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The City was low-key, but literally, magical. At some point a wish granting aspect seemed to have been woven into its fabric. A scorching hot August might herald the unexpected appearance of an ice cream truck, or even a hitherto neglected corner ice cream shop. The number of middle tier lottery wins was suspiciously high.

We suspected there was a retro-temporal aspect to it as well. One day people just began to notice The Pirate Quarter, a somewhat Disney-fied set of streets on the north side, on the inlet to the sea that no-one would swear had always been there but no-one could deny having always been part of the City either.

The residents of the Quarter were nice enough, like Jamie McGrew, the old guy with the eyepatch over one clouded eye and his perpetual scruff, who worked on the tourist galleon forever moored to the main pier. Off duty he would happily answer questions about his own personal past, but no matter how much we probed we could never detect a paradox, just a life story deftly woven in and around aspects of our own histories we had clearer and more concrete recollections of. A few of us the Bat started calling him "Jamais", as in "jamais vu", but he took our suspicions in good cheer, and soon enough we couldn't remember when we thought we hadn't always known him.

Recent snack "creation" of mine: 2 Wasa Rye crackers with Dijon or Horesradish Mustard.

I say it's a reasonable snack that does good at meeting chip-like salty/crunchy cravings, and is pretty satisfying @ 40 calories. (The crackers alone would be kind of miserable, but with a good mustard? Not bad!)

Melissa says it's "weird" and "like something a pregnant lady would eat"

Are you on Team Kirk or Team Melissa on this one? I barely know what this means but I like the mood, and the movie.

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Forgot to post these two fine feathered folk, one from last week the other from this last weekend.

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Mother Jones on FOX news as the biggest provider of fuel for the hyperpartisan flames. (Combine that with nuts-o gerrymandering and an overflowing abundance of safe districts where the political threat is ALWAYS from being called out as too soft from inside your own party vs actually having to appeal to media voters... it's trouble.)

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I didn't start properly getting drunk with friends until I was about twenty-three years old and I think the reason I started joining in was because I couldn't stand around watching people getting drunk any more. Not because I was jealous but because when you see people get drunk it looks like the most pointless activity you could ever imagine. You are watching someone become progressively worse as the night goes on and yet they insist it's the best. Unless you also have some sort of buzz going, drunk people are the most irritating company you could ever wish to keep. Having a conversation with a drunk person when you are sober is like being a classroom assistant in a primary school for kids who are drunk.

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A child looks at your average office and sees a playground; an adult looks at an office and sees a prison sentence. Then there are adults who love swivel chairs and hole-punches but can't openly enjoy them because they aren't children anymore and their playground days are over. The universe is cruel.

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I've been getting into Luigi's Lemon Italian Ice, great texture, made me wonder "100 calories? how have i been missing out?" and then I tried Marinos and was like "oh that's right, this is icy trash" On FB my old manager Kevin asked

Why do we ikea? I mean really. Why?

This was my response:
I think there are 3 reasons to dislike IKEA:

1. the cultural triumph of mediocrity, of not great materials furniture not built for the long haul
2. the disastrously wearing and psychologically manipulative experience of the IKEA store, its rat maze and sometimes huuuuuuge lines
3. the torment of assembling this shitty flatpack, and how failing to notice one little tiny dot representing a screw hole and the only asymmetry of the piece means you have to undo like 20 minutes of work

But for those, I say:

1. IKEA is also a victory for quality of thoughtful design and simplicity, not to mention affordability.
2. The IKEA store is kind of an aspirational wonderland, tantalizing inspirations for a more elegant and less cluttered life
3. People feel a bit more connected to furniture they assembled - your work went into it, vs just you or some hired blokes wrestling in a piece that then just sits there

I dunno. I dig it! I remember a story from growing up - Salvation Army Officer families generally live in pre-furnished houses or apartments, so there's often little choice about furnishings. One time, though, our quarters were newly established, and my parents got the chance to tasteful scandinavian design stuff. But word was the people who moved in after had a tendency to be super rough with the new stuff, but mostly so they could replace it with the same old colonial crap.

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(speaking of kinetic typography videos, the one I saw for Cee Lo Green's F*** You still stands out)

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Today someone said "what are linked lists for" and I said "technical interviews, mainly" and nobody reacted in any way and I still think about that.

Cris Valenzuela's Text to Image, neural network software that attempts to generate images from text descriptions.

I like just putting in names, which create more abstract images. Here's "kirk israel":


See many cooler examples at AI Weirdness has great writeup.

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Joined Melissa for lunch on a bench outside our office building:
Me: [After going to town on a piece of BBQ Chicken]

Oof.... Daddy needs a wetnap...
...That's the worst thing I've said in the last 20 minutes.

I remember growing up in upstate NY and we'd have those Lender bagels, the ones in a bag... I figure we must have had them with blueberry jam along with the cream cheese, because this Greek Yogurt w/ Blueberry brings back such strong sense memories it's kind of uncanny...

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Another take from the Economist on a response to that leaked Google discrimination memo AOL #DefFest2016 in Ireland...

Friday at WTC station on the Silver Line I saw this new public art project - kind of awesome, it uses lenticular trickery so the goldfish change as you look at them from different angles.



Yeah. Been there since 2009. I started working and walking by it nearly daily since 2015.

How much of life do I miss by not paying attention?

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Or maybe I can pretend it's my own private Berenst#in Bears Problem and I'm secretly from another slightly more mundane parallel universe.

Maybe I'd stumbled onto the secret for eternal happiness: Keep your dreams small and stupid.

"There is no god & murphy is his prophet" & that's why my back seizes up on moving day. I should have figured out how to my my damn old place.

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Flexeril is my new old wonder drug. I was a little fuzzed but functional (i.e. not paralyzed in pain) all day!
--via 22 words

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[Writing and reading are] like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

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She is leaning on one arm on the back of my chair, her hips canted forward; her shirt rides up, showing a chevron of sleek tummy, a demure ring at the navel.

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Coding around obscure and bizarro IE9 timing-related bug symptoms (like the guts of the page missing) by having page render as IE8. #FML
--Best improvisations in the movies... a few violent or rough scenes, but still very compelling. via 22 words

These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush; (l) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies."

The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's Taxonomy wikipedia page says that no one was quite sure how seriously to take this. I like the note that "Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian, cited alleged acceptance of the authenticity of the list among many academics as a sign of the degeneration of the Western academy."
--"Alive in Joburg", the original "District 9" short... according to this Slate piece, a bit better than the movie it inspired, and having seen the film I sort of agree. I guess it was less "40 Year Old Virgin" than "The Office", which meets "The Fly", with touches of Blackhawk Down, Robocoop, and/or Predator, but the plot holes were about as big as the ship hanging over Johannesburg. Not a terrible movie, though, just disappointing given the rich material they gave themselves to work with.

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I know Les Paul was really old. But I am still convinced he died because you can hear Justin Timberlake on 104.1 in Boston now.

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for amber: an aquatic ape fairy
(a mishear at Park Street Station)
To view this content, you need to install Java from java.com
bumblebee mafia - source - built with processing

My entry for Klik of the Month Klub #14: bumblebee mafia!

(I didn't have time to make it a game in terms of game overs or points or, if I actually want to start making games instead of toys, waves.)

Press any key or the mouse button to raise the water cannon and try to splash the bees into the ground...

I'm happy with how pretty it turned out...

The title came from this exchange on Gamer's Quarter between Harveyjames and aderack...

I'd also like to point out that OPA OPA would not be able to fly with those tiny wings.

What are you, the bumblebee mafia?

(The Opa-Opa being the main character of the Fantasty Zone games, and I assume the joke reference is to the idea that Scientists Say Bumblebees Can't Fly But The Bees Don't Know That.)

If anyone's keeping track, this represents a new form factor for my games, 480x320 instead of the old 400x400.

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Seems like adults ask two years lots of pedagological questions. But the question of if it was annoying seemed a bit too abstract for EBB.

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Jeeziepetes,laptops are decked out like frickin' indy cars these days...6 stickers on the wrist rest of my new tablet PC, incl. one 3-in-1.

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So weirdly interface blind sometimes-sure my new laptop had no pgup/down despite seeing/using their alt modes(were hidden w/ function keys)

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EB's 2 year old daughter is so happy when I show up, it's kind of heartening. It's twelve after twelve Thursday night, I'm at my friend's birthday get-together at a karaoke bar, and I just sang a dang-near perfect "Ghost Riders in the Sky"... between a mild cold and shouting along to too many songs, I had a great cowboy timbre.

Oh, and the whisky sours.

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Followup of the Moment
So yeah, that was written last night. Got in late. I knew I might not be on my A game this morning when I finally started to make the mistake I had been vaguely expecting for a few weeks now, grabbing the pre-shave splash-on stuff thinking it was mouthwash... (to be fair they're both green liquids in similar bottles.)

So recently I came up with the idea of using a different font for kisrael. Do people thing this looks better or worse than what I have currently? I know it can be hard to judge fairly because it's less familiar...

It's been said (some movie, can't remember where) that everyone is either an Elvis fan or Beatles fan, that you can't like both equally, even if you appreciate both. (Rob at work disagrees, citing himself as a counter-example, but still.) Anyway, I think the same thing is true for late night: either you're either Jay Leno or David Letterman, and you really don't "get" the other side.

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CNN Screenshot of the Moment


Yesterday's big headline feature on CNN was a link to this article about kidnapping victim Jill Carroll's story via the Christian Science Monitor. It's the headline that gets me:

Captor's eyes were black as ink with a heart to match

CNN... for when you just wish the news wasn't so darn "newsy". (Actually, usually I expect better from them.)

UPDATE: In this other CNN story we see that they just don't make Buddhist Monks like they used to.

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Tattoo of the Moment
So the only TV I'm watching these days is "Project Runway". One of the current contestants has a big old tattoo on his neck, some kind of script writing... I managed to google up the explanation, it's is his son's name, "Harrison Detroit", followed by "The Love of My Life" in Italian. I also found this Blog that seems to just be about the show. Weird.

Political Observation of the Moment

It is interesting to note that in Germany only people critical of capitalism use the term "capitalism", while in the US only people critical of socialism use the term "socialism".

Not the America-slamming I thought it might be, pretty well balanced, and with some things I knew, some things that were new to me, and a few things I just hadn't thought of.

Here are the "Factoids about German Life:" I recorded when visiting V in Germany in late 2000...

• Apartment renters often have to furnish their own kitchens
• Stores close at 4 on Saturdays and aren't open on Sundays. Weekdays they close earlyish, 6 or 8. This is federally mandated to protect the homelives of workers.
• For water conservation, toilets in Germany have a dual mode switch- press one side to flush, but if you don't need the full amount of water you can press the other side to stop it early.
• Germans do drive pretty fast & hard on the autobahns, (160+ km/hour in V's little renault, 200+ in a nice BMW wagon) but it's not quite as insane as all that. On the roads where there are limits, there are sometimes automatic cameras take a picture of your car and you get a ticket 6 weeks later.
• Upon leaving, German restaurant patrons say 'bye' ("tschüß", roughly pronounced 'chuss' or more roughly 'cheers') to other patrons. Also the waitstaff brings over a moneybook to conduct cash transactions at the table rather than carrying money or change to and from a remote register.
• Almost all Universities in Germany are public and once you graduate from the German gymnasium you can register at any University.
• Fords are considered German cars here since they are manufactured in Germany.

The kitchens, stores, autobahn, and Uni situation are mentioned in the article, but the other stuff is new.

Game of the Moment
Thrust 2002 is a decent port of the old C=64 game "Thrust"...looks great, though doesn't impress me quite as much as Thomas Jentzsch's amazing port to the Atari 2600.

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Product of the Moment
I have to admit, boingboing's coverage of an explosive sink and toilet plunger (it uses C02 cartridges to blast through clogs...literally) sounds pretty temping. I wonder if that's the best thing for older pipes, though...

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Oddness of the Moment
It's the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. Good for a quick glance... AT&T's circa 1952 sweeping instructions were pretty good, and I found these warning diagrams from a toy tank strangely compelling. How To Put a Compaq Proliant server on a table should be a lesson to us all as well.

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Software of the Moment
Stickies for Windows seems to be a pretty decent version of virtual Post-It notes for your Windows desktop... Sig of the Moment

...while in space no one could hear you scream, it was damn sure not for lack of trying.

Funny of the Moment

I'm willing to accept that we all lived through a decade where three morbidly obese men making fart noises in Davey Crockett hats were considered talented musicians. It'll make a funny story for our grandchildren. But when those grandkids find out we let a studio make a movie based on them without even attempting arson... well, we're going to have a lot of explaining to do if we want to avoid becoming fuel for their grandpa-powered hover trucks.

from Decade of Rad: The 10 Eightiest Movies. You know what I like? I like putting on loud music in my car and then watching the image in the sideview and rearview mirrors shimmy with the thump of the bass, that's what I like.

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Image of the Moment

My camera's 3000th photo: a loader that was parked outside my building yesterday with wheels about as tall as me. I have a 6-yr-old's fascination with machines like that.

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Link of the Moment
Somehow, I'm a little weirded out but not terribly surprised that we process brand names using emotional logic, not the same kind of thought we use to identify regular objects. I guess the book The Space Merchants got it right...

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Funny of the Moment

The Bad Erotic Fiction Award, for bad writing about sex, went to AA Gill. He told the organisers what they could do with it - but not very well.

Well, my 10K day has come and gone, by 4 digit days are behind me. The funny thing with a "big event" like that, or say, Y2K, that unless you really work at it, nothing you do will seem quite big enough to live up to the occasion.

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Quote of the Moment

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.

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Links of the Moment
Wow, Some people are way too into roshambo, more commonly known as rock, paper, scissors. All this via an alt.fan.cecil-adams Usenet thread which talked about extended versions of the game:

	Rock (fist) Blunts scissors.
	Scissors (pointer and middle extended) Cuts paper.
	Paper (fingers extended, flat) Covers rock.
	Bomb aka Dynamite (thumb up) Blows up rock. Scissors cuts Fuse. Unclear relationship with paper.
	Fire (fingers up and wiggling) Burns everything, but you can only use it once in your life.
	Devil (pinky and pointer extended) Beaten by everything but beats Fire.
	Fish (like paper, but sideways and wriggling) Rock smashes, Scissors gut, Paper wraps. When you're playing to lose.
	Bird (middle finger extended) "F*** you, I don't want to play your game, I win."