great type-in game it had one month was Warrior 3000, a character-graphics based Archon-inspired duel. For some reason, the art used for it, shown here, really stuck in my memory...something about the arms, or the visor. The keepers of that big Antic archive were kind enough to go back and scan it in for me...
• I Am John's Brain, a tribute to those old Reader's Digest articles that talks about some cool issues of mind vs brain and consciousness.
• I missed the 50th birthday of the pixel?
• Some people are big fans of Michelle Wie, the 14yr old who golfs better than some professional guys.
• The 1994 journal of jwz, one of the most famous Netscape coders. He also has a rant about "Megapixels". I also tend to think in X by Y terms, but it sounds like most casual users are more comfortable with megapizels.
• Another cool Lego/GameLab game: WorldBuilder. Neat puzzle elements.
• Man, the danger of not posting things sooner: (Well, not that it was that interesting even when it was semi-relevant, which is probably why it wasn't posted then, ah well.) Around June, Wired reported that Columbia House Jumps in Game Biz. "Columbia House, the venerable if stodgy powerhouse of direct-market retailing, quietly entered the video game-selling business last week, another sign that the gaming industry is maturing." The weird thing is, my first video game system was a "Columbia Home Arcade", circa 1984...a rebranded Coleco Gemini, which in turn was a clone of the Atari 2600. It had a monthly mailing that had a poster on one side and games to order on the other. Just kind of funny that this is being treated as something new.
• Got any Star Wars questions? Ask the Jedi Council. Lots of behind-the-scenes info if you dig that kind of stuff.
• Over Three Hundred Proofs of God's Existence... like the Monkees didn't sing, "then I saw this page...now I'm a believer."
• Random comic: the Cartoon Hospital Opthamology Wing.

Sorry, but I'm inspired to do more backlog flushes as the prospect of cutting down my backlog page so I can actually start using it again looms nearer. (And today's flush has a lot of images, usually a good thing in my book...though lately all my images have been mostly black, white, and gray.)

• This globe is an image I modified for use for an online New Year's Day invitation. I just think it looks cool. That New Year's Party (1997->1998, I remember because of the animated gif I made of crossing the 7 to form the 8) was the first big social ocassions for me and Mo as a couple.
• Strong Bad checks his email. Some funny stuff. More recently, the Homestar Runner main menu has been loaded with a ton of classic video game references. Oldtimers might get a chuckle by putting the mouse over the e-mail button.
• 

  This place is not a place of honor.
  No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
  Nothing valued is here.
  This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
  Pay attention to it!
  Sending this message was important to us.
  We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
  

  I guess the text is ideally what we'd like to say, to the right is one pictograph to convery that. (Scroll down most of the way on the page to see the full-size version.) I think the goofy picture will work better than the "giant spiky avant guard sculpture" for scaring people off.
• A lot of people seem to be taken by the tales of the robot Boilerplate, the Victorian era Mechanical Man.
• Gamestudies.org has some interesting articles about video games, including this interview with Sims-creator Will Wright.
• The Christian Science Monitor thinks that claims of Grade Inflation may be a bit inflated themselves. I dunno, but I'm not sure if I should have gotten all A's in all my comp sci classes. I was good, but that good?

• Finally the cimbalom fell silent too, and we all stood in a circle around Jaroslov, who looked at me and said it was all because we'd stayed there, that he hadn't wanted to stay, he'd wanted to go out in the fields, especially now that I'd come, how beautiful it would have sound under the stars. "Don't talk so much," I told him, "What you need now is to be calm." I was thinking that although he probably would make it, as the second fiddle had predicted, it would be a completely different life, a life without passionate devotion, without the strain of playing in the band, a life under the aegis of death, a second half, but a second half played after the game is lost, and I suddenly had the feeling that one's destiny is often complete long before death, and that Jaroslav's destiny had come to its end.

  (One of these months I'm finally going to use the review I wrote of that for the Blender feature.) Interesting thought about destiny, however. Sometimes I have to shake the feeling that mine was sometime in high school or college. As pathetic as it sounds, doing interesting stuff and putting it on this website helps.
  
  
• According to the Brunching Shuttlecocks' Memento Morty,
  
  Good to know!
• Hmm, this Ruben Bolling cartoon ties in with my chatter about the Spider-Man movie yesterday (well sort of) but mostly I just like the image of GWB saying "Whatever you say, longhair!"
• I like the "What I've Learned" articles from the Esquire Feature Archive, though I haven't found any real gems yet.

Quote of the Moment

I found while driving in Wyoming that wearing a stetson and driving a beat-up pickup meant you could go as fast as you like, while the police picked up Californian winnebagos that went one mph over 55. After all, they wanted to bring money into the state, not merely circulate it.

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Image of the Moment
Ah...Handsome Man Lando Calrissian. In college, Rick and I loved the up-and-down look smilin' Lando gave Princess Leia as he says "Hello what have we here...", it became a catch phrase. And Billy Dee William's later career as Colt 45 pitchman just added to his greatness... I'm hoping now more people will get it when I say "Lando was right...it does work every time!" (Image via Toys R Gus) Image of the Moment

The parking lot I use for work (a violently icy ten minute walk to the office) had the most amazing shade of blue last evening. I'm not sure if this picture does it justice or not. The orange shade on the right is from the lone streetlight there, it made a nice contrast. And that was at five pm! The days are getting longer!

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Ramble of the Moment
I closed the KHftCEA (my four year old Palm quote journal) today. I'm doing pretty much everything I set out to in the KHftCEA in this journal, and then some. The thing is I have to allow this journal to be a bit more personal sometimes, not just entertainment for the masses. (Masses. Shyeah.)

That said, I called up my friend Habib's work today... I've been stopping my his house lately (it's right by the ice covered parking lot of doom) but he's never been in. I guess he's back in Morocco for a while because of a family tragedy, alas. It's interesting having a close friend of strong religious faith who isn't Christian. He's really amazed at my skepticism and confidence in ideas such as Darwinism.

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Link of the Moment
The Onion is back after it's long Winter vacation! If you don't know what this site is, you're either new to the 'Net, or just a touch lame. (That's ok, I'm a touch lame as well. Only in different ways.) Arguably the funniest site on the Web. Go read The Onion!