2023.07.24
Open Photo Gallery
2022.07.24
It's always been comforting to me to know that Pluto doesn't give a shit about what we call it.
2021.07.24
It's too bad "It is what it is" has become such a trite cliché of the reality television set, because I think its calm refusal to sort into emotionally engaged wonderful/awful (with its tacit "yeah, this situation probably isn't my first choice" living in its meta-level) is a useful tool. As far as trite pop catchphrases go it's probably better than "It's all good!" which requires a bit more self-deception or spin to be consistently true.)
Thinking on the subject reminded me of a quip I made years ago - I've been trying to note when I remember early, nascent forms of my current philosophical stances - and I looked it up in my blog:
One of my favorite tags on my blog is /tag/aim, (mostly) bits from the old AOL Instant Messenger days. For a while I assumed it was mostly nostalgia that made me think "damn, we were funnier then" (or maybe just being a bit younger and more quick-witted after all!) but you know? The modern "equivalents" of AIM - SMS/WhatsApp etc... most of them are phone based. And it's much more challenging to get banter going between people tapping into their screens than with two competent typists!
Cleveland Indians dropping the name and switching to "Guardians". Didn't realize it was on the short list. I like this logo:
It's kind of a deep cut, but the name comes from (and the art deco-ish style reflects) the statues (either "Guardians of Traffic" or "Guardians of Commerce"?) on the Hope Memorial Bridge:
I was kind of hoping for a return of the Cleveland Spiders but I guess that was too creepy a name to have legs (so to speak).
2020.07.24
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
ridiculous ones.
Arthur's Laws of Love:
(1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else.
(2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person.
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
'Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just love Mom.'
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
You first.
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back.
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.
Love is sentimental measles.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very *least* he can do is to Shut Up!
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies, the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a nose bleed, which usually cures them of *that*.
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing?
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
I also found files making this hypnotic barcode clock, also available online.
A crucifix for a snake would just be a stick.
2019.07.24
At a junior college in South central Kansas there is an introductory course taught by Death. The course, Basics in Animal Husbandry, is transferable to most major Universities, except for a few small liberal arts colleges who are skeptical of Death's academic qualifications. At least once, but usually two or three times, during every semester, Death would be absent from class. In her place was always the same man, who simply announced himself as Death's Substitute. He spoke with a strong southern accent, was very overweight, and told stories about his wacky shopping mishaps at discount stores to highlight his lessons. The next day Death would be back in class, excusing her absence because of some cold or flu. Then the class would laugh, to which Death would respond with a slight smile, because we had all seen the mornings news about some plane crash or earthquake, and knew what she'd really been up to.
If one is fortunate enough to reach a level of middle-aged, one encounters that phenomenon where any fixed interval of time is at risk for seemingly curiously compressed. (A "where did the years GO?" type thing.) Perhaps it's an artifact of any set unit of time being smaller percentage-wise of the overall length of time lived.
Lately for me it gets manifested as "what the hell, time to cut my fingernails AGAIN??"
(Also, FWIW: I'm often skeptical about the benefit/cost ratio of gourmet versions of things, but "Seki Edge Stainless Steel Fingernail Clipper (SS-106)" has proven worth the extra cost.)
This piece about this series of videos:
Eight years ago, a middle-aged Japanese man started a YouTube channel and began posting videos of himself feeding stray cats. A lot of videos. Usually one per day, every day. As of this year, he had posted over 19,000 times. If you put all his videos into one big playlist and turned on autoplay, it would take you roughly six and a half days to reach the end. It’s possibly the most prolific non-automated channel on YouTube.I kind of love it!
It’s also one of the loneliest.
2018.07.24
"They've politicized and in some cases monetized their public service," The White House press secretary Sarah Sanders claims.That's chutzpah!
This side of "Tart Cherry Limeade Sparkling Polar" is making me angry. Would it have killed them to line up the text and the lines? Are they trying to trigger people's OCD? "Thanks" Liz.
2017.07.24
TIL: Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, was discovered on the sun before it was found on the earth. (Hence, helium like helios, the greek word for the sun.)
2016.07.24
Open Photo Gallery
There was a little park and playground right across from our house in Waltham.
Yi, at my job in Salem.
Mo and her dad. Folder information suggests this is around her brother Dan's thesis concert.
We travelled to Europe that spring, in part to attend Veronika and Volker's wedding in Germany. The German guests thought I was being charmingly euphemistic when I told them Veronika and I "dated" in high school. Also I learned, don't try and keep up with German guests when there's free red wine being poured.
The kid of one of V+V's friends. I learned two things playing Pictionary (in English) with Germans: one, the German's view of Aladdin's Lamp is more upright, like a vase. Two, in English (or at least the UK flavor?) technically, a frown is an expression of the brows, not of the mouth.
We visited my mom who was working in London those years. I've always liked this shot of Mo on the London Eye, Europe's tallest ferris wheel.
Jane and Julia. Sometimes Jane and I felt like the only liberals at that place, it was a bit square.
The family reunion was in Belmont that year, here's a little soccer action.
An in-progress shot of my project for that year, JoustPong for the Atari 2600. I don't want to mix up cause and effect, but sometimes I wonder about if I had put as much focus on Mo's project of getting a house as I had on my own technical endeavor.
I do enjoy this shot from EB's wedding.
Halloween Pac-Danger, at the "Paper Source" near Porter.
Flapper Jane dancing at a masquerade ball Mo and I threw. Sometimes that feels like the last hurrah for me and her and that place and that time; she had realized her interests lay elsewhere.
BONUS: A few months later I made this composite shot of the park, and called it "Ghost of a Snowman"
Clay Shirky speaks to why I'm so appalled about Trump.
2015.07.24
seaport has the best clouds sometimes
2014.07.24
Two smart articles:
The War Nerd on ISIS. His analysis always seems very straight forward and pull-no-punches. In short: ISIS isn't really a threat for further domination, but they may represent a defacto partisan trifurcation of Iraq.
Slate on Putin. I didn't realize how insular Russia was becoming. That story is so sad, really.
Lately I'm wondering if "UI Engineer" is not a good description of what I want to do as a career. There's this legion of engineers who seem to dig build systems and complex frameworks more than, you know, building cool interactions and powerful UX. (And I know I can build robust, maintainable systems with simpler, fewer layers of indirection, more-native-browser tools.) But what is the term for this kind of role?
2013.07.24
Sure it mattered. When you get to my age you discover that everything mattered. Life isn't a series of good and bad choices. It's harder to steer it one way or the other than most people think. You just get pulled along. You look back and you wonder 'could I have changed the course of my life?' Maybe you could've ... but it would probably have taken a tremendous force of will.
Every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s. In fact, ten percent of all the photos we have were taken in the past 12 months.I'm not 100% sure I buy the 10% line, but maybe!
If I had a dollar for every time someone called me an entitled white guy the problem would be even worse
Great quote from this goodmenproject article:
The core issue is this: many, many men in our society feel they have to be needed, because they can't imagine they could ever be wanted.I wish the article pushed a little farther, though, to think about the background of this: the old trope of men as proactive subject, women as passive object. The old (and still around, alas) "male as default", especially for active roles. As society slowly gets better at accepting women as subject, men will be better served if they can accept a corresponding role as possible "objet du desir", someone you'd LIKE to have around than NEED to have around.
2012.07.24
The whole site is pretty awesome, actually. Such a cool concept, making awesome but not 100% implausible UIs...
Slate on The GOP: the party of the postfacts future. Yeesh.
2011.07.24
http://www.frumforum.com/stumbling-toward-disaster - Republicans brought the hand grenade of default to the knife fight of politics. Likely victim: the economy, you, me.
Silver Ball Museum @ Asbury Park boardwalk- such vast amounts of pinball. The late "Revenge from Mars" was astounding, visuals and playwise.
2010.07.24
Friday my company had an outing, canoeing on the Charles (Newton area) followed by some tasty meat from Red Bones. Most of these are from my photoset of the day...
Open Photo Gallery
Ok, so these two aren't -- this is Spy Pond from last weekend--
I was surprised at how well this other shot of the moon came out. (while still always bummed that the cratering on the moon doesn't really look like anything else.)
Although in my heart of hearts I prefer the July 4th Kayaking on the lower part of the Charles, I was kind of stunned at how scenic it is upstream...
Though as always, I'm just as fascinated by human engineering, like the underside of this bridge, closeup...
And a bit further back on the way back in...
And I'm not above admiring the odd bit of graffiti, if competently done, and/or oddly placed, and/or with an odd word or phrase in it.
Finally, a bug in the window of the men's room--
I take you to the beach sometime and i'll bring the blanket and the chicken. Is this not the makins for love?
"Pretty please?"
"The physical appearance of the please makes no difference."
Is Time Itself Slowing Down? (or "disappearing from the universe" as the article is headlined.) You know, I have to say that makes more sense to me than "Dark Energy". Also: would creatures in that universe really notice it? Or just move slower and slower, asymptotically closer to stopping forver? (via Bill)
Can't figure out if flikr's UI lets me do what I want, namely, quickly go through large versions of photos in set and discard ones I dislike.
The gratifying *SNAP* of unfurling a new garbage bag more than makes up for any drudgery of taking out the kitchen trash.
Been thinking about how the iPad might represent a new breed of "Casual Computers". I was thinking about my computers before the web; for me they were game players and word processors and that was it; nerdy and/or boring. Would I even bother owning, say, laptops if not for the web? With the iPad, the PC might return to a workhorse type role; it's good for more serious browsing, and critical for getting things done, but not so much fun beyond that.
It was grandmotherly, as though grandma... might have done it with... her axe.
2009.07.24
Recently I decided to press the reset button on the material I had at hand in there... My bathroom library was as follows:
- Loadstar (old C=64 magazine-on-disk) catalog
- Holy Cow
- The Book of Sequels
- Cooking for Dummies
- Penny Arcade 2: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings
- Edge Presents The 100 Best Video Games
- WWII From Here to Eternity (WW2 as drawn and painted by soldiers)
- The Photographer's Manual
- Tufts University ("College History Series")
- My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable
- Discussion and Interaction in the Academic Community (Aunt's)
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Player's Guide
- Clerks: The Lost Scene (Comic)
- Clerks: Holiday Special (Comic)
- The Illustrated History of WWII
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: Maximum Performance
- My I Kiss You on the Lips, Miss Sandra?
- 5 copies of Wired
- 8 copies of Game Informer
- Hardcore Gamer Magazine
- Fashion Rocks (think this was bundled with a Wired)
Any volunteers to describe their bathroom library in the comments? Or is it still all just old Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom Counties?
(As for the "ick" and "well I'm never borrowing a book from HIM" factors... I dunno. I suspect if you start going down the road of uptightness beyond washing your hands after using the bathroom, it's a slippery slope to starting to freak out how many insect bits per gallon are allowed in foods, or about the eyebrow mites we all carry, or the intestinal bacteria that help us all out, and 1,000 other ways where things we think of as relatively pristine are really quite icky.)
Random anecdote: my dad grew up rural enough to remember some places where the Sears Roebuck catalog served as a combination of toilet paper and reading material (maybe for an outhouse at the cousins' farm?) There was a specified order to which sections of the catalog got torn out first; I think it started with shoes.
Trees and grass are looking so green. Is that because all the rainwater "lets" them be, or they desperately reaching to use any sun they can?
After a spring and half a summer of sandals, socks and shoes (for a business meeting) feels like swaddling clothes.
- The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon
2008.07.24
Reading further into the book, I see what Hawkins is up to. Around 100 pages in he writes
If Searle's Chinese Room contained a similar memory system that could make predictions about what Chinese characters would appear next and what would happen next in the story, we could say with confidence that the room understood Chinese and understood the story. We now see where Alan Turing went wrong. Prediction, not behavior, is the proof of intelligence.So now we see where Hawkins went wrong... Turing specified a judge looking to determine if the conversation partner is a human or a computer, and is permitted to ask questions that could not be answered without having a normal human's ability to predict the flow of a conversation, to fill in the gaps. Thus Hawkins use of the Chinese Room is a giant strawman, where he might be using the room as a stand in for "computers as they are generally used now" (with a CPU, long and short term memory, following programs step by step, etc) and a weak form of the Turing test (fooling a Chinese speaker who probably wasn't having that deep of a conversation to begin with) and saying that this test can be passed by a machine that isn't really thinking, which is view so weak it's tough to argue against.
For Hawkins, and I think he makes a strong case for this, prediction - a non-stop giant flow of expectation and comparison with reality - is the tool and hallmark and perhaps even necessary component of intelligence. He is probably taking for granted Searle's idea of "Strong AI" vs "Weak AI"; some proponents of the former would argue that even a simple thermostat has a (extremely) rough form of consciousness, that it in effect "wants" the room to be a certain temperature and "acts" according to that desire. Hawkins sees a bigger, unbridgeable gap between that kind of simple mechanism and generalized intelligence, rather than a continuum, and feels that he has isolated the crucial difference.
I like when I read a book about how the brain and consciousness might function, and suddenly I feel more self-aware of my own internal thought process.
Quote of the Moment
Sure it mattered. When you get to my age you discover that everything mattered. Life isn't a series of good and bad choices. It's harder to steer it one way or the other than most people think. You just get pulled along. You look back and you wonder 'could I have changed the course of my life?' Maybe you could've ... but it would probably have taken a tremendous force of will.The man was a friend of "Kalo", a New Yorker cartoonist the main semi-autobiographical main character is trying to find information about. (It turns out Kalo is made up by Seth (pen name of Gregory Gallant), though he throws in some convincing mockups of Kalo cartoons at the end that really make the quest feel real.)
I think I should let myself be hungry more -- "full" as default is probably not good. Conversely... diet coke and creme de menthe altoids?
2007.07.24
News of the Moment
One Laptop Per Child is underway, and already kids browsing porn is an issue. Actually, the morning before I read that story I heard about the progress of OLPC, and how they agonized about the $2.50 extra adding a camera to it would cost... for a second I wondered if "teen webcam girl" culture might spread through these potentially at-risk populations in the most vile ways imaginable. Mercifully, I don't think the economic infrastructure is there for that, but still.
Funny of the Moment
Cute Slate piece on what they should have asked at last nights Youtube debates:
Gentlemen, here's the scenario: As you are flying home from Moscow--having told the world you will never deal with terrorists--hijackers, posing as reporters, seize Air Force One. They vow to kill a hostage every half-hour, including your wife and daughter, until you release a murderous Russian general. I'll start with Senator Obama. Do you negotiate with the hijackers in the hope of saving lives, or do you flee into the bowels of the craft, then pick them off, one by one, with makeshift shanks and your bare hands?Ah, sweet politics. May the most physically attractive candidate win, again, and may that be Senator Obama.
Game of the Moment
I posted some sandbox particle-based games earlier, but now they have little fighters who kick each other. Fun!
2006.07.24
I have a kooky theory, that the best time for me to exercise is right before bed, that maybe cranking up your meatabolism before being so inactive is useful. The computerpoint is, maybe it's just that I'm more dehydrated or whatever when I go to weigh myself the next morning. A corowker mentions the idea that right before you eat is a great time for exercise as well.
I found the video for groove is in the heart online, and like exercising to that, even if I have to kind of doubletime it if I want to keep in rhythm. It's just as weird and campy a video as I would have hoped for. And Lady Miss Kier...mmmmmmmm...
Analysis of the Moment
Slate's Middle East Buddy List... a grid showing who are friends, who are enemies, and why.
2005.07.24
Open Photo Gallery
2004.07.24
AIM of the Moment
LAN3: Heh. This is what I call balanced media:
"Sept. 11 Panel Says Government Failures Not to Blame for Attacks"--headline, Associated Press, July 22
"9/11 Inquiry Damns US Government"--headline, Reuters, July 22
"Leaders Not Blamed in 9/11 Report"--headline, Associated Press, July 22
"9/11 Panel Point to Bush and Clinton Failings"--headline, Reuters, July 22
LAN3:(from OpinionJournal: no jump link; it's halfway down under "Did Reuters see a different report?")
LAN3: Also, I don't know if you wanted to link to it, but "Uncle Patrick" Hughes has posted another list of advice for the kiddies. As he disclaims from the start, it's not as funny as the first list, but it's pretty funny.
2003.07.24
Not enough hours in the damn day.
Not enough days in the damn month.
Not enough months in the damn year.
Not enough years in the damn lifetime.
But, oddly enough, too many days in the damn week.
Why isn't it Friday yet?
IMDb of the Moment
Nice! From Justin to Kelly has surpassed Manos, the Hands of Fate as the worst of the Bottom 100 Films at IMDb.
Music of the Moment
Mashups are remixes where the artist takes 2 or more known songs and slams them together. "Dsico that No-Talent Hack" has a download page full of some pretty good ones. My very favorite was Groove's a Bitch featuring Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" against Missy Eliott's "She's a Bitch" and Basement Jaxx's "Just 1 Kiss". (I found it looking for information on Deee-Lite's Lady Miss Kier lawsuit against the game Space Channel 5...she claims they stole her image, I'd say it was a completely dumb case except previously they tried to license it from her and then went ahead on their own.)
Feedback Feedback of the Moment
After yesterday's 'French Fries' quote, Atari programmer Nick Bensema came up with "Fruit flies like a banana, French fries like a hamburger" on the comments page, which I hadn't heard before, but I like it a lot. After that, LAN3 requested "More jokes in the punchline-as-setup vein, please" but try as I might, I can't quite wrap my head around what that's supposed to be asking for. I must be dumb.
2002.07.24
Oy, the good old days, when a highjacking just meant a small social disruption, with only a few people being killed at worst.
Death and her Substitute
At a junior college in South central Kansas there is an introductory course taught by Death. The course, Basics in Animal Husbandry, is transferable to most major Universities, except for a few small liberal arts colleges who are skeptical of Death's academic qualifications. At least once, but usually two or three times, during every semester, Death would be absent from class. In her place was always the same man, who simply announced himself as Death's Substitute. He spoke with a strong southern accent, was very overweight, and told stories about his wacky shopping mishaps at discount stores to highlight his lessons. The next day Death would be back in class, excusing her absence because of some cold or flu. Then the class would laugh, to which Death would respond with a slight smile, because we had all seen the mornings news about some plane crash or earthquake, and knew what she'd really been up to.
2001.07.24
Online Toy of the Moment
What Historical Military Leader Are You Most Like? I'm a Robert E. Lee, which I think is the most modern seeming choice: don't be a glory hound, trust your troops to make the right decision, negotiate well. (I plotted out the binary tree of 4 A/B decisions that lead to the 16 possible outcomes. I'm geeky like that.)
Cartoon of the Moment
A Brilliant Tom Tomorrow Cartoon.Salon rocks so much.
Quote of the Moment
Dear L. L. Bean, please rename the color choice for mens' boxers to something other than 'cream.' Many thanks.