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via James Gleick... "Eric Swalwell had some good questions for Hunter Biden. No wonder Republicans insisted on conducting this interview behind closed doors." Hey he's just askin' questions!

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WALWELL: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?

BIDEN: No, he has never operated a hotel.

SWALWELL: So he's never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?

BIDEN: No, he has not.

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it's messed up that we live in a world where the definition of "freedom of press" is widely defined as "freedom from the government", "press not controlled by the government" and gives zero consideration to press controlled by the capital. even though the capital has greater control over the press than the state in many places. it gets a free pass because it's not a big scary government so it's ok if they control information. get me out of here

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I sometimes wonder if fear isn't just God's way of saying, 'Pay attention, this could be fun.'

(I guess usual content warnings for people who don't like reading about obsessing on calories too much)

I sort of wish I had been making a better log of simplistic food preparations I've leaned on in my new "work from home" era... ("recipes" is generally way too generous a term.)

But like all of these are beyond easy and have very good flavor and satiation to calorie ration

1. Banana and Nutella in a Joseph's Flax Wrap (or more recently, an unsliced small Pita) My go-to breakfast.

2. Oatmeal with a splurtch of canned whipped cream (or as one ex cutely misheard it, whisper-cream). Another breakfast standby, also good as a snack.

3. Prewashed Greens w/ Salsa and maybe crumbled Tortilla for a quick and dirty "taco salad" (I don't do this one as much I should, I let the greens go bad too often)

4. Microwave Mac and Cheese covered in Salsa (almost equal proportions... the flavor to calorie ratio of salsa is unbelievable.)

5. My latest find: Microwave-in-Bag Green Beans, with a ramekin of horseradish mustard

6. Cup Noodles ramen, with a nice heap of Sriracha

7. And a chicken sausage, also in that wrap or pita, with mustard and/or sometimes crumbled chips...

I've had to mess around with frozen treats. Like really good chocolate coated things just won't last long, and pints of anything are similarly too hard to resist and regulate. Lately I realized old fashioned fudgesicle-brand pops, like the no-sugar-added type, do a pretty good job of hitting that chocolate and texture note, but not SO well that I'm tempted to rip through a box over a day or two. Also, Outshine Creamy Coconut hits that creamy texture most other fruit bars don't, similar for Luigi's Lemon Italian Ice. (Their cherry is pretty good too.)

I can't believe I was on the verge of Marie Kondo-ing the coffee maker, because a pot of coffee, chilled and consumed over 2 days, has been my single strongest quarantine ritual. Oh, and Atomic Fireball candies - 20-30 calories of mouth entertainment and distraction.

One thing WFH has reinforced is once things are at home, I'm not going to have a lot of willpower. I eat and drink in part as a angsty mental release throughout the day, and so I have to be careful about what is at hand. The good news is, if my brain has labeled something as "Melissa's" I'm generally good at respecting that boundary.

I've regained about 10 of the 15 pounds I lost at the start of quarantine, and I'm still intrigued by my body's reaction to the perception of food scarcity, or maybe the "danger" of food-gathering, is to eat less.

Anyway, let me know if you have any low-preparation, reasonable calorie food treats you've found tasty and useful

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Deep Nostalgia - We now have the technology to make Harry Potter-verse Photo-like animations from still headshots. Potentially creepy in at least two different ways, but also potentially nostalgic and beautiful.

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Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself – a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Found this via a Poetry Unbound podcast on another fine poem, Joy Harjo’s “Praise the Rain”

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So like clockwork here is my One Second Everyday for the winter-- Christmas in NJ including the pinball museum, lots of bands (with me as player and me as audience), hanging out with kids, lots of office shots, some snow shoveling, a bit of football game and video game footage....

Oh wait, that's 2013-2014, not not 2018-2019! Here's the current one:


So, little joke there. It is a little jarring to me how similar my current life looks.

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I'm pedantically anti-pedantic. I HATE when people correct someone calling a sousaphone "a tuba" - the term "tuba" isn't as specific as it could be, but it's not wrong! And flaunting your "superior", yet incomplete, musical knowledge over someone is just rude.

Anyway, that whole "look how smart I am, I know tomatoes are FRUITS" crowd has some splainin' to do, because the definition of "vegetable" is a hot mess. (And to my surprise reflects the old Anglo-Saxon/Norman elitist crap of centuries ago, and today...)

I guess I always fall on the side of being descriptivist, because I think prescriptivism is forcing people to bow to a quite possibly false god - l feel there IS an optimal, "correct" answer to things, and you should look to the usage by real people as the most accurate signposts - maybe even the definition of what is correct - to that unknowable truth (or rather, the truth you can know, but you can never be CERTAIN you know) rather than strutting with the arrogant hubris of self-certainty, like just because you know the etymological roots of something, you are blessed with perfected knowledge. December, January, February, One Second Everyday. Lotsa music (as player and audience) and love and some movies and you know not THAT much snow come to think of it...

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I was bitterly tongue in cheek about our nation's worship of the Great God Gun and the child sacrifices we'll be making periodically from here on in, but post-Moonies are makin' it real.

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My Todo list has barely been below 30 items since Christmas break, and it's been brutal getting to Inbox Zero (just for "Important + Unread"). It's getting kind of discouraging...

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I feel like it's inner child afraid of little ego-depleting failures at every turn...

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Man, there's like no half-assed armchair quarterback "solution" Trump won't throw out there, huh? Let's take away guns ask questions later one day, death penalty for drug dealers the next. He's like the really drunk guy who's got "answers" for everything.

Truthiness.

The Zen master says that we are adrift in a river of forgetfulness, which still, some days, doesn't sound like the worst place to be.

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In making the documentary I find one of my mother's ex-boyfriends in a retirement community in Florida--acre upon acre of identical attached houses, seemingly held together by golf.

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Clink/Clank/Clunk
I think that I am drunk
Clunk/Clank/Clink
I really need a drink.

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29 Seconds of Februrary! Coolest stuff was probably in the middle when I joined the Bread + Puppet Overtakelessness Circus Band. At the end was some good geek stuff.
One Second Everyday. Highlights include the city's giant snow piles on the 7th, R​'s fire in snow pit on the 21st, Keytar Bear on the 23rd, Dr. John on the 25th (and Sarah Morrow rockin' the trombone and generally leading) and ends with snow tubing...

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Making the rounds...
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s Three cheers for Apple CEO Tim Cook.

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One Second Every Day for February:

hit or missile - source - built with processing

I admit this game is a bit of filler. I was late Saturday, I was kind of crispy, but then a latecomer just arrived around 8 or 9, so I thought I should be good for at least one more game.

I reused the tracking routine from Heatseeker (An old C=64 Gazette game) and made this. I've been told it plays a bit like an old game by Cactus.
-Forget if I posted this. I just wish I could sketch as well as Joe Larson. I liked the book, though I listed to it as an audiobook -- which is how I first experienced Douglas Adams, the second book "Restaurant at the End of the Universe". Sometimes I think that changes my perception of the whole ball of wax... on the other hand the very first HHGTTG format was radio, so maybe it all just works.

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I am kind of sad I don't have the kind of life that means I should really be at the GDC.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2286735/ - Major Hering; the hero of our nuclear age. So nuts ANYONE has this power, much less politicians.

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"Language was developed for one endeavor, and that is? [...]"
"To communicate."
"No! To woo women!"

beebash - source - built with processing
A silly little game for THE 371-IN-1 KLIK & PLAY PIRATE KART II: KLIK HARDER. We made over 500 games!

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http://cyberneticzoo.com/ - neat old robots. Man I remember being fascinated by that stuff as a kid.

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My life makes a little more sense now that I recognize I've kind of been mixing up "Ron Paul" and "RuPaul". Just a bit.

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QUIZ! Do you know which years are leap years without looking? Amber was surprised I knew, I was that she didn't. A programmer/Y2K thing?

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554 - heh - on the one hand it's easy to mock the cyberskepticism, on the other, 15 years is a LONG time...

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Commercial videogame development is architecture. Hobby videogame development is making pillowforts from anything in reach.

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Let's admit that dialog is emerging as our generation's way to develop and share knowledge.

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If I could change one thing--this is going to sound stupid--but if I could go back in time and change one thing, I might try to interest some early preliterate people in not using their thumbs when they count. It could have been the standard, and it would have made a whole lot of things easier in the modern era. On the other hand, we have learned a lot from the struggle with the incompatibility of base-ten with powers of two.

So my former roomie Miller is making some nifty Turtle-tastic t-shirts!. I bought this one: I like the idea of a turtle pontificating on mortality.

Sorely tempted by:
And Turtle Ninjas were awfully cute:

So I'd encourage anyone who wears T-shirts or knows someone who does to go buy a few. (His livejournal page on the subject has some closeups of the designs in question.)

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What I learned from twitter (and wikipedia) today: asterisms are like the safety schools for starts that didn't make constellations.

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RIP Paul Harvey [insert "rest of the story" joke here]. "Good day." Get it, time MARCHes on? Oh I slay me.

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Paradox of the Moment

In Zeno's dichotomy paradox, you run toward a wall. As you run, you halve the distance to the wall, then halve it again, and so on. But if you continue to subdivide space forever, how can you ever actually reach the wall? (The answer is that you can't: Once you're within a few nanometers, atomic repulsion forces become too strong for you to get any closer.)

I never thought about how modern science and atomic theory has such a good answer for Zeno! The article is also worthwhile for its final bit, a speculation about what life would really be like if electricity HAD become "too cheap to meter" as predicted by Atomic Energy Commission chief Lewis Strauss

I don't know if it's the stress of a new job or what, but MAN is this week crawling by.

But... it is March!

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Tribute of the Moment
Today we take a moment to praise the accordian.

Here is a picture that includes my mom playing the accordion. I believe this is some kind of mission work from the School for Officer's Training, the Salvation Army's version of seminary.



The accordion is in that category of comedic "no one really wants to hear it" instruments, alongside the bagpipes and to a lesser extent the tuba. This is why in his early days, "Weird Al" mined the thing for comedic gold.

I'm not sure why the instrument is so disrespected. Both tuba and accordion may be tainted by its association with Polka, a lively folkish tradition music that now seems unbearably corny in the modern vernacular.

But the accordion is a terrific instrument, combining the melodic capabilities of the piano, the polyphonic chordal ability of an organ, and the emotional expressiveness of a string instrument, where the player has great control over the volume and feel of the sound through the physical control over the bellows.

Plus, it's portable in a way other (non-electronic) keyboard instruments aren't . When my folks were stationed at Salvation Army churches that lacked a pianist she would haul her accordion out for all the Sunday School Songs.

So, a little love for the accordion, an instrument that gets the kind of derision that should be reserved for the saxophone.

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Link of the Moment

Boston PD: Putting the 'error' in 'terror.'

As his blog piece helps to point out, if the Boston Police say they think it was a bomb, someone must have tried to make them think it was a bomb, or they found it useful to act as if that was the case. DC had a lot of political graffiti... must be the proximity.

The job was at a place called Dupont Circle. It had some pretty architecture as well.


Anecdote (with Cusses) of the Moment

"this morning, while joking around with my girlfriend, i referred to my 'male implement' as a 'wand of fucking +2,' and proceeded to request that she make a saving throw against orgasm. she immediately lashed out at me, stating that if i ever attempted to mix our sex life and dungeons and dragons ever again, there'd be hell to pay - and not the kind of hell that you get to ever have sex with ever again."

Sometimes I am glad that I don't have to admit to ever, EVER having played an actual game of D+D. (via morecake)

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Video of the Moment
Here's an environmental message video using that old chestnut of how a frog won't jump out of hot water if you heat it very slowly. Leaving aside the way that the actual metaphor for global warming would be that we should hop away from planet Earth, it makes me wonder...who was the sick S.o.B. who first noticed this little nugget of observed amphibian behavior wisdom? (Feh, actually, Snopes debunks this...a good rule of thumb is, if anything seems too cute to be true, check snopes.)

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Incredibly Mundane Update of the Moment
To the Quote-O-Matic viewer I caved in (after having to hunt for the URL to use) and made a link to see the whole list of quotes on one giant page. Maybe it's kind of like giving away the store, but oh well.

So I'm aiming to head down to the video game convention PhillyClassic, March 20-21. I have one road buddy lined up, some guy from MIT, to split gas, tolls, and rooming expense...anyone else interested? It's kind of cool, lots of video game wackiness, tons of arcade games set up for free play. I'm going to release JoustPong there, amusingly I'll probably be asked to sign the game boxes and what not...let me know if you want to tag along, it's a fun weekend roadtrip. UPDATE: think I got a full civic load to head down there.

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Inspiration of the Moment

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Of course, so does falling down a flight of stairs."

Never say die. I've tried it, and it doesn't actually make people die.

"The early bird gets the worm. But then, you can also get a worm by drinking a whole bottle of tequila."

"Every dawn brings us a fresh start, because we never freakin' learn, do we?"

It takes a village to raise a child to hate all of the people in the next village.

"The key to someone's heart is never lost: It's just that the locks were changed 'cause your some kind of psycho."

"You can do anything if you want it bad enough. That is why we see so many people that can fly."

--from a contest in The Washington Post, via "Planet Proctor" in "The Funny Times".

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Games of the Moment
Speaking of videogame wackiness, Lore of Brunching Shuttlecocks fame is starting a new site, Little Fluffy Industries, a blog dedicated to cataloging all the free web-based games out there. One that immediately caught my eye was Warthog Launch, an extremely compelling game. It's a 2D homage to a sport people invented by gamers fooling around with Halo when they realized they could send the indestructable "Warthog" jeeps soaring by piling grenades underneath and then shooting. (I kisrael'd that previously.) With this online version, it's very satisfying to figure out how to get all the floating aliens. Good UI too, marred only by having no way of resuming a previous game.

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Toy of the Moment
Old wine in new technological bottles, it's Bush Unmasked. Tip of the Moment
I learned something new the other day...you know how IE has that feature where it remembers what you've previously typed in a textbox, and it gives you a dropdown list? Some people (like me) like it, other find it kind of an annoying security risk...but anyway, if there's an entry you want to remove from that list, you can cursorkey down to it and hit "delete" and it goes away. For me it's most useful to remove past typos from "username" textboxes, but I guess if you had a particularly personal Google search you wanted to eliminate, it would work for that too. (Note, I have no idea if it's "really erased" or not, so don't assume this a secure thing...) Business Cards of the Moment
For the networking I'll need to for my jobhunt, I thought I'd print up some personal business cards. This is the design I ended up with: Dylan took the idea and ran with it. (and by chance, ended up with the Event Zero (my previous employer's) colors) I ended up worrying about how much orange potential was in my printer so I didn't print up any models, but it's an interesting idea: Later, talking with Ranjit, I mentioned my idea of using my old ASCII self-portrait for a card, and he pointed out that Figlets (big ASCII-character based fonts, here's an interesting toy for 'em) are underused on business cards, and sent me the text for the below: Hmm, maybe I should save that for my alter-ego, "Cap'n Old School".

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Link of the Moment
Speaking of Old School, Nanoloop is a Gameboy ROM that lets you make techno on a Game Boy in realtime. Some interesting song samples here, maybe someday I should try my hand at it. Odd, this journal entry seems to have erased itself, (I must've had an old edit window open that overwrote the contents) but I still have the notes for most of it...

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Guestbook Quote of the Moment

the mental capacity of recalling or recognizing previously learned behavior or past experiences. OR COMPUTER COMPONENTS THAT STORE DATA. 2 different definitions for the same word that you have mastered.

I'm not sure what this means. Is the word "memory"?

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Movie Quote of the Moment
[Challenged to say if he considers anything holy.]

Yes! The individual human mind. In a child's ability to master the multiplication table, there is more holiness than all your shouted hosannas and holy holies. An idea is more important that a monument and the advancement of Man's knowledge more miraculous than all the sticks turned to snakes and the parting of the waters.