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RIP Jim Brown!

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RIP the novelist Martin Amis. Here is a page on his (intriguingly utterly disavowed) guide to the arcade game fad, Invasion of the Space Invaders
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i knew i matured when i realized every situation doesn't need a reaction, sometimes you just gotta leave people to do the dumb shit they do

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Guy Transforms Space Behind Wall Into Bedroom For His Cat Heh. I do wonder about videos for cats, as well as when an indoor cat gets to see birds and squirrels outside... do they love it as something interesting or is it just frustration as something they can't get?

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"Who do you think you are?" is actually a pretty powerful question when you don't swing it like a hammer.

My entry in the melancholy The Last 'Normal' Photo on your phone meme - cheating a bit because it's a still from a "1 Second Everyday" video.
JP Honk, March 9, outside Stony Brook Station, sneaking in an outdoor practice on an unseasonably warm night.

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Trump Administration to End National Guard COVID Deployments One Day Before GI Bill Benefits Kick In Jeezus. From Politico's take: "Tens of thousands of them have been working full-time since early March on a wide range of sensitive and dangerous tasks, such as decontaminating nursing homes and setting up field hospitals, along with performing tests for the virus. They've provided a crucial backup for understaffed and underfunded state public health agencies trying to contain the pandemic." And Trump's administration is all, "thank you for your 89 days of risky service, now don't let the swinging door hit your ass on the way out".

I feel like the National Guard is much, much closer to what the country's founders had in mind than the military industrial complex we have today. (the same one Ike totally tried to warn us about) At this nation's formation, permanent standing armies were seen as a tool of tyrants - you had this idea of the citizen-soldier. Treating our Guardsfolk like this sucks.

Well, in a sense, Hairy One, fire is everywhere. Rather than being an object, say, like your sharp stick, it's really a process, so it can't really be said to exist anywhere. In a sense, fire exists in its own imaginary, virtual space, where we can only talk about what is not fire and what might become fire.

I'd also highly recommend his "Judge John Hodgman" (I just found out about it but it has been around for almost a decade) where he and "bailiff" Jesse Thorn do a kind of People's Court thing - both hosts are so funny, kind, insightful, and well-spoken, it's a real treat.

La Croix tastes like when my foot falls asleep

Really cool thing where you can doodle help a bot learn how to recognize basic drawings... how to be a guesser at Pictionary, I'd say! The pile of image reminds me of some stuff I did http://kirk.is/2004/07/17/ http://kirk.is/2009/11/13/ and then in color http://kirk.is/2010/07/10/

Lena Dunham just released a very brief kindle book, "is it evil not to be sure?", selections from a short-form/snippet journal she kept as she started college. In the introduction she writes

If I could be didactic about just one thing (though I hope to God that limit is never imposed upon me), it would be my belief that young people, young women in particular, must commit their experiences to paper. If for no other reason than this: only you will ever have these particular experiences and we won’t want to have lost them after you go, or forget, or grow up and get terrible snow boots.

(this after mentioning her moms Oscar Wilde-ish penchant for the devastating bon mot, like when she told her shrink she could never take advice from someone with such awful snow boots)

It's a good mandate. Here were some of my favorite pieces of the book:

This was the first time I’m realizing that snowflakes are actually shaped like snowflakes. I always thought it was an abstract thing like drawings of hearts.

A boy shared his umbrella with me and I got his name wrong and I loved being able to feel powerful in those two ways.

I've taken to walking around the dorm in slips.

Its terrible to ride a bike in the cold.

we’re dunk on the floor in the dark. I say “your breath smells like babies.” You say “that’s because I just ate a baby.”

I’m learning that just because someone is smart, funny and good in bed, it doesn’t mean they’re nice

ocean meeting shore and the wet spot between

the French word he messaged her has a very specific meaning: to patch something up, but quickly and probably badly

we’ve nearly nicknamed him “hey, you can’t just throw my legs over your shoulders or wherever you please.”

I'm really fond of this genre... young and precocious and observant, mostly in the present tense, and usually romantically longing, so often written to an absent "you". I think of a spiral bound journal with a red cover a friend let me post excerpts from once upon a time, also some of Sandra Bernhard's books ("Lips kissed for the first time are kissed forever." is a good line, and once the entire content of a chapter was "I wish you had, but I'm glad you didn't.")

I guess I kind of dabbled in that form in my "Palm Pilot Journal" in the late 90s, http://kirk.is/khftcea/ , especially the early entries. I hadn't set out for it to be public, but EB kind of barged into, and my hope for attention or posterity has always been stronger than my sense of privacy. (I have a visceral memory of the device, transcribing that romantic moping and of course quotes from all over, using the scrawny little stylus on the spinach green monochrome screen.) In retrospect the 3 or 4 years I spent on it are dwarfed by the time I've been blogging since, but there was something beautiful in writing that way, and I kind of miss it, or maybe miss being the person who would do that.

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I am glad the new Ghostbusters trailer seem so solid... the old one got such guff, I think for sexist reason.

But I am totally onboard the Kate McKinnon fan club. So many expressions.

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Man, I can't even do a proper riffle shuffle.

Actually I can't think of anything I do as well as these guys do card manipulations.

"Enjoy every sandwich."

Zevon was one of David Letterman's favorite musicians and a frequent guest who had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and had only months to live. From this year-by-year rundown of Letterman's show

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But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Man that's pretty harsh! Kind of like a Christian excuse against charity. (Or only for charity for non-Christians? idk) My mind seems to be wired in terms of verbs: the roles things play, versus an essentialist notion of "what they are". This is a powerful way of thinking about the things, but it can have some odd side effects. For instance, I am surprisingly slow at recognizing certain icons and associating them with the software functions they go with.

To the right is my OSX Dock at work. Most of the images are relatively associate with their function: Sourcetree looks like a file tree, Stickies looks like post-its, Terminal looks like a terminal window. A few others, like Chrome and and Vidyo (the isomorphic cube) make up for the lack of use-association with great big hunks of color. (Finder I remember because it's always at the top of the list - that's the same kind of positional memory I rely on in iOS. Again, it's not that I can't hunt and find icons, I just don't want to have to for the icons I use the most.)

This little guy has always proven problematic: It's for the (very good, and free) "Komodo" Editor, and I guess it supposed to be a dragon or lizard head. I don't use it as much as I used to, though.

But lately, my recognition nemesis is this guy: That's for IntelliJ by JetBrains (hence the J?) the editor I spend most of my coding time in these days. But that icon... though the other day (and I'm chagrined at how long it took me) I realized I could use another hook. Those are the initials of my dad, Jim.

Obviously, there's no particularly strong natural association between my deceased father and a code editor, but in this case the other connections I have are stepping in and making me think of James Israel when I sense myself hunting for the right icon... I actually enjoy the little tribute of it, as weird and idiosyncratic as the connection is.

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I don't think you have to believe the Bryan way in order to be a strong evangelical. But this is Bryan College, and this is something that's important to us. It's in our DNA. It's who we are.

He's defending its decision to double down on literalist theology by viz a viz Adam + Eve, so the irony of him citing "DNA" is almost palpable. The real issue is literalism and fundamentalism; this point is it's just a way of drawing culture war lines, you could certainly be a non-Genesis-literalist Christian. Took a fun little jaunt to DC with my buddy JZ, partially to see the "Art of the Video Game" exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery... 2019 Update: I was saddened that a panoramic view I entrusted with photosynth.net went away along with the service - fuel for my "don't trust the cloud with anything but backups" paranoia)

I had captioned the earlier work "The view from 6 rue de Jean Mace... a lovely patio to relax in the evenings with."... so I post this photo that represents it a bit, and what I most remember: my favorite meals on all the trips to europe I've taken were probably here, light dinner with one-euro baguette or crackers, and cheese and wine, and fruit.

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via
--on a bit of a Beatles kick, triggedered by reading "100 Best Beatles Songs: An Informed Fan's Guide". Went on a bit of a wikikick (what's the word for that, when you just start following links? Surfing? More networked than that though...) freading about Cynthia Lennon having an affair with "Magic Alex". I was intrigued by his "Nothing Box" (partially 'cause of the name), something that John Lennon is said to liked staring at while tripping... this advert for it and a picture of Lennon with it from Lennon's Sunroom. (I'm kind of conceptually interested in the Indica Gallery where Magic Alex showed some of his kinetic lightwork and also where Lennon met Yoko Ono...

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One MAD parody, "G.I. Shmoe" - repeated gag was a woman asking "HEY JOE- YOU GOT CHEWING GUM?" Guess it was a pickup-line, not sure what era though.

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Yay to 10-1 Design and their iPad/iPhone Pogo sketch stylus- mine got a broken clip, I emailed, they said there had been a bad production run and sent a replacement.

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It occurs to me that the App Store's restrictions and control are to this coming mobile era what Windows's inferior user interface was to the PC era: something that offends some critics to a degree such that they will insist for years, despite the success and popularity of the platform, that it's a fatal flaw that will ultimately doom it.

--via the BBC Animals in the Womb series. The Dolphin was cute too!

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Before persuading by logic, someone must be persuaded in their system that logic is the best means to accept. Logic cannot be used for this.

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Last night at my UU covenant group we were talking about personal ethics. One idea occurred to me is that maybe "a balanced life" should be elevated to the status of a "moral good" - otherwise, it's hard to argue that we're not compelled to be absolute zealots for causes we support, but may not be willing to go ballistic about... gay marriage, fighting hunger, the environment, pro-choice or pro-life, etc.

This is a stance more compatible with Eastern religions - the "moral clarity" and zealotry impulse runs deep in Abrahamic faiths, like how Revelation 3:15-16 (KJV) says

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

(Even with food, I kind of dig lukewarm! Maybe not so much with water though.)

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realism and toleration - tolerance as the key to a nation's success.

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I am almost sickened by how difficult it is to get a Java applet to talk to a basic Perl upload script to transfer a file. So I think I mentioned (or not?) I'm going to be moving into the Au Pair apartment at my Aunt and Uncle's in Boston, the Mission Hill neighborhood. It's a great location, it's cheap rent, it's near work, it's being with family, including being around for my Aunt and Uncle as my mom is being moved to the Salvation Army's national headquarters in Virginia, and... well, my Uncle is older than my Aunt, and is fine and fit and sharp but maybe ain't remembering things the way he used to (err, keep this among us) and there's laundry and nifty stuff like that. Not to mention finally trying some ideas of living a bit more lightly, in terms of space and clutter and all that.

So, my new apartment. Like a lot of Boston brownstone apartments, there are compromises involved. Brownstones are skinny! My Aunt and Uncle have been really nice about giving up their former office-y space (originally a dining room) so that it's not just a small studio, and now I'm having a hard time figuring out the best way to set up the rooms...

Here's a rough sketch: (Hrrm this ended up looking a bit more phallic than I intended.) From top to bottom: the main studio apartment (Hi Josh) is there. It's a yellow room with decent hard floors and a small kitchenette. There's a cute little window space cut out between that and the room. There's a closet two rods deep, and a decent bathroom off of the hallway (ceiling to floor with bookshelves, nice.... shown in yellow) that leads to the front room.

The front room is green and has carpeting. And another closet. The blue block is a nice mantelpiece, the brown are these built in deskslabs, and the yellow represents bookshelves (there are also bookshelves above the deskslabs. My family is a big believer in bookshelves.) There's a chandelier in the center and a nice bay window facing the street.

So one option keeps how the furniture is currently set up, with the backroom used as a bedroom. I stuck in the bed (shown in green) and a loveseat foldabed that's currently there, plus drew in where I think the projector would go, using the space above the mantle. (EB thinks I should project towards the top wall, pull the screen over the two doors, but I can't figure out where the projector would sit, plus hanging the screen would be more problematic.) So Pros include not having to re-disassemble the bed, and in general having a nice spread out entertainment space, along with my main desk. Cons include having a kitchen off the bedroom.

I came up with an alternate idea of using the front room as a bedroom: Pros include having the bedroom be a softer room Cons might be having people walk through the bedroom, especially if I put a chair in front of the top room's door to the outside hallway. Also, having a chandelier in the bedroom, and the way it might be louder in the morning than the top room that is by a quieter alley. Plus violating the advice of not having your workspace in your bedroom. The top room has a great wall for a projector though, I might even do something clever with that little galley window.

So I dunno. Personally I'm leaning towards the second idea, but EB and JZ both like keeping the bedroom where it is.

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gonna be closer to my family but have to work harder at other social contacts...

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the idea that buying quality saves more in the long term. but to what extent can you trust the price/durability correlation?

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heh so funny how bonnie comes to the developer cubicleland to get work done away from the hubbub of the main open floor office

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in Arlington for the night. 4 years slipped by, as years do. am I crying for what my time here was, or wasn't?

Lee / EB / Me in the nosebleeds

So EB was scheduled to see Friday's Sox game which got rained out and became the second part of a double header last night. His friend Lee then had an extra ticke for the rescheduled game, and I tagged along, a good way to unwind after a day of tearing down cabinets and stripping wallpaper up in Rockport.

I hadn't been to a ball game for years and years, since well before I started watching Sox games and learned a little something about how the game is played, beyond the basic rules. What I most noticed about seeing a game in person is this: it's motion vs. space. on TV, a hit ball is about motion, the camera panning to follow the ball as it soars along, the stadium a blur behind it. In person, it's all about space, watching the ball go up up up to some superhuman height above the fixed confines of the stadium.

That evening was not the Sox's finest moment. After hearing about a 13-2 victory that afternoon, we left in the seventh as the Sox were behind 0-8. By sneaking out then we missed 6 more runs by the Braves and some extra rain. We did get to see a drunk fan sucker punch a buddy who had snagged some of his Italian Sausage, and then watch a fan dash across the field, but like an idiot I didn't think to pull out my camera until the cops already had him.

"Huh, I hope this new Sox cap was looking over. [Checks in visor mirror] Nope. Baseball caps always make me look like I'm wearing a slightly oversized yamaka. I guess that's what I get for having the last name of Israel."
"No, that's what you get for having an oversized head."
"'Pumpkin-like cranium' is my prefered term but... yeah."

I've noticed that for every current front page entry, I've had a bit of non-"of the Moment" rambling. I know I've fretted about the balance of quotes-and-links to Kirk's ramblings before (and that that navel-gazing fretting probably doesn't make the most exciting reading) but I think for a while I'd like to make some non-"Moment" content a daily occurrence on this site.

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Non-Moment of the Moment
Yesterday our lead engineer Tim was talking about his ADD and the ways he has of coping with it. He mentioned a bit of "self-medication" with caffeine, and it reminded me of Mo saying how stuff like Ritalin calms a person with ADD down but has the opposite effect on people without the condition. Same with caffeine, though "opposite effect" isn't quite accurate in either case. I only sort of remember Tim's explanation of exciters and inhibitors in the brain chemistry but it seemed to make sense of that counter-intuitive idea.

Tim's geekish computer metaphor for his head was like a terrific multithreaded processor without a scheduler, or with a poor one. One trick people with ADD pick up on is "self-medicating" with something distracting to occupy one of the threads that would otherwise start pushing the rest of the brain around, looking for something to do... he talked about how his own son will play contentedly with Legos for hours if there's a TV on, but turn it off and he'll wander off within minutes. Same goes for the daughter of a friend of his and having music on while doing homework.

He also mentioned how for someone growing up with ADD, things change as the brain matures and gets older, and that made me think about some differences I've noted in my own ability to focus. I don't think I have ADD proper, but might have had a bit of a similar chemistry especially when I was younger. But I've noticed how I used to like random music on when I wanted to hunker down and focus, but now it has to be music I'm very familiar with... preferably energetic, so I can tap into the energy as well. Tim also talked about how he's gotten very good at balancing his own head, but sometimes he'll get virtually indistractable as every thread gets focused on different elements of the same problem. I remember something like that happening when I was a kid, where I'd get so engulfed in a book that I'd ignore my name being called, though I haven't noticed that happening to me so much lately.

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Video of the Moment
Wow, BoingBoing's description and photo of this golem suit was impressive enough, but check out the video. D+Dish geekery at its very finest!

I'm very impressed with youtube's performance. They seem to have great bandwidth and/or efficiency, because videos seem to always start right up, and because of their custom player, there's never a hassle with drivers...I guess the downside is there might not be an easy way of saving a video...

So Ksenia's English still has rough patches, but sometimes it's cute...last Monday she asked me to pick up some whipped cream in a can for her grandmother's birthday dinner, except she called it "whisper cream". Which given the Shhhhhhh sound it makes when you spray it, and the general light texture it's supposed to have, is actually a much better expression than "whipped cream". Less violent at any rate.

Anyway, I don't know when was the last time I bought whipped cream, but when I jostled one of the cans they had available at the supermarket, the contents seemed (to me) to be suspiciously "liquidy". Then I tried a few more cans, and realized they all made a similar sound, and so that it was probably just what they were supposed to do untill well-shaken, and that no one would be mad at me for not getting the right stuff. And then it hit me--is it normal to be less concerned about, say, how well the party gets on with the whipped cream I bring then to not have people think I'm a bozo who doesn't know how to buy whipped cream properly? Such a strange thing to be insecure about! But I think too much of my life is like that...I'm more concerned about it being my fault and respnsibility if something goes wrong than I am about the thing going wrong itself.

Issues, issues.

In other news, I did see "Revenge of the Sith" with Ksenia, Evil B., and his wife after a Sushi dinner. It was good, but dragged in the early middle a bit. If I see it again I want to get a score card for how many light-saber-welding limbs get chopped...good thing those laser swords cauterize the wounds instantly! Our seats were pretty high up...I almost would have rather gone for the back of the front section (one of those stadium seating setups at Fenway) but that got nixed by the women in the group...they just don't understand that to really feel a spaceship battle the spaceships need to be REALLY big relative to your field of vision. I think I would like to get the trilogy on DVD when it comes out, this film has retroactively made the other prequels better.

In other other news, when did Google stop directly linking to sites and send you through a redirect? Seems kind of sketchy to me. I mean, I've been tempted to setup something similar on this site, but then I don't have a "Don't Be Evil" policy to adhere to. And it's definately a negative in the sense that a link to a site that you've been to through (found via other means) won't show up as clicked in the Google search results.

Image and Quote of the Moment

When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track.

Weegee was the most famous NYC street and crime photographer. The photo is "Girls at the Bar", c. 1946...I thought it was appropriate for today, when so many gay couples are tying the knot (after the 3 day waiting period.) Janes at a wedding of 20 couples today.

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Moment of the Moment
Here's a wonderful moment:
It's night, you're tired, you're just arriving home after driving a while with the radio on...you pull into the driveway, turn off the engine and the radio and sit and close your eyes and maybe recline a bit. Such a lovely newfound lack of stimulation...no road noise, no radio, no need to keep your eyes and mind on the road...only the sound of the car cooling down and settling in for the night, and the usual night noise beyond.

You don't need to stay there too long, just long enough for the calm of the moment to settle in, then you can walk into your home and into bed.

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Spam Subject of the Moment

Regretful Of Having Little Diccky? Hahha trinomial whipsnake

I don't know what a trinomial whipsnake is, and can only guess how it ties into having a "Little Diccky", but it certainly has an air of menace about it.

Come to think of it, "Trinomial Whipsnake" wouldn't be a terrible name for a band.

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Article of the Moment
The universe as a giant hack by God...

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Essay of the Moment
Another Slate piece, against willy-nilly anti-gay-marriage 'slippery slope' arguments.

old passport. new passport. curse you mailboxes etc!

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Random Snicker of the Moment
So I got my passport yesterday, yay...I got my old passport for my "summer before college" trip to Portugal in 1992, it had expired since our last international trip. We hadn't noticed, so last week we got expedited service. Anyway, I was looking at this FAQ on German Visas (to try to figure out what most easily constitutes proof of health insurance) and I felt a little sad I had no need for a Verpflichtungserklärung, an official affidavit of support from friends or relatives.

Gotta love German. It's like legos for words!

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News of the Moment
Ugh. Asia Times thinks that "the next targets could be in Europe, and soon." Yay, just what I want to hear before heading out. On the other hand--what are the odds? Everyone thinks that they're special, singled out for good or bad fortune. That's not the way it works though.

Actually, I've been thinking about our nation and risk aversion. While I have no doubt that our soldiers hold their own in terms of bravery on an individual basis, on the institutional level, our military is much more cautious than say, the British, and that works to our detriment. When the British took off their helmets and started wearing their berets, when they got out of their tanks to talk with the locals--even though in one instance it cost a British soldier his life--they were able to connect to the population, to foster a positive relationship that our guys couldn't. We project an image of faceless, untouchable soldiers, and the more we do that, the more distanced we are from the populations we're theoretically trying to help.

Similarly, Jane's wonders if our decision to remove troops from Saudi Arabia is seen as a bit of a victory for Bin Laden.

All in all the situation isn't as bad as it could be. The fact that terrorists are picking softer targets and haven't conducted a jaw-dropper attack since 9/11 indicates that some of our efforts are paying off. I wish all this stuff wasn't happening right before our trip, but overall I'm confident the odds are in our favor. And if not...well, I've had a pretty good life in all. From a global and historical perspective, I've been way up the high percentiles. (My one request would be that my collective family friends and/or fanbase (heh) try to keep the Love Blender going and find a permanent way of archiving this site...)

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Link of the Moment
Hemmings Motor News presents Oddies but Goodies, oddities from the history of cars. Some really cool stuff in there...the 1939 Antarctic Snow Cruiser (with its 10 foot wheels, built-in darkroom, and optional attachable biplane accessory) was pretty amazing, and this 1931 idea for adding some shape symbology to traffic lights (so that colorblind people can more clearly see what's going on) makes so much sense it's not even funny. (I only had time for the first dozen or so, but I plan to come back and read through 'em.) Mascots of the Moment
The Mighty Midols and their fight against "Monsteruation" are about the most random corporate animated spokespeople I've seen in a while. They have they're own little minicartoon and game (actually I dig the little thumping beat they play in the introscreen to the game itself...)

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Star Wars Link of the Moment
Trying to meet my insatiable appetite for more, More, MORE! about the Star Wars universe, the official online Star Wars Databank is pretty cool, covering characters, locations, vehicles, and all of that. It has three views of its various entries: what you learn from the films, what's "known" from the "expanded universe" (comics, novels, games, etc) and then a "behind the scenes" view of the Industrial Lights and Magic design.

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Quote of the Moment

Like the man says: Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive.

Went to my five year reunion at Tufts last night. I skipped some of the multiyear events and just went to the dinner, but I guess for the cheapskate 5 year-ers they don't go all out. It was catered by Redbones but it was in a gym. Not a great turn out. The people there seemed... I dunno, pretty much the same. We agreed that it would be better if they could find someway to have people come back based on what they studied, or what groups they were in, for a general period of time, rather than strictly by year.

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Link and Ramble of the Moment
A wonderful, wonderful commercial is back on the air... here's how I described it last summer:

There's a brilliant commercial for the VW Cabrio, a convertible. 4 people are driving on a moonlit road in the country, enjoying the night air, looking up at the moon, trying to catch the magical looking pollen as it blows past, all to this wonderful mellow folksy song 'Pink Moon'. They finally arrive at the destination, a party- through the windshield you see many cars, strings of big festive lights, people talking... it seems very pleasant but the foursome look at each other and silently decide to keep driving into the night. It's a beautifully shot piece, the convertible nature of the car permitting intimate shots from many angles in the moonlight, not just the typical headon from the front view. Even though I find the decision to ditch the party unbelievable and just the wrong choice, as a whole the spot really resonates with me. I'm seriously tempted to look into one when I get my next car. (Then again I've always liked the compact boxiness of VW convertibles.)

You can see it here at VW (same link as above) or at AdCritic.com. (When I was looking for a second copy at the VW site I found this image which would have been much better for the quantum car gag I had here a few weeks ago.)

You know, one of the nice things about this quote 'blog over the Palm journal it replaced is that I can include links to the thing, as well as the images. Incidently, although some people were really happy to see Nick Drake (who did the song) get some exposure with this ad, I was a little bummed out when I saw that the lyrics didn't live up to the mood.