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| the rise and decline of the blender of love |
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So I made a new Blender of Love digest yesterday... the ramble featured the following graph:
This is number of monthly submissions over time. While I'm grateful that I'm not having to read (well, skim) 500-600 pieces every month, I kind of wish it had stabilized at where it was a few years ago, because the numbers are starting to alarm me. The Blender has its stalwarts, but I don't really understand what happened to provoke either the rise or decline of it. I used to promote it in the 90s, some banner exchange programs, some plugs on like Usenet, but now I'm not sure what I'd do, other than possibly take a shot in the dark and advertise on Google AdWords. So it's a bummer when a project of over a decade and a half seems in poor health! I am proud of the look of my graph though, handrolled in Java processing. |
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| hello japan! (backlog flush #67 and travelog) |
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Another amazing day with Josh. I'm going to be traveling to Hiroshima and Kyoto on my own by rail, so I might not be posting quite so extensively for a bit... This is what a Tokyo rail and subway map looks like. It is not a simple thing:  You do see more uniforms in Japan, I imagine it's an aspect of the pride in their work. This lady is one of those folks I mentione meant to warn people getting off the train about the construction:  Shin-Matsudo station, near where Josh lives:  First glimpse of Akihabara, the electronic district of Tokyo. We met up with my old college buddy Alex who lives in Tokyo.  The first thing we hit seemed to be a bit of a hobbyist center, 5 or 6 floors, each about a different hobby. Here is a racetrack on the second floor, one of the model builders behind:  Next floor: guns! CO2 and battery powered.  Some political commentary on the gun floor:  The basement was about, well, porno. Though I can't imagine what this was, must be some kind of novelty cup holder.  We then went to the grand department store Yodobashi-Akiba, like 9 or 10 stories. Here's what it looks like on the outside, including the electronic billboard.  An on the inside, you can see it's pretty hopping!  On the ninth floor we went to "Pepper Lunch". You place your order using a vending machine that gives you the appropriate coupon which you give to the waitstaff. Like many vending machines here, especially ones that have products at different prices, a light shines next to each selection for which you've inserted enough yen.  My meal, which was some tasty pepper steak, served raw-ish on a hot skillet, so you get to cook it yourself... fun, and tasty!  Typical Japanese hand drier... almost a matter of trust as you hold both hands in the mouth of the thing:  Back to the department store! A few places around the district I saw these kid-sized arcade games...  Including Pokemon, where you could battle people at other machines.  So this store tended to have vast selections of many things, like dozens and dozens of Playstation Portable cases. Or in this case, LOTS of watchbands:  Near some other exercise/health equipment, some kinf of vaguely obscene-looking saddle things that would shake and shimmy. Kind of like a small scale mechanical bull:  Josh and Alex indulging me in a goofy photo, holding a very odd one handed keyboard device designed for gamers.  So on Sundays certain streets in Tokyo get blocked off, and they have things kind of like street fairs. (Corner of one of those streets, mostly I just liked the banners.)  More buildings:  More buildings and a fearsome Space Invaders. (I remember hearing how the original Space Invaders caused a shortage of ten yen coins...)  So one recent addition to the scene are "maid cafes" where you can be attended to by highly attentive young ladies. (I guess it ranges from the innocent to the err...more detailed services.) We thought these gals were advertising one of those but no, they were just playing dressup, which happened a lot at the Akihabara street fair thing:  As amusing as the girls in dressup, all the men taking their photo...  Another cute girl:  Alex and me at the The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel.  I liked the sci-fi vibe of these escalators:  And who doesn't like Snoopy? "Snoopy Towns" seemed even more prevelant than "Disney Stores"  Gate for Takeshita Street, super-fashion-trendy...  But don't take my word for it:  Fairly crowded:  One of the more common jobs are people outside of stores saying "welcome welcome" and otherwise trying to interest you in the store. Often they have megaphones. Lordy, the Japanese seem to love their megaphones.... in the department stores, you have the same thing, only for individual products.  I didn't know Chevrolet made bikes:  The ritzier high fashion district Harajuku: so many people!  Alex and Josh outside of a Wendy's  This photo doesn't show it well but it was the most hopping Wendy's I'd ever scene, very youth-centric. Also smokey despite the signs against it.  There was actually some kind of Irish festival going on: (I saw a small Irish group, complete with some hooligan lookin' fella shouting at random intervals to the music.)  Errr... buildings. I liked the billboards.  Injoke: "pedobear is that you?" (It actually might be where the infamous parody character came from.)  I'm very fond of corporations co-opting hippy-ish sentiment. Maybe they even mean it!  Funky building. An Audi dealership I think.  What does it say about Americans that I want to call any any big construction vehicle that's not a crane or a dumptruck a bulldozer? Anyway, these cute purple vehicles were all over Japan.  The Hummer and the Zen Temple.  Famous Scramble Intersection... this is under the same billboard with the giant walking dinosaur in "Lost in Translation"  Random cultural note: most restaurants give you a oshiburi before your meal, a hot wet facecloth for your hands and face. Refreshing!  The universal sign for exit in Japan:  Tokyo at Night.  Finally two examples of kawaii, "Japanese Cute". Josh notes that it seems to be losing popularity... now you see more computer rendered 3D characters. Still, I dig this aesthetic a bit more, like the peanut I posted yesterday:   |
- this is the "Rhino" truck from the show "Mask", the last toy series I got into, after Transformers and GI Joe. Ever since then I always get the feeling that the back end hitch part of trailerless semis I see should be able to roll around independently, as shown here.
| not so domo arigato, mr. roboto |
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I just tried to txt what I didn't realize was a landline, and got told my message was relayed via Sprint's "text to landline" service.
I guess some robot read my text to my intended recipient. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with robots taking that familiar a role in my communication, especially without warning me first. Image of the Moment
Observation of the Moment We walked four blocks south to a Brazilian restaurant that I must have walked past a thousand times on my own and yet never noticed. This further proved my own belief that there is only so much any given person can see for themselves in Manhattan. It takes two people, looking in all directions at once, to see everything. --Augusten Burroughs, "Magical Thinking". Great read, and I think this comment is dead all. It's a little true for a lot of places, actually, but even more so for NYC. And I dig the romantic undertone. |
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| i think sex is better than logic but i can't prove it |
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Off to NYC! Actually grabbed a Brooklyn Hotel...last minute options in Manhattan were either expensive or skanky without a ton of middle ground.
Man I miss my mom's apartment on the Upper West Side, and that little seperate room I had...my own little microstudio overlooking broadway... sigh. Logic of the Moment Good evening. The last scene was interesting from the point of view of a professional logician because it contained a number of logical fallacies; that is, invalid propositional constructions and syllogistic forms, of the type so often committed by my wife. 'All wood burns,' states Sir Bedevere. 'Therefore,' he concludes, 'all that burns is wood.' This is, of course, pure bullshit. Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted: all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only some of the class of dead people are Alma Cogan. 'Oh yes,' one would think. However, my wife does not understand this necessary limitation of the conversion of a proposition; consequently, she does not understand me, for how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic, if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder? For example, given the premise, 'all fish live underwater' and 'all mackerel are fish', my wife will conclude, not that 'all mackerel live underwater', but that 'if she buys kippers it will not rain', or that 'trout live in trees', or even that 'I do not love her any more.' This she calls 'using her intuition'. I call it 'crap', and it gets me very irritated because it is not logical. 'There will be no supper tonight,' she will sometimes cry upon my return home. 'Why not?' I will ask. 'Because I have been screwing the milkman all day,' she will say, quite oblivious of the howling error she has made. 'But,' I will wearily point out, 'even given that the activities of screwing the milkman and getting supper are mutually exclusive, now that the screwing is over, surely then, supper may now, logically, be got.' 'You don't love me any more,' she will now often postulate. 'If you did, you would give me one now and again, so that I would not have to rely on that rancid Pakistani for my orgasms.' 'I will give you one after you have got me my supper,' I now usually scream, 'but not before'-- as you understand, making her bang contingent on the arrival of my supper. 'God, you turn me on when you're angry, you ancient brute!' she now mysteriously deduces, forcing her sweetly throbbing tongue down my throat. 'Fuck supper!' I now invariably conclude, throwing logic somewhat joyously to the four winds, and so we thrash about on our milk-stained floor, transported by animal passion, until we sink back, exhausted, onto the cartons of yogurt. I'm afraid I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief. But in a nutshell: sex is more fun than logic-- one cannot prove this, but it 'is' in the same sense that Mount Everest 'is', or that Alma Cogan 'isn't'. Goodnight. --from The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, transcribed here. |
| outlook not so good |
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Rant of the Moment Man, I hate hate HATE how Outlook "helpfully" tried to preserve the font and coloring information when you cut and paste from a web browser. Am I alone in thinking that if you're writing an email, you don't want it to look like a mishmash of fonts and colors? That an email is usually a single nit that has its own cohesive sense of displaying text? It might be tolerable if it weren't for the completely retarded way that when you start typing after the cut and paste, your new text is in the same wacky font and color. I know I should probably be sticking to non-HTML "Plain Text" mode, but sometimes it's useful to bold something to bring attention to it, and using asterisks for *emphasis* is a little too old school. Feh. Outlook is broken both by design and implementation -- trying to correct the problem by selecting all of my text and then picking a new style led to bizarre inconsistent results. Almost makes me wish for a Word Perfect-ish "Reveal Codes" or a browser "Edit as HTML Source" option so I can figure out how it gets so screwed up. |
| pair a' noids |
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Paranoia of the Moment was wondering if anybody could recommend suitable survival strategies for street games? I'm not talking about games for children but about the very expensive type of game where whole cities start acting around a single person (the player) and newspaper articles, TV news and hollywood movies are made with bits and pieces taken from that person's diary or even his brain .. --from this Slashdot journal entry that LAN3 pointed out to me, which probably indicates not all is well with this guys head. Still kind of an interesting read. Personal Paranoia of the Moment Now, counterterrorism officials say one of their biggest concerns is how U.S. actions such as the war in Iraq are motivating new recruits bound by a common goal: to destroy Western secular society. Both government and private experts are bracing for what they say will be a war that could last for generations. --from this CNN article "Experts: War on terrorism could spawn new enemies". It just reminded me of how there are people with these visions of a whole happy sunshine-y world for Allah and are willing to blow things up to try and get there. "You love life and we love death" indeed. Religious fervor and fundamentalism can be so frickin' dangerous...even when the "religion" is an atheistic belief. And there will be more, if God wills it. "What's that God? You say you want me to build a bomb? And blow up a bunch of commuters! Ok! As long as it's your will!" I do worry about the idea that the Spanish election was a bit like feeding meat to an alligator, like some administration official said. Sociology of the Moment Fun to play with two axis way of grouping people: Elf/Dwarf (high concept thinkers vs. pracitcal doers) and Ninja/Pirate (quiet and honourable vs unrestrained and gregarious) I'm heavily on the Pirate side, and probably a bit towards the dwarvish, though I do have a bit of the Elfen "what would be the bestest way of doing this in me. What about you? Are you a dwarfen ninja, an elven pirate? Though in my mind, it seems like ninja/elf and dwarf/pirate are more likely combinations, they seem similar to me somehow. Article of the Moment Slate.com on the rise of the American cupholder. It's synchronicity; I've been borrowing my Aunt and Uncle's minivan (nice that it's a Honda, as is my own hatchback (in the shop); I know where right where all the controls are) and was glancing at the manual (actually looking for instrutions on the fold-up seating) when I found where it described the cupholders: fold-out jobbies that don't seem as sturdy as the ones in my car (the bottom is just a plastic bar that falls down when the thing slides out) but must be less likely to accumulate the dried spilled coffee and other beverage goop that I sometimes have to clean up out of mine. What struck me about the description of the cupholders in the manual was the admonition that they were only to be used when the car wasn't moving, since liquids (maybe even hot liquids!) could slosh around when the vehicle was in motion. Apparently, the manual writers come from some (lawsuit-prone) universe where A. People just like to sit in their stationary car to consume beverages and B. They haven't developed effective drink lid technology. |
| putting the whisk into whiskers |
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Videos of the Moment Making the rounds: Hercubush explains the administration's need for oil. I hate shaving too. I like the idea of tensecondfilms, though there's something screwy with realmedia on my system. Also, they rudely ignored brooklyngirls's entry, I Was A Teenage Cartoon. Cartoon of the Moment 
Link of the Moment This Ebay listing is very very odd. Threat of the Moment "When the enemy starts a large-scale battle, he must realise that the battle between us will be open wherever there is sky, land and water in the entire world." --Saddam Hussein threatening to make the war global. Well, he thought the last one would be the "Mother of All Battles", so there's at least some precedent for overblown rhetoric. Of course, the last Bush who attacked him didn't seem quite so intent on killing him, so who knows. Between this and mystery-pneumonia I kind of wish Mo and I didn't have to leave the house this week. |
| rainy housewarming |
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Huh, I was getting over 100 unique users/day for a few days there, now it's back down...maybe more people were Google image searching on WTC because of the six month anninversary? Ah well, that's the danger when you start looking at the numbers on a daily basis... Link of the Moment Ah, at last there's Google News. Game of the Moment Ah, at last there's slime volleyball. (Tough game, a little easier if you use the arrowkeys for left and right and w to jump.) Quote of the Moment "The Future is here. It is just not evenly distributed." --William Gibson, who was quote by Tim O'Reilly the other day (except he rendered it as "widely" instead of "evenly") It's a great point though, and interesting to think how and where the future has its roots in the present. Though there's a downside to that as well, if you think of the WTC part of the present, and not the shiny cool computer gadget side. |
| industry substandard |
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Yikes. Trying to figure out if things are afoot in my company. My heart's racing a bit.
Quote of the Moment
Link of the Moment
Quote of the Next Couple Years It points out that on the Clinton watch we had some sharp downturns that we managed our way through, but Bush is trash talking the economy to play up his taxcut plan, and that may screw us all. I have less faith in ever in Bush, and this electoral college driven mixup will haunt us for years. |