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The secret to getting the most fun out of life is: *to live dangerously*.
Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unknown seas! Live at war with your peers and with yourself!

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Don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not?

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I have found that it's useful to begin the conversation with a discussion not of homosexuality but of left-handedness. One hundred years ago, left-handedness was considered *pathological*: an abnormal condition requiring intervention to change the individual from left-handed to right-handed. The belief that left-handedness was abnormal was not unique to that era: on the contrary, that belief has been shared by many cultures in many eras, often with an added connotation linking left-handedness with evil or weakness. The Latin word for "left," *sinistra*, is also the source of our word "sinister." The Old English word *lyft*, from which we get our word "left," meant "weak" or "weakness." The French word *gauche* means both "left" and "clumsy" or "inept." One century ago it was common for teachers to "correct" left-handed children, forcing them to write with their right hand instead of their left. President Harry Truman recalled being forced to write with his right hand as a child instead of his left. All that began to change around the middle of the twentieth century, in part due to recognition that left-handedness is common and that left-handedness is innate. It's now generally recognized that between 7 percent and 10 percent of the population is left-handed. And it's equally well recognized today that left-handedness is innate, even though left-handedness sometimes is not clearly manifest until early or middle childhood.

Read this for a reading group I'm in. I think he does a pretty well researched job about how some innate differences between men and women are hardwired, and he plays lip service to the idea that people should be given more reign to explore their realities and preferences outside of those stereotypes, but falls into the trap of misunderestimating how much expectations have snowballed, and there's a whole lot of "must be" derived from "usually is" Random family anecdote, dimly recalled: my dad's family would give the kids coca-cola in small juice glasses, but he liked going to his cousins on the farm were everyone got handed out a full bottle. Or as his aunt put it: "goodness Jim you measure pop by the swallow"

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Kayaking on the Mystic River with Cora...

I've lived with six girl friends in my life. In my life I've lived with six women and all six of them have left me. And sooner or later, I'm going blame myself. But not today!

I'm a nostalgic beast.

I figure we always have the present (maybe that's all we have!) but if you keep your eyes only forward, valuing the future but discounting the past, you're only going to get poorer as time goes on.

Even with relationships and what not that didn't work out the way I would have hoped (and for almost everyone in a relationship doesn't that tend to be "all of them save the current one"?) I like to frame those as good and interesting times that I once got to have experience than something I've lost.

Exes tolerate or accommodate my retrospecting nature to various degrees. I had an epiphany during a friendly "hey I'm in town" dinner with A. the other year. At one point I mentioned how I don't have an intuitive belief in personal growth or qualitative change. People can adjust their behaviors, and new habits can become more ingrained, but there's a core that is constant, and I'm not sure it develops all that much - every potential a person has is in there at the beginning, and at best things become unlocked.

(There's a lot in Ted Chiang's short story "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" that resonated for me... the sci-fi piece traces a parallel between a possible future technology of completely recording your own life to the adoption of writing and the cultural changes it wrought. But his quote landed for me: "And while I wasn't that man anymore, I couldn't deny that I was continuous with him." The way the characters recognize the difference but also the ongoing thread seemed instructive. Another particularly apropos quote to the narrator from his daughter: "'Fine,' she said. 'But let's be clear: you don't come running to me every time you feel guilty over treating me like crap. I worked hard to put that behind me, and I'm not going to relive it just so you can feel better about yourself.'"... Good to keep in mind as I talk with old loves.)

Anyway, A indulged me by listening to me talk about what happened with M (the one time a relationship got to the marriage stage before falling apart.) My take on it was: I think we started with a similar 1:1 outlook but over time M. started to grow in a future + family looking way, and I didn't give her enough indications that I was inclined or able to lean in that same way, even though I think that potential was there. But I will always resent that she didn't communicate that much at a time when it was still actionable, to give me time to adapt. (Maybe it's not fair of me to have expected to be told what to do, but on the other hand, I think that's what wedding vows are kind of about...)

So at that dinner with A, for the first time a newly amalgamated thought clicked...
I was carrying a grudge that M didn't give a guy who doesn't believe in personal growth a chance to have personal growth

Wow. It seems stupid that it took so long for me to put those threads together.

Ah well. I've had a note to write about "expecting people to let the guy who doesn't believe in change have a chance to change" for a long while, but that Jeffries quote above finally nudged me over - along with this review of an old video game console controller, where the gimmick is they try to figure out what family/relationship role any given controller plays:
The relevant quote:

[The Sega Master System Control Pad:]

Nothing is really wrong with them. They feel sturdy... when I hold them in my hands I'm not thinking about my death, I'm not feeling pure divine joy either but that's not their fault. They're doing their best.

Who are they in our family? They're not a sibling. Our relationship feels both more distant and more intimate. They're not our family dog, our dog is more energetic.

I feel like they're our first husband, who was fine but our lives just moved in different directions. Perfect!

Welcome to our family first husband. We'll always remember the time we shared as having been okay.

I guess I aim for "having been ok". (Reminds me of my first company, where one senior developer remarked we had "delusions of mediocrity.") What did the average ancient Roman apartment look like? I found this Quora response one of the more interesting ones I've seen, I almost want to find a good kids book on the subject of Roman city life. When you read about how many assumptions about "your place" and use of shared, public things it's quite striking - switching to ancient Greece - it's sort of like reading the original versions of Aesop, and the way people have very different concerns about honor and friendship.

That all makes me think about how Christians treat their scriptures, and the cultural context they were written in. For many believers, they grow up so close to the Bible stories (if not actually reading the book that much) and they're so use to regarding it as the foundations for correct modern behavior, that that sense of estrangement is lost.

I recall years past, feeling a bit Christian-hip, and in on secret knowledge, in understanding that early Christians were setting up communes, it seemed a strong rebuke to the materialism of current-day capitalism and its accompanying consumerism, but now thinking in terms of this Quora, maybe the early Christian setup wasn't quite as much of a stretch from its surrounding context as I used to think.

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via from What Aliens, Blade Runner, Jurassic Park & Terminator Would Look Like As Anime

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What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

--Found online, a great take on Metroid... I've decided to go through all the digital photos I (or sometimes a friend on my camera, or my comission) taken over the past 20 years, and pick out the dozen best photos of each year. Starting with 1996 - but I was only taking photos for like half the year, so it's just a half dozen.

1996 marked my graduation from college, and my first apartment - in Waltham, where Dylan subletted from me for a while.

My first camera was the Kodak DC20. It had a beautiful minimalism; no screen, no flash, just a cut-out viewfinder. Like getting good old film developed at the drug store, you couldn't see what picture you had taken 'til later.

So, the best of 1996:

Last night was "Paint and Wine Night" at work...

...lesson learned, nowadays you can't paint dragons without someone assuming it's a Game of Thrones reference! Angular.js is less of a framework and more of a language. Like JSTL had sex with Perl on top of a browser.

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From my UI blog: chewing the Intern's ear off about Angular and jQuery and the like

And yet, despite their love of all things fried, the Henderson-Thompson-Shannons are living life the exact right way. Their priorities are: love, enjoy, and hang with your family.

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https://medium.com/behavior-design/1de726c2d7a4 I wonder if I could use the Hafta vs Wanna distinction for some motivational jujitsu on myself... Like Richard @photonstorm Davey ‏says:

Koalas are cute, aren't they? NOT WHEN THEY'RE WET. THEY'RE TERRIFYING AND SCARY

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Our life is the creation of our mind.

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Mercy is for the weak. Which is everybody.

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Tonight I am no longer afraid of heights.

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Wonder is broken knowledge.

After watching the new, final Harry Potter (IMAX is great, but the 3D is just starting to annoy...) we went up to Rockport to hang with EB et al...

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Jordan's- please. Update the pre-IMAX music. 90s retroswing has not come back yet. So sick of Zoot Suit Riot. #jordans #cherrypoppindaddies click to play

pcir3d2 - source - built with processing
Pretty Colour Invader Rally 3D! Inspired by Amber's liking of pretty colour crackdown Glorious Trainwreck's Klik of the Month Club #37 - the event's 3rd anniversary! Like most 3D updates, it might not be as good as the original, but I'm not displeased with how it came out. Move the mouse to have them follow the cursor and rally around their love of pretty colours or just let 'em hang out.

UPDATE: this is actually Pretty Colour Invader Rally 3D *2*... changes are: invaders now stay upright, move a little differently, have outlines, and the (remodeled) chase cursor moves X+Y when you just move the mouse, and X+Z when you hold the mouse button down as well. You can see the original here -- would be interested if anyone (besides Amber who I consulted with on this) cares enough to say which they prefer.

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Inception: Eternal Sunshine meets Oceans Eleven with a touch of the first Matrix... not bad!

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Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

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Nuts are in effect edible wood.

at BoingBoing, some talk about the restored footage. (What do NASA and the BBC have in common? They've both destroyed big chunks of their priceless heritage in the need to recycle magnetic tape.)

But it's ok, at least we have our permanent moon colony and... oh, never mind.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2223013/ - remember that old line that "man began to walk upright to free his hands for masturbation"? Now I believe it...

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Children see magic because they look for it.

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http://bakingbites.com/2007/09/car-baked-chocolate-chip-cookies-step-by-step/ - dashboard cookies in the parking lot at work I have not much to say today so here is a robot playing clarinet:

I wonder if you could build a robot trumpet player, like I envisioned in my youth. Seems like the embouchure might be even tougher to get right. (Searches for robot and trumpet together on youtube pull up fakey sounding stuff that I don't believe is real.)

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Heh... somehow the Palm graffiti "E written as backwards 3" has become a permanent part of my printing - it is a bit more efficient. Snarky Comment of the Moment

Man, I could just watch hungover Hugh stand absolutely still and blink very gingerly all day. It’s kind of hypnotic. The next three weeks of this strip could just be Hugh blinking as the storyline is advanced by word bubbles coming from off-panel. They could call it The Angriest Hungover Brit in the World.

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Quote of the Moment

A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?

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Art Game of the Moment
Continuing yesterday's instance of "things your eyes won't like very much", try 3D Stereogram Tetris... if you thought regular "Magic Eye" puzzles were tough or annoying, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Spurred on by a soon-to-expire 12% off "Reward Zone" certificate from Best Buy, I got my mom her big ticket Christmas and/or Birthday gift half a year early: a "TomTom GO 300" GPS/roadmap gadget.

It's pretty cool, and I see a lot of improvements in terms of UI from my old reliable "Babe in a Box" Garmin 2610. Most notable, all these units have that "3D" view for the map. It reminds me a lot of that old Super Nintendo "Mode 7" effect, where 3D was done by rotating and zooming over a single giant plane... despite my initial uncertainty I can see it's a UI win, I think because of the way it emphasizes the streets closer to you, since in perspective they're larger.

The one thing is, at first we couldn't use it to find my mom's own street! Though browsing, we could see it on the map. I finally found it by entering her zip code, which explained that she doesn't live in "Needham" like we thought, but "Needham Heights". (One thing I can do on m Garmin but I don't know how to on the TomTom is search for a street without knowing the city.)

Of course, one of the niftier features is all the voices they build in, male and female, and with various accents. The female UK English one is rather euphonious. And Ksenia was impressed that it also spoke Russian.

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Games of the Moment
I found this page of Chess Variants, where you can play against a weak computer opponent online (Java applet-- actually following one of the game links seemed to shutdown Firefox once, so beware.) I got the chance to try Kriegspiel, where you can't see your opponents pieces. The UI could be a bit sharper, but overall it's cool to mess around with.

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Achievment of the Weekend
Another late loveblender. The From the Ball-Room to Hell was kind of fun.

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News of the Moment
CNN had a transcript of a conversation between Bush and Blair. The headline is "Bush frustration sparks expletive" (Who cares, really, though it would be nice if he was a bit less shoot-from-the-hip) but it was kind of interesting to see a relatively casual conversation like that. Bush almost sounds like he knows what he's talking about!

So Ksenia and I went to a pretty big housewarming party last night. Not that's it's saying much but it's probably the biggest one I'd gone to in years, maybe ever. And they really went all out with the theme, "Apollo '69" -- lots of tinfoil around, people dressing up in odd mishmashes of camp scifi and 60s-wear, all rooms labeled with faux-Nasa placards, even a 2 story rocket in the back. There was a lot of lights, a pro or semi-pro DJ, a tended bar, pretty impressive. We only knew like two other people there, but still it was a decent time and we got some dancing in.

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Online Toys of the Moment
I've struck up a bit of a friendship with "VL-Tone" (at least that's one of his online handles), the guy who made that Metroid Cubed demo back in the day. The relationship was possibly cemented when I sent him a Casio SK-8 keyboard from my youth that I hardly ever brought out of retirement (even though it was really fun to mess with its ability to sample 4 sounds at once, and was very good about "looping" patterns so they could become basslines) that he plans to use for circuit bending

He's been up to more cool stuff. Most recently his Super Mario 64 Peach's Castle demo has been making the rounds (Thanks, Nick). He's managed to extract the polygon and textures data from the old N64 game and built an engine to display it. You can fly around anywhere the castle grounds, and there are a few other levels extracted as well. It has a few clipping problems but still it's cool to be able to fly straight up and look straight down, as well as duck under bridges and whatnot.

One his more obscure but very pleasant little creations is ElektroAqua--check it out! It is a copy/spinoff of one of the modes in the upcoming Nintendo DS game ElectroPlankton. I was mentioning SimTunes the other day...turns out ElectroPlankton is by Toshio Iwai, the same guy who did SimTunes. VL-Tone also mentioned a lost SNES title "Sound Fantasy".

Its surprisingly tough to find recent information on Toshio Iwai online but I did find this article on his work with Nintendo, including the lost SNES title "Sound Fantasy". It also some pictures with him onstage with Nintendo legend Miyamoto, and video of a violinist / ElectroPlankton duet of sorts. Nifty! Maybe I'll have to get one of those DSes, now that they're finally really taking advantage of the touch screen.

Annotated Doodles of the Moment
--I created this page of doodles during a company-wide business meeting...I recommend the technique of filling an entire page with small, non-repetitive doodles, it's very satisfying. Just to make my self-obsessive-geekness complete, I made it into an imagemap...hover the mouse over any doodle to find out what it is, or use the tab key to tab through each as a link and see its description in the status bar. (only tested in MSIE)

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Webcomic of the Moment
Peterman introduced me to the webcomic Full Front Nerdity...3 guys (and a webcam) around a D+D table. I don't know if I'm ashamed or proud to say I've never actually role-played. Still, I read the books enough to understand this one and if you're in a hurry just check out this other one that ends with a potentially reusable "zinger".

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Related Joke of the Moment

A fifth-level paladin drives his car to the repair shop.

He gets out and says to the mechanic "It's really weird. Normally I fight for justice and righteousness, but every time I get in this car I have this incredible urge to run over old ladies, drive way past the speed limit, and pick up hitchhiking demons. Can you help me?"

The machanic looks the car over and says "Yeah, I see what the problem is. Your alignment's off."

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Explanation of the Moment
For the unitiated: both the first "this one" cartoon link and the joke deal with D+D's concept of "alignment". See this definition of the concept for an explanation.

There is No Paddle of the Moment
Making the rounds is this terrific video of a live-action round of pingpong, Matrix style. You owe it to yourself to check it out. (They say they're just regular guys competing on a talent show called Kasou Taishou.)

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Smart Critter of the Moment
Crows can create and use tools...in this case, they know enough to shape a piece of wire into a hook to reach a tiny bucket of food stuck in a vertical pipe. As a species we really aren't quite as amazing as we assume...still pretty amazing, but not as unique. Now I feel more bummed about what West Nile Virus has done to all the crows around here.

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Virtual Stunts of the Moment
I guess with the release of the PC version of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", there are whole things people are doing with it, Mods to adjust the world and objects. Another newish artform is Stunt Video, recordings of people's car and motorcycle stunts within the game set to music. The coolest one is the one with the big graphic ("My jaw seriously dropped") though the SandahX is cool as well...it explicitly claims it doesn't hack the handling of the vehicles, so I'm not sure that the other one doesn't. Still, very well done, and fun to watch.

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Flight of the Moment
Some guy in Germany flies remote control helicopters and makes videos. (Click on "Videos" on the left side.) The "Light Aerobatics" one is probably the coolest.

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Motivation of the Moment
Reebok warns belly gonna getcha. Catchy!

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Cute Cats of the Moment
Managed to find a copy of this that wasn't on a site with a ton of porn ads: Cats being really, really cute. You feel bad for one or two of them but overall it's good fun. Political Link of the Moment
Reasonably deep article The Eagle Has Crash Landed from Foreign Policy magazine about the decline of the United States, from Vietnam on. It takes some positions that make a lot of sense, others that I'm not sure I accept. (Like viewing both World Wars as a single general conflict for power between the United States and Germany.) I sense a certain agenda on behalf of the author, but besides the general point against the hawks who want us to "Attaq Iraq" (and I still can't get my head around the public indifference to this upcoming event) I'm not sure what it is. And you have to keep perspective, the loss of American power isn't the same as the nation in ruins, though our relations with the rest of the world can help determine if we go through something more like the Soviet Union or like the United Kingdom.

We are not a nation that is able to see humbleness as a virtue.

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Quote of the Moment

It's like Vegas. You're up, you're down, but in the end the house always wins. Doesn't mean you didn't have fun.

Today, my mom flies off to England to live there for three years. That's pretty intense.

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Compassionate Conservatism

Who cares what you think?

Admittedly the author was being a bit of a dork but it's surprising how undiplomatic our "Mr. Geniality" president can be.

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You Like To Watch, Don't You?
metaspy is pretty cool, you can see what terms people are searching for in "real time", and it comes in censored and uncensored versions.

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from the T-shirt Archive: #9 of a Series

"Escher-Sketch". Cute parody of the famous escher lithograph. I've seen a similar title used for a computer program in Antic Magazine.