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I made a slideshow web app for a collection of photos of my community street band JP Honk: stuff.alienbill.com/jphonk/shoebox/slideshow (p5.js / canvas)

I really like how the presentation came out; I put all the thumbnails in a roughly square grid, then the page picks a photo, pans over all the thumbnails to it, zooms in, pauses, zooms out and repeats.... it gives a sense of context to the scale of the band's joyous events over the years.

A little more info on my devblog I've been thinking about ambient anger and annoyance, those days when everything rankles. When you're in that state, you can snap and yell at any moment, with every minor (and major) further irritation being a potential spark to a minor (or major) blow up.

At first I thought understanding the problem (in order to better cope with these scenes) was like this:



...so, like, everything seems like a big deal because we lack long-term perspective. (To quote Keynes: "The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.") But now I think Michael Jordan points to what looms even larger:

I think - subconsciously - we can take EVERYTHING personally. The traffic we're stuck in seems like a personally directed affront, somehow. The jerk cutting us off - I mean that's DEFINITELY one on one, zero sum, and so very personal right? It's outrageous.

We evolved to become a planet-engulfing species by being really sophisticated in small-group settings - that's where our brains developed, and co-operation allowed us to overcome our (good, but not world-beating) physiques to become just about the planet's most fearsome and successful animal. (I just did some math and while ants outnumber us there's only about 14lbs of ant per person)

But I think a side effect of that is how we attribute intentionality to everything. I think this explains the ambient frustration many people live through as well as many folk's beliefs that there's a higher divine power behind it all. When we see something happen, we look to who wanted it to happen, because that attitude serves us so well in the scopes we evolved in.

But we don't just see things as intentionality serving someone else's purpose (which is the stance I can usually take) - we replace a kind of objective sense of "what chain of cause and effect made this happen, and did someone set that in motion on purpose, and if so what where their goals and intentions?" with a simplistic "why the hell is his happening TO ME??? Screw you."

But that's no way to live. To quote the eponymous character of Garrison Keillor's Don Giovanni: "Helpless rage is a major cause of falls in the home."

So disclaimers, I know a lot of my equanimity seeking, even-keeled nature gets based in the privilege I enjoy. I'm not much of a striver and I have a materially easy life. That aids to my ability take things more calmly. (Though also I think about cliches of the passive Taoist; it might be that the best path is not to accept everything but keep fighting the good fights...)

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Dallas QAnon Cultists Are Drinking Toxic Chemicals from A Communal Bowl, Family Says - unfortunately, not just a metaphor like I first hoped.

It reminds me of one of my least favorite quirks of fringe belief, or even mainstream religion: expressing strong faith in an outlandish belief is a way of expressing your in-group bona-fides. The ridiculousness of a belief is a feature, not a bug, and the wackier and harder to swallow the idea the better. And ditto for bowls of cleansing chemicals.

I've been playing with the idea that the big dividing line is if a belief system relies on validation through special revelation. (I accept that my sense that any Truth must be potentially universally recognizable might come from my particular anti-Calvinist upbringing, but I still think it's an empathetic view to hold.)

It makes me think of this quote from the Buddha:

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

That is a great general idea, though where it falls down a little is humans have a very instinctive urge to anthropomorphize; like we're such social creatures and so much happens because other humans wanted/caused it to happen, and since almost all reasoning is via analogies, there's a set of common sense explanations that posit a supernatural entity wanting this world just so (the old "if you found a pocket watch, you could infer a designer" folly.) And atoms are so tiny, and the process of evolution so slow, both so outside the normal scales of everyday existence that we need to build these trust in institutions that have put in the hard work of finding things out and been willing to put their hypotheses to the test - everything lightly held so that if a better idea comes along we can let go of the old belief and accept the new.

(with my friends, I was also putting in the disclaimer "I realize I have a bit of faith in science", and they objected to that use of the word "faith" - like, "trust" perhaps, but faith is something meant to be there, undeterred by contrary evidence.)

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Great Tik Tok metaphor for vaccines - COVID is a test, and vaccines are the cheat sheet, an answer packet with 40-60% of the answers, and from the teacher. And we're graded on a curve, because people not using the answer packet is dragging us down and making us have to take the test again and again.

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Millennial: OK, I've done the 10-day isolation, PCR was negative two days ago, so were both of today's LFTs. I'll walk 14 miles back now for Xmas so I don't have to be exposed to anyone.

Boomer parent: You'll have to speak up, pub's very busy because of the face-licking contest

(I'm not saying my folks are like the Boomer Parents here, but I feel like I'm setting up a Millennial-ish regimen for visiting them for Christmas after a possible exposure over the weekend)

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today was the final 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century.

The world is complicated, Bar. That's why it's interesting.

via his medium essay on making tough decision

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Awesome sound toy blob opera Pretty fun time w/ Cora today - she and her Mama K had done crystal growing science the night before, and so I tried to give her the basic theme of atomic theory - solids, liquids, gases... and the Kiwi Krate was a particularly good one about electricity, building up a little game where a light lights up when three pinballs are in the correct position... and then we moved onto computer science:
corapegasus I have this jewelry (I think) piece that was framed by my dad over 35 years ago: I'm not sure what to do with it. I don't think it's a particularly lovely piece, but any charms it does have are likely being lost on me. $135 is about $400 in today's money - and for all I know he was thinking investment as much as the beauty of it (or the contest winning.) I don't have much sentimental attachment to it - heaven knows I have my fair share of artifacts that connect me with him.

Of course, that was in a pre-Etsy/Ebay day. (I suspect his visions of carefully hoarded 1980s-era Happy Meal toys being worth something came to naught, since the web turned that into a buyers market.)

Wish I had access to something Antique Roadshow-y!

UPDATE: my mom says

If memory serves, I think he liked it because it was [a broach] designed by Georg Jensen [...] I believe original. It intrigued your dad because it was a jewelry piece, rather than Jensen’s usual tableware."

Interesting!

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Very much a WIP, my timelines project might be of interest to people who dig information display problems (and want to provide feedback and/or see how the sausage is made) I updated my Wall O' Peeps - shots of people I dig. I took all but one or two of the photos shown here, and I really like the composition of most of them (there are a few people I want to see but don't have a particularly interesting photo of.)



To update it , I swapped in replacements for a few photos, and added some as well. As I make the selections, I realize how important this collection is to me, I end up knowing its contents like the back of my hand.

You can see the first rendition here. Also I started making an archive of the fullsize version of these.

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Blender of Love

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Boston and Racism A lefty debates with his more conservative younger self. I like the dialectic in this, even as my own views lean left.

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advent day 21
advent day 21

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#schoolofhonk low brass sectional

A video posted by David Wedaman (@grainger_d) on Dec 20, 2015 at 5:53pm PST

(School of Honk Low Brass Sectional... tubas doing this great chromatic ascending riff in "Uptown Funk")

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Steve Harvey and Miss Universe, meet "Elderly Jewish Retirees for Pat Buchanan"; design layout really can make a difference.

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"Thanks again for driving me, Jay. 'YOU'FF ARRRRRIFFED AT YOU-RE DEST-ONATION.' Geet it? Because ve're in a jherrman car!"
"I have lived a long full life. I will drive us into a wall."

advent day 21

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Oh man they just released GTA:San Andreas for IOS. So much for a productive holiday break- suspect I will like GTA:SA more than GTAV.

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Man, UPS sucks. They left a "sorry we missed you" tag, but we THINK it's the package that got handed off to some neighbors and got to us fine... but the "InfoNotice" number on the tag just isn't recognized on the website. And then the "livechat" feature on their website is closed. For the weekend I guess? The weekend before Christmas? Way to go, guys. You win at internet.

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Plus, trying to click Lowes' "Make This Your Store" on their Store Locator leads to "You have attempted to execute an action which our server has flagged as malicious." Genius! Now I don't feel so bad for all the stupid things I've done as a (cough) professional software engineer.

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Baby Got Back: An Oral History
advent day 21

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So this is Maya2K! I do admit, I would at least describe New Jersey as "very windy" today.

Actually, I think over the last few months there's been less hype than I expected...

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The Broken Boadwalk of Jersey:

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Another thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a situation where "bad" guys have fewer ways of getting guns. Duh.

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Wow. 8:45 and I'm already typing ("entitlement"=="Assessments") instead of (item.entitlement=="Assessments"). Gonna be a long day.

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"How can you sex up the gift of a coffee grinder?"
"Try saying 'now you got the grind, I'll bring the bump?'"
"...hmm, maybe."

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#xmasfail

I saw mommy shaking Santa Claus' hand / but in a meaningful way

Jingle bells / jingle bells / jingle at least most of the way

Frosty / the Snowman / was inert

Rudoph / the damp-nosed reindeer / had a rather damp nose

Bittersweet contentment to the world!

O the weather outside is frightful / I hope the god damn furnace guy gets here soon

I'm dreaming / of a ... Christmas / without so many wolves in it

Silent night / shut up.

It came upon the midnight overcast

I'll be home for Christmas / that's what "house arrest" means

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12 minutes of fail for your holiday schadenfreude needs. The driver at 7:46 is one of the subtlest and best.

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Deregulate. 4 months later, a coordinated "Bear Raid" crashes your economy. Conclusion: Duh.

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.

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There's a part of me that thinks maybe it's just dumb to live in a place where snow is a regular part of the landscape; ignoring a blatant sign from nature.

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http://onastick.net/drew/sinistar/ - The 80s videogame Sinistar as seen by Descartes More minimalist holiday season updates!

Made a Glorious Trainwreck and went to the company party last night. I guess it was good to dig out my car if nothing else. The party was decent enough, if excessively wedding-reception-y. "Semi-formal", which brought back all those memories of high school dances...

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Video of the Moment
"What if Obi-Wan had used Force Speed?"

--Wow, I must be slipping with my Star Wars geek cred, I had to look up "Force Speed" (mostly from some of the video games, Jedi can sometimes move very fast.) Still, I laughed.

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Quote of the Moment

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

...another lame QotD, but I just love that he picked "navel of a firefly", as opposed to some other insect, because it subtly reflects the Hollywood glamor thing.

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Holiday Party, a bit too highschool danceish for me. They gave us plastic bracelets, ala "ok to drink" ones from college.

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Wow, 5 pieces of spam for Microsoft Office products snuck through gmail's spam filter... it's been a while.

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Flann's, the local pub, has started adding fruit to most of their meals... something seasonal, like an apple. Kinda nice!

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Obama's Brand: Marlboro Reds: http://tinyurl.com/9bfc4d (Yay Google!) I feel a little more Christmas-y than usual this year, at least judging by propensity to whistle or scat Christmas-y songs as I walk along. Especially "Let It Snow", though lately there's a quiet ironic undertone that might just be detectable by the careful listener.

* "zoo be dippidy bop be dop doo DEEE dop" = "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" in scat speak. That's the nice thing about scat singing, it sounds jazzy and it's ok if you don't remember the words.

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Funny of the Moment

"Here baby! Nothing but the best for you!"
"It's a gift certificate."
"For the best!"
"For twenty dollars."
"WORTH OF THE BEST!"

Just a quick note before driving with MELM (my ever lovin' Mom) to around her new digs in Nyack. Wikipedia seems to claim it's just coincidence that the place sounds like "New York" as said with a speech impediment.

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Pachabel Canon of the Moment

--Very funny and musically nifty! The tuba had a similar part on that song, though more Bass-y and less Harmonyish than the Cello bit. I have to say I didn't mind it so much.

One random musical memory I'll always have is watching Chuck Daellenbach of the Canadian Brass sitting midstage, on the floor, playing the bass line almost as a lullabye, rocking back and forth, the foundation for the rest of the group on that number.

Geek Article of the Moment
On Slashdot someone cut and paste this page on Basics of the Unix Philosophy from the The Art of Unix Programming. I found it worth a skim-through...

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Geek Humor of the Moment

<microgal> and whiter than white
<Kronovohr> so...you're like #GGGGGG?

(For non-techies It's an HTML code joke...let me know in the comments if you want an explanation.) Yeesh, the 11-2 2-11 (duhhr, thanks Eric) Dolphins beat the 12-1 Pats? Ah well. Maybe a dose of reality will be good for this team in the playoffs.

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Image of the Moment

--"McDonald's" from the floating logos project...tall franchise signs with the poles digitally removed, leaving the billboards eerily floating above...

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Mashup of the Moment
Meet the Beastles...a mashup of two of my perennial favorites, the Beatles and the Beastie Boys...

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Editorials of the Moment

What 'I' get to do, as president, is make promises that I know perfectly well can never be kept, and then to make Congress break those promises for me. I don't have to change 'the principles I believe in' because I know more responsible people in the government will violate them and take the blame.

Those 'principles,' then, are really nothing more than the narcissism of a spoiled child.

...was it as bad as all that? Should our Commander-in-Chiefs new motto be the buck stops over there, so don't ask me? And is his "strong leadership" just trying to make others make the difficult decisions? What a lame figurehead.

I had dinner with my mom and Mo last night. Kind of fit under the big "weirdly amicable" tent, pretty much we just ignore the fact that anything has changed.

Carambola in Waltham has some mighty tasty Cambodian food, even if it took my mom about 10 listens to remember how to say that name....

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Cartoons and Games of the Moment
Slashdot mentioned a series of cartoon shorts that tell more of the story of the Star Wars "Clone Wars". I got to watch the first 2 sets at Sawers and Cordelia's holiday party. They were made by the same teams who made Power Puff Girls, Dexter's Lab, and Samurai Jack, and while sometimes they threatened to get a little too "cartoony", overall they were excellent. So good I was led to give the Clone War videogame (had to buy it to get a deal on a PS2) another try....and it turned out to be much better than I remembered, lots of giant land battles with tons of troops, really giving the feel of large armies clashing. So now I'm more into this whole section of the Star Wars universe, and am more actively interested in seeing the third movie of the prequels.

Anyway, the Cartoon Network site has some simple but fun Clone Wars games itself. The basic games are the same whether you choose to play for the Light or Dark Side--there's a cool overhead jousting game, a simple little 2D fighting game, and an old-school sidescroller shoot-em-up, set underwater.

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Link of the Moment
I think it's safe to say that in general, half of any given "Top-10" list is filler, which is why this Merlin's Lists of Five Things makes so much sense. (No relationship to Merlin of King Arthur fame, so far as I can tell.) Funny and sometimes thoughtful stuff, although sometimes I wish it it was clearer when he was just making a funny and when he was being serious. Overall it reminds me a little bit of my biography in lists, which is probably in need of some updating soon.

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Scam of the Moment
There's some web advertiser who has this really lame and evil scheme....they popped up a javascript message box that said "press the enter key and hold it down for a surprise". If you just click slowly, or just tap enter, it nags you and says "no no no - you have to hold it down so the auto-key-repeat kicks in". See, what happens with that is you clear a bunch of regular message boxes, and then one of them is going to be the confirmation for "do you want to change your startpage to [insert name of crappy spam portal here]". And they do some timer checks to guess whether you are or aren't gullibly holding that key down. I did some experiments, as your reward for playing along, you get a lame web reproduction of that old "flying through space" windows screensaver.

Yeesh. These guys have no shame. Beware. I got some crap so that when I reboot my machine, I get some lame search portal sidebar, and the reset some of the aspects of my carefully arrange IE toolbar...oddly adaware doesn't find something wrong. Quote of the Moment

I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them.

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Toy Review of the Moment

Everybody loves Slinky, the springy coil that long ago slunk its way into America's heart, so everyone is sure to love Slinky Pets, which combine the coil-like fun of Slinky with the furry plushness of stuffed animals. Best of all, since the fuzz-covered Slinky is topped with a furry dog's head, you needn't worry about any of that horrible "slinking." Instead, the Slinky Pet tumbles clumsily down stairs, to the delight of kids and adults alike.

...toys that were marked down for a reason.

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Slightly Good News of the Moment
According to the latest Ask the Pilot on Salon, maybe shoulder launched missiles aren't that big of a threat. Still, it makes you wonder.

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Random Gift of the Moment
My grandfather-in-law just got us a subscription to Reader's Digest. Now I feel old.

Vaguely Sacrilegious Image of the Moment

--from an eBay auction, a Jesus-signed bible! Jesus sounds like a real cool dude.

Quote of the Moment

Enya to Star Wars, Enya to Star Wars, Enya to Star Wars

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Link of the Moment
Space Moose is one of the offensive cartoons online, but also one of the funniest. It's PG13 to R material, with scatological humor and sodomy jokes, but laugh at loud funny at parts. Two of my favorite Space Moose cartoons actually aren't offensive, though: Demented chess game and Ducks.