| a day in dc with jz |
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Took a fun little jaunt to DC with my buddy JZ, partially to see the "Art of the Video Game" exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery...
US Navy Memorial Plaza: 
JZ in front of a rock at the Air and Space Museum. 
Me reflected in their model of Sputnik. 
An important note on early flight! From the gift store there... 
Dragon at an Asian Culture Street Fair. 
Hippo at the Natural History Museum. 
Cool atrium inside the buildings that make up the portrait gallery. 
Finally we went to a DC United Soccer game... 
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| eurotrip day 6 |
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via Au Revoir à Paris of the Moment The view from 6 rue de Jean Mace... a lovely patio to relax in the evenings with. |
| the nothing box, the nowhere man |
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--on a bit of a Beatles kick, triggedered by reading "100 Best Beatles Songs: An Informed Fan's Guide". Went on a bit of a wikikick (what's the word for that, when you just start following links? Surfing? More networked than that though...) freading about Cynthia Lennon having an affair with "Magic Alex". I was intrigued by his "Nothing Box" (partially 'cause of the name), something that John Lennon is said to liked staring at while tripping... this advert for it and a picture of Lennon with it from Lennon's Sunroom. (I'm kind of conceptually interested in the Indica Gallery where Magic Alex showed some of his kinetic lightwork and also where Lennon met Yoko Ono... |
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| baby elephant walk prelude |
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--via the BBC Animals in the Womb series. The Dolphin was cute too! |
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| come fret with me |
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So I think I mentioned (or not?) I'm going to be moving into the Au Pair apartment at my Aunt and Uncle's in Boston, the Mission Hill neighborhood. It's a great location, it's cheap rent, it's near work, it's being with family, including being around for my Aunt and Uncle
as my mom is being moved to the Salvation Army's national headquarters in Virginia, and... well, my Uncle is older than my Aunt, and is fine and fit and sharp but maybe ain't remembering things the way he used to (err, keep this among us) and there's laundry and nifty stuff like that. Not to mention finally trying some ideas of living a bit more lightly, in terms of space and clutter and all that.
So, my new apartment. Like a lot of Boston brownstone apartments, there are compromises involved. Brownstones are skinny! My Aunt and Uncle have been really nice about giving up their former office-y space (originally a dining room) so that it's not just a small studio, and now I'm having a hard time figuring out the best way to set up the rooms... Here's a rough sketch: (Hrrm this ended up looking a bit more phallic than I intended.) 
The front room is green and has carpeting. And another closet. The blue block is a nice mantelpiece, the brown are these built in deskslabs, and the yellow represents bookshelves (there are also bookshelves above the deskslabs. My family is a big believer in bookshelves.) There's a chandelier in the center and a nice bay window facing the street. So one option keeps how the furniture is currently set up, with the backroom used as a bedroom. I stuck in the bed (shown in green) and a loveseat foldabed that's currently there, plus drew in where I think the projector would go, using the space above the mantle. (EB thinks I should project towards the top wall, pull the screen over the two doors, but I can't figure out where the projector would sit, plus hanging the screen would be more problematic.) 
I came up with an alternate idea of using the front room as a bedroom: 
So I dunno. Personally I'm leaning towards the second idea, but EB and JZ both like keeping the bedroom where it is. |
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| took me out to the ballgame |
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Exchange of the Moment "Huh, I hope this new Sox cap was looking over. [Checks in visor mirror] Nope. Baseball caps always make me look like I'm wearing a slightly oversized yamaka. I guess that's what I get for having the last name of Israel." "No, that's what you get for having an oversized head." "'Pumpkin-like cranium' is my prefered term but... yeah." --Me and EB in the car after the game. |
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| it all adds up |
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I've noticed that for every current front page entry, I've had a bit of non-"of the Moment" rambling. I know I've fretted about the balance of quotes-and-links to Kirk's ramblings before (and that that navel-gazing fretting probably doesn't make the most exciting reading) but I think for a while I'd like to make some non-"Moment" content a daily occurrence on this site.
Yesterday our lead engineer Tim was talking about his ADD and the ways he has of coping with it. He mentioned a bit of "self-medication" with caffeine, and it reminded me of Mo saying how stuff like Ritalin calms a person with ADD down but has the opposite effect on people without the condition. Same with caffeine, though "opposite effect" isn't quite accurate in either case. I only sort of remember Tim's explanation of exciters and inhibitors in the brain chemistry but it seemed to make sense of that counter-intuitive idea. Tim's geekish computer metaphor for his head was like a terrific multithreaded processor without a scheduler, or with a poor one. One trick people with ADD pick up on is "self-medicating" with something distracting to occupy one of the threads that would otherwise start pushing the rest of the brain around, looking for something to do... he talked about how his own son will play contentedly with Legos for hours if there's a TV on, but turn it off and he'll wander off within minutes. Same goes for the daughter of a friend of his and having music on while doing homework. He also mentioned how for someone growing up with ADD, things change as the brain matures and gets older, and that made me think about some differences I've noted in my own ability to focus. I don't think I have ADD proper, but might have had a bit of a similar chemistry especially when I was younger. But I've noticed how I used to like random music on when I wanted to hunker down and focus, but now it has to be music I'm very familiar with... preferably energetic, so I can tap into the energy as well. Tim also talked about how he's gotten very good at balancing his own head, but sometimes he'll get virtually indistractable as every thread gets focused on different elements of the same problem. I remember something like that happening when I was a kid, where I'd get so engulfed in a book that I'd ignore my name being called, though I haven't noticed that happening to me so much lately. Video of the Moment Wow, BoingBoing's description and photo of this golem suit was impressive enough, but check out the video. D+Dish geekery at its very finest! I'm very impressed with youtube's performance. They seem to have great bandwidth and/or efficiency, because videos seem to always start right up, and because of their custom player, there's never a hassle with drivers...I guess the downside is there might not be an easy way of saving a video... |
| whispercream |
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So Ksenia's English still has rough patches, but sometimes it's cute...last Monday she asked me to pick up some whipped cream in a can for her grandmother's birthday dinner, except she called it "whisper cream". Which given the Shhhhhhh sound it makes when you spray it, and the general light texture it's supposed to have, is actually a much better expression than "whipped cream". Less violent at any rate. Anyway, I don't know when was the last time I bought whipped cream, but when I jostled one of the cans they had available at the supermarket, the contents seemed (to me) to be suspiciously "liquidy". Then I tried a few more cans, and realized they all made a similar sound, and so that it was probably just what they were supposed to do untill well-shaken, and that no one would be mad at me for not getting the right stuff. And then it hit me--is it normal to be less concerned about, say, how well the party gets on with the whipped cream I bring then to not have people think I'm a bozo who doesn't know how to buy whipped cream properly? Such a strange thing to be insecure about! But I think too much of my life is like that...I'm more concerned about it being my fault and respnsibility if something goes wrong than I am about the thing going wrong itself. Issues, issues. In other news, I did see "Revenge of the Sith" with Ksenia, Evil B., and his wife after a Sushi dinner. It was good, but dragged in the early middle a bit. If I see it again I want to get a score card for how many light-saber-welding limbs get chopped...good thing those laser swords cauterize the wounds instantly! Our seats were pretty high up...I almost would have rather gone for the back of the front section (one of those stadium seating setups at Fenway) but that got nixed by the women in the group...they just don't understand that to really feel a spaceship battle the spaceships need to be REALLY big relative to your field of vision. I think I would like to get the trilogy on DVD when it comes out, this film has retroactively made the other prequels better. In other other news, when did Google stop directly linking to sites and send you through a redirect? Seems kind of sketchy to me. I mean, I've been tempted to setup something similar on this site, but then I don't have a "Don't Be Evil" policy to adhere to. And it's definately a negative in the sense that a link to a site that you've been to through (found via other means) won't show up as clicked in the Google search results. |
| a gay day in may |
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Image and Quote of the Moment
"When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track."
--Weegee, via Weegee's World. He was a famous NYC street and crime photographer. The photo is "Girls at the Bar", c. 1946...I thought it was appropriate for today, when so many gay couples are tying the knot (after the 3 day waiting period.) Janes at a wedding of 20 couples today. Moment of the Moment Here's a wonderful moment: It's night, you're tired, you're just arriving home after driving a while with the radio on...you pull into the driveway, turn off the engine and the radio and sit and close your eyes and maybe recline a bit. Such a lovely newfound lack of stimulation...no road noise, no radio, no need to keep your eyes and mind on the road...only the sound of the car cooling down and settling in for the night, and the usual night noise beyond. You don't need to stay there too long, just long enough for the calm of the moment to settle in, then you can walk into your home and into bed. Spam Subject of the Moment "Regretful Of Having Little Diccky? Hahha trinomial whipsnake" --Subject line of spam from "Kandis Teena". I don't know what a trinomial whipsnake is, and can only guess how it ties into having a "Little Diccky", but it certainly has an air of menace about it. Come to think of it, "Trinomial Whipsnake" wouldn't be a terrible name for a band. Article of the Moment The universe as a giant hack by God... Essay of the Moment Another Slate piece, against willy-nilly anti-gay-marriage 'slippery slope' arguments. |
| don't let mailboxes etc do your passport photo |
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So I got my passport yesterday, yay...I got my old passport for my "summer before college" trip to Portugal in 1992, it had expired since our last international trip. We hadn't noticed, so last week we got expedited service. Anyway, I was looking at this FAQ on German Visas (to try to figure out what most easily constitutes proof of health insurance) and I felt a little sad I had no need for a Verpflichtungserklärung, an official affidavit of support from friends or relatives. Gotta love German. It's like legos for words! News of the Moment Ugh. Asia Times thinks that "the next targets could be in Europe, and soon." Yay, just what I want to hear before heading out. On the other hand--what are the odds? Everyone thinks that they're special, singled out for good or bad fortune. That's not the way it works though. Actually, I've been thinking about our nation and risk aversion. While I have no doubt that our soldiers hold their own in terms of bravery on an individual basis, on the institutional level, our military is much more cautious than say, the British, and that works to our detriment. When the British took off their helmets and started wearing their berets, when they got out of their tanks to talk with the locals--even though in one instance it cost a British soldier his life--they were able to connect to the population, to foster a positive relationship that our guys couldn't. We project an image of faceless, untouchable soldiers, and the more we do that, the more distanced we are from the populations we're theoretically trying to help. Similarly, Jane's wonders if our decision to remove troops from Saudi Arabia is seen as a bit of a victory for Bin Laden. All in all the situation isn't as bad as it could be. The fact that terrorists are picking softer targets and haven't conducted a jaw-dropper attack since 9/11 indicates that some of our efforts are paying off. I wish all this stuff wasn't happening right before our trip, but overall I'm confident the odds are in our favor. And if not...well, I've had a pretty good life in all. From a global and historical perspective, I've been way up the high percentiles. (My one request would be that my collective family friends and/or fanbase (heh) try to keep the Love Blender going and find a permanent way of archiving this site...) Link of the Moment Hemmings Motor News presents Oddies but Goodies, oddities from the history of cars. Some really cool stuff in there...the 1939 Antarctic Snow Cruiser (with its 10 foot wheels, built-in darkroom, and optional attachable biplane accessory) was pretty amazing, and this 1931 idea for adding some shape symbology to traffic lights (so that colorblind people can more clearly see what's going on) makes so much sense it's not even funny. (I only had time for the first dozen or so, but I plan to come back and read through 'em.) |
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old passport.
new passport.| periodically |
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Mascots of the Moment
The Mighty Midols and their fight against "Monsteruation" are about the most random corporate animated spokespeople I've seen in a while. They have they're own little minicartoon and game (actually I dig the little thumping beat they play in the introscreen to the game itself...)
Star Wars Link of the Moment Trying to meet my insatiable appetite for more, More, MORE! about the Star Wars universe, the official online Star Wars Databank is pretty cool, covering characters, locations, vehicles, and all of that. It has three views of its various entries: what you learn from the films, what's "known" from the "expanded universe" (comics, novels, games, etc) and then a "behind the scenes" view of the Industrial Lights and Magic design. Quote of the Moment "Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive." --Bugs Bunny |
| pink pink pink pink pink moon |
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Went to my five year reunion at Tufts last night. I skipped some of the multiyear events and just went to the dinner, but I guess for the cheapskate 5 year-ers they don't go all out. It was catered by Redbones but it was in a gym. Not a great turn out. The people there seemed... I dunno, pretty much the same. We agreed that it would be better if they could find someway to have people come back based on what they studied, or what groups they were in, for a general period of time, rather than strictly by year.
Link and Ramble of the Moment A wonderful, wonderful commercial is back on the air... here's how I described it last summer: You can see it here at VW (same link as above) or at AdCritic.com. (When I was looking for a second copy at the VW site I found this image which would have been much better for the quantum car gag I had here a few weeks ago.) You know, one of the nice things about this quote 'blog over the Palm journal it replaced is that I can include links to the thing, as well as the images. Incidently, although some people were really happy to see Nick Drake (who did the song) get some exposure with this ad, I was a little bummed out when I saw that the lyrics didn't live up to the mood. |
There's a 