Sweet gherkin pickles are my favorite snack right now.
My new favorite word is whenish. As in, “Whenish are we meeting up?” It’s a pre-emptive strike on imprecision. Ha!
Band name freestyles are my favorite pastime.
ffffound.com is still my favorite site.
Irresponsible amounts of coffee is just for today.
WETA is my favorite PBS station.
It’s date night! Hi Annie! I know you’re probably reading your feeds, or browsing around Etsy right now. Come give me a kiss when you read this! <3 steve
Here’s a time when men were men, women were women, and enormous trees were cut down by cartoonish band saws.
I’ve been using Google Reader these days. One of my favorite activities is unsubscribing from people’s feeds. It’s like my private, under your breath, behind the back “Fuck you” to people exactly like me who live many miles away. It’s curiously satisfying. I will be subscribing to sarcastic blogs aplenty now that I’ve discovered this tiny pleasure center in my brain.
Speaking of Google Reader, I had an interesting chat with Neal a few nights back about posting frequency. He thought sites that post 20+ times a day, mainly the biggest blogs like boingboing, are posting way too often. That people simple don’t read the content because it’s too much to keep up with. I can definitely relate to the sentiment. In boingboing’s case, I’m not sure if they give a shit if anyone reads it, but I think that the sites that get revenue from readership may very well see this themselves. I look forward to the growth of information slowing every so slightly in certain nodes. Time shall tell, as usual.
In a similar vein, Jake de Grazia offers some thoughts on what type of posts get an attention payment.
This post is so meta! I’m blog obsessed at this moment! Yeah!
I stumbled upon Visual Thesaurus today while thinking about words. It appeals to me. It’s a subscription service. I’m considering it. Take a look at their visualization applet. It’s really convenient to see a whole bunch of relations simultaneously, though the visualization at this point doesn’t really take advantage of positioning. All the nodes are equidistant from each other. I’m not exactly sure how you would implement this, but it seems natural that some words are more tightly linked as synonyms, so the relationship should appear stronger/closer/more prevalent than others.
Actually now that I really think about it, that’s a stupid idea. If I think that, it’s because I don’t have a real understanding of how multifaceted a word really is. However, I’m glad I left the above paragraph, rather than delete it, as it shows a thought process. I always find it more gratifying to follow along with an author, than to be at the receiving end of some pronouncement.
It could stand to group adjectives and nouns and verbs into easier to spot groups though.
Check out Protege and Ontoviz if you’re interested in mimicking visual thesaurus for some other dataset.
A few days back, I saw that Steve Martin had written a book on his comedy career, which surprised me because Steve Martin hasn’t been funny in my lifetime. In fact, the most recent thing I’ve seen where he was prominently involved was Shopgirl, possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in the last three years or so. Plot development was either forced, non sequitur or nonexistant; the characters were one-dimensional, unsympathetic and unlikeable; there were zero laughs, unless you count laughing at what a pompous asshole Steve Martin comes off as, since he wrote and starred in it. Sorry for the negativity - check out King of Kong for good times.
However, the quote from the aformentioned link about Mr. Martin actually having a comedic method is interesting. An attitude I’ve gotten from Bruce Mau is that process is more important than outcome, because process takes you new places, whereas shooting for an outcome only takes you places you can imagine being. I personally prefer being in an inner tube, drinking Utica Club, floating down the river of life as compared to swimming through it. Let the river do the work, dig?
I just got a great spam, which I think is a great manifestation of the extreme form of Martin’s joke-telling strategy. Here is it, in unabashed glory:
From valencia to kirkwall, the englishah, the from dorrimore’s carriagenay, he may have caught do, you know. They know the most extraordinary one by one, stepped forward, and dropping on both tron, and were fighting hard, when the provost, and, as i said before, you know john, so, after the virtuous young matron. Am i to be trusted? He sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed more out in the ozone, marching abreast with shining in bridgetown, y’understand, which he is sick and peeped down the path which the elephant had and staring with round unwinking eyes full in do you think?’ ‘in his study, of course.’ ‘yes only through vague rumours. Neither the brotherhood there’s where the pants come in, she added as.
I think they were trying to sell me something, but that part wasn’t as comprehensible.
RU Sirius’s recent publication True Mutations is full of fascinating interviews from edge thinkers. In particular, I’ve really enjoyed the interview with Jamais Cascio and Cory Doctorow (surprisingly, since boing boing has given me the impression he’s spasmodic; of course, he’s extremely thoughtful and well-spoken when not in tidbit form). I’d recommend reading it, particularly because it is fulfilling my current need to get out of the computer pigeonhole and stare at the wide world around me. If you’re in similar straights, and you’re also skeptical of consensus reality, then you might be me.
Another thing that looks entertaining, though in a less (or more?) philosophical manner, is this card game Fluxx. I’ve never played, but perhaps I’ll buy a set.
Water from the tap is also amazing. I recommend appreciating that every day. Honestly: Wow!
I’ve noticed that I’m always complaining about things on my OEIC blog, which is either one, some of all of these items:
I want to be positive, and heap praise on the things I enjoy, rather than denigrating the things that cause me strife. Hence this post. I’d much rather have my mind filled with joy all day.
http://ffffound.com/
images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images images
Right up there with green roofs in the category of “good uses for wasted spaces” is mounting gadgets under your desk.
This is one of my worst blog posts ever. And I’ve been at it for a long time, despite appearances. Now I’m going to watch Bladerunner.
I am often solicited by the AARP to become a member. While I don’t have many of the traits that generally define those worthy of an invite to such an exclusive club, such as being retired, I did cash out my defined retirement plan when I left my job in 2006. Apparently, that’s good enough for the AARP. I don’t have the receding hairline, gold watch, failing memory or zest for life after 60 that most AARP members have, but I do have a dogged determination to keep your damn hands off my gold. My gold! Back! No!!! Bad! Bad dog!!!!
I’ve yet to actually heed the call to join the zombified ranks, despite excellent offers of cash back at my favorite restaurants and haunts, mostly because Annie seems to be somehow repulsed/disillusioned/unamused by my desire to be a card-carrying member. Perhaps she doesn’t realize I could get 3% cash back at my favorite restaurants. And haunts.
Today’s mail revealed a more sinister side of AARP membership; a side that left a chill in my bones and a sense of foreboding that, despite my best efforts, I may miss out on the free gift I can’t take with me after I die and am buried at King Memorial Park. Snarkiness aside, I can’t imagine what the free gift could possibly be. Why don’t you guys hang onto the free gift? My mausoleum is going to be pretty full of mummified things.
Snarkiness aside for real this time: Many people have tried to sell me many things, but never before a grave site. It makes death seems so … pragmatic. Like getting a diaper bin at a baby shower. There’s always going to be a lot of shit to deal with. That’s life and death, I guess.
One of the things that has struck me about my time in the working world of computers is that most things that are somewhat interesting to work on never actually get finished. Not in the sense that nothing is ever accomplished, but that the end goal is a moving target. It often seems to me that the faster you’re getting to your goal, the further away the goal moves. Once something useful has been made, there’s always 10 “Wouldn’t it be great if it did this?” type moments right after. Software is essentially thought, and one thought breeds another.
This type of work is in distinct contrast to the type of work I was trained to do in school. Fill out a worksheet, write a paper, take a test, go to class. All the work you do in high school and college is totally discrete, with a hard deadline (for the less charming among us). I’ve been conditioned to do the best I can within some finite amount of time by our academic culture. Then I get out into the working world, and few deadlines are real. With programming, there’s always some piece of code that could be a little faster, or more elegant, or doesn’t really work they way it should; the temptations to do inappropriate work are many.
But today, for the first time since August 2003, I don’t have any work ahead of me. I am currently completely self directed! Exciting! I wonder how many Twix bars I can eat a day? I’ll be sure to find out. I don’t have a plan for taking on new work right now - I’m just going to let the cash flow. With luck, I’ll find a genie to do my bidding, then come up with some bidding to give.
I also got a new office chair today, so we’ll see how long I keep the mindset from the last paragraph before my cheapness guilts me into looking for contracts. Regardless of that, I purchased an office chair. I’m a 27 year old self-employed tax paying home owner. Not sure I saw that coming when I was throwing kegs off the roof of the Dell House. Here’s my chair:
Herman Miller, brand whores!
There used to be a bizarre circuit training room in the basement of the Johns Hopkins athletic center, right down the hall from the more standard issue weight room. The circuit training room had early versions of today’s fitness machines; the resistance was provided via pneumatics. To adjust the difficulty, you would adjust an air pressure gauge. I have no idea what era these machines dated from, but judging from the light brown they were painted, I’d say they were from the late 60s or early 70s. When I first started at Hopkins, I used this room because it was always empty, and back then I was even more impatient than I am now. There was this laminated sheet of paper on the wall by the door, so when you left, it was hard to ignore. It said:
“The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best”
- Thomas Jefferson
Actually, I think it said something else, but I can’t find another exercise quote attributable to Jefferson, so either my memory is faulty, or the sign is. There’s no way to know. The rest of what I was going to write makes no sense based on the above quote, so I’ll just let this thread trail off… wish I remember that quote… man, that’d be great!
A few days ago, Annie bought a Nike+ gizmo that works with your iPod. Check that - it works with an iPod Nano. A few days after that, she bought an iPod Nano. Since then, she’s been running up a storm. As such, it has served its intended purpose of giving her motivation to exercise. It’s a neat little thing, keeping track of each step you take on a run, so you can imagine the various data breakdowns it provides. It’s an anal retentive dream! Highly recommended if you’re into running or data visualization or both. If neither, you can safely avoid it.
I think two days ago, Annie ran a workout, a 5k I think. She was proud for pushing herself, and felt like she was really getting into good shape. But lo and behold, she had forgotten to activate her Nike thing. When she got home and tried to sync up her new workout numbers, there weren’t any, and suddenly she felt like she hadn’t even worked out. Pride gone. Isn’t that incredible? We’re able to condition ourselves over the course of a single week. For Annie, the signal that she worked hard (the Nike data) was more important to her sense of health than the actual health-creating activity. This is pretty similar to the stuff I read about in sixth grade, with Dr. Pavlov getting dogs’ mouths to water by ringing a bell.
I feel like this sort of thing is absolutely fundamental to our culture. Money is a prime example; it’s a stand-in, but people often care more about money itself than what it is used for.
If you have not yet seen Xavier: Renegade Angel on Adult Swim, I’m not surprised because their ads suck, I have no idea when it’s on and it’s only 15 minutes long. However, I’ve been lucky enough to catch it twice, and it blew my mind the first time and made me laugh a whole lot the second. They’re pretty good with the old turn-of-phrase. Put forth an effort to catch it. Or check out the atrocious website (Things that intentionally suck still suck, as it turns out. Hatin’! In all other regards though, I’m lovin’!).
About
I'm Steve Goodman. I live in Baltimore with Annie. This is a nearly inscrutable place for me to post random musings and internet things that give me joy.
Recent Archives
Contact
steve@this-domain.com
Let's chat, maybe.
© low inertia. Powered by WordPress using the DePo Clean Theme.
