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Your honor, I DO have a drug problem: sometimes I run out of drugs.

I'm thinking of buying a monkey. Then I think, "Why stop at one?" I don't like being limited in that way. Therefore, I'm considering a platoon of monkeys. So that people will look at me and see how mellow and well-adjusted I am compared to these monkeys throwing their feces around.

You know it probably took me a little too long to notice Robert Downey Jr and Morton Downey Jr were different people.

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it's been said before and i'm sure said better than i can phrase it. but really, really - if you like making "i'm going to kill myself" jokes, please try switching to being ironically conceited instead.

anytime something goes wrong, say things like "ah well at least i'm beautiful and charming and everyone loves me." when you forget something, try "my big huge brain is so smart and thinking about too many other very big wizardly thoughts you wouldn't even *understand*." when you're frustrated by one of your symptoms, start talking like you're in My Immortal. "Life has come for me but my eyes are beautiful pools of gorgeous fire and my hair is amazing. I stuck my middle finger up at life and told it to fuck off and it did."

Melissa liked this. They go on to tell examples of friends even joining in. Two photos by Seton L, JP Honk at Roslindale Porchfest, Adubbs then Me...

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Spiders are the only web developers who enjoy finding bugs

Thinking I should do an old game clear out (Wii/Wii U especially, also PS2, some other things) but it's really tough to let go!

It really runs into the muchness of the world. So many of these games, packing them up for selling is the last time I'll think about them. And I have a pipedream of like getting random young folkI know enthused about this stuff... but does that even matter? Is not being able to let them fire up "Rayman Raving Rabids" on Wii that big of a loss, wouldn't we find other things to do? My band JP Honk is thinking about getting T-shirts made up, here are some designs I'm playing with...

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From my company's engineering blog, Why devs should embrace project ownership and swift iteration.

The essay is legit, and I would say that if you're A. looking to buy a car, we're the best place to start (CarGurus became #1 in a crowd of sites who will help you find a new or used car in the area by being the first to not be afraid of calling a car overpriced when that was the case) or B. if you want a job in Cambridge - either tech / engineering, or in sales / getting dealers on board (or whatever job listings are on it - hit me up, for reals, it's a great place.) quotes from zora neale hurston "of mules and men":

“There’s no mo’ chicken left, Willie. Why don’t you offer her something she can get?” “Well there was some chicken there when Ah passed the table a little while ago.” “Oh, so you offerin’ her some chicken was. She can’t eat that. What she want is some chicken is.”

"Love is a funny thing; love is a blossom. If you want yo’ finger bit poke it at a possum.”

Stepped on a pin, de pin bent And dat’s de way de story went.

Ace means the first time that Ah met you, Deuce means there was nobody there but us two, Trey means the third party, Charlie was his name, Four spot means the fourth time you tried dat same ole game, Five spot is five years you played me for a clown, Six spot, six feet of earth when de deal goes down, Now, Ahm holdin’ de seben spot for each day in de week, Eight spot, eight hours you sheba-ed wid yo’ sheik, Nine spot means nine hours Ah work hard every day, Ten spot de tenth of every month Ah brought you home mah pay, De Jack is Three Card Charlie who played me for a goat, De Queen, dat’s you, pretty mama, also tryin’ tuh cut mah throat, De King, dat hot papa Nunkie, and he’s gointer wear de crown, So be keerful y’all ain’t broke when de deal goes down.

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every woman in this pic tho

I'm getting some tuba bell costumes printed up for halloween for Scheiny and the horn of my buddy Ezequiel... I described some hacking I did to make these in a entry on my devblog:

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The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.

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How Trump Is Ending the American Era. One point I hadn't thought of, for people who liked his being a businessman, and thought it a plus- someone "who has spent a career in charge of a small, family-run corporation without shareholders [isn't] likely to pay much attention to external views." Even with the premise that a someone strong in business (which is a dubious description in Trump's case; he's more of a study in the power of marketing and branding, powered in large part by the mellifluous name his grandfather had to replace "Drumpf") brings something good to the political table, there would be more to if that personal history involved being accountable to external stakeholders, outside a narrow little circle of family and sycophants.

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Not to tempt Murphy and His Immortal Law but I'm glad that when it comes to overthrowing the ACA, the GOP is more like the Republican'ts.

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via Blast from the past... (2000)

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Just the image of Mega Man standing [...] there's a sadness to it. Even his sprite has a certain gravity and seriousness to it [...]. When I see a young child playing alone, in a park or in the middle of the street, playing by himself [...] there's something so sad about that sight, it can almost bring me to tears. And there's something similarly lonely about Mega Man [...]. In the backstory I wrote, Mega Man alone is equipped with the functionality to turn himself off. That very fact imbues him with a sadness. The other robot masters were made for some kind of specific job or work, so there's no need for them to have an "off switch" they can control. However, a robot helper like Mega Man can make his own judgments, and therefore can decide whether he's needed or not [...]. The sadness of being a robot is having this inorganic existence.

Yesterday Melissa, Liz, and I went to "The Big E".

I took a lot of footage for potential use as "One Second Everyday", then made a compilation of it...


Food Consumed (7 hours, 3 people):
Some of these were large amounts, some were just bits and pieces...
steak sandwich
Corn dog
Cream puff
Maple candy
Maple Cotton candy
housemade spiral chips with chili & cheese
Cider donut
Milk shake
Funnel cake well sugared
Diet coke
Pork and beans parfait
Corn On Cob with Sriracha
Fried (!) Martini
Kettle popcorn

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Eclipse happening now! I love things that remind me of the clockwork mechanism of the solar system-- it took me decades to notice that, when you can see the partial moon (in particular in the day time) it's kind of like a rounded arrow head pointing towards the sun....

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I just realized... for a while I've known that maybe one reason I don't like "white text on black" is my (mildish) astigmatism... it makes it hard to focus, because of how the iris has to open up. And that same reasoning might explain why I the detail of the moon seems particularly hard to make out at night. This just in: Yahoo to Discontinue Yahoo

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Man, I wonder where I can get a clip of Homer Simpson saying "Lousy minor setback! This world sucks!" I use that as a mantra, sometimes, to remind myself that I'm crazily over-reacting to whatever little inconvenience is irking me just then, like a broken escalator. ("Mantra" is the wrong term... what's the word for a cross between a catchphrase and a koan to set one's thinking on a better path? Sort of a catchprahse wrang-wrang, to use Vonnegut's bokononism terminology.)

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I really feel like a better person, empowered and creative and capable, when I take time to sit and hack in an environment I'm fluent in, especially sitting in front of a big monitor rather than just grabbing time on the subway. Between a techie conference, helping friends in need, a band gig, and various social fun stuff, I haven't had a solid morning or afternoon or even evening for that for weeks.

I wonder if this feeling is anything like what people who get nurtured by being out in nature feel when they go camping. I mean, different, obviously, but deeply resonate and restorative nonetheless.

(And the "environment I'm fluent in" is critical, which is why my dayjob has not been a joy for me for a few years, even though my new gig has a fun group of people in proximity to me in a way that was lacking at the job before.) Back to drawing class, with my original instructor who was focused on simple shapes and feeling. Then he had us put down our two favorite images on the floor (and teased us about our paper tearing off skills.) Can't tell if I'm getting better; felt a bit rusty. Also I'm feeling more ok about sometimes letting my own (cartoony?) style leak through. I noticed both my works and the one the instructor did in front of me tended to make her torso less long than it was in real life.

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Yesterday I brought in my iPhone that was developing a wonky power button... only one side of it was registering presses. Its been less than a year so the guy at the Apple store gave me a new phone.

1. It's kind of remarkable that 15-20 minutes of synching and I have a device on my person functionally indistinguishable from what I've had on my person before the swap, except that I have to re-enter service passwords and I lost my gelaskin art on the back.

2. This kind of service, and the Genius Bar in general, helps keep me with Apple. Though I'm not sure, would Verizon or AT+T or whoever do the same few-questions-asked swaps? Do the Samsung phones have year long warranties? (The same thing goes for laptops, maybe even more so. I think the Genius Bar ranks more highly than the Geek Squad...)

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If you wanna meet a nice young lady, then you try to smell your best. A girl don't like nobody walking up in her face smelling like a goat. Then, you don't say crap like 'Hey, don't I know you?' The first thing you ask her is: 'Are you alone?' If she tells you that she's with her boyfriend, then you see if the cat's as big as you. If you don't have no money, just smell right. And for God's sake don't be pulling on her and slapping on her. You don't hit the girls! If you do this, you can't miss.

Dutch people, ages 0-100:

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19670686 - UKisms making their way unto the USA vernacular

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'There but for the grace of God,' said John Bradford in the sixteenth century, on seeing wretches led to execution, 'go I.' What this apparently compassionate observation really means-- not that it really 'means' anything-- is 'There by the grace of God goes someone else.'

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The Quantum Theory of Romney

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from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

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Nice, balanced piece on Presidential Leadership, Obama, and Romney.

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latest pseudo-dyslexia: typing ebay when I mean facebook in the url bar. I think that strong "b", maybe along with the two syllable nature, leads to the mixup.

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self portrait 1

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self portrait 2

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

At MF they point out a few small problems with this thinking: 5 and 7 are certainly helpful for the "Vaccines cause Autism" and other ideas that stick around even after opposing evidence is in, and the original source of the thought is extremely suspect.

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My hips lie

--Judging by other ads out there I guess the pitch is supposed to be "Windows 7 Phones are faster to get to your information" (by putting more dynamic stuff on the front screen) but the lesson here seems to be "don't use your phone so damn much and miss out on life around you" which is an even better point. So A for execution, D- for getting the message across.

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http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/css/css_annoyances.htm - finding more voices saying tables aren't the enemy for web design.

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http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/17/wanted-layout-system/ - when hardcore CSS folk point out why CSS layout needs tables.

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It's CSS, not cascading LAYOUT sheets eh? Div and Table layout: easy in simple cases, but colspan's complexity scales better than float's.

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http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/css-3-column-layout/ - man, 4 years ago, same issue. Is "3 column CSS layout" still tough? If so, yeesh.

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I guess one anti-table idea is "wouldn't it be swell if all layout was externalized, hot-swappable?" Well, kinda- that can be hard to trace.

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Photoblog of the Moment
My final day in Portugal! Marcos and I decided to hit Sintra.

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--Best Fight Scene Ever? Cracked has analysis and a few other candidates

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Every three stripe tricolor flag feels like someone was phoning it in. "Eh, let's pick some colors, make up some blahblah. Who wants lunch?"

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I feel so loyal when I order a Boston Kreme Donut. (also, it's obviously no health food but it's less bad than many of the DD types.)

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It's so dark driving... I keep checking to make sure my headlights are on. I think either I'm really tired these days, or getting the early stages of juvenile-onset Alzheimer's, but I left my bike on my porch last night. No harm, no foul, but still, sheesh. I suppose it's nice to know that Arlington Center is safe enough to do that at least one night.

In other news I got a haircut. I got the sides clipped, but kept the sideburns (albeit trimmed) and now I'm worried I'm mixing my hair decades.

Also I decided to try using Crew "Fiber" hair goop. I like it. It smells like lemons.

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Image of the Moment

--"If Pac-Man Were Real", a larger, animated GIF I saw at AtariAge

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Video of the Moment
This was making the rounds a while back... Sherri Sheppherd on "The View" saying that she's too busy being a good mommy to know that the world is not flat. The two details that captivate me are 1. the idea having been brought up by Whoopi Goldberg apparently in defense of evolution and 2. Joy Behar trying to shoot it away with "You know, didn't some person already work this question out? I mean, why are we doing this again?", followed by laughter and applause.

It is to weep.

So, the other day I read some news that kind of bummed me out a bit... 2006 will be the last model year for my car, the Scion xA. It's kind of weird to think I'll be driving an orphan, especially because I think it's such a nifty utilitarian blend. And it seems like its likely replacements are going to be bigger. Definately those xB boxes sold better, they thought the xA was going to be the hot seller because of the cost, but the "hip to be square" idea won out.

I don't know if this will increase the value of a used Scion xA, because they won't be just "an old Scion" but something more uncommon, or decrease it, because it'll just be an odd duck. But given that I think my philosophy is to drive a car into the ground (taking care of it along the way though) and then try and give it or sell it for a song to someone who could use it, maybe it's not such a big issue for me.

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Quote of the Moment

[On the reaction to the Chicago Seven trial] "They ran up and down the street, smashing car windows and stuff. My first reaction was, 'Yeah, right on!' But then I thought, 'Wait, I'm parked out there.'"

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Video of the Moment

--Homebrew Stopaction animation, with a bit of a videogame theme.

Vocabulary of the Moment
Last year I kisrael'd some "difficult to translate words" (there's a lot of those in Howard Rheingold's book "They Have A Word For It".) The BBC has an article about a new book by Adam Jacot de Boinod called "The Meaning Of Tingo" with some different words from other languages... my favorites:

uitwaaien

walking in windy weather for fun (Dutch)

plimpplampplettere

skimming stones on water (Netherlands again...great word!)

igunaujannguaq

"frozen walrus carcass", a game that fortunately involves pretending to be a frozen walrus carcass, not utilizing an actual one (Inuit)

tingo

"to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left" (Pascuense language of Easter Island)

Cool stuff!

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HOWTO of the Moment
Had to Google this up for a coworker...if you (poor thing) are writing a DOS Batch file and you want to prompt for and use a line of input from the user, the SET command now (as of NT4/Windows XP/Windows 2000) supports a /P parameter, something like:

SET /P varname = enter varname value:

Which does "what you'd expect", except you should be aware it will stomp over system variables.

Like I said, I guess this is a rather new (if obvious) addition the the DOS/Windows Batch pantheon...this page mentions truly ugly hacks like using the FORMAT or LABEL command and temporary files to get the same effect.

Quote of the Moment

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

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Travel Photos of the Moment
Somewhat interesting, a Canadian's view of Korea...he worked there for a while as a teacher, and took a sidetrip into Japan. Hampered a bit by a clunky interface, but still some good content. (via Bill the Splut)

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Games of the Moment
The 50 Best Shooters...some of them aren't shooters in the traditional sense, but it gives about the right amount of description for each one...just a sentence or two blurb for the early ones, but the most important ones get longer, more loving writeups. Quote of the Moment

Pudding can't fill the emptiness inside me... but it'll help!

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Poem of the Moment

Loveliest of trees, the maple now
Is turning yellow on the bough.
It stands aong the trees of green,
All dressed up for Halloween.
Now of my three score years and ten,
Sixty will not come again.
Subtract from seventy, three score.
It means I don't have many more.
And since to look at things sublime,
Ten years is not a lot of time.
It's rather sobering for a fellow
To see the maples turning yellow.

What's funny is I remembered the original as being set in Winter, not spring... Florida Filler Update: (Yes, I am a geek, why do you ask?) Florida is very warm and humid. I love some of the wildlife here, the little lizards like we had when we lived on St. Thomas, the little toads like when we lived in Cincinnati. Family anecdote: I would collect these tiny frogs and put them in old Cool Whip containers with holes in the lid that I would bring with me everywhere. One time my mom was driving with me in the back seat, she assumes I'm asleep because I'm quiet for so long, and then she hears "got 'em all back now, mom!"...related family-in-law factoid: Mo's dad helped invent Cool Whip.

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PEAS

"Wait!" cried the last two peas in the can. My hand stopped its arc to the garbage.

"What do you want?" I asked them, the two peas that clung in the slivery cylinder.

"We want out."

"What do you care? You're peas."

"That's right. We're peas. What is there for us but the fork and the plate? How can you deny us our place on the plate? We've lived on the vine, huddled in our pod on cold nights, striving away for greenness and roundness. It's all been in vain if you throw us away."

"I didn't know peas had feelings," I said.

"We do," they replied, "and this is our moment. We have nothing higher, no krishna, no green goddess, no madonna of the vegetable garden. This is our calling, no other, the climax of sun and rain and humus, green energy pushing through our vines, this is us, this is what we are. We are the peas."

"How can I help?" I asked them.

"Give us butter and salt," they said, "and maybe pearl onions."

"You know you'll be eaten." I said.

"Yes."

"Does it hurt?"

"No one knows," they answered.

So I watched the first episode of "Enterprise" last night. A lot of geeks are complaining about the theme music, which was "Felicity"-ish alt rock, but I liked it... I mean, how many times can you do that orchestra with a lot of horns thing? Over all the show was pretty good, but sometimes it seems like the "first encounters" don't seem quite alien enough.

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Funny of the Moment

First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no verbs.

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Link of the Moment
Just to see what was up I visited (now defunct, alas) suck.com yesterday. The article there was actually a funny piece about growing up and old, with the following chart: