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It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn't enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we're conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn't take energy into account, doesn't grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn't need more time; *their time needed their art.*

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On The end of cool small cars. My car is nearing the end of its life but there really is not much new I'd like to buy.

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A few weeks ago I realized that my body has a kind of fixed mindset; that I can demand almost total reliability from it, but in turn I have to not test the boundaries too often. So I can march with my tuba in a parade for as long as I need to (though I have to keep in mind not every bandmate will share this privilege) but in return I don't push limits too much; when I tried couch-to-5K my jog was barely faster than a quick walk.

And today I realized, I have the same fixed mindset financially! I've never had to budget carefully, and I never have to deprive myself of small luxuries (and some large ones) But I take care to make sure I'm not living extravagantly, drive an 18 year old Toyota, have a small condo. (Basically ridiculous tech salaries just about afford what used to be a middle class life.)

Fixed mindset, especially if the base it is protecting is fairly confident of some good abilities, is a mixed curse. It gives me an almost unshakable self-confidence, but I also don't take big swings where there's a significant risk of being shown up as not as capable (intellectually, physically, financially) as I assume I am.

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The metamorphosis of Jesus Christ from a humble servant of the abject poor to a symbol that stands for gun rights, prosperity theology, anti-science, limited government (that neglects the destitute) and fierce nationalism is truly the strangest transformation in human history.

Response from FB buddy Matt McIrvin: "Honestly the transformation of Christianity to an institution that can be a happy servant of power happened really early on, in the late Roman Empire. Ever since then we've just been living with some form of that contradiction."

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Texas "detectable heartbeat" laws is the worst kind of religion mooching off of science. These fools think a fetal Doppler device is actually a soul detector.

The old standard for "unborn personhood" was quickening; if you insist on controlling women's bodies (and come up with the weirdest ass rubik's cube of citizens ratting out citizens legal bullshittery to do so) - and thus assert that the government knows more than women and their doctors, at least go to that traditional standard, you loony hypocrites.

Also, the photos of the month:

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everybody needs a tuba for a pillow, everybody needs a tuba

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my pals think living in scotland is all beautiful rolling hills and friendly patter when in reality it's a junkie shouting 'ye goin for a shite hen?' at me because i'm carrying a 16 roll pack of toilet roll

My summer: bands, bridges, birds, beaches, buds (I like that it begins and ends with flowers)

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Watched "The Disaster Artist" last night. Woke up thinking I wanted to see a prequel to "The Room" but animated, and cast with the Muppet Babies. So I've been playing with doing 3-month seasons rather than one month videos for my "One Second Everyday"... so here's my summer!

Lot of good band-plus-dancer shots.

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"How dare you speak ill of Hawaiian pizza. Pistols at dawn.
Or dusk, because dawn is pretty early."
"I guess that's why a lot of old westerns do high noon. You don't have to get up early, but you still have the day ahead of you should you survive."

We have a slack channel "#stupid-dea-buddies" where we add to a numbered list of Stupid Ideas, and no one is allowed to criticize other people's ideas, we want to keep stuff positive! (Based on the question Was Twitter a Stupid Idea.) Anyway, it's a fun channel, I'd recommend something similar for any company that uses shared chatrooms.

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"Premium Medicore". What was so wrong with "Middlebrow"?

Never is a shortened version of 'not ever'... i feel like I am supposed to have known this...

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One Second Everyday for August! A lot of band stuff as always (at a funeral on the 5th, at the hatch on the 11th, in front of a ribbon acrobat on the 21st), other highlights like underwater Melissa on the 13th and seeing my German friends on my way to Ireland on the 15th.

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Diggerland, USA Wow. Plans for my next NJ trip! Who wouldn't want to operate a massive earthmover machine?

I built the website for our class final and it was not easy. But it also wasn't scary. It just took a lot of patience, reloading, and Googling. Unlike math, there was no mythic and absolute answer that I was missing; I could do it my own way as long as I followed some basic rules. And unlike learning a new language, I didn't have to stare into someone's face and watch her cringe when I mangled a new phrase. My ugly textedit coding document was a judgment-free zone.

August One Second Everyday... some pretty shots of Boston and Baltimore, Bouncy House on the 9th, ALS Ice Water on the 20th...

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http://boingboing.net/2014/08/31/frank-sinatras-february-196.html I share some of my dad's kneejerk dismay at anything that glorifies mafia culture, but Sinatra's strongly stated-- Deism? Agnosticism? Whatever -- impressed me. kottke.org excerpted this bit of a David Galbraith piece on Steve Jobs... a brisk read (with pictures!) and worthwhile:

Perfecting the model of selling design that is compatible with big business, Foster simultaneously grew one of the largest architecture practices in the world while still winning awards for design excellence. The secret was to design buildings like the limited edition, invite only Porsches that Foster drove and fellow Porsche drivers would commission them. Jobs went further, however, he managed to create products that were designed like Porsches and made them available to everyone, via High Tech that transcended stylistic elements. An Apple product really was high technology and its form followed function, it went beyond the Porsche analogy by being truly fit for purpose in a way that a Porsche couldn't, being a car designed for a speed that you weren't allowed to drive. Silicon Valley capitalism had arguably delivered what the Soviets had dreamed of and failed, modernism for the masses. An iPhone really is the best phone you can buy at any price. To paraphrase Andy Warhol: Lady Gaga uses an iPhone, and just think, you can have an iPhone too. An iPhone is an iPhone and no amount of money can get you a better phone. This was what American modernism was about.

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One downside to achieving "Inbox Zero" on gmail is that its always pimping out Google Reader, like "not enough to read" is the problem.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_sofa_problem - sometimes I just love geometry.

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French are great soldiers (seriously.) But now they have a new war: THE WAR OF THE POST-ITS http://www.postitwar.com/
--via JZ

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http://www.slate.com/id/2265067/ - the more I know about Max Headroom the more I like.

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Dig the idea of built-in HDR on the iPhone camera. Wonder when/if Canon Powershots will have that (oh, duh, need to check out CHDK firmware replacement, maybe I can get it already)

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I like how Netflix is the whore of streaming now. I can watch on laptop, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360.. yet Apple TV is still tempting.

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Apple Store is now themed with a "fingerprint rainbow" as title backdrops. Like that they're embracing how smudge-y these things get.

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You can't spell "success" without "u"! But in fact, I can't really spell "success" all that well, all those weird "s"s and soft "c"s...
--from the Museum of Animal Perspectives (via)

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Bad restaurant idea: "Barely Legal Seafood"

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How does our econosystem support so many damn cellphone stores? Oy, September already? Where do the summers go...

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Followup of the Moment
So despite some discouraging technical setbacks, Team Cowsome Loneboys of the OLPC Physics Game Jam got a finished product in time for the judging...



The game we presented, "Babel", had 2 phases... building and destroying. Building is taking 60 seconds to build as high a tower as possible, using a nice springy mouse tool to grab and sling blocks into place. Destroying uses the same mouse tool to grab bricks and fling them away, or possibly grabbing the wrecking ball for that purpose.

The game was surprisingly well-received... the educators in particular actually liked its simplified environment and focus a lot. There were only 4 or 5 games made, but we got a silver medal in "level design" (got the mug for that) and a bronze in something else.

Even after the judging, Jon and I kept on toiling to add an element that was part of our original vision: a slingshot! Now instead of racing against a timer, the goal was to use as few shots as possible to clear the platform area...



It's really a bit of a bummer that we didn't think to push on the slingshot ahead before... we probably could have gotten the basic version in, and it really made a much more compelling game, since rather than "use this cool tool to make a building... now use the same tool to destroy it..." there are two nice and distinct "aesthetic kinetic" phases.

It was great collaborating with so many clever people. Also, SJ, the organizer, assures me that the OLPC audience, school kids all over the world, is surprising voracious, and I think the game we made might actually get many more downloads and much more attention than most of the stuff I hack out on my own, so it was nice staying after to do it a bit better. (There are still tremendous ways of cheating, however... like dangling or flinging a brick over the tower area as time is up, and using the slingshot "backwards" to swipe bricks off rather than knock them out cannon-style.

The other games were pretty swell... rollcats was the belle of the ball, though some of the educators weren't as crazy about its simple puzzle mechanic, despite the lovely execution. My favorite among the other teams was "XO Olympics", an almost afterthought of a game where each player controls a kind of hopping triange to try and push volleyballs over to the other players goal... the interesting bit is each goal throws out the next ball (in the color of who scored a point) onto the field, but the old balls are never removed, so the scorekeeping becomes a part of the physics of the game... neat!

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geek rant: maybe after ~52 hours of python hacking I'd learn to put "self." in front of everything? Nope! Same w/ forgetting str() for ints

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stepping into my dark bedroom after too too many hours of geekery, I longed for a sleepy, admonishing but sympathetic voice: "Hey, you..." Brief update, off to Rockport.

One quick gripe: I can forgive the current version of the iPhone software not supporting receiving and displaying MMS (multimedia messages) but ATT giving me a code I have to type in a web browser. I can even forgive, somehow, the link not being clickable in SMS and opening up in Safari. What I can't forgive, and find to be yet another misdemeanor against humanity, is generating a "pickup code" with characters and a font that's ambiguous. Upper case 'I'? Lower case 'L'? I can't tell, and I wasn't able to pick up my damn message. Do it all caps, or all numbers, or something, but think, people!

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Video of the Moment

--Forgot where I saw this... brilliant, though.

I learned a few things at this company and in this city:

1. There was a gentleman working here who aways wore a turban. I have to admit that it never occurred to me that you could coordinate a turban with the shirt you were wearing, color-wise, much like I've been doing with shirts and ties all week, but now it makes perfect sense.
2. There company had a room/closet labeled "medical needs". It had cupboards labeled with a sequence of letters. For some reason I was a little bit bothered about why there was a comfortable chair in the center of that small dark room, facing the cupboards, until I realized that it might make a discrete place for a nursing mother. (Or, I suppose, someone resting with a headache or some such.) There was also a digital clock right in front of the chair, rather that was something useful for such a situation, or more a nagging reminder that "times a-passin'!" I'm not sure.
3. So Colorado has the lowest obesity rate in the country. Though Massachuseets isn't far behind, surprisingly...but in the Denver area, I think you could really tell, especially in this high-rent area. It's a little funny how there's a correlation between being well-off and being fit, and we've changed as a culture, so that basic food needs are generally easily met.
4. After a successful presentation of the new small application I developed for this company, one of the women mentioned that I was a bit if a brainiac, or a similar term. So I guess it's flattering that despite my self-perceived (or even hypochondriacal) mental deterioration over the years, I still read as "smart", even when I'm just trying to be "friendly" and/or "eager to please".

More as I think of it but I have to go pack.

Whenever we get to this time of year, I always find that one Indigo Girls lyric coming to mind...

i could go crazy on a night like tonight
when summer's beginning to give up her fight

The other thing I have to do these days is re-adapt to living at night, to cancel out the feeling that darkness means I should be safe back at home, possibly thinking about bed. It takes surprisingly long for me to reacclimate to driving in the dark.

I'm still proning to thinking that this latitude is way too far north for me. But friends and assorted loved ones, along with understanding the area, keep me here.

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Sports Quote of the Moment

There were some good things. There were some other things that weren't so good.

The funny thing is that's ALL he says, in effect, for the entire thing. Man, reporting on the Pats must be a tough job sometimes. He sounds a tad less dour after the romp over Green Bay, but only barely. Of course, it's just the preseason.

Given the personal disasters many of the Saints players are having to deal with, I really hope the preseason victory over the "Superbowl Champs" isn't the highlight of their playing year.

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Geekness of the Moment
At work we started talking about the geographical difficulties of New Orleans. Jokingly, my coworker mentioned that we should just get everyone in the USA to send a cup of dirt down so they can build it up. Well, intense feats of geekish estimation are now made easier with Google's built in calculator...I typed in "300,000,000 cups in cubic feet", got back around 2.5 million cubic feet. I've heard the water is 20 feet deep in places, so lets say we want it 10 feet deep...that's .25 million square feet, which is a square 500 feet on each side. Not enough dirt I'm afraid, even if we lower our standards for depth or somewhat increase the amount of dirt sent in per person.

Haiku of the Moment

Hippopotamus
Antihippopotamus
Annihilation

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Prank of the Moment

Tip of the day: Take a screenshot of an error message, and set it as your desktop background. Move all your icons to other places on the screen so it looks like there's two of each. Move your taskbar to another side, or top of the screen. Log out of your computer and shut down. Then take it to a tech support guy and tell him how you get this error message every time your machine starts up that won't go away, and how there are two taskbars running and you have problems starting some of your programs. See how long it takes them to figure it out.

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Ramble of the Moment
So I started a new determination to watch my eating and exercise two days ago. My first day I lost 4 pounds! I figure at that rate I'll weigh 80 something pounds by October. Or I can just lost 28 or so in a week, then quit...I don't know why people say dieting is so difficult.

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Music of the Moment
The PRECURSORS do really great remixes of the music from the old Star Control 2 game...

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Bad News of the Moment
Man, Hurricane Frances sounds like bad news. Sometimes it amazes me that we have an infrastructure that seems to whether stuff like Hurricane Charlie without too much hassle. (At least for people not in the immediate area.)

Lessee...seriously, this is only the fourth category 5 storm this year, and the first time since 1950 that two major hurricanes have hit Florida in a month. I think anecdotal evidence is building that the weather is seriously being broken...

Helping Jesse move today, might be light update-wise.

Hit an important milestone in JoustPong though--though there's still a lot I'd want to add to it, I could release the current version and think it a complete game. I guess I really should write up some instructions for playing it for people who haven't used atari emulator before.

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Quote of the Moment

Bees make honey and jelly? Huh. How come nothing humans make tastes good?

So I've started to dream in New Yorker Cartoons. Well, not really, but the other night I had a dream where I was looking through a book about them, complete with artist interviews and the like. The only one I remember (and it had the graphical style down) has a man in arab headgear standing in a living room, with his wife sitting on the couch, and a kind in a crib in between. The caption is the man saying "Yes, it's nice to be Prince Rudi Rannan of the Saudi province of Drunel. But when I'm working in the USA, I think it's good to have an SSN." I think the implication is normally being reduced to a number would be beneath the dignity of a prince, but since he wants a job here he'll give it a pass.

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Links of the Moment
Is NY Defender an interactive political cartoon about the hopelessness of the struggle against terrorism, or just a little joke game in really bad taste? Slate had an article on online games as political commentary...they do seem to be the Internet equivalent of political cartoons, albeit with even less of a message than most.

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Quote of the Moment

Do not meddle in the affairs of cyborgs, for you are conductive and can support 110 volts.

0wnz0red is a scifi short story that Salon just published. At the risk of spoiling the joke for those not geek enough to know, this is a play on "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger" from Lord of the Rings. (Another frequent variation is "Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.") Funny of the Moment

> "Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm,
> and yet he will be making gods by the dozens." -Montaigne

Yo' god so false, when you pray, you get a busy signal!

Yo' god so false, Pascal be wagerin' AGAINST him!

Yo' diety so low, he need a stool to pray to himself!

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Nutrition of the Moment
A Harvard Nutrition author wants to update the USDA Food Pyramid. It's not quite Atkins, but it does pay attention to things like 'glycemic load'. I have no idea how I'd go about getting more whole grains in my diet, or Plant Oils. Favorite quote: (talking about the author's personal habits)"'What about secret indulgences?' 'Sometimes I'll have some flavorful cheese or a bit of chocolate.'" Whew! What a wild man!

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Game of the Moment
"Man! Those people down there look so small! Like Ants! Let me get out my giant novelty sized magnifying glass... ahh, good. Hey, what's that burning smell?" A wonderfully demented game, very well done, but not quite as rich a world sim as it may first appear. I love the name and logo of the site, bossmonster (via memepool)