livingtech

Big changes have been happening, and for some reason that has contributed to lack of time, or ambition, or something, and bloggging has taken a backburner… simmering and waiting to bubble up to the surface of my attentions once again. Anyway, the pot’s starting to boil now folks, and I need to get some of this out.

I apologize profusely for not reading your blog. With about two or three exceptions, my list of blogs to read has been as neglected as the popsicles in my freezer.

So… changes: Work foremost and front and center. My entire life has had a major upheaval for the better. I even took the bus two days last week! I have to get downtown to the metro-transit store and buy a nice fatty buscard in the near future or mine’s gonna run out, and I’ll be stuck sticking dollar bills into the slot–hoping I have “exact change”.

I’ve had like three assignments, and each one has had a major programming component in php. I have a new dell, and I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I’ve really enjoyed playing with the preinstalled XP. It’s the first time I’ve used it.

Programming for extended periods of time changes the way you think. I’ve experienced this before, mostly in small doses. It shifts stuff around in your skull. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not like I’m thinking in logic statements or anything that silly, but just a subtle shift. I guess I’m about to find out what it feels like in large doses.

I guess nothing else that’s happened in the last week has been all that dramatic or life changing. I don’t think a day has passed without my thinking that some small anecdote would make a good blog entry– Yesterday’s valentine’s day sushi; the game of Settlers of Catan with my sister and her boyfriend; Friday’s party that two people showed up for; my dad staying the entire day at my place to surf the internet; Thursday’s family dinner craziness; Wednesday’s return to the land of commuter-bus-taking.

Anyway, I’ve kept up on the moblog. I really love doing it. Looking at everything as a potential picture also changes the way you think. You notice more beauty that way.

This morning I woke up wanting to program for my phone. I wonder how much a copy of CodeWarrior with that Symbian emulator thing costs. Ahhh, over a grand… maybe I’ll hold off on purchasing that one then.

Mondo was fabulous. The show was extremely good this year, I’d say better than any other mondo show that I can remember. Vova and Olga were well worth the plane ticket that we paid for to get them out here. They were AMAZING. Machines, really. But beautiful machines. They were also very nice.

My other favorite from the show was George the slackrope walker. (If I find a link, I’ll post it, but so far, google has been failing me. It would of course help if I could remember his last name.) He was extremely good, and after the show, back in the gym, I got the chance to talk with him some about slackrope, and specifically the best way to turn around while standing on one. George was very willing to teach, and after a few minutes of practicing on the lines on the floor, I was starting to get the urge to actually do some slackrope. I pulled the mountain climber’s tape out of my duffel, and we tied it between two aluminum risers in the gym. At first the risers slid around a bit, but for whatever reason they didn’t move after the first couple of minutes.

George showed me how to practice just about everything he did in his show, and now I have a TON of stuff to work on. One of the things he did that I had previously thought was near impossible was balancing with your feet perpendicular to the rope, (facing the audience). Not only did George show me the trick to doing it, but by the end of the night (2am) I was able to actually balance there for about10 seconds! I had also turned around on the rope a total of four times–the first four times I’d ever done it.

Watched Lost in Translation last night. I wish the DVD actually had translations on it for the parts that really were lost. Laura wouldn’t have let me watch it with those turned on till we’d seen the movie the “intended” way first, but when I went back after to try it with the English (for the hearing impaired) subtitles on, it just says things like [talks in Japanese] when they’re talking in Japanese.

For a few scenes, I really felt frustrated because of this. Especially the scene in the Hospital with the two women in the back laughing so hard, I really felt like I just wasn’t getting the joke. I guess that was obviously the point. Now that I think about it, that’s not a feeling that I have experienced from a movie before, and I suppose is interesting and worthwhile. Of course, that won’t stop me from going to google to find out what was said. (But I won’t say anything about what I’ve found, because I know of at least one person who will read this before he sees the movie. Jason, that’s you. No googling now. ;)

Anyway, some aspects of the movie really were brilliant. Visuals were stunning. Acting was great. It deserves lots of awards.

This weekend is MONDO! (The coolest juggling festival this side of the Midwest.) Some might argue that claim, but I always enjoy the festival. Plus, I’ve helped run the thing for the past 5 years or so, so I have to say that, or they kick me off the planning committee.

Not that I’ve done anything for it this year other than fold the fliers one night at neverthriving. I’m not very active in the group, but I do try and go to the meetings and stuff. This year promises to be a good festival– then again, they’re all pretty good festivals. I haven’t been to a juggling convention all year, I don’t think, and I’m starting to really look forward to this one.

Also amazingly crazy: My last day at my job is tomorrow. I packed up a bunch of my books and stuff already, but I’m still going to have a box of stuff when I leave. It will also (strangely) be a little sad to say goodbye to the box that I’m writing this on right now. This mac has been my work machine for… well, I was going to say three years now, but then I realized that I swapped it out for a newer one only a few months ago. Damn. I guess I can’t get that nostalgic about it then, can I?

I will most likely do most of my work on a PC at the new place. I’ll have my little laptop if I need my fix of OSX, but it is slow as hell, (especially running mozilla), and I’ve been thinking about upgrades for a while now. If only apple computers weren’t so damn expensive I’d have probably bought a new G5 a while ago now.

Anyway, MONDO… this weekend… yeah.

I am occasionally so politically moved that I want to DO something. I feel incensed to riot, or protest, yet some other (more) rational side of me feels the pointlessness of protests and riots, and so instead I sit, day after day, and work, or play games, or just LIVE instead of looking for something to DO.

I do not want my life to be dominated by these moments. I despise the fact that suitably horrific world events and circumstances exist to move me in this way, but am (without devoting me life in some way to abolishing them) relatively unequipped to deal with these circumstances, and thus feel justified in doing nothing.

This is, of course, a defeatist attitude, and no way to go about exacting any change whatsoever. In a small way, these posts on politics and my opinions are a way for me to somehow do penance for the moments when I feel I must DO something to change the world.

This morning I had one of those moments after reading an article at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) entitled Do Turkeys enjoy Thanksgiving? I gather this article was actually some kind of presentation at the World Social Forum, which I had never even heard of before reading the article.

I have decided to paste the entire contents of the article into my “extended entry” below, mostly because–at least for me–their website is really slow. I encourage everyone to click “more” and read it.
Continue reading “global Imperialism”

I’m taking this post to link the new blog of my old friend delobius. We met back in the day at the UofMN, where we slacked off together in my first (and only) C programming course.

This morning I wrote this huge response to his post asking about whether lies are black and white or shades of grey, and debated posting my response here instead of in his comments. So now that I’ve written another huge response to his latest post on political discourse, I decided to post it here instead. Anyway, he’s a great guy, political disagreements aside.

I agreed with almost everything in the post initially. Name calling in politics is pretty much pointless, and about as likely to convince someone of your point as it is to enrage them beyond the point of rational discussion… But I do NOT agree with the premise that Bush is obviously not a terrorist.

Dictionary.com defines terrorism as:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Bush is clearly using force and violence to coerce foreign governments for ideological or political reasons. (Does destroying them completely count?) He’s changed his tune a couple of times about why we invaded Iraq, but whether it’s ideological or political, I think we’ve got it covered there. (Of course, giving him complete credit for these actions is probably unwise, but lets take that in stride for the sake of this argument.) That leaves only one question…

Did he break any laws to do it?

If he hasn’t broken any laws… he’s not a terrorist by dictionary definition, he’s just an asshole with too much power.

I’m not up on my global treaty knowledge. (But a quick google search reveals at least one page on laws that were perhaps broken by invading Afghanistan.) As far as I know our “war on Iraq” has circumnavigated (if not overtly broken) international peace treaties and/or accords. If these treaties can be considered “law” then we’ve got ourselves terrorist actions performed by our government…

If not, well, we’ve still got the term “asshole” to fall back on.

So yesterday we visited the commercial circus that is the ice palace. Not one, but two giant wall-sized TVs blast commercials at you with the sound echoing over megaphones as you walk in. I felt like I was in some science fiction dystopia ala Minority Report or something. I mean, here we are in negative degree weather, and they’re showing Campbell’s soup commercials on a giant TV that is literally so big that you can’t look at the ice palace without seeing it.

I honestly recommend you NOT go. Or at least, don’t bother going inside. There are a couple of neat ice sculptures, and a giant garish purple column spouting a two-foot flame from the top of it, but otherwise, there’s nothing inside you can’t see from outside. And if you want to go ice-skating, do it at a local park… the rink size will be the same, and you won’t have 50 other people trying to squeeze onto it simultaneously.

They do a light show that is perfectly visible from across the street in pretty much any direction. It’s nothing special, and in my opinion definitely not worth the $5 admission.

I was so upset about the commercials that I could have left after about a minute, (not to mention the fact that it was uber-cold) but Laura wanted to finish up her roll of film, so we stuck around long enough to get some pictures here and there. I took a bunch with my cameraphone, but only a few turned out decently.

We went home to warm up and Laura cooked a hot yummy dinner of breaded Quorn (faux-chicken) patties cooked in Campbell’s tomato soup. We both had a good laugh about the irony.

This morning as I left for work everything was covered in probably six inches of snow. About a mile down the freeway, everybody stopped, and we were stop and go for another mile. In that time, I started taking pictures with my cameraphone, mostly of just random shit, until we finally started moving again, about the time the freeway split down to two lanes, because there was a two-semi, two-car pileup covering the leftmost two lanes. Of course, I didn’t even think to get any good pictures!

Then, having finally accelerated to 55 for the first time that morning, and as I was cursing myself for not taking any pictures of the accident, four dump truck snowplows entered the freeway literally one car ahead of me. They spread quickly to cover the entire freeway, dumping sand and/or salt behind them as they went. I was stuck behind these giant orange beasts almost my entire ride down 394. I didn’t mind so much though, as I decided I would be able to redeem my earlier photographic failure by taking pictures of the plows!

First, I had to maneuver around the car in front of me. No point having him in the shot. Once that was taken care of, I whipped out the camera, and BLAM-O! –out of memory error! I scrambled to erase a few of the stupid random pictures I’d taken earlier, and snapped a couple of quickies before I had to exit the freeway–all this while driving dangerously close to the four giant snowplow-behemoths.

I wish I’d thought to empty my camera last night after we got back from the ice palace. I’d have gotten some pictures while the dump trucks simultaneously raised their rear dumper thingies… I think they had to periodically do that in order to get the salt to the back of the truck. Anyway, it was a sight to behold. But you’ll have to take my word for it.

So today jasonj forwarded me an interesting article on how juggling is good for your brain. It’s crazy stuff, that greymatter.

“Human brains probably must be viewed as dynamic, changing with development and normal learning.” ~ Arne May, of the University of Regensburg in Germany

This got me thinking about the concept of our dynamic brains, and wondering about Einstein’s brain. I mean, was it all misshapen when he was born? Or did it change as he spent years thinking about math and science all the time?

I wonder about what parts of my brain are over (or under) developed?

Of course, the email’s subject was “we’re smarter”, and DrBombay posted about how we’ll soon take over the world. This reminded me of last night when I was wondering when they’ll release seasons of the Animaniacs on DVD so I can watch all the episodes of Pinky and the Brain. (I love that show!)

While I’m posting interesting links… today is the birthday of poet Howard Moss, (according to the writer’s almanac). When I went searching around for him, I found this awesome poem by Erica Jong called For Howard Moss. I’ve never really liked long poems, but sometimes (very rarely) when they’re split up into shorter sections like this you can find a good one.

On the subject of interesting links… I’ve just about decided that I want to adopt a format similar to Jason kottke’s in that he has links scattered in among his posts. I don’t, however, want to use the same implementation he uses. (Follow the link for details on his convoluted homepage.) I’m not sure what the best way is yet to achieve what I want to do, but I only need two types of data intermingled, not five, so I feel that there has to be a perfectly easy way to do it. In fact, an idea just came to me that involves using an entry’s “category” to select a CSS style that controls formatting of the post… hmm. Maybe I’ll work on that soon!

So I’m excited to blab about this–now that it’s all official and stuff–I start a new job in 2 weeks! It’s going to be great. I’m super excited.

I put my letter of resignation (cowardly according to Jason) on my bosses desk before I left last night, along with sending an email to everyone I work with. The response has been surprisingly positive. (As in, “good luck!” and “best wishes” rather than “good riddance”.) For instance, I just had an extremely satisfying conversation with my boss, who I don’t really deal with on any sort of regular basis, but who I gather has some amount of respect for me and the work I do.

Last night we had an impromptu party in celebration. Tom brought the booze, (which only he, laura and I really consumed). Then we fixed the other Tom’s laptop (installed some drivers for his new keychain-drive) before playing a round of Guillotine, which I felt was a blast.

I think there will be an official party in the works… probably on Friday the 13th! (Black cats and all!)

This morning has been a slow recovery from last night’s foray into none other than *trumpets sounding*: Talisman! The game drBombay has been trying so desperately to find and play. At juggling last night, Travis (who hadn’t been there in awhile) revealed that he had a copy of talisman at his place that he’d never even played.

We set it up on the round table in our kitchen, and Laura, DrBombay, his friend Rick, Travis and I spent a couple of hours playing it, despite a missing deck of spell cards. (Somehow, Travis’s copy had an extra minotaur figurine instead.) I took a picture, so you can see at least a bit of the glory that was had.

This version of the game was the 3rd edition, and DrBombay has been working pretty exclusively at getting a copy of the 2nd, as he has fond memories of it, and has apparently heard from various sources that they screwed it up with the last release. The lack of spell cards did detract quite a bit from the game, but I think we all had a pretty good time anyway.

When Travis finally won, I felt that it was pretty abrupt. If he hadn’t had a one-time +7 to his attack, the game might easily have continued for another hour into the night. I kind of feel like you should have to beat all the other players rather than just the dragon king. I guess all the expansion packs change the goals of the game in various ways, so maybe it wouldn’t feel quite as jarring when you play with them.

Travis, it turns out, has an extensive collection of the types of game that we’ve all been so excited by lately. We were going to play Killer Bunnies, but after two hours of Talisman, I think everyone wanted to call it a night. Hopefully there will be more gaming excitement soon!

Link discovery of the morning: http://bookcrossing.com/. Across between geocaching and the library, this site deserves some exploration. I’m debating releasing a book into the wild myself!