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Sometimes when people say "woke" they mean "liberals being self-righteous and vicious about trivial things" and sometimes they mean "integration," or "civil rights laws" or "black people on television" and it's convenient not to have to explain what you actually mean.

A Boat

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.

via

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(but I feel like this is Generation X as well?)

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i love when tragedies are like "the love was there. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the love was there"

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Yesterday I made a devblog entry the joy of trivial webapps in php - calorie tracker with graph. I really do love being able to easily stand up my own bespoke web services!

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whut

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The problem isn't that robots are taking over our jobs, the problem is that we've created a world where that's somehow a bad thing.

Frodo: I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Applicable to many troubled times of course, and with the evil being a mindless bundle of pointless RNA.

Via this tumblr post that also mentions Sam's comments...

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Petition: Dunkin' should enable tips in online ordering - get in early!!

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At one point I said, 'Hey there's Hawaii! There's Hawaii...there goes Hawaii' - that's how fast we were moving. Crossed over the California coastline at Mach 8, at about 120,000 feet and came in over the landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base in California. And this is where the commander gets to show his stuff, because he's going to land it, and it's a 200,000 pound... brick. It sort of flies. So at 40,000 feet you're subsonic, below the speed of sound, passing overhead, synch rates of 11,000 feet per minute, 300 miles an hour, you get to 1200 feet, pull back slightly on the stick, shallow the glide angle, slow down, touchdown at 200 miles an hour, and roll out. You only have one chance at this, 'cause it's a glider. And as we've said, it's better to die than look bad... ....and fortunately we didn't do either.

via The Moth Live in Portland, Maine. Mostly I like the "it's better to die than look bad" line.

To attract the moths, [the Bolas Spider] Nancy emits a chemical cocktail that resembles the pheromones that female moths gives off when they are ready to mate. Chemical mimicry and common sense: If you want to catch a chicken, smell like a horny chicken. If you want to catch me, smell like doritos and a nap.

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Omg I just realized how cute it is that pirates call their friends their hearties 😍

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Sometimes I think how the universe was pulled into existence through the smallest hole in nothingness, and other times I think how cool it is that sticks look like swords.

Shame on South Boston Allied War Veterans Council for excluding Veterans for Peace in the St Pats Parade.

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CHINA:
[finishes binge watching "Black Mirror"]
Hold My Beer...

I have such ambivalence about video games.

This article might exaggerate the scale of people, especially young ones, switching to a virtual world for comfort, but maybe not.

It's crazy at how coddling single player games have become. They really want you to succeed, but feel you've accomplished something. You used to maybe need a map (heh, I think about how I never would have gotten through Metroid on NES without that player's guide map, and guidebooks were a mainstay for me in big N64 and GC games) but now that's all baked into the game. Any mission failure is immediately handled another chance, it's barely a setback, and maybe they'll quietly knock the difficulty down a few notches for you. It used to be you'd think you could get good at something, gaining skills 'til you could "beat the mission", but now it's so quick to retry and retry that sometimes you're just playing the odds.

I suppose that's less true for the online multiplayer stuff. I've always shunned that, but maybe mostly it's too bruising for my ego to get my butt handed to me by "that 12 year old who can spend all his time playing the damn thing". I guess I'm kind of amazed multiplayer avoids that, or succeeds despite that effect... I guess it's through careful tourneying, group you with like-skilled opponents?

It's such an odd blending of factors for me: fixed mindset, the desire to see a new microcosm, empowerment fantasies, fun visceral physics engines... what hardware I've favored, disliking sheer "make the number go higher" games, dabbling in creating my own tiny games, really missing having 4 or 5 people over for a round of "couch" nintendo games...

At one point I was sure that games were a good path to creating in digital media for kids, now I have my doubts. For one thing, the triple-A titles you can play are so far beyond what you can generally make. (I should keep my eyes open for tools that allow playfulness in 3D, for a start) For another, they seem to have evolved into a human-attention sucking rabbit hole - I mean they always kind of have been, but the evolution has made them that much more potent.

To be lonely is to be among men who do not know what you mean.

A very provocative article - it's theme is that since there's so much diversity across cultures, the hope of a single unifying Utopia is hopeless. Personally I'm not sure if a Utopia would need to be so homogenous and all-encompassing as he says, and also I think the primary issue is getting rid of "cheaters" - since people tend to rate the circumstance of their lives relative to their neighbors and not in a more objective way, keeping people on track to a greater good is tricky!Follow up to yesterday's note on "expecting to be annoyed"... on FB David H said the attitude might be called a form of "realist optimism" and Tim K wrote:

it could also be seen as a sort of Zen-like acceptance. Truthfully, I think the real wisdom of not allowing oneself to be stressed by or overly focused on things outside one's ability to control or influence is an element of just about any philosophical branch. It's sort of one of those universal truths, that is expressed differently in different contexts, but boils down to the same thing in the end.

My response was

Tim you're right that it's a fairly common sentiment, but some of the nuance is important. For instance I dig neo-stoicism (see http://kirk.is/2010/11/10/ ) over Zen because of how it doesn't discourage embracing of the pleasant (unlike Zen's encouragement to detach from positive and negative-- and usual disclaimers about my understanding of Zen apply)

In this case, it's the setting of expectations that is useful for my temperament, in a way mere acceptance in real time doesn't. Lower parts of my intellect get flustered and worried when things go wrong, and I become so aware of "THIS COULD BE OTHERWISE AND THAT WOULD BE BETTER FOR ME" that I'm prone to immature outbursts of anger. (Homer Simpson's stuck-in-traffic "Lousy Minor Setback! THIS WORLD SUCKS!" sums it up pretty well.)

With "mere acceptance", I can quickly quell the outburst, but it's more effective to have prepped the landscape with the expectation that things will utterly fail to live up to my self-centered ideal for them.

Just like Homer Simpson provides a good model for the rage, Garry Gergich from Parks & Recreation is a good model for calm acceptance of terrible and stupid things happening to one. (To borrow TV Trope's term, he's the Butt Monkey of the show, but then the writers make it up to the character by giving him an amazing wife and family situation.)

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I do like Japanese infinite toys. I remember bringing a bunch of the bubble wrap back from Japan.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLH8BX9-z5w shameless pandering for people to go to youtube and Thumbs Up this video I have a cameo in! A friend is campaigning to be a playtester for Exploding Kittens, a new game tied in with The Oatmeal...

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So we got the record for snow (funny, I remember 92-93, my freshman year, a bit more strongly than the 95-96 previous record holder, even though 92-93 is only like 7th on the list now) but the more amazing bit was how much of that was in one month. But of course, Capracotta Italy is making us look like rookies.

We're going to be amazed at how calm and gentle our environment was for us, in retrospect.

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I think dead is really a thing just like alive except you have less choices to make.

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Rayman Legends for Wii U-so good. Great art, awesome, unique, and forgiving co-op play, slapstick physics, and a terrific physics-y "soccer" Kung Foot This was one of the 5 days (2011.07.07, 2013.03.16, 2013.05.04, 2013.05.08, 2013.05.13) I missed, as of this site's 5000th entry on Sep 8 2014...
--via Bill the Splut

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"I need to find a job doing something I'm good at, but what?"
"Fleeing like a coward?"
"Are you referring to jogging? I do that for my health."
"Which is fleeing like a coward from your own mortality."

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That's right. It's over and then it begins again.

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Most people who read poetry are reading because they want to write it.

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An alternate translation for "Carpe Diem" is "Pluck the Day", like you would a fruit, or maybe a bowstring. I like that better. Every season I keep a rolling playlist of music I discover, and then I track down videos for most of them, to share them with you, and to keep around for my future self. Last Winter was a pretty good season for my music!

Recommendations from friends.

• Fidelity - Regina Spektor - such a lovely song, and a great artist, who Amber introduced me to.
• I Want To Hold Your Hand T.V.Carpio - from the "Across the Universe)" soundtrack, but I had forgotten about it until I heard it again from Amber's collection.
• Walk on the Wild Side - Lou Reed - this was on Miller's mix when we did 24 Hour Comics Day last October. Between this, Lola, and Tone Loc's Funky Cold Medina, there seems to be an 80s fascination with the genderbendering...
• Thinking 'Bout Somethin' - Hanson. Gerard LaFond, coworker and big name in the whole infogames thing, mentioned this Blues Brother tribute... despite the boy band roots of these guys, they're pretty great.
• Shut Up & Kiss Me - Orianthi. From Kjersten, I think.

Over the years I've grown to dig the Verve Remixed albus... I usually end up loving one or two songs from each.

• There Was a Time - James Brown
• California Soul - Marlena Shaw

Songs I found out about thanks to sports.

• Pump It - Black Eyed Peas. Maybe the NFL halftime show reminded me of their excellent use of "misirlou".
• The Power Is On - The Go! Team. An NFL commercial used this... I think I just dig that shouty girl voice thing.
• Hi de Ho - K7. They played this before the Celtics game I went to. Uses a lot of Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher- he shows up at the beginning of the video. Very hard to track down the song.

Songs from movie soundtracks...

• Go Speed Racer Go - Ali Dee and The Deekompressors. Such a vibrant kinetic movie... if you're a friend of mine ask me to watch it on my big projector screen.
• Creep - Scala & Kolacny Brothers. "The Social Network" used this, it's really kind of amazing.
• Mad Men Theme - DJ Swindeal. (Different video) I was looking for a simple version, this remix is ok.
• Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing - Chris Isaak. Rewatched "Eyes Wide Shut" with Amber.

Songs from Internet Videos...

• God's Gonna Cut You Down -- Kevin Lovatt. The video is what introduced me to the Johnny Cash version, but I could only find Kevin Lovatt's cover... his voice though is of the stronger, middle-aged Cash, not the weathered version heard in that video.
• Umbrella - The Baseballs. Such a terrific 60s rock cover of last decade's pop.
• I Just Had Sex -- The Lonely Island. Tacky, but funny. And the music is actually really slickly arranged, it sounds great.
• Gimme Pizza Slow - Olsen Twins. I think I already linked to the creepy weirdness that results from slowing down the 90s kiddie show song.

We went to Francesca's Espresso Bar one morning, and I heard these--

• Brand New Colony - The Postal Service
• Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy - The Andrews Sisters. Man, I love the musicality when one of the sisters imitates a wailing trumpet.

A bunch of songs I rememnber from either my youth or a few years back...

• Skate or Die - Rob Hubbard. One of the best bits of video game music ever, especially the C=64 version.
• Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle) - Limp Bizkit. Kind of a catchy but idiotic song, but they used a cleaned up version of it on the old "NHL Hitz" game I'd play with my young cousins.
• Kiss Me Deadly - Lita Ford. The "went to a party last saturday night, didn't get laid, got in a fight, uh-huh, it ain't no big thing" line was in my head for a while-- didn't realize it was a woman singing. The video is actually really sexy in an 80s hairband kind of way.
• Mr. Roboto - Styx. It's weird how the rock-opera-musical story aspect of this song can shine through as you listen.
• You Were Meant For Me -- Jewel
• Bubbly - Colbie Caillat (cvs)
• Listen To Your Heart - DHT (new version)

Songs I don't really remember how I found out about...

• Go Go Gadget Flow -- Lupe Fiasco
• Dynamite -- Audio Bullys
• Les Petits Ballons -- France Gall
• Fortune Teller -- Benny Spellman
• Airplanes -- B.o.B./Hayley Williams - scandal
• If I Was Your Girlfriend - Prince
• Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun - Beastie Boys
• Last Leaf - Ok Go
• Face Melter - The Japanese Popstars. Love how this sounds like printer noise.

Finally, a bunch of mashups from Lenlow... I couldn't find videos for most of these but they're all great, especially "Do Your Thing to the Music" (I just love that "I don't need no tv, I don't need no news, all I need is a bumpin' beat to bump away these bl-bl-blues". I found this treasure trove looking for his mashup of Kanye and the muppets, "Kanye Mahna"... and it's amazing how much more I like these mashups than any of the originals of their own, a good mashup finds a real synergy.

• Kanye Mahna
• It's Time We Ramble On
• Bjorn Slippy
• Cyprestition
• Do Your Thing to the Music
• Hop Star
• Imagine Wild Music
• My Shiny Gun Mosey
• Soul Shot
• War Discographer

That's it! Lately I've gotten better at tracking where I hear music. A weirdly large amount of it is upstairs at the Copley Square CVS.

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Kind of weird that the iPhone playlist has the album name before the artist-if you don't listen to the whole album, likely it doesn't matter

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http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xhkp04 - Tron "tween" vid, via miller. Weird to think that many of Tron's biggest fans are probably a bit faceblind; so Alan Bradly/Tron being the same guy is harder to "get"

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Amber says that if she twittered it would be something like "Surprised Kirk hasn't made any 'Erin Go Braless!' jokes this year. Yet."
Man -- some people get PAID to do "the robot"!

Kind of makes me wish our traffic lights were smart and more aware of traffic waiting. I am unwilling to relocate to North Korea to get that however.

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Bostoners: you may have forgotten, but that big bright thing in the sky is the "sun". DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT.

Also, a tint of blue in the sky, rather than the typical grey-white, is acceptable.

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The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

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It's seven PM and daylight. I can't even tell you how much love I have for Daylight Savings Time.

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I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead

So I made a new Blender of Love digest yesterday... the ramble featured the following graph:
This is number of monthly submissions over time. While I'm grateful that I'm not having to read (well, skim) 500-600 pieces every month, I kind of wish it had stabilized at where it was a few years ago, because the numbers are starting to alarm me. The Blender has its stalwarts, but I don't really understand what happened to provoke either the rise or decline of it. I used to promote it in the 90s, some banner exchange programs, some plugs on like Usenet, but now I'm not sure what I'd do, other than possibly take a shot in the dark and advertise on Google AdWords.

So it's a bummer when a project of over a decade and a half seems in poor health!

I am proud of the look of my graph though, handrolled in Java processing.

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http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/03/building-better-mousetrap.html - the better moustrap, with strobe photography!

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http://www.najle.com/idaft/ - great daft punks toy. Not quite as cool as http://limmy.com/playthings/xylophone/ but less obscene and abusive.

• - this is the "Rhino" truck from the show "Mask", the last toy series I got into, after Transformers and GI Joe. Ever since then I always get the feeling that the back end hitch part of trailerless semis I see should be able to roll around independently, as shown here.
• Gary Kitchen's Gamemaker was a very cool program for the C=64. That link is an attempt to collect games people made on it for posterity.
• Physics funnies:

  Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.

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Travelog of the Moment
Another amazing day with Josh. I'm going to be traveling to Hiroshima and Kyoto on my own by rail, so I might not be posting quite so extensively for a bit... I just tried to txt what I didn't realize was a landline, and got told my message was relayed via Sprint's "text to landline" service.

I guess some robot read my text to my intended recipient.

I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with robots taking that familiar a role in my communication, especially without warning me first.

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Image of the Moment

--Given that Lucky already has magical powers of uncertain magnitude, helping him see into the future doesn't sound like such a good idea, kind of how like Agent Smith absorbed the Oracle so that HE had the power of precognition. Actually I'm convinced Lucky is going to snap, turn all the kids chasing him into mice, and then step on them.

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Observation of the Moment

We walked four blocks south to a Brazilian restaurant that I must have walked past a thousand times on my own and yet never noticed. This further proved my own belief that there is only so much any given person can see for themselves in Manhattan. It takes two people, looking in all directions at once, to see everything.

Great read, and I think this comment is dead all. It's a little true for a lot of places, actually, but even more so for NYC. And I dig the romantic undertone. Off to NYC! Actually grabbed a Brooklyn Hotel...last minute options in Manhattan were either expensive or skanky without a ton of middle ground.

Man I miss my mom's apartment on the Upper West Side, and that little seperate room I had...my own little microstudio overlooking broadway... sigh.

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Logic of the Moment

Good evening. The last scene was interesting from the point of view of a professional logician because it contained a number of logical fallacies; that is, invalid propositional constructions and syllogistic forms, of the type so often committed by my wife.

'All wood burns,' states Sir Bedevere. 'Therefore,' he concludes, 'all that burns is wood.' This is, of course, pure bullshit. Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan. 'Oh yes,' one would think. However, my wife does not understand this necessary limitation of the conversion of a proposition; consequently, she does not understand me, for how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic, if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder?

For example, given the premise, 'all fish live underwater' and 'all mackerel are fish', my wife will conclude, not that 'all mackerel live underwater', but that 'if she buys kippers it will not rain', or that 'trout live in trees', or even that 'I do not love her any more.' This she calls 'using her intuition'. I call it 'crap', and it gets me very irritated because it is not logical. 'There will be no supper tonight,' she will sometimes cry upon my return home. 'Why not?' I will ask. 'Because I have been screwing the milkman all day,' she will say, quite oblivious of the howling error she has made. 'But,' I will wearily point out, 'even given that the activities of screwing the milkman and getting supper are mutually exclusive, now that the screwing is over, surely then, supper may now, logically, be got.' 'You don't love me any more,' she will now often postulate. 'If you did, you would give me one now and again, so that I would not have to rely on that rancid Pakistani for my orgasms.' 'I will give you one after you have got me my supper,' I now usually scream, 'but not before'-- as you understand, making her bang contingent on the arrival of my supper. 'God, you turn me on when you're angry, you ancient brute!' she now mysteriously deduces, forcing her sweetly throbbing tongue down my throat. 'Fuck supper!' I now invariably conclude, throwing logic somewhat joyously to the four winds, and so we thrash about on our milk-stained floor, transported by animal passion, until we sink back, exhausted, onto the cartons of yogurt.

I'm afraid I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief. But in a nutshell: sex is more fun than logic-- one cannot prove this, but it 'is' in the same sense that Mount Everest 'is', or that Alma Cogan 'isn't'.

Goodnight.

Rant of the Moment
Man, I hate hate HATE how Outlook "helpfully" tried to preserve the font and coloring information when you cut and paste from a web browser. Am I alone in thinking that if you're writing an email, you don't want it to look like a mishmash of fonts and colors? That an email is usually a single nit that has its own cohesive sense of displaying text? It might be tolerable if it weren't for the completely retarded way that when you start typing after the cut and paste, your new text is in the same wacky font and color.

I know I should probably be sticking to non-HTML "Plain Text" mode, but sometimes it's useful to bold something to bring attention to it, and using asterisks for *emphasis* is a little too old school.

Feh. Outlook is broken both by design and implementation -- trying to correct the problem by selecting all of my text and then picking a new style led to bizarre inconsistent results. Almost makes me wish for a Word Perfect-ish "Reveal Codes" or a browser "Edit as HTML Source" option so I can figure out how it gets so screwed up.

Paranoia of the Moment

was wondering if anybody could recommend suitable survival strategies for street games? I'm not talking about games for children but about the very expensive type of game where whole cities start acting around a single person (the player) and newspaper articles, TV news and hollywood movies are made with bits and pieces taken from that person's diary or even his brain ..

LAN3 pointed the link out the journal entry to me, and it probably indicates not all is well with this guys head. Still kind of an interesting read.

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Personal Paranoia of the Moment

Now, counterterrorism officials say one of their biggest concerns is how U.S. actions such as the war in Iraq are motivating new recruits bound by a common goal: to destroy Western secular society.
Both government and private experts are bracing for what they say will be a war that could last for generations.

ar on terrorism could spawn new enemies". It just reminded me of how there are people with these visions of a whole happy sunshine-y world for Allah and are willing to blow things up to try and get there. "You love life and we love death" indeed. Religious fervor and fundamentalism can be so frickin' dangerous...even when the "religion" is an atheistic belief.

And there will be more, if God wills it. "What's that God? You say you want me to build a bomb? And blow up a bunch of commuters! Ok! As long as it's your will!"

I do worry about the idea that the Spanish election was a bit like feeding meat to an alligator, like some administration official said.

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Sociology of the Moment
Fun to play with two axis way of grouping people: Elf/Dwarf (high concept thinkers vs. pracitcal doers) and Ninja/Pirate (quiet and honourable vs unrestrained and gregarious) I'm heavily on the Pirate side, and probably a bit towards the dwarvish, though I do have a bit of the Elfen "what would be the bestest way of doing this in me.

What about you? Are you a dwarfen ninja, an elven pirate? Though in my mind, it seems like ninja/elf and dwarf/pirate are more likely combinations, they seem similar to me somehow.

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Article of the Moment
Slate.com on the rise of the American cupholder. It's synchronicity; I've been borrowing my Aunt and Uncle's minivan (nice that it's a Honda, as is my own hatchback (in the shop); I know where right where all the controls are) and was glancing at the manual (actually looking for instrutions on the fold-up seating) when I found where it described the cupholders: fold-out jobbies that don't seem as sturdy as the ones in my car (the bottom is just a plastic bar that falls down when the thing slides out) but must be less likely to accumulate the dried spilled coffee and other beverage goop that I sometimes have to clean up out of mine. What struck me about the description of the cupholders in the manual was the admonition that they were only to be used when the car wasn't moving, since liquids (maybe even hot liquids!) could slosh around when the vehicle was in motion. Apparently, the manual writers come from some (lawsuit-prone) universe where A. People just like to sit in their stationary car to consume beverages and B. They haven't developed effective drink lid technology. Videos of the Moment
Making the rounds: Hercubush explains the administration's need for oil.

I hate shaving too.

I like the idea of tensecondfilms, though there's something screwy with realmedia on my system. Also, they rudely ignored brooklyngirls's entry, I Was A Teenage Cartoon.

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Cartoon of the Moment

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Link of the Moment
This Ebay listing is very very odd.

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Threat of the Moment

When the enemy starts a large-scale battle, he must realise that the battle between us will be open wherever there is sky, land and water in the entire world.

Well, he thought the last one would be the "Mother of All Battles", so there's at least some precedent for overblown rhetoric. Of course, the last Bush who attacked him didn't seem quite so intent on killing him, so who knows. Between this and mystery-pneumonia I kind of wish Mo and I didn't have to leave the house this week. Huh, I was getting over 100 unique users/day for a few days there, now it's back down...maybe more people were Google image searching on WTC because of the six month anninversary? Ah well, that's the danger when you start looking at the numbers on a daily basis...

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Link of the Moment
Ah, at last there's Google News.

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Game of the Moment
Ah, at last there's slime volleyball.
(Tough game, a little easier if you use the arrowkeys for left and right and w to jump.)

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Quote of the Moment

The Future is here. It is just not evenly distributed.

It's a great point though, and interesting to think how and where the future has its roots in the present. Though there's a downside to that as well, if you think of the WTC part of the present, and not the shiny cool computer gadget side. Yikes. Trying to figure out if things are afoot in my company. My heart's racing a bit.

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Quote of the Moment

"It's so hard being neurotic. A normal person would be able to touch this [gooey brownie] with their bare hand, but not me."

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Link of the Moment
Scarily plausible article on Slate: The Case For Northern Secession.

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Quote of the Next Couple Years

Initially, Bush wanted the bad economy to be associated with the Clinton era and was framing it as worse than it was and now he is framing things as being worse than they are in order to promote his tax cut to create support and rationale for his tax cut. It was disingenuous, and a really bad move. Because he's drumming up a pessimism about the economy that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It points out that on the Clinton watch we had some sharp downturns that we managed our way through, but Bush is trash talking the economy to play up his taxcut plan, and that may screw us all. I have less faith in ever in Bush, and this electoral college driven mixup will haunt us for years.