October 28, 2023

2023.10.28
on life before modern lighting which is one thing we take for granted, but is a huge recent change that many period pieces get wrong

October 28, 2022

2022.10.28
So last week on FB I learned from people sharing that most folks live more intuitively than I do, like how while my unattended-to feelings sputter out for lack of supporting cognitive fuel, other folks' ignored angers and fears will smolder and make noxious smoke and maybe even burst into flame.

Which makes me think this fundamentally ingrained epistemology of mine (where early on I felt compelled to confirm emotional validity with higher truths) might act as a natural anti-depressant? In both desirable and undesirable ways: cutting the lows, but also maybe the highs? But leaving me in a generally pleasant and contented state...

And that's not a humblebrag, I'm legit trying to find if the parallel is superficial or might point to useful things. But unlike a real anti-depressant, I can't just switch prescriptions... also it's a bit isolating; like I suspect I'm not the only person with this "rationality anti-depressant" shtick, but I can't describe it concisely enough to find similar folks. (Except maybe I think it ends up with some similar results to Buddhist detachment? Hmm.)

October 28, 2021

2021.10.28
So I indulged and got a new Macbook Pro 16. I'm excited by the New Hotness (or rather, coolness - very, very literally) of the M1 chip, but mostly by the larger screen... I was realizing that the my Macbook Air wasn't great for dev work when away from my desktop monitor, and I use my Mac enough to justify investing in something that feels good.

And the new screen size is pretty great! Especially combined with a program like "SizeUp" that makes it easy to have two windows each taking up half of the screen... it's almost like having two small monitors. (I have a similar vibe with my 32" LG Monitor)

I keep getting obsessed with trying to think of like, what's the perfect size for devices. I've been of three damn minds about it - tiny, devices still hold this appeal, the elegance of all that power in a compact space still has a frisson for me. But for phones and desktop displays and now laptops, big is in. And then sometimes I'm like "nah... right up the middle, best of both worlds".

As my eyes start to get creaky with age, and I end up doing that damn glasses on top of head thing for close up text, maybe big displays will keep winning out for me.

(Interesting to see where I go with iPads. I have a giant first gen Pro that was the first thing I could get that supported the Apple Pencil... it was FANTASTIC for e-comic-books but up until lately I've preferred the iPad mini as a reader. But between the creaky eyes and the way my large phone can do as a reader in a pinch, it's getting squeezed out. But the iPad Pro is corny huge, so maybe someday back to the cheap, medium-size iPad it will be. But iPads have tremendous longevity, so no rush.)
(also it's weird since I'm sure to be mixing up the new Monterey OS details with the new computer in general.)

October 28, 2020

2020.10.28
Ric is, in fact, a huge jazz fan. He subscribes to a magazine about jazz and jazz musician. From what he says, most of the articles seem to be about jazz's waning popularity and the difficulty jazz musicians have finding enough work to pay their bills.

The magazine is called Downbeat, which seems fitting.

October 28, 2019

2019.10.28
Two quotes from Barbara Tversky's "Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought":
Space places two fundamental constraints on movement, constraints that are reflected in thought: proximity--near places are easier to get to than far ones; and gravity--going up is more effortful than going down.
The second is very near and dear to my heart:
Speed and accuracy trade off in just about everything we do; the trick, as with all trade-offs, is to find the sweet spot.
(This a side-effect of her first of Nine Laws of Cognition: "There are no benefits without costs.") At some point in my development, some dial got twisted all the way up, so I look at the surface broad stroke interactions of things and have a hard time attending to their fine detail, or inner being. I think this has allowed me to punch above my intellectual weight in some cases - I'm an extremely fast reader (i.e., a skimmer who goes back to the tough bits) and having this speed to always go back and check things was a huge help on the SAT.

For what it's worth, I corresponded briefly with the author - about a tweet's worth of thought from me, but she's not publically on twitter, and so I'm sort of charmed with how many academics will have their email on their public-facing web page, and how many authors are willing to spare a quick email reply to a polite reader.
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'
Anne Lamott, "Bird by Bird"

LOL, Watching Trump and Melania's faces fall as the way the crowd is booing them sinks in...

what's in a name

2018.10.28
Recently a great episode of the Allusionist podcast talked about how people feel about their names, especially people who end up changing theirs.

On FB, I asked folks "how do you feel about your name? Do you know what your folks were thinking when they gave the first part of it to you? What about your family name?"

I enjoyed reading the stories some of my friends shared, but here's what I wrote about mine:

I dig my name, first name especially - "Kirk". My dad (James/Jim) liked the idea of a name that couldn't really be shorted, though I'm not sure how much he disliked "Jim". My name is dripping with religion, Kirk is "Church", Logan is after a theologian, Israel is like the country. Which tends to lead to erasure of my evangelical preacher's kid upbringing w/ people assuming I'm Jewish, but hey, I'm not THAT not-Jewish. (Also most Americans will spell Israel "Isreal" like they hear it pronounced.)

But I dig the strength of the K-sounds.

(Of course if I was born one day after my actual birthday of March 31 my dad assured me my name would be "Foolsbert" - Foolella if I was a gal. (Also, Iove how weird my birthday is - 31st is the least common of all month day numbers))

Once, undergoing adolescent angst, I used yet another move (Upstate NY to Cleveland) to go by "Logan" as first name for a while...odd situation when I switched back when I changed school districts but kept attending the same church. A letter was being read about my enrollment (akin to confirmation) that called me Kirk, but he knew me as Logan, and then-Captain-Schenk said "aww just call him Butch" and with a little work on my part it sort of stuck. My full church nickname was "Kirk Logan Brother Butch Israel Brother".
[...]
FUN FACT: my mom had to convince her friends I wasn't being named after the captain from her fav sci-fi tv show. She had to convince her REALLY close friends I wasn't being named after a similarly named character in some "Bonanza" fanfic she and her friends would write


I love how David Price's hat jumps as he moves his eyebrows or whatever, like when you're trying to wiggle your ears but you're not really good at it... Also his pre-pitch "take a deep breath" routine is so human and recognizable.
Mookie Betts breaks his series drought and helps the Red Sox win the World Series and gets a hat for his hat:

What an era to be a fair-weather fan in Boston :-D What's this, 11 championships (Celtics, Bruins, 5 for Pats, now 4 for Red Sox) since 2002?
Also: in Alex Cora We Trust, Huh? He has done some seemingly inexplicable moves that in hindsight are pure brilliance. Between that and hearing how, despite a top of the list payroll, so much of the Red Sox team is young and home grown - and seeing how those "supporting" players stepped up Saturday night, and in general how the team played on defense as well... it's a great team to like!
Oh and that jerk Machado getting the last strike out... ahhh

October 28, 2017

2017.10.28

via

October 28, 2016

2016.10.28
Oh, cool, Republicans up and down the ticket are both idiotically racist and disrespectful of military veterans.

Tammy Duckworth herself is a purple heart veteran who lost both legs co-piloting a helicopter that was attacked by an RPG in Iraq. Her father's side has an American military tradition going back to the Revolutionary War, but Mark Kirk thinks he can go for the jugular by pointing out she's asian, and of course those people didn't fight with George Washington. Such commanding snark!

(Full Disclosure: I've disliked Mark Kirk ever since his apocalyptic-minded middle east policy actions made him show up on Google searches for my name...)

October 28, 2015

2015.10.28

London has a clever help for what to do with chewing gum. Personally I am filled with righteous fury when I see someone spit that where someone can step on it.
I feel like I may have back slid on patience a bit not getting unduly frustrated by relatively small time delays... not that its ever been a strong point of mine.

It's like I'm a crazy miser sometime; I have a wealth of time in my life and my day, but I begrudge every little nickel and dime, especially when I can easily see how the delay could be otherwise. (4 people in front of me at dunkies? Time to sigh dramatically and roll my eyes! What's up with that?)

October 28, 2014

2014.10.28
from Cracked: 17 Creepy Photos That Prove History Was Haunted

(hint: turn your head sideways.) Man, that's still disturbing.

October 28, 2013

(1 comment)
2013.10.28
Reading "Hardwiring Happiness". I'm only part way through it but I'm pretty sure it's central idea is just "accentuate the positive". I think about that in contrast to (my understanding of) the Zen practice of detachment from things good or bad; I guess I have a fear of being delusionally happy, but I don't think that "rational" fear is all that rational, in the sense of wanting to adopt an outlook that's pragmatic and generally utilitarian.
whoa i just realized that pizzas are insects and we eat their mushy insides then throw their exo skeleton pizza boxes away

If you're in a hurry, just stick around for Superman from about 1:40 - 2:45 -- but it's all pretty amazing, go Ohio State!

On FB, Christa wrote in response to that brain thing:
Are emotions even rational? Every emotion could be called a delusion if you break it down enough so why does it matter?
My response was:
Emotions can be rational to the extent they help you better guide your life.

There has to be a balance between subjectively feeling good and objectively being in a good place; we rightly don't approve of people overdosing on some awesome-feeling drug and dying young but happy. An opposite of having constant dour self-recriminating feelings leading one to being rich and powerful and miserable is terrible too.

But what this book argues is that we're wired for the latter, in (as they say) the brain is like velcro for bad experiences but teflon for good, but through mindfulness we can switch that up. (I haven't read far enough to know if the suggested technique is more specific than focusing on/being mindful of the good things as they happen and/or remembering past good things.)

October 28, 2012

2012.10.28
Do Radio DJs get special training to audibly laugh at things that might otherwise just make them smile, or are they chosen for that skill?
Sometimes I really like Modern Family:

via
http://inventikasolutions.com/demo/iPod/# - nice original iPod emulation! Nice piece of work. (Both the original "OS" and the simulation.)

the opposite of FAIL

2011.10.28

--People are awesome 2011via kottke
"Beef-witted" is a 400-year-old insult that still holds up pretty well.
Codify for iPad reminds me of PocketC for Palm way back when. Former is slicker, but the latter was more amazing, given the hardware... especially fun since I laptops weren't nearly as common back then, so "programming anywhere" was more of a rarity.
Man, long day at work, and the typos are getting stupid and numerous. .head() instead of .hide() ? Time to go home.
"I like how the Google auto-suggest for 'duran' is another 'duran'"

putting on airs

(1 comment)
2010.10.28

--A playful dis on the new Macbook Airs. The 11" one seems like a really awkward form factor to me-- this whole trend towards "widescreen" but short screens is a bit irritating. Via fakesteve.net who says it was "Found in a Gizmodo comment string"
Today I'm celebrating global warming by wearing cargo shorts to work!
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rogerup/momiga -- interestingly minimal game: a dot, a playfield, a beep, a button.

You don't have to do no soloing, brother, just keep what you got - don't turn it loose!
James Brown,"Funky Drummer"-best drum solo advice ever

jackolanterning

2009.10.28
On Sunday Sarah repeated her fine tradition of an afternoon of social pumpkin carving. (Photos from last year here)


http://www.slate.com/id/2232669/ - the pride and shame of coupon jujitsu
Boingboing PROTIP: construct date URLs ala http://boingboing.net/2009/10/26/ to catch up on articles with full previews...
Remove the rivets, the battle-cruisers disintegrate, and the water is calm once more.
Henri Michaux

Ever get that feeling like you've purposefully put something stressful out of your mind? But you force yourself to remember what it was-- like just in case it was important, and then it ends up being, yeah, something dumb and you shouldn't worry about it anyway. This is what happens when you have an associations-based memory and trace things back by the emotions they caused.
Don't make me come over there; because, you know, I will. Maybe not right this second, but eventually. Sometime really quite soon. Much sooner than you think though not exactly right now. You know, I've got things to do and stuff. But... I will
Dwayne Plain via cmg

I love how DBAs reflexively use powers-of-2 to size their table columns. Usually it doesn't matter - it's just voodoo / cargo cult thinking-

the time is now

2008.10.28
Good gosh, it's only Tuesday?


Quote of the Moment
My fellow Americans, the time for running aimlessly through streets while shrieking and waving our arms above our heads is now. I understand that many of you are worried about your economic future and our situation overseas, and you have every right to be. Yet there is only one thing we as a nation can do in times like these: give up all hope and devolve into a lawless, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself society.

Politics of the Moment
--"Hope", parody of Obama's Hope poster from this webpage of same.



Those neonazi scumtards wanted to kill 88="HH"="Heil Hitler"?? How inconvenient for them that the Nazis didn't say "Ave Adolf". Assholes.
Gary Kamiya:"[Bush] failed because he acted on the extreme right-wing ideas that Reagan only paid lip service to." http://tinyurl.com/5onas3
Didn't Jon Stewarts "America: The Book" jokingly have a grave reserved for the Dems by the Whigs, Bull Mooses party, etc? Cycles and cycles.
Software Cheapskate-ism is kind of killing software. The shareware model is much harder than it should be.
Of 20 cities only Boston and Cleveland had home prices rise; apparently people just want to live where I have over the last two decades.

geek-n-peek

2007.10.28
Still in Rockport. I've seen more rocks than port, though.


Quote of the Moment
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
Robert Bly
But you know, that is the guy who started that Mythopoetic Men's Movement, and a tendency to "have obsessions", and relish them, seems to be a bit more of a guy thing. Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but there is a stereotype that women are more likely to look for a life balance, and men are more willing to live an unbalanced life as a sacrifice to their current focus. And of course, that outlook reaches a zenith (or a nadir, depending on your outlook) with the current image of "geekdom".

are ess ess

(7 comments)
2006.10.28
I dont know how many people will find this useful but this site now provides an RSS feed. For those who don't know, RSS is a way of gathering updates from many sites at once, so instead of having to go to N different sites to catch up with their articles, your RSS browser collates their latest entries into a single page. (Firefox users should be seeing the bright orange icon that indicates an RSS feed on their browser bar now, and there's also a link in the sidebar.)

I don't use it, but people who do love it. Google Reader seems to be a good reader, and Feedvalidator.org seems to be a good tool for making sure you're on the right track.

I guess there are improvements I could make...right now a whole day's contents makes up a single RSS item, but theoretically I could make it smarter and try to get each "of the Moment" chunk as a seperate item. Also I'm not sure if I'm handling the links to the comments correctly, or if I should be messing with GUIDs when I do an update, to make sure the old version isn't cached. Anyone know?


News of the Moment
So there might be a math-y way to win the lottery??? Seriously? Damn, damn, damn. It's one of those if only I was smarter, I could make my life much easier kind of things.


Quote of the Moment
I don't really know what to do with my 319 new online chums, compatriots and cronies, but frankly I never knew what to do with my meat friends either. I usually took them to mini-golf, but that doesn't seem to be an option on MySpace. I think you just collect them, as they collect you. It is the 21st century, and we are all each other's Hummel figurines.

truth is hard and absolutely essential

(6 comments)
2005.10.28
Quote of the Moment
Life sucks and you'd better get used to it. Sounds negative, but nothing could be further from the truth. The sooner you understand that politicians are liars, thieves, and worse, the sooner you stop waiting around for a leader to make everything better. Stop putting your faith in Gods, friends, family--hell, you may not be such a hot prospect yourself. Truth is hard and absolutely essential.
Ted Rall, from his intro to Shannon Wheeler's "Too Much Coffe Man: How To Be Happy".
He goes on to explain how it was his abstract expectations for the world that literally brought him to the brink of jumping off the top of a building, but the truth "It'll HURT" that brought him back.


Article of the Moment
It's a fun morning that starts out with Intelligent Design vs Monty Python.


Product of the Moment
Ksenia is the envy of her classmates after I gave her the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse...it's pretty slick. A bit smaller than a regular mouse but not too small, and the clever bit is that the USB plug/receiver snaps into the base of the mouse which makes it very portable and non-fiddly, as well as tells the mouse it can shut off to save battery life. Plus the basic model doesn't seem to suffer from the "featuritis" of many mice that stick on too many buttons. (As far as I can tell the site is misleading about the feature set...and I had to use Google to find that they had a feature comparison tool--and even that is a bit arcane. What's a "Smart Receiver"? and I'm vaugely amused by "Sophisticated Finish" and "Cutting Edge Design" and "Ergonomic Design" as seperate features.)

So thumbs up for that. In general I think Microsoft does very decent hardware work...I think they were the first to start pushing scrollwheels in a major way, and the split keyboards that I prefer (and that drive coworkers sitting at my PC nuts...) Though I'm a little unhappy with the number of multimedia buttons they've been adding to the keyboards, making an already biggish keyboard even more unwieldy.

Lately I've been recognizing how I have some neurons that "compact design" rubs in just the right way...I get a little happy buzz when I see something just the right compact size (so long as it doesn't seem fragile.) This applies to the car I drive, cellphones I admire...sometimes I wonder if it might even tie-in with body types I find appealing. There's just something so karmically right about avoiding excess when it comes to design.

1918

(10 comments)
2004.10.28
HOORAY
FOR THE
RED SOX

it was a class on romance

(2 comments)
2003.10.28
Dialog of the Moment
"Remember that class you tried to hold last semester, out of your dorm room?"
"Err, not really."
"It was a class on romance..."
"Oh, that one."
"...that mostly consisted of 45 minutes of you fiddling with the VCR, trying to find the right part of the tape, giving helpful advice like 'if you're watching videos on a date I guess you should try not to do this, then'."
"Right."
"And then there was something about how sometimes it was romantic to casually slip a hand in someones front jeans pocket."
"Uh-huh."
"Or vice-versa, you said."
"Right."
"But then you suggested 'but not to the extent that you acquire a nickname like 'itchyballs'.'"
"Thanks for remembering."
"My pleasure."
--Jen (an old girlfriend) and I, in a dream I had this morning that made me giggle out loud. Paraphrased a bit, I tried to punch it up so you could see what I was giggling about.


Geek Link of the Moment
Possibly about to be slashdotted to heck, the images of putting a model of the Enterprise through a "atmospheric re-entry simulator" are hard core geek cool.


Geekier Link of the Moment
A Russian site looks at toilets as portrayed in video games. Many different video games. Strange world we live in. Would it make more sense in Russian?


News of the Moment
Looks like theres news of another earthbound solar flare. That final line ("Space weather forecasters say this spate of strong solar flares unusual because it is not following normal patterns of solar behavior. The sun follows an 11-year cycle of activity, with the last peak being around 2000") gives me a bad feeling.

king kong along

2002.10.28
Quote of the Moment
I am think about. Maybe I am no do. But I tell-a you what ingenuity we plan and you tell me what you think. Kong-a lay dead, and how you say--scientist come apart, and Kong come like Frunkensteen--you know Frunkensteen--and he come crazy bad. He kill everyone. And Dwan [Jessica Lange] is now a big time movie star and she say, 'Hey, Kong, remember me?' She jumps in his hand, he picks her up, put her to his face, smile and then...WOMP, he eat her! You like?
(from The Golden Turkey Awards, via Bill)


Link of the Moment
Looks like Saddam's Official E-mail was hacked, and now we get to see what people have been writing to him, both pro- and con-. Don't know if it's a hoax or not.


Political Quote of the Moment
You can get around the Constitution if you place the word 'Shmonstitution' right after it.

Ramble of the Moment
You know, I used to be dead set against people replying to e-mail and just typing at the top but now I do it all the time. I remember giving people crap about (Hi Jen) as well at the time, until I converted to the darkside. And it doesn't seem quite so dark.
On Usenet, the oldschool discussion groups, "top posting" (as they call the tecnhique) is strongly discouraged. As unclefreddy of rec.games.video.classic puts it in his .sig:
Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
A: Why is top posting frowned upon?
But E-mail is different from Usenet. Now the quoted mail below can act as kind of a historical record of a conversation.
In both communication forms, there's also that other "interspersed quoting" method, where you kind of write paragraphy by paragraph responses inside the other person's quoted text. That's one of my favorites.

halloween special

2001.10.28

This was my halloween costume at Brooke's party, made from an idea I had two years ago, and with a lot of help from Mo, who did most of the sewing work. I was "The First World War". You can see the Yanks and British Doughboys on the left, and the Germans on the right. The flags for the three nations aren't exactly historically accurate, but whatever.

Combined with my triumph at deciding to go to 256 megs from 64 for my desktop system and getting it done, it was a pretty good day. Hmm, I think this system now has about twice as much memory as my first PC had diskspace. (And this is a cheap-in-1999 Pentium II system...)


Halloween in the 1980s
Man, there were some Bad Children's Halloween Costume in the early 1980s. Even back then, I thought it was really dumb to dress up as a character but have that character's face plastered all over your chest as well. It totally broke the spirit of the deception. This page is laugh-out-loud funny in parts. (via memepool)


More Halloween Spookiness
And I thought Mo's cats were scary...

Yesterday, the sight of a chapter verb list from a Spanish textbook gave me an almost palpable feeling of joy that I no longer have to study foriegn language.
99-10-28
---