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There's nothing guaranteeing tomorrow. We could die today or we could die 60 years from now; Either way, there's never enough time to do everything we want.

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Advice from a professional experience creator to all other professional experience creators and aspiring ones:
If you start working on a project, and realize partway through that it has a critical flaw that breaks the whole thing, and you stop working on it, then with absolute certainty someone else will come along and make that same project, miss that critical flaw, and release it. And a few people will notice the critical flaw, and complain about it, but enjoy the thing anyway. And the majority of people won't even notice the critical flaw.
In 2024, aspire to be that stupider version of yourself. ❤

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The optimist sees the whole of the donut, the pessimist sees the hole of the donut.

Nolan Bushnell dreams of his next big toy by John Schmelzer (Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1984).
via

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Everybody [brings something to Christmas dinner] except for my shady uncle. All he bring is judgement, man. He still can't believe I'm gay! He'll be like "Ugh- ya still into them girls, huh?" and I'm like "Yes, Unk - 'cause women are SOFT and FLUFFY... like hotel pillows and they smell like CUCUMBER-LEMON and STABILITY." I don't want to wake up with no big hairy man in my bed with a bulge at my back... uhh! Y'all rough like bricks and smell like NEWPORTS and EXCUSES, uck!

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Twitter thread on how we're actuall doing under Biden

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Beginning aren't automatically good. Even shitty things *start*!

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"My new Yankee Candle has no scent, 1 Star" - our new COVID tracking system.

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We barely have time to react in this world
Let alone rehearse
And I don't think I'm better than you
But I don't think that I'm worse

I think about this line sometimes when reading about “Guns, Germs, and Steel” colonialism and racism. Tough to know if any group would have been more moral had opportunities been reversed. And it’s one of those questions that begs the questions of existential predeterminism- how can anyone have done other than what they did in a universe that is governed by a domino chain of cause and effect? Free will is tough to pin down though moral behavior seems to depend on us acting like we have it.

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What I say to them are the one or two best things that I learned from Sen. [Ted] Kennedy. First of all, the best is the enemy of the good. He didn't make that up. But if you have a choice between achieving 20 or 30 percent of what you'd like or being the hero of all your friends, choose the first. We're not here just to make speeches. The second thing, which I think is really of great practical value, is don't worry about credit. Credit is a weapon. You give the other person the credit. When you disagree with someone, get them to talk about the problem. Eventually--it happens almost always--they'll say something you agree with. Then you can say, "Let's work with that."

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Well, when I was young, I was pretty dumb. And now that I'm older, I'm pretty fucking dumb. I don't know everything, and I think I do. So there's the problem.

I didn't ever think I'd get this old. [Laughs] I always thought I was lucky to make it past 21.

Also him on daily exercise:

I still try to do a little workout every day just to pay for the day. That’s what I call it: You have to do something to pay for the day. So I’ll get up and do a little walking or jogging or whatever, just enough to keep the heart going.

The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea.

(repost but man is it good)

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economists really took the divine right of kings and turned it into billionaire CEOs
"it's kinda fucked up to reject the business practices of jeff bezos when he rightfully earned his position under capitalism"

A history of Star Control 2 and some games by the same folks, like Archon... very rich about the feel of the folks who made it. (I like the reference to the game review calling the mechanic "Rock, Scissors, Vapor")

Sometimes it strikes me as weird when I'm communicating with folks doing cool stuff in the games field (blogs/podcasts or new creative work - see Chogue, a combination of Chess and Rogue that got me thinking about Archon) and I realize I know a lot of game lore that they don't - and usually stuff like "I thought EVERYONE knew that". Guess it's a combination of being old, and the general community of video games folks being much much larger. (And conversely, when I realize how pretty much every game I can think of has some kind of video showing gameplay on Youtube, I realize there's this large group who know much more about these games, and have put in the work to get them playable and recordable. They are doing important cultural history work.)

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IMPORTANT QUESTION
What do LEGO astronauts have on their backs?
A. Jet Pack for smooth travel
B. Oxygen for survival
C. Something else

catholic contestant: i'd like to buy 12 O's pic.twitter.com/M6tIcsPn7h

— pope phteven (@PhuckinCody) October 2, 2017

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Hm, the offense that fueled my profanity-laced tirade about censorship at the CDC may have been exaggerated - to the extent that it's self-censorship in the CDC for budget documents. Is a group censoring itself to try not to get the axe from a bunch of truthiness-wielding blowhards better than outright orwell censorship? I guess? Still telling tho.

advent day 22

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You know, I was going to write about mixed feelings about if Donald Trump was backing off "Drain the Swamp" rhetoric (you know, just leaving big money as the only long term interest in DC) while still utilizing it as BS puffery--- but Newt saying he had to take it all back. Yeesh. I'd say it sounds like someone got sent to the principal's office, but Trump is more... bully? Commandant? Metaphors fail me. What a cluster.
advent day 22

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Ted Cruz, looking like a more-weaslish Nathan-Lane, has some of the savviest and most daring PR/campaign stuff we've seen... from the crude photoshop of him as a gangster, to that almost-self-parody like tv spot - there's a winking, almost hip, knowigness to it all that's lacking on the democratic side.

Some of it looks to spring from the candidate himself; between his half-assed Yoda and Darth impressions to his more impressive re-enactment of Billy Crystal in Princess Bride, there's a kind of media aware hipster-geek vibe that may resonate with the swing youth vote in a way Hillary won't.

The safest bet for the Democrats would be a block-splitting third party run of Trump; (they say Hillary stacks up pretty well against him if he were to get the nomination as well) --- without that, Trump has said enough extreme things and gathered so much attention for himself that he makes the Cruz Rubio et al sound more sane.

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The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea.

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After an indulgently late night of a video game, I was kind of hoping to sleep in more but my upstairs neighbors (The McStompersons) are apparently in training for the national pacing competition. Dang!

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advent day 22

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One reason I'm wary of Libertarianism: when stuff like the FDA is restricted from doing its thing, stuff like this happens-- the market does not autocorrect to prevent harm to people.

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Koi @ Tropiquarium in Ocean Township, NJ

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Going through old files (from back in the DOS days, I think) I found this file called "ERASEME" that I am now turning into a prose poem:
Questions:

1. Who are you?
2. Do I know you from somewhere?
3. Why do you care about my feelings
   for the Waltermire's car?
4. Is there anything wrong with me
   admiring this red Ford?
5. What are your feelings for this particular car?

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Moral of Cinderella: Intentionally leave some of your shit at his place so he'll have to return it.

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As a rule, I try to keep my "bucket list" small. I'm all for having extraordinary experiences, but to be irritated or disappointed with yourself on your deathbed because you didn't touch the Taj Mahal or drive a fire engine -- that's no way to live.... err, or to die.

But as a kid, I've always wanted to go to space, to slip these surly bonds of earth and be unencumbered by gravity. The Kid's Whole Future Catalog ( http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/tag/kids-whole-future-catalog ) kind of implied I'd get that chance, but things don't seem to heading that direction. BUT - I did get to "Gravity" in IMAX 3D, and to be honest, I feel like that gave me panorama. And now, for my 40th Birthday in March, I just bought myself a ticket from The Zero G Corporation, https://www.gozerog.com , the folks who fly those "Vomit Comet" flights on parabolic arcs and let civillians have little 20-30 second sips of weightlessness. The price is a bit on the exorbitant side, but hell -- if this soothes my midlife crisis instead of buying an expensive car, I'll practically be SAVING money!

So between Gravity in IMAX 3D (which, to be honest, kind of made me feel safer about not going all the way to Low Earth Orbit) and this, I hope my inner child will see I've done the best I can to experience space, and not done too bad a job of it.
advent day 22

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There is no situation that cannot be made stupider and more volatile with the addition of a gun.

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My new drink concoction: Spum-O: Sprite Zero + Rum. On ice. In a glass. Enjoy with friends.

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http://kirkdev.blogspot.com/ - using scale9grid to let old IE have drop shadows. Or not. BONUS: Fireworks muddled through cheatsheet!

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An arcade cabinet is a vending machine that dispenses excitement.

--Apollo 11's walkabout on the moon, overlayed on a baseball field... some background and the soccerfield version over at Gizmodo.

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Artistic License: Because someone other than the government should take liberties.

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I was doing some mid-holiday relaxing with Grand Theft Auto 4 "The Ballad of Gay Tony". Lovely moment on a rooftop, fighting guys on neighboring roof, sniped last guy just before he throws a grenade - ragdolls everywhere. Off to NJ... a little traveling music...



BoingBoing linked to Greg Fleischut and friends... they're like 15 years old in this.

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Watching the Giants and Panthers go into OT, I can't stop thinking that the "first point wins" OT rule is kind of BS- college has it better It is really great to have a sushi restaurant right next door. On my own after a grinding week at work, a few California rolls, a few Spicy Tuna rolls, some hot green tea, a book, all's a bit better with the world...

There used to be an Indian place there, but it always looked sad and empty-- elegant, but empty. (There's another, more lively Indian place around the corner, Punjab, that just moved into bigger and exquisitely decorated quarters with one of the few bars in the city.) So even though it feels to me like there's a glut of places to get sushi at this intersection, it feels like Manna Sushi is doing pretty well, I rarely see it empty.

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Joke of the Moment

Two cows are standing in a field. One says to the other, "What do you think about this mad cow disease?"
"What do I care?" says the other. "I'm a helicopter."

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Gallery of the Moment

--36 of the Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek -- original Trek. Dig the 60s glam. More at the link!

My latest UI gripe: physical buttons that change their function when you press and hold, versus just pressing. Three case studies as of late:

• One grey lining to the silver cloud of the Wii's innovative controller schemes is that they've ditched the traditional "start" button, and while every game seems to respect the "home" button that takes you to a system menu and offers to totally reset the game (almost like power-cycling), there doesn't seem to be a single convention for an "in game pause menu" that might offer to, say, end the current match and return to the previous menu. The Plus button seems to be a non-universal standard for it, but games like "Super Monkey Ball" ignored it. Or seemed to... through trial and much error I finally figured out it's press and hold of the Plus button. That's irritating! The button serves no other use during the game, and it's not in place where it's likely to be pressed accidentally. So why do that? What possible benefit is there in making people think "this button does nothing"? Is the needed prolonged hold a way of expressing the sincerity of our desire to stop the game?
• My car radio's tuning feature. By default, pressing up or down adjusts the tuning .2 degrees on FM or whatever. Like most modern cars, it has a "seek" function, which kicks in after a second or two after pressing and holding the button. Now, given what a huge percentage of the time is spent driving near home, and at any given moment people likely have a big selection of strong radio signals to choose from (rather than having to fiddle and tuning in a station that's almost out of range), how smart is it to have the default be "tweak this tuning" rather than "find me another damn station"? And when you're trying to "channel surf" radio stations, the extra second of delay is infuriating. You listen, judge the content in like a quarter to half a second, go to move on, and listen to whatever crap you just rejected for another second or so, 'til the thing beeps and moves on to the next station...
• Ksenia's grandfather's radio... he asked me to set the clock for it. Now, clock-setting is a whole 'nother ball of bad-UI wax, but having to press. And hold. And hold the button labeled "Clock/Sleep/Timer" was just not something Ksenia's grandfather was going to stumble on by himself.

In some cases I can see why the designer does this, sees "press and hold" as a way of reusing buttons, adding functionality without the "clutter" cost or physical cost of extra buttons there. But there's no real iconography or concise language for "press and hold for function X", so it just makes these functions more obscure. (And in the case of Monkey Ball, there's absolutely no excuse. Games are all about reacting to input, providing feedback. If you press every button on a controller looking for a command you think you should be there, you should activate every command, not have to press and hold everything for an indetrminate period like some sort of mad functionality Easter Egg hunt.)

Dumb UI designers: making your life a little worse in a thousand little ways. I was giving Ksenia some grief about the way she might have to work at the temple on Christmas Day...she's culturally ethnically Jewish but Russian Orthodox in practice. Of course, the 25th isn't Orthodox Christmas anyway.

At any rate, she got the hiccups as we were walking through Harvard Square, and I suggested maybe it was God punishing her, either for being a fence-sitter like that, or for being mean to me and tricking me into carrying the bag from 7-11. So I started telling Knock-Knock jokes:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"THE WRATH AND FURY OF ALMIGHTY GOD."

and then a bit later, down the street:

"Knock Knock."
"...Who's there?"
"STILL GOD! I'M EVERYWHERE!"

Finally as we were almost back to the car:

"Knock knock."
"..."
"Knock knock!"
"Fine, who is there?"
"A cute little kitten!"
"A cute little kitten who?"
"HAW HAW JUST KIDDING! IT'S GOD AGAIN!"

So I'm not sure which Hell I'm going to end up in, but one of them.

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Gripe of the Moment
Last year I griped about how dumb Window's file finder had become. Well, Outlook 2003 seems to be campaigning for a place on my S***list. It's just trying so darn hard to be helpful...rearranging the taskbar buttons for messages I'm composing, closing the window of an email I was composing but navigated away from, and tucking it safely away in the sent folder...bleh! So inconsistent with anything else I've ever used! And now it has some of the same "lets make search results look like regular content" that plagues Window's file Explorer...in this case they have a nice filter-looking search, but there's not an obvious visual cue that the filter is being applied. This means you can happily think "oh, no new mail lately" when what's really happening is "no new mail that meets the keywords you were searching for."

Feh.

Hey, congratulations to "Evil Bastard" (He's not so evil, as far as I can tell, though he is a figurative bastard when it comes to certain Nintendo games) who just got himself a job after a somewhat-prolonged bout of unemployment. He doesn't start the new gig 'til after the new year, so finaly he can really enjoy not working rather than sweating it. Ya know...in the "be careful what you wish for department"...I really wish I had like a month or two off. Between dating, a bit of church involvement...I don't know, but it feels like I have so much fewer free weeknights than I used to. It seems like every evening is either with Ksenia, or maybe with E.B. and his wife, (though I end up blowning stuff off with him too often...FoSO and Sawers, I'm lookin' at you.) or some scheduled thing, church or family. I neglect my other friends, and in general I feel seriously strained timewise. So a month or two off, try to catch up, tacklet like 3 or 4 projects I have in mind...but if it was because of unemployment I'm sure I'd be too neurotic to enjoy it.

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Game of the Moment
Decent little oldschool puzzle game RefleX. Click on the panels to adjust the course of the ball to collect all the tokens and then hit the goal.

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News Headline of the Moment

Up to a foot of snow is possible in parts of Indiana and Ohio today as a storm spreads into the region. Motorists already are sliding off roads.

I just thought it was a strikingly folksy way of writing an article summary.

I want to write about those times when I was happiest;
those times when good fortune seemed to alight on my shoulders
and the sky was smiling down on me with a grin the size of the world.


(When asked what had satisfied him most in life,
  Man Ray -- photographer, painter, sculptor, innovator --
  said "...I'd say women".

...I'll say women.)


High School summer nights;
heels over head for the German girl--
--my last simple love. Late nights outside
the home of her host family...
(Maybe I broke one heart to get there.
  Maybe not. In either case it was worth it.)
...leaning, pushed up against the cinder wall that
was still releasing the heat absorbed in the day.
standing, leaning, but legs splayed,
the German girl standing between them,
leaning in close herself.
Kissing, and kissing, and kissing, and kissing.

In a month I'll notice she stops closing her eyes
but now, this moment: I was happiest.


Years later. College.
That beautiful girl with the curly long dark hair.
So assured. Sitting in that white and black
director's chair. Her shirt off. Leaning back.
Those beautiful breasts. Knowing a dozen guys
on campus whose envy at that situation could
knock down the walls of that brave little dorm room.
Thinking that this time could be the time
it was going to work, was going to stay working.

Her leaning so far back, letting herself melt into that moment.

That cheap chair would break in minutes.
And that damn carousel of a romance would spin away
from me by midterms. But that moment: I was happiest.


Finally. Years after college.
A midwinter escape to the Jersey Shore with
you and some friends. (The Russian chick, and
her husband, but they're a different story)
Together the four of us had run away, just for
a short while, a break from the workaday life,
But more than that, I thought all the old cycles
had broken. The old patterns of finding and
loss washed away. I tasted some salt from the
ocean water. I wrote a heart and our initials
in the damp sand. My college drinking buddy
and I had found something more in each other
and I thought that was all there was to find.

It was a moment, a moment that held the end
of needing other moments: I was happiest.


Oh Darling.
Now, this moment.
You say that you're leaving.
Maybe I don't understand why.
Maybe I understand all too well.

Kundera wrote of poetic memory. That's what I inscribed
in his book that I gave to you: "to finding a place in
poetic memory". But I thought...I thought it would be
more about being poetry. Less about being a memory.

Aw Darling.
Maybe we'll each find more times, other moments.
Maybe I'll be happiest again.

I don't know and I can't know
but right now I miss you more than anything.

Random Iconography of the Moment
(Ok, this is incredibly geeky, but in an oddly sportsy way.) While looking at ESPN's NFL Power Rankings, I noticed certain patterns in the iconography, and decided it would be much cooler if they grouped via that, rather than geography...

Bird Head League	Mammal Head League
Whole Animal league	Words and Letters League
People Head League	Icon and Thingy League

Speaking of football, I'm getting a little freaked by all the military promos and what not. I wonder if we'll be at war by the time the superbowl comes around?

And as long as I'm sort of ranting...ugh, between the Debeers 'I love this man, I love him I love him' buy-a-diamond-and-be-loved spot and the Lexus 'auto as perfect gift' ads...yeesh.

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Essay of the Moment
On the other hand, this is one of the few pro-war "Hawk" essays that makes some kind of sense to me. The author has pretty good credentials; I hope he knows what the heck he's talking about.

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Blog of the Moment

God, I don't have great faith, but I can be faithful. My belief in you may be seasonal, but my faithfulness will not. I will follow in the way of Christ. I will act as though my life and the lives of others matter. I will love.

You know, I'm still always a little startled when I hear about the ministers and other believers who are Christian but don't take everything about the Bible literally. (I think a lot of Anglicans are like that, according to one survey I heard about, and the preacher in the blog mentions that's one of the things he learned about Bible scholars in his pre-seminary schooling.) I think the church in America does itself a disservice with its Fundamentalist "incorruptable and literally true" reading of its holy book. I think that's certainly something that drove me from my faith. On the other hand, from a meme point of view, maybe "the American church" is doing better for itself with this kind of simple, easy to understand, take-it-or-leave-it belief. After all, people don't seem to be getting much more rational, or equipped to judge the scientific likelihood of some of the claims of the bible.

I'm not 100% which of these camps my mom falls into. But I think she's aware of how this kind of thought has kept me from the church, and that's why she's bugged that I like to listen to Christian radio, which tends to be very fundamentalist. I listen to it because I like to argue with the radio, and it's probably not fair that that radio is so tempering my view of the religion. Aw crap. My home directory and all the files (including my website) are missing from alienbill.com. Still waiting to hear back from tech support. Well, at least now I've figured out a way of backing up my other sites. (FTP always had problems, I'm hoping pscp (from the maker of puTTY, a kickbutt free little ssh client) will do the trick for this site and loveblender.)

Man, why do suck things always come in waves?

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Headline of the Moment
Salvation Army fights to stay in Moscow...they're being accused of being a paramilitary! Hee hee hee. The 'Army claims it's because they're not making the requisite bribes.

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Piecemeal Quote of the Moment

With the arrival of the "ultra-rapid computing machine", "the average human being of mediocre attainments or less" will have "nothing to sell that is worth anyone's money to buy."

Couldn't find the whole quote, but I think it's from early-ish in the 1900s. It's an interesting flipside to the "computers will do all the work and we can all retire and it will be utopia" mentality.