❮❮prevnext❯❯

---

I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? And ... I mean we've got enough smog in Los Angeles let alone to deal with setting these fires and things ... It's just not right. It's not right, and it's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. They've won the battle, but they haven't won the war. We'll get our day in court, and that's all we want. And, just, uh, I love – I'm neutral. I love every – I love people of color. I'm not like they're making me out to be. We've got to quit. We've got to quit; I mean, after all, I could understand the first – upset for the first two hours after the verdict, but to go on, to keep going on like this and to see the security guard shot on the ground – it's just not right. It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And uh, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out.

---

---

It really is true that the unexamined life isn't worth living. But the overexamined life isn't much better.

---

Watching twitter content slide from VHF to UHF.

---

Gargoyle (dating back to my college days) lurking in the front yard... and it's not every day you run into Vermin Supreme... or even every May Day...

---

I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids? And ... I mean we've got enough smog in Los Angeles let alone to deal with setting these fires and things ... It's just not right. It's not right, and it's not going to change anything. We'll get our justice. They've won the battle, but they haven't won the war. We'll get our day in court, and that's all we want. And, just, uh, I love – I'm neutral. I love every – I love people of color. I'm not like they're making me out to be. We've got to quit. We've got to quit; I mean, after all, I could understand the first – upset for the first two hours after the verdict, but to go on, to keep going on like this and to see the security guard shot on the ground – it's just not right. It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And uh, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out.

It's too bad "can we all just get along?" (often munged to "can't we") is so often used in a mocking way; it's a sincere sentiment.

---

That Squiggle of the Design Process (via)

---

Awesomest Rube Goldberg Machine Tweet - and this tweet was great too.

---

Also this one

---

Willie Nelson the original stoner

• All This Money (Injury Reserve) This month's sole 5-star, saw on an Apple Ad - very confusing video 'til I realized that, uh, it's not the original artists lip synching in the video.
• Pynk (feat. Grimes) (Janelle Monáe) Sexy and sweetly gentle.
• Solidarity Forever (Pete Seeger) Some people in my band find war songs problematic, so I like this one that's lefty friendly but grabs the melodya and harmony. Why should the devil have all the good tunes?
• Lazy Sunday (feat. Chris Parnell) (The Lonely Island) Oldie, but you know, it has a really good sound.
• Be Water My Friend (Melodysheep) Used in background at "Liquidity, Inc" at the ICA- I like Bruce Lee's philosophy.
• Runaway (feat. Pusha T) (Kanye West) Aw jeez Kanye.
• Freaky Friday (feat. Chris Brown) (Lil Dicky) The excuse for a bunch of white college lacrosse players to shout the N word is not a good look, and the song is not unproblematic, but I love how this song has artists trying to catch each other's cadence.
• The Titanic (Pete Seeger) Not quite the lyrics I grew up with, but nice to hear.
• Signifying Monkey, No. 2 (Bruce Jackson) Not a song... kinda the roots I hear Mohammed Ali drawing from...
• September (Earth, Wind & Fire) Taylor Swift's cover reminded me that I didn't have the original...
• I Will Always Love You (Dolly Parton) When Taylor Swift covered "September", they said the complainers probably thought Whitney Houston originated this song. I've been on a very low key Dolly Parton kick lately.
• Melissa (The Allman Brothers Band) I wrote "Sweet Melissa" when I meant "Sweetie Melissa", and she wondered if it was this song...
• Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose (James Brown) Who doesn't love James Brown...
• Tic Tac (feat. Lambo) (UNIIQU3) Goofy club stuff. My Booty so Fresh, they call me Tic Tac!
• Peace Like a River (Paul Simon) Mention as a member of the 4 AM collection/
• Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley & The Wailers) School of Honk is starting up this song, so I wanted to know it better.
• Give It Up (Youngr x Endor) (Youngr & Endor) Nice R+B clubby stuff.

---

--Josh Dahl says "This image is amazing. It should be used all the time. It applies to every situation. Use it far and wide." "COME Friends.... Let us go AWAY from this dumb place"
Let's see, I play weekly or so with The Jamaica Plain Honk Band, BABAM - Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians, School of HONK and the more irregularly with Porch-i-oke and Reverend Dave and the Reprobates (and it doesn't get much more irregular than that.) And I think for Somerville Porchfest I may be joining in a pickup Dixie land band.

Maybe someone should stage an intervention?

---

"He said, there's no reason for this. People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don't ask that. But why was there the Civil War. Why would that one not have been worked out?"

ladies and gentleman your tax dollars at work!

i mean even apu on the simpsons knows that one A lot of music, and some animals, and some quiet moments.

The contrast between people swimming in Austin's Barton Springs on the 4th and the wintry Arlington street on the 5th is pretty striking... The surpreme court gets ugly on the death penalty. What a mess. Alito basically blaming the lawyer for executed Charles Warner (his last words "my body is on fire") for the scarcity of reliable execution drugs is the height of class from a wicked classy agenda laden judge.

---

A little late but my friend Sam made this card of 15,000 exclamation marks for my 15K Day (but then she left it on the printer...)

---

Highlights include baby chicks on the 4th, sQ's 20th anniversary on the 11th, a roasting lamb on the 12th, John McEnroe serving on the 22nd, a 15K Day cake by Liz on the 25th and Bellringers at the MFA on the 26th

---

'That Google Chrome "what tab is being noisy?" speaker icon should function as a mute button.' -- My first significant bit of reddit juice. Funny thing is someone posted that this feature is a part of chrome, but has to be especially enabled. New on my devblog: I really admire the design of the door handles at work...

---

10 PRINT "HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY BASIC!!! ";

20 GOTO 10

BASIC was so important to me growing up, and the whole 80s culture of encouraging kids to be proactive in their interaction with computers.

"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn"

That was one of the first quotes I ever "collected"-- it was my .signature file for a while.

Last year, before I turned 38, it occurred to me I might be about as old as my dad was when he died. I wasn't positive of his birthdate, but I thought I knew the year, so I googled my site for 1949... this quote came up before my dad's birthday (which I thought, correctly, was there from a tribute I wrote when I was 29, and had lived as long without him as with.)

Somehow I had recorded the quote with a date, and never realized that the day Charlie Parker said that was also my dad's birthday. And according to my date toy, today is the day I was wondering about last year: today I am as old as he was as he died.

I guess the guy lived it so it woulda came outta his horn, except that he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Played a mean timbrel (Salvation Army term for a tambourine) though, and wanted to start the James Edward Israel School for the Triangle.

All of the above I wrote last year.

I didn't really come up with a great way to commemorate the occasion, so I ordered a box of Payday bars (his personal favorite) and am passing them out at work and whatnot.

Now that the day is here, what does it mean? I think there's a time in late teenagehood, young-adulthood when a young man kind of takes on his father to help become his own man, and I'll never have a proper version of that. A milestone like this, where in every memory I have of my dad going forward he'll have been younger than I am at that moment, might help me grow up a bit. Maybe.

Still bummed he didn't get to see me grow up, still bummed he didn't get to see the world evolve a bit into something more connected and communication-oriented, still bummed for me and all the other people who loved him and have been deprived the pleasure of his humor and company.

---

History teaches us nothing except that something will happen.

Nearly 20 years ago, I got this e-mail from my buddy/mentor gowen, who kind of inspired my decision to pursue a double major of English (which had influenced my choice of University) and Computer Science (which I was actually good at), which was what he was doing.

Date: Wed, 15 Dec 93 19:24:17 EST
From: Gregory Owen
To: kisrael
Subject: Re: !Si Si Si!


Follow this simple flowchart.
1) Go to a party with pretty women.
2) Find a pretty female engineer. Say "I'm a CS/English major." Watch her laugh, mutter something about leisure arts, and go over to that dork from your ee128 class.
3) Find a pretty female lib-arts major. Say "I'm a CS/English major." Watch her laugh, mutter something about "fucking geek," and go over to that dork from your Shakespeare class.
4) Get drunk off your ass, man. You are a Liberal Arts Outcast. Neither side wants you. At least you get good head off a beer.

gowen

Still, I think the double major worked out pretty well for me. ("The English to keep me well-rounded, the Comp Sci to keep me well-employed" was my quip at the time and I think I mostly lived up to that... and despite the joke, it was surprising to me to find out how many of my fellow comp sci majors were in it in a trade school kind of way.) Amber and I had been working on straightening up the place a bit before our trip in 2 weeks. I was taking a break and lounging as she walked in looking a bit more on the ball than I was feeling at the moment, and she was then amused when I asked "How can I help you? Err, how can I help us?"

I realize that in that kind of situation, where I'm looking for guidance on how I can be useful (since I know I'm not always a great self-starer with the domestic stuff, what with my generally bachelor-ish standards of household cleanliness, poor organizational skills, and being a bit lazy) I often catch myself a bit because I'm thinking of this old Doonesbury comic:



Sorry for the poor scan... it's from "The Big Book of New American Humor", a giant yellow tome from 1990 that was wildly influential on me in high school... I often see it at half-priced book places (like the basement of the Harvard Book Store) and it's well worth the price of admission.

It also reminds me a bit of this old Star Trek quote:

'Let me help'. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words over 'I love you'.

Amber, I dig helping you...

Dan Meyer's 2009 Annual Report from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

via boingboing - man, and I thought I was good at recording stuff. Not to mention his mad video assembly skills...

---

--It's hard to find solid information about the Ross Sisters, or why they are so enthused for Solid Potato Salad, but about a minute or so in this video gets truly amazing.

FOLLOWUP: in the comments LAN3 xoxoxoBruce provides some information. Man, this video is also so great because of how well they matched the music to it, or vice-versa, like a human Tom and Jerry cartoon. (Someone else said it's "Hee Haw meets Cirque de Soleil")

---

This May Day seems to be a day of losing things and finding things: my hoodie (lost) my sandals (lost and found) my laptop's power supply (lost and found) my good sunglasses (found)

---

In one might be a textbook example of "TOO SOON": http://ISurvivedH1N1.com/ - am toying with the idea of shirts.

---

If a man knocks you down, and you can't get up, well bite 'im on the leg.

---

Grabbed a shirt I had worn to EB's cookout in Rockport. Man, the smell of leftover sunblock is such a nostlgia trip, old days of amusement parks and working at daycamp.

---

My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.

---

Yesterday I amused myself for a few songs on iPhone by realizing the wires dangling from my old schoolish earphones can be used as single string guitars - cool bass sound. So, new solution for the new KHftCEA -- Twitter! While in theory Twitter is more this way of telling people who care where you are and what you're doing, it can also be a handy repository for the attention starved to post their bon mots, as Lore Sjoberg has done. (The goal is to avoid the scenario of this Penny Arcade -- and for me the world of ideas is so much more compelling than the world of mundane activities...)

So for now the KHftCEA will be twitter-based. (I shoved in KHftCEA thoughts from the past week in a big batch to see how it felt.) So now I can post little 140-character gems from the web or a cellphone! We'll see how it goes, how personal I'm willing to get in that kind of forum, and how it will support or interfere with how I post here.

---

Quote of the Moment

Si, abbiamo un anima. Ma e fatta di tanti piccoli robot.

"Yes, we have a soul. But it is made up of many small robots." -- A favorite of Daniel Dennett whose "Freedom Evolves" I'm reading now.

---

Birthday of the Moment
Happy Birthday BASIC! (Cool link from the slashdot comments: first BASIC manual. As the commentator pointed out, "their original 'hello world' program does linear algebra (page '9')")

<geek type="computer" mode="retro">BASIC wasn't a bad introduction. For people growing up in the 80s, though, it made us think line numbers were more important than they really are... full-screen editors made them obsolete, really, otherwise they're just a convenient way of entering and re-entering lines in a certain order. (See listings in magazines for Amgia's linenumberless BASIC was an eye-opener!) In retrospect, the lack of local variables was the real killer.

See Batari BASIC, the BASIC that compiles into stuff you can run on an Atari 2600, made me realize how close to ASM that stuff was! Even when he ditched line numbers, the fairly stackless BASIC is a lot closer to Assembler than "low" level languages such as C.</geek>

---

Milestone of the Moment
Wanna hear something crazy? It has been five years since peace broke out in Iraq! Half a decade of the "End of Major Combat" in Iraq.

Ah, four years of peace and traquility in Iraq. Feels great.

Previously I was able to use Pythagorean theorem to put my walk, Arlington Center to Alewife via the Minuteman Bikeway, at about 1.4 miles (by coincidence, the Google driving directions made the two sides of a right triangle, each about a mile) and, lo and behold, that's what this tool tells me as well.

---

Design of the Moment

--Boingboing liked the fruit dispensers from a breakfast-ware design contest but I thought these these milkdrop bowls are fantastic.

---

Tool of the Moment
Wow, here's the feature I thought was missing from Google Maps! The Gmap Pedometer makes it very easy to compute a walking or jogging distance. (It took me a second to realize that once you hit "Record", you then have to double click to mark a waypoint.)

---

Exchange of the Moment

"You know what would be awesome?"
"What?"
"If rabbits laid chocolate Easter eggs."
"Yeah, but then their entire species would, like, fail."
"Yes, but they would fail deliciously."

Happy May Day everyone.

---

Gadget of the Moment
I think it's only inadvertently an infomercial, but this video of a guy tooling around with the Quickcam Orbit software's facial recognition software, giving himself funny virtual hats, noses, and even some total avatars (i.e. he becomes a bunny, or a dinosaur, etc, and the avatar matches up to his lip and head movements) makes it look like a hell of a lot of fun, and a great use of technology.

Fun with computers fiddling with images from a camera has been around for a while. A few years ago Sony released the Eye Toy, a cheap webcammy looking thing with a disc of fun minigames...slapping away tiny ninjas was especially fun. But the basic technology behind that has been around for over 35 years... Myron Krueger did some amazing stuff, all in real-time. here's a webpage about his videoplace work, and you can also watch this video. Keeping in mind that this was coming out right around "Pong" being invented, never mind Pong being widely released, and you can see how utterly amazing it was, from both the technology and creativity standpoints. (I'm finally getting around to ordering his book...I think its been on my wishlist since before Amazon had the used books connection.)

---

Quote of the Moment

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

It's May Day once again! April actually seemed to last a good long while this year.

People who have been to my apartment might've seen my storage closety thing, a narrow room that's as long as my bathroom, but barely wider than the door, and the mountains of modular storage I have there (the same stuff I made a closet rack out of last year)...with great hubris, I had jokingly been refering to myself as "The King of Modular Storage" but yesterday my kingdom came raining down around me in a very "I Love Lucy" kind of way...I had been aware that a few of the "joints" had been loose and had been fixing them as I found them, but then, wouldn't you know, eventually a critical mass is reached, and the stuff collapses like dominoes.

Ah well, nothing hurt but my pride, though the ongoing effort to put it back together has set back my apartment straightening regimine quite a bit.

---

Essay Excerpt of the Moment

The idea that there can be prudential compromises on issues like the right to die, or same-sex marriage, or stem-cell research is a difficult one for fundamentalists. Since there is no higher authority than God, and, since there can be no higher priority than obeying him, the entire notion of separating politics and religion is inherently troublesome to the fundamentalist mind.

Wow. I must have Star Wars on the brain, because now I think of "New Republic" as "What Happens After 'Return of the Jedi'" So last night the potential buyers for my house and I agreed on a price...if all goes well in a week or so I'll be one house poorer and a wad o' cash richer. Which means I have to move at the end of this month, yurgh.

---

Product of the Moment
According to 'carbwire', Coca-Cola C2, design to appeal to low-carb dieters, is coming out this summer: All I could think of is that this previously-kisrael'd product idea, imagined by Joseph Calzetta, might be more prophetic than I ever knew.... Go Low Carbers Go!

Quote of the Moment

The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.

Hmmm...I know a good excuse when I read one!

---

Game of the Moment
SWRON is yet another version of Tron lightcycles...but I think it does the best job of finding the balance between looking like the movies (a lot of version are just overhead view) and still being playable. (First person lightcycles is nearly impossible to play.)

---

Update of the Moment
The May Update of the Blender of Love is up and about...it's hardly ever out this early in the month... Game of the Moment
Following up on yesterday's videogame with artistic pretension, it's Painstation, Pong with a masochistic (or sadistic) twist; every time you miss the ball your hand gets shocked, lashed, or heated, depending on what icon the ball hits. Loser is the person to take their hand off first. I think it says something artsy about our relationship to entertainment and technology, but I'm not sure what.

---

Update of the Moment
Starship Dimensons, linked to earlier this week, as a new URL and a new 2 meters per pixel page.

---

Quote of the Moment

Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life. [opens envelope] M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

For some reason this line popped into my head the other day, I guess I was thinking that I haven't been reading as much lately. I think it's a pretty good chunk of advice, really. Hey, great news...Mo got a job!

And I have a few ok prospects, nuthin' definite yet. But the difference between one salary and zero salaries is pretty dang big...I feel like going on a spending spree. Not that I will, but you know.

---

Link of the Moment
So in this spirit of unbridled optimism, a Salon interview with the author of "The Long Boom"...maybe this recession is just a blip? Who knows, but it's a nice thought.

---

Funny of the Moment
Seanbaby strikes again...The Best of the Worst in Comic Book Advertising...actually an older link, but it's laugh-out-loud funny. And of course his other comic coverage of Hostess Cupcake Ads is brilliant. Seanbaby's site has a ton of great stuff, actually.

---

Quote of the Moment

'Let me help'. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words over 'I love you'.

IMDB's quote yesterday was from Star Trek, so I read up on the quotes and things...did you know that Scotty is missing his right middle finger? Products of the Moment
Empathy Belly -- "Shatter the romantic illusions of teen pregnancy". Man, it's kind of weird to think that there is a "romantic illusion of teen pregnancy"... and then there's Drug-Affected Baby. Your own imitation crack baby for the low low price of $285. --via cruel site of the day

---

Quote of the Moment

It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction

2/3 of a great movie. Very realistic dialog, but with people who are funnier than you and your friends. Parts seemed a bit contrived though.