| thomas jefferson's list of differences between the north and the south |
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--via "One-Night Stands with American History", Shenkman + Reiger |
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| corporate shilling for fun and no profit |
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--Weirdly captivating Japanese commercial for Sony's PS3. (via Offworld, which has some of the
precursors to this ad) Come to think of it I guess it reminds me more of this older Nike spot: |
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| that was the end |
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Leonard wrote: Before I go on, let me make my position clear: I am a total video game nerd (though not a particularly angry one). Songs have I written and stories that draw from this pixelated well. My cohort has a fascination with video games: old ones, new ones, the people who make them, the ones we make ourselves, their distribution mechanisms, their similarities and basic building blocks, the ways we push ourselves to best them, the stories we tell about them, the relationships they create and mediate.My response was as follows... Some pretty cool links...
(also for people who might not know Lucky Wander Boy, I quoted a bit from the Pac-Man meditation here: http://kirkjerk.com/2003/03/28/ ) The Pac-Man kill screen feels like... I dunno, like coming to the edge of the Matrix, of sailing to the place on the map where "There Be Dragons". "The kill screen is not in the realm of the meant." - absolutely! You seem to be conflating found, interpreted meaning with authorial intent. The microcosm collapsing because of programmer oversight, as the natural product of code that otherwise seems fine, sturdy, and lovely, seems to have a potential for profundity that, say, a reward intermission screen showing Pac-Man winging off to the beyond, would never have. (Or for that matter, a patch either locking in level 255 forever, or looping back to cherries.) Heck, even the patterns that let these players get to that point are in some ways transcendent... I've read about the surprising depth of personality used for the Pac-Man monsters, and it's a byproduct of that determinism that allows for this almost meta-game of perfect score plotting... have you ever seen a perfect play video? It's all about waiting in certain spots 'til the ghost waves finally coalesce and then pouncing... not very fun to watch or do, except in a meta-sense, and certainly not what was "meant" by the programmers. |
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| gravely |
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So yesterday Evil B and I worked on his driveway. It was unpaved gravel but with enough weeds that it was starting to look like an extremely poorly kept lawn, virtually enough to give careless beachgoers an excuse to block it while parking.
Well, we took care of that. 
The first part was the weeding. For the first stage we broke up the worst areas with the pickax and one of those twisting garden claw things, both shown here. Eventually we started shoveling hunks of gravely landscape into a sifting screen over a wheelbarrow, shaking furiously and picking out the roots and plant bits. Later we had to shovel and rake to redistribute the new gravel to cover the turned over space. It was a lot of heavy and dusty work. The photo above is him and me standing after the new gravel was delivered. In all we had about 2 1/2 "scoops" delivered, a scoop being about a cubic yard, which is about a ton. A ton of gravel is only like 30 or 40 bucks! I am totally in awe of our society that you can buy a ton of anything useful for that kind of money. I almost want to get a scoop delivered to my apartment, just so I could have a ton of something. Physically it was a tough but satisfying day, and the end result was a huge improvement. In the evening we head for a reviving swim at the beach, braving the chilly water for a swim to the raft anchored offshore. It was kind of cool seeing Evil B pass on the neighborhood lore of the raft to some groups of younger people who later arrived: the game where you stand on the edge with your heels hanging off until the small ocean harbor waves throw you off, and then the ritual of diving to the bottom and returning with handfuls of sand to show that you've done it. (Evil B mentioned that he liked the mix you see in Rockport. The first group who joined us swam over from a sailboat, 2 very young boys, 2 older girls, and a father-y figure. Later it was 3 boys, sweet natured kids who might've been from the wrong side of the tracks.) So, a good day in all. Exchange of the Moment Evil B explains that he's going to break up some ground with the pickax and I can then move in with the Garden Claw to rip it up. He begins swinging the pickax with great vigor: Evil B: "[Swings] Get in there! [Swings]" Kirk: "Uh... your lips say 'yes, yes' but your ax says 'no, no'..." Turns out he was addressing the ax, not me... You had to be there but my nervous comment struck him as pretty funny. |
| beam me up bart |
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Back in town!
Boston people... so a friend of Ksenia's, also a student at AIB, but a bit older, just went on a trip to Japan. He took some photographs that I haven't see yet but I've heard are great. He's looking for some kind of exhibition space... any suggestions? Video of the Moment --Fun Simpson/Star Trek mashup. Great use of the theremin! |
| y not 2k? |
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Ongoing Bad News of the Moment For the record, this is kind of what I expected for all over the USA during Y2K, at least in 1998. (By mid-1999, it was clear that a number of systems had been rolling over with no problem.) The "advantage" for Y2K was that it didn't have the physical infrastructure blowout that they have right now down south; conversely, a Y2K scenario meant there would be no "outside" to ship aid in. It almost makes me want to get my survivalist mojo working. I would say, I wonder if there's anyway we're going to avoid an oil-shockish recession from all this. (slate has similar thoughts.) Of course, any questioning of Bush's push for a taxcut early on, and the negative effcts thereof, are handwaved away by 9/11 and now maybe this. I just read a good, if scary, analysis of this in Atlantic, written from a hypothetical future campaign advisor looking back to 2008-2012 or so. Bush strived to eliminate a guesstimated surplus that never showed up, with no concept of setting aside resources for a rainy day. And if the Iraq war wasn't neccesary, it's an unnecesary brutal ongoing drain on our economic and military strength. (Slate has argues that this is a huge test and failing grade for "Homeland Security".) |
| wellington nitroglycerin |
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Ramble of the Moment So there's that new indy film with the title "Napolean Dynamite", which, supposedly by coincidence, is the pseudonym Elvis Costello (heh, not his real name either come to think of it) used on his 1986 album "Blood and Chocolate". And it made me think that an Elvis Costello fan would get ticked, because most websearches for "Napolean Dynamite" will be about the movie, not about Costello. I decided there should be a name for this: your "Dooplegoogler" is the person or thing, more famous than you, and with a similar enough name that Google searches for you are thwarted. Now, the Costello fan can arrange to search for both full names, but I live in fear of the Scottish National Church (aka "Kirk") having a big terrorist incident at its Jerusalem chapel, because then I might be totally lost on like the tenth page of a Google search. Quote and Art of the Moment "A good friend of mine often compares programming to music. He studied jazz improvistion at the college level and is now a programmer... so I feel like he has a good insight into this sort of thing. One quote that really made sense to me was, 'Traditional jazz improvisation is all about trying to fit creative and spontaneous music composition on top of somewhat predictable chord progressions.' This is what many programmers try to do... develop creative solutions using predictable software design patterns. I guess Alex Mclean has found a way to be creative AND spontaneous with his coding." -- UncleBiggims in this Slashdot article on this guy who programs in real time to make music. Man...coding Perl live, with an audience...THAT takes cajones. I should look into this...supposedly, getting back into making music, making some electronica using the basslines I've had in my head (and on any available piano) since highschool is the mandate for my 30s. Image of the Moment
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| the rise of man |
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Blenderites: It looks like things are starting to work again on the Love Blender but there are still some bugs (like the author profile page isn't showing up). I'll be getting things up to speed this evening. Funny of the Moment "A study in The Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: 'Duh.'" --Conan O'Brien Article of the Moment After reading the article The Naked Face a year ago, I was thinking someone should capitalize on training people to read the "microexpressions" people inadvertantly broadcast with their faces...according to Wired, it looks like somebody has. News of the Moment That news report about the deliveryman who had a bomb strapped to him and was forced to rob a bank is the weirdest and saddest thing I've heard in a while. Image of the Moment  The miniseries "V" was on one of the movie channels the other day...everyone remember its logo of a spraypainted "V" but I was more struck by the Vistors' "official" logo, which I've tried to reconstruct here. I like how it looks other worldy but still useable, like the alien countdown LED timer in Predator.Incidentally, the current overapplied gag on Slashdot is "I, for one, welcome our new ______ overlords", from Kent Brockman in this episode of The Simpsons, which fits the old miniseries well. |
| cute widdle viowence and destwuction |
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Oy, I've slacked off on doing the Blender all weekend, better get to work. Videos of the Moment 
What happens when you cross the Care Bears with Dead Baby Jokes?
Probably something that looks a lot like Happy Tree Friends. Warning: this stuff, while very cartoonish, is also very very macabre and violent. But kinda funny none the less. If you're in a hurry just watch the first one. (I only got up to #11 or so.)Movie Quote of the Moment "You have no values; your whole life is nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm and orgasm." "In France I could run on that slogan and win." --Woody Allen, "Deconstructing Harry" |
| falling |
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