Category: Uncategorized

Why is it that I can’t seem to get to bed before 3AM? This last week has been night after night of 6 hour sleep cycles. I’m the least productive I’ve been in months. (I blame GTA3:Vice City.) What’s worse is that I haven’t touched the “novel” I’m trying to write in just about as long. Maybe this weekend will be less crazy, and I’ll get some writing done.

Kicking off said weekend, tonight is this big paintball extravaganza that’s been in planning for the last couple of weeks. I convinced a few people to go, and just about everyone else did too. We grew from a group hoping to get 10 people (the minimum reservation to rent an arena) to having between 20 and 25. It’ll be my first time playing in an indoor arena, so I’m excited. (Note, link is to one of the worst websites I’ve ever seen. There are some pictures of the arena at http://www.mnpig.com/.) I wonder how many first person shooter level-design parallels I’ll make in the course of the evening.

Last night I went to the brand-spanking-new restaurant that Jason posted about after he went. When the manager on duty asked us how we’d heard about the place (there were like 2 people in the restaurant when we showed up) I just said “from a friend”. I didn’t want to go into the whole blog thing. But it occurs to me that that’s what I should have said. More and more I’ll bet this kind of thing is happening. How many times have you read about something in a blog and then acted on that knowledge in “real” life? It happens to me all the time, I think.

Where the digital meets the real: Next, on Oprah!

PS, I’m planning a big post on juggling sometime soon! In it, I’ll tell you all about the class I taught at Circus Juventas last Wednesday, among other juicy high-flying facts!

UPDATE: Jason pointed out that I didn’t a) mention the name of the restaurant (AZIA), or b) include an opinion really at all. It was good food, a little pricy, but good. Go read jason’s post for more… *grin*

Last night Laura and I received our first order from Simon Delivers, taking us one more step toward a completely digital lifestyle. If I can’t shun my humanity entirely and stop eating by becoming a computer, then I might as well have the computer bring my food to me.

This morning’s surfing reveals more human-computer parallels: Jason sent me this tidbit on how male ejaculation transfers data at breathtaking speeds. And Peter sent me a link that eventually led me to this poetry generator. (although I don’t think it does that great a job, it is definitely the style of poetry that I enjoy.) Finally, I was surfing around for human computer statistics, and found this article on brainpower vs computer processing power over at http://www.transhumanism.com/.

I feel like writing a sort of found poem using that digitalprose poem generator link, but I should really get back to work.

This morning on my way to work a frantic looking elderly black woman ran up to my car while I was stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn left onto a busy street. She begged me to give her a ride down to Portland, (a mile or so out-of-my-way to the right). I thought about it for a second and then unlocked my door. Her car had broke down, and she felt fortunate that it’d happened on a day she didn’t have to work. (Today is Martin Luther King day–one of my namesakes.) Unfortunately, I did have to work today, and I was already late before giving this woman a ride. So I pulled into the lot where I work an hour late, but feeling smug in my moral superiority.

update: reading this later, I realize how stuck up this sounds. Smug is perhaps the wrong word, and that whole last sentence undermines the feeling that I was left with by this woman. What she said was not particularly enlightening, but her situation, her charisma, fearlessness were all somehow vibrantly illuminated for me that morning, and it made me feel somehow more alive in the same way that “stepping back” and thinking about the entire world all at once also makes me feel more alive. I did feel morally in-the-right, having placed this other person’s struggle above my own, if only for a few minutes. But superior was not necessarily the right word or feeling either.

First of all, it’s irish-girl’s birthday today.

Second, I have no time to say stuff. I’m running out the door. Maybe I’ll post more later. I had been working up to writing another poem in the “math metaphor” category. Let it suffice to say that I was going for the multiplication puns. Sad, sad, bad and maybe funny.

Speaking of word counts, the new Harry Potter novel (which it has been announced will be released June 21st, 2003) is rumored to be over 255,000 words. It took something like 3 years to write, but still! The link has some comparative word count statistics. It falls in between The King James version of the Bible, (at 181,000 words), and Dickens’ David Copperfield (at 357,000 words). You’d think, for the purposes of the article, CNN would have tried to find another book closer in length to compare it to as well.

I’m planning a trip this weekend to Madison WI, for their local MadFest (juggling festival). (Parenthetical tangents for those who follow the link: I’ve always liked that toaster graphic. For some reason, it reminds me of another graphic I found recently on memepool, this guy with a Kleenex head. (complete with tissue sticking out the top). I was specifically looking for graphics to spruce up the desktop of a friend’s computer here at work. Of course, the friend had two monitors, so I found a picture of the ebay Home Game, and tiled that on the other screen. Last weekend I saw that very game on post-x-mas sale, and almost purchased it for $10.)

For some reason, I’m really looking forward to getting away again. I’m not sure what it is, but my life is more and more frequently something I want to escape from. I’m not depressed, more wanting to travel, I guess.

Well, this post (and the obligatory browsing it inspires/requires) is merely a short intellectual stretch before I go sit for mind-numbing minutes in my sister’s auditorium, watching her Jr. High choir performance. Wish me luck!

Today I discovered William Gibson has started blogging. In a little over a week he has written more than I can consume in a lunch-hour of blog-reading ecstasy.

My weekend was filled with performance and indulgence. A group of us went to see my friend Dave perform at Patrick’s Cabaret on Sat, followed by homemade baklava (courtesy of Kristin, who is an excellent chef, despite the baklava’s blackened edges–which were still good!), followed by a particularly fun exodus to Balls at midnight.

On Sunday, Laura and I accompanied another friend to The Circus of Tales at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune downtown. As unexciting as parts of the show were, it still got me excited that this kind of thing is actually happening in Minneapolis. The show felt a little disjointed, and the “circus” aspects seemed to have little to do with the “story” aspects (something cirque has gotten better at over the years, in my opinion–so maybe it’s hard to do).

After the show, we were going to go see a local Drum and Bass group (called simply: T), but Laura’s ID is old (expired), so the bartender wouldn’t let us stay. (It was just as well, the band hadn’t even set up yet, and we were already kinda tired.) But the more I thought about it, the more I really wanted to punch that bartender in the face. I mean, it’s not like the ID was faked or anything, it was merely expired. Laura thinks we have 6 months past expiration to replace the ID, or something like that. I called DMV to find out exactly, but talking to anyone there is like trying to talk to anyone at the UofMN. (Press 1 to hear a list of options you don’t want. Press 2 to hear another infuriating list. Press 3 to return to the previous list of options that had nothing to do with why you called.) So I sent them an email instead. We’ll see if anyone replies.

So then, to kill some steam, I decided to stop by cheepo and see if T has an album there. They don’t, but I got this album of Volante remixes (aptly titled “Remixes”). It’s pretty cool, but I’m going to stop listening to it now before I stop thinking that.

Work continues on getting up an “about” page (with statistics). So far, I know this blog (before this entry) was about 46 thousand words, and this is the 301st entry. More stats forthwith.

When I first started blogging, I wanted a forum where I could “write and walk away” (to paraphrase mopsa and quote Natalie) … Complete anonymity brings a certain powerful confidence — the ability to say anything, and that’s what I wanted. It is far easier for me to be “outgoing” with strangers than people I know, and that’s always been the case. As with most bloggers, I wanted to vent.

But relatively shortly thereafter, as I realized this was really fun, and as I let more friends have the URL, I found myself censoring myself more and more. Not censoring me really, or masking who I am, but rather, selectively not writing about things that I do, or the way I feel about something — generally things that I know someone else will be likely to read and take issue with.

I hadn’t really thought about whether that censorship also entails more smoothing out or editing of my posts until I read mopsa’s post about her own ability to flounder, both in person and in blog.

I love when she says “life is accidental. This blog was an accident.”

I’d like to think I’m just as “smooth” in real life as I am in blog. That is to say, sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. It’s accidental, or coincidental. Human interaction isn’t really one of my stronger points, but I think I do have moments. Blogging is probably like that too. On the other hand, I also tend to be one of those people who likes to edit as I write, going back to the beginning of the paragraph or sentence over and over again before hitting submit. So maybe I’m not smooth at all in real life. Or maybe my editing screws up the smoothness just as often as it helps it. Or maybe this concept of “smooth” needs to be thought about and more clearly defined before it becomes entirely meaningless semantically.

I wanted to make the blog to poetry metaphor here, but instead I find myself thinking that blogging is more like improv theater. I’ve got a situation, the blog, and I’ve taken suggestions from the web, or other blogs I’ve read, or sometimes real life … and here I am, busy converting them to scenes of great hilarity, or sadness, or both.

I laughed, I cried, I blogged…

If the big S were here he’d say: “All the web’s a stage, and all bloggers merely players.”

Another browser discovery, this time for OSX. Apple has released a public beta of their new web browser, Safari. It seems speedy (their main claim), and renders well all the sites I’ve thrown at it so far (not many), but it lacks several of the features that make mozilla my browser of choice on a mac. The number 1 missing feature is tabs. I’ve become so used to having tabs that using a window-based browser is nearly unthinkable for me. Browsing without tabs is somehow like a stunted version of the real thing.

When I browse without tabs, I tend to surf one site at a time, in a very linear fashion. Usually I am more goal oriented, and focused. I suppose this could be perceived as a good thing, but in my mind, it’s not. I like to open new tabs whenever I come across something that I might want to look at. When I’m browsing without tabs, my clickthrough threshold is much higher. I wouldn’t bother with a link I might want to read. If it’s not something I’m definitely looking for, I don’t even look at it twice. Thus, with tabs, I’m learning more, and exploring more.

I can’t say I think much of Safari’s interface, which has the brushed metal look of iTunes and the other iCrap series apps. (I do thoroughly enjoy iTunes, and some of the other products aren’t bad either, but none of them — with the exception of iTunes — have been good enough to replace the apps I used to use for the same purposes.) Anyway, it does block popups, and search google in a google-bar-like search box.

There is one other new-seeming feature, the “Snapback” button. Supposedly it’ll bring you “back” to either the typed URL, or clicked bookmark. I think it should recognize search result pages, and take you back to one of those too, but that’s just my opinion. I’d have to really use it to see know if it’s a worthwhile addition, and at this point I’m skeptical.

I have had a strange week. Not so much in deed or event, but in emotion and intellectual turmoil. My mind is running in circles and yapping at its tail.

New Year’s eve itself was nothing too terribly special, time spent groping good friends, called my mom at 2AM, that kind of thing.

When we first got back from Texas, I ran around town looking for Super Bubble Pop, the new puzzle game for gamecube, but couldn’t find it, so I ordered it from Amazon. It’s pretty fun. A new twist on the genre. I also ordered Ballistic, another puzzle game for the gameboy color, (I played it in texas, it’s fun!) and the Afterburner, an install-it-yourself backlight kit for the gameboy advance. And then today, the day I get the afterburner in the mail wouldn’t you know it, Nintendo announced the new style gameboy, which is backlit, and folds up into a 3″ square when not in use. It’s coming out in March here in the states, so I’ll probably have to get one. (We’ve been debating getting a second gb to play linked up anyway.)

After new year’s, I skipped out on working the last couple days of the week, and lazed about, ostensibly sick at home. Unfortunately there was some truth to it, as I was fighting off some kind of flu I made worse by Scuba diving.

I’m going to write a novel. That’s my new year’s resolution. So far I really only have a theme (and about 2000 words). I was at first hoping that plot would just sort of develop itself, but now I realize that doesn’t actually happen in the universe in which I exist. I need to at least plan something out and aim it in that direction. I just haven’t gotten around to deciding what that plan will be yet.

I think I’ve procrastinated blogging for the past week because I really really desperately wanted to get my about page all up and working, but I didn’t actually want to tackle the work that would take to accomplish. Well, I started tackling it yesterday, and to install the blogtimes plugin that I wanted, I’d have to also install at least two perl modules, so that’s either on hold or dead in the water. I still have yet to begin the process for MTWordStats, but at least I’ve already downloaded and am resigned to installing the two perl modules for that one. (It’s more word-related, so I’m willing to work a little harder at it–understand, I thought the blogtimes plugin would be easier to install, that’s why I tried it first.)

The only other news is work related. My boss has found a new job, and is leaving sometime in the next two weeks. She has been one of the only things keeping this job tolerable, (notice I didn’t say enjoyable), so I have no idea how things will change when she leaves. Wish me luck.