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Active Interlock! Dynotherms Connected! Infracells Up! Megathrusters are go!

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In reviewing a letter I wrote for future delivery to my 9 yr old superniece... I am sort of alarmed to realize the Supreme Court protecting gay marriage happened in her lifetime.

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noclip is a really cool website that lays out levels and worlds from various video games and lets you zoom around them, all in the browser.

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vine was better than tiktok Like or Comment when you get it.

Took me a minute and a reverse image search and I'm still just barely pretentious enough to get it.

(hint: think Camus)

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From Nick's lips to God's hips.

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One of your ancestors was alive during every historical event you've ever heard of

Man, that's interesting to think about.

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Not too yuck people's yum but 53,000 people is, like, too many people to have at a convention. Even with just plain delta. Damn. Advice from the Beatles, assembled by Michelle Rial - I think I need to buy a print of this

I remember once having emotional catharsis with "Let It Be" in college, on hearing of the death of Baptista, a guy I shared an unusually mild august night in portugal with.

Comic Sans, the bumbling, blarpy tuba solo of typeface picks.

My tuba solos are not bumbling >:-(

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A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death - Excellent long read in the NY Times. While my book's concerns are more on the existential aspects of death, aging is another part of it all that looks to us to be brave and thoughtful.

advent day 3
advent day 3

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Three from Joshua Allen's "The House of Wigs":

Connecticut: an "ill-advied and unnecessary state."

But anyway my favorite part of ["The Greatest Love of All"] -- everybody's favorite, probably--is "I believe the children are our future," because of the "are our" part which echoes the haunting cry of the harbor seal and kind of adds a seaside vibe to the whole thing.

What if you wrapped a granola bar in a slice of mozzarella cheese. Would that taste good. Would it constitute an actual meal.

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Jar-Jar, the "Drunken Master" and mastermind behind the rise of the Empire...

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Probably the weirdest thing about my mustache... I must have some odd neural crosswiring, if I touch the whiskers gently, often I feel it in my eyelashes.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbvZdYAu_4g Looking at some pictures from NYC circa 1999, saw a billboard for this. Anyone remember it? In retrospect it looks like a low-rent Archer.

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weirdly starting muted :-/
advent day 3

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Do you ever get bogged down with nervousness or small insecurity?
Do you have any tricks or habits that let you find courage?
advent day 3

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Besides the amazing mechanical work they did to get the mouth to move, the best part of the original Chewbacca costume is the mustache.

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I really dig my Doctor John Bordiuk... He's been my PCP for like 10 years, he was my yoga instructor for like half of that (he balances rock solid Western medicine with respect for what other traditions do well.) Anyway, he just set up a new practice (right off of 128 in Wellesley) and I think he's open to new patients... highly recommended,

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what I've done
and what I've failed to do...
wind-blown leaves

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Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?

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The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over - fewer and fewer excuses to pirate music, seriously.

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I'm starting a magazine called Lowlights for Children. It's mostly puzzles and word games about nearsightedness, booster shots, and divorce.

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New Find by NASA - now once we have life forms based on old lace, we'll really have something.

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Best Buy vending machine at Alewife T station. Loaded with pretty serious shwag, like Canon cameras, iPod touches, and even those expensive Dr. Dre headphones they sell at Apple stores.

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What things cost in Ancient Rome....

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diesel sweeties explores the infinite...

I am a deeply superficial person.

Man, that's me in a nutshell, at least when it comes to wrangling with problems and interests. I'm not sure if I even believe in "deep", it's all just superficial layers piled on top of each other.

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By appointing Arizona Gov. Napolitano to head Homeland Security, Obama may actually be jeopardizing our critical supply of iced tea.

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"If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you"-go obama!

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When I overhear someone speaking a foreign language and then break into English for a few words, am I hearing what English is better at? Bleh. Enough of a cold and a sore back that I think I'm staying in today.

The cool part is the synergy the two conditions make-- "ACHOO! Oww I wish I hadn't done that."

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Video of the Moment

--NickB forwarded me a facebook reference to the premier of "A Briefcase Full of Knives". Given that the premiering theater was, literally, about 4 doors down from me it would seem mean-spirited not to go. There was a selection of local shorts first, mostly comedy, and the mini-film itself was good, silly comedy and a hint of working class angst.

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Game of the Moment
Strangely compelling puzzle Chat Noir - you get to block one hex, and the cat gets to move one hex, and you try to prevent the cat from escaping. Fairly easy, but not absolutely trivial, once you get the trick.

Well, I still have some of the issues with anxiety that I kisrael'd a year and a half ago. And I still think that I might have an "addiction to anxiety". Which is annoying, I mean if you get addicted to something, isn't there supposed to be a time where you enjoy it or appreciate it, at least for a while?

I've noticed that my anxiety tends to have a single focus at any given time. When I start to dwell on one thing, like say preparation for teaching next week, all the other concerns slide from view. But then when the preparations are settled, experience tells me one of the other concerns will shoulder its way to the forefront. Which makes me think, probably none of these things are worth me being so uptight... or at least, none of them are helped by my sense of anxiety.

Actually, that's true to a huge degree. And to the best of my introspection, that comes from a desperate need not to fail at a task, to be shown up as not good enough, to the extent that I have to fight trying to "sour grapes"-away tasks where it will be more evident I'm not the smartest guy in the world, or even the room.

One coping mechanism I've inadvertently developed... you can throw money at some problems to decent effect. I'm doing ok financially, I'm living fairly cheaply (if indulgently, when it comes to gizmos and the like) and so I tend to keep this great big financial safety cushion, and rely on it from time to time. This has given me some limited measure of the equanimity I kisrael'd 2 years ago, where sometimes I have the privilege of saying "hell, it's only money".

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Lego of the Moment
FoSO did most of the work assembling this lego creation (from my favorite toy store The Construction Site) and while I dig the new Exo-Force line with all their big lego robot suits, I'm dismayed to see Lego providing sheets of stickers, rather than having them pre-applied to the various pieces. Mostly because I always screw up stickers on toys, they've never ended up straight, going back to my Transformers in the early-80s...

Quote of the Moment

CHRIS FARLEY IS THE UNCLE TOM OF FAT PEOPLE

...it's a collection of (for the most part) not-terribly-explicit but absolutely real-seeming and captivating short autobiographical "comics" of people's experiences with sex. Aaron is an assistant editor at a weekly porn magazine one of the author's worked at, and he says that while watching a video of himself and an ex-girlfriend doing sex-themed performance art. (Actually, a bit of Googling makes me think the piece is about this guy, now a porn director who's received some accolades.)

Anyway, the collection is pretty darn cool...it reminded me of why I'm sure to stop in at the comic store "Million Year Picnic" at Harvard Square every once in a while.

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Video of the Moment
Anyone fond of the Hello, Kitty gang, Voltron, or Anime in general should check out this great claymation video... I've been listening to sports radio a lot lately. It hit me that I consider it something to feel a little ashamed of, as if I was veering towards being more of a anti-intellectual "typical guy", or something like that...something that doesn't match up with my image of myself. (This negative "Joe Shmoe" image probably reflects a bit of prejudice on my own part.)

First off, a lot of Sports Radio is pretty dull. These guys can go off on tangents that are pretty obscure, or even big topics (like player contracts) that don't interest me that much. There are some bright points, though, like WEEI's "Whiner Line", on around 6PM weekdays...there's some really funny people calling in. And a baseball or football game can be a great driving companion, engaging the fan's visual imagination and emotional core just a bit.

But then it hit me...at the risk of being a bit of fairweather fan, this is an astounding time in Boston Sports. Boston has the reigning champs in both baseball and football! (Plus a basketball team we won't get into right now, but a pretty good soccer team that I think got into the finals.) I mean Boston usually fields very competitive teams, but having the "world champions" in two sports at once has only ever happened a few times. So why not be a bit of a sports fan? It would be stupid to not appreciate this era in the local sports scene 'til after it was long gone...

A funny disparaging term on these stations is calling someone a "homer", meaning they're all "rah-rah" for the home team and it clouds their objective opinion. And I'm sure I've got some of that, but who cares. Pats Rock. Red Sox Rock. You other teams, just stay the heck out of their way lets you be steamrolled by our mighty juggernauts.

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Quote of the Moment

Dying is hard, but everyone has to do it, and I hope I do it well.

That's a lovely sentiment, though I keep thinking of what my cow orker Jamie said: "gee...how psyched must the person who used to be the SECOND oldest person in America be now?"

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Toy of the Moment
It has been done before but who can resist virtual bubble wrap? Don't bother not checking "Manic Mode", other wise it's way too slow to be satisfying. Sweet jimminy crickets, 1300 unique frontpage visitors yesterday? Man, I hate it when I get a huge spike on a so-so update day. I wonder why...is it the Popular Science rush? Or something else?

It's kind of odd that on the days with the most traffic I don't get any comments. I guess it really is only the regulars who are likely to write. (Hint to regulars: write me some comments, so the torrent of visitors think I'm well-loved.)

Hmm...with the addition of the icons to the sidebar, my bottom-of-the-page hit counter is getting a bit inflated for overall hits. Maybe I should weed images out from that...

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Advice of the Moment
You know, rather than just kinda kvetching about the traffic yesterday, I can take a valuable lesson away from it: if you see backed up traffic on the dang onramp, consider plan B for the day, or at least an alternate route.

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Link of the Moment
Already making the rounds but worth a quick giggle out if you haven't seen it, from the UK it's Rude Food ("now alphabetical!") It's a bit snarky and sophomoric, and some of the names are only funny to speakers of UK English, but still, an entertaining few minutes.

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Geek Link of the Moment
For all you Just Another Perl Hackers out there, it's the 2003 Perl Advent Calendar, some cool Perl Coding tidbit every day 'til Christmas.

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Column of the Moment
Speaking of snarky, I was recently reminded about the archive of Funny Paper, a semi-regular feature of the Baltimore City Paper. It's the week of comics in review, and his hatred of Mother Goose and Grimm is quite enjoyable. I also like how they punch up the thing with snippets from the comics...out of context, some of those single panels are very odd. Typical bit:

HI & LOIS: Thursday, Hi tries to straighten out Ditto's attitude about gender relations. "Believe it or not," he says, "someday you'll find someone, like I found Mom, and you'll fall in love!" "Well, moms are a lot easier to like than girls!" the future serial killer retorts.

(via slumbering lungfish )

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Quote of the Moment

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Quote of the Moment

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Good note about why we shouldn't fret so much.

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Tech Art of the Moment
Wow...a tattooing robot! -- and it looks like a PalmPilot is part of the control system. Now, I love my PalmPilot, but I'm not sure if I trust it quite that much...

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Bad News of the Moment
The other day, I kisrael'd a Salon piece on the danger of shoulder launched missiles against commercial aircraft. And last week in Kenya, it happened, though it was a miss. (One question is, did the airplane use electronic defense measures or was it just dumb luck?) Anyway, this Slate article argues that in terms of the future of airline travel, Nov 28 will be a bigger deal than 9-11.

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Linguistics of the Moment
I've always been interested in the difference between English here and in the UK, here are the differences in the first Harry Potter book and the second. The biggest thing was changing "Philosopher's Stone", which was a cool legendary alchemy reference into the much more pedestrian "Sorcerer's Stone".

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Geek Link of the Moment
The 2002 Perl Advent Calendar has a tasty tidbit (for the computer language Perl) every day for the holiday season. Already I've seen some cool modules I should have been using, rather than doing it from scratch. You can see last year's and the first year's as well (though that first year was just links into previously existing Perl documentation.) Ok, popcorn making "EHS alumni". Any females? Jenny, Ellen, Lynn, Wendy, Deb, Toni, Marnie, Maria, Chris. That's roughly in order of likeliness, off the top of my head, and I'm sure I'm forgetting many. Are you any of these? Sheesh.

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Quote of the Moment

You know, Captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful. If you just take the time to look at it.

One of the cheesiest quotes I've ever heard, it just comes out of nowhere, the show had a lot of fun with it.

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Link of the Moment
More of the wonder that is the web. This has to be one of the oddest fetish video collection I've ever seen. As far as I can tell, the whole video set stays at PG-13, but I think it's a sincere website.

Different strokes to rule the world. So to speak.
(via Cruel Site of the Day)