Stuff from February, 2008
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2008.
Caricature
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on February, 2008.
A little timing goes a long way.
Feist sings “Sea Lion Woman” live, on YouTube. The description:
damn this rocks live!
That’s pretty accurate.
Mykala got this card as a congratulations when I got into school. Love this card.
Working on getting my deep blacks and bright whites exposed correctly on the first try.
I just found out at The Blue Shallow that John passed his boards. Congratulations, John!
I found out in the middle of last week that I PASSED the National Boards I took late last year. So what does this mean? Provided I graduate in May, I can practice as early as the first business day after graduation. The National Boards say whether or not I will have a License to practice Veterinary Medicine. And now I can.
The more I have learned and grown as a world citizen and the more the seeds of a liberal arts education have germinated within my brain, the more I have realized the incredible gift of a democratic government that we have here in the United States. That’s not to say my ignorance of the election system isn’t shocking — in fact, today I read through the Wikipedia article about Super Tuesday to understand what, exactly, happens on this day:
You did it, Katy! Congrats on getting your Master’s in Mathematics (I don’t know if those words should be capitalized, but they seem important enough to be capitalized) by passing a ridiculously rigorous, stressful and difficult oral exam! I knew you could do it. Whether or not you decide to get your Ph.D., you’ll always be the best math solver that I know.
At our celebration dinner for Katy’s passing her oral exams and me getting accepted into school.
A short piece in which I continually widen the scope of the issues addressed.
The fact that I have precisely one choice for high speed internet in the capital city of Minnesota irks me to no end. For someone who will return to higher education and is currently freelancing doing webdesign, high speed internet is a need, not a want. So, I must pay what Comcast asks, and I have no other choice. As I said in the title, this sucks. Could it get any worse? I’m stuck as a customer of a coercive monopoly so… of course it could get worse. Read on.
I find it easy to trust the hard-earned truths of a successful comedian. For example, here’s an excerpt from a recent A.V. Club interview with John Cleese:
A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people. There’ve been two or three examples where, just really laughing, it all goes away. I remember David Niven taking me out to dinner with Connie [Booth], my first wife. And we were sitting in the open air, drinking pinot grigio in the middle of Rome. There was an editor there, a really nice editor, but being British, he had terrible teeth—Americans have never seen teeth that bad, unless they read National Geographic. And David told us, “He’ll smile a lot, but he’ll never laugh.” Every time David made us howl with laughter, we glanced at the editor, who was roaring with laughter, trying to keep his lips together. Um, so what I’m saying is that when you’ve laughed like that with someone, it connects you at a humanity level.
For what it’s worth, my cell phone is thicker (by about a third) than the thickest point on Apple’s newest laptop, the MacBook Air. The thinnest part of the MacBook Air is 6 times thinner than my cell phone.
The printer has this… what is it?
Nothing says “I follow the crowds” like taking a picture of a Moleskine planner with a 50mm f/1.8 “nifty fifty.”
Like this sticker.
Windchills made it to 40 below this morning.
An article entitled “Math Trek: The Grammy in Mathematics” from Science News Online explains how Jamie Howarth, with the help of mathematician Kevin Short, used an awesome technique to restore an old Woody Guthrie recording (emphasis mine):
My favorite one is the one on the top left. First things first: a table.
NFL teams have too many managers and too few resources to manage, writes Gregg Easterbrook at his ESPN column Tuesday Morning Quarterback:
If General Electric had the same ratio of titles to revenue as the Patriots, GE would employ 652 presidents, 1,304 executive directors, 1,956 chief officers and 9,780 directors.
Derek Powazek tells The Real Story of JPG Magazine. He has some helpful words of wisdom:
Decisions aren’t decisions if you have to keep making them. Set on the course and stick to it. If you keep talking about things that have already been decided, nothing will ever get done.
Skills I would like to learn:
Things I vehemently oppose:
Role models:
Mister Rogers. Tom Junod, in Esquire:
Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence.
And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, ‘I’ll watch the time.” There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, seven seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly, “May God be with you,” to all his vanquished children.
Su Song. From Wikipedia:
Su Song was most famous for his hydraulic-powered astronomical clock tower, crowned with a mechanically-driven armillary sphere, which was erected in the capital city of Kaifeng in the year 1088. His clock tower employed the escapement mechanism two centuries before it was applied in clocks of Europe; the tower also featured the earliest known endless power-transmitting chain drive in the world, as outlined in his horological treatise of 1092.
Gottfried Leibniz. Paul du Bois-Reymond, in a biography about Leibniz:
As is well known, the theory of the maxima and minima of functions was indebted to [Leibniz] for the greatest progress through the discovery of the method of tangents. Well, he conceives God in the creation of the world like a mathematician who is solving a minimum problem, or rather, in our modern phraseology, a problem in the calculus of variations — the question being to determine among an infinite number of possible worlds, that for which the sum of necessary evil is a minimum.
For Mykala, for Valentine’s Day.
Well, I guess the annual flash mob Valentine’s Day San Francisco pillow fight went well yesterday. I especially like this picture. Fun stuff. Reading about this is starting to restore my faith in humanity. Maybe we will be alright.
This throw blanket Mykala picked up at Ikea is really snug and nice.
NSP, or Northern States Power, was purchased by Xcel a while back. I really preferred the old logo.
Knut the polar bear is very very cute. Born in captivity late in 2006, he was abandoned by his mother and raised by zoo keeper Thomas Dörflein:
Knut’s need for around-the-clock care required that Dörflein not only sleep on a mattress next to Knut’s sleeping crate at night, but also play with, bathe, and feed the cub daily. Knut’s diet began with a bottle of milk every two hours before graduating at the age of four months to a milk porridge mixed with cat food, vitamins, and cod liver.
Computer programming teaches you to think logically, optimize for speed, relevancy, etc., and structure your thinking within a world where there are set rules. (Incidentally, that previous link points to one of the most insightful articles I have ever read — it’s about who nerds are, and proper care/feeding of nerds. If you haven’t read it… seriously, man, read it. And technically, I should say “seriously, lady” because the article is most useful to a woman looking at a nerd or nerd-like significant other. Anyhow, let’s break out of this parenthetical statement. BUT, before we do, note to self: install footnotes on the next revision of the tumbledry formatting system. That way, diversions such as this will end up at the bottom of the article in… a footnote.) So, this endless logic game within a world where the entire system is known is an excellent exercise for the mind. Indeed, I enjoy the exercise. However, I’ve never quite been able to articulate why a profession (above and beyond a hobby) in the programming arena does not appeal to me. Thankfully, somebody spoke my mind on the issue in a comment attached to a recent Slashdot article entitled “Obsolete Technical Skills”:
The “Help ‘em Wash specialized shower curtain is one of those things that sounds like a good idea, but really is not a good idea.
The Pet Shower Curtain has shoulder length gloves that allow you easy access to bathe your pet. The gloves are completely intergrated and waterproof. The curtain is clear to help you watch your pet closely while bathing them. You will stay dry even when your pet shakes the excess water off.
Continuing the theme of baby animals this week, we have a baby bunny. As Weebl and Bob might say, sooo cute!
NPR is great because it has interviews where the interviewers actually research their guests and ask them good questions. So, it’s interesting to hear this: NPR Music: KT Tunstall: Greater Than the Sum of Her Sounds. Sure, we hear some great studio recordings of Tunstall songs, but you actually learn something interesting and useful things about the artist. I’ve had this up in my browser for over a month, so I’m glad to have finally gotten the chance to listen. That said, the NPR music site is a really high quality integration of articles, samples, and full interviews. Color me impressed.
I’ve always approached blogging from a rather pragmatic stance, complete with low expectations, no thoughts of a cult-like following, and no deluded visions of grandeur. For these reasons, I don’t usually link my blog, I’ve pulled it out of as many search engines as possible, it’s not listed on my Facebook profile, and I seldom bring it up in conversation. The whole idea is one of website as a hidden gem. I’d like the people who visit to only do so because (however limited in scope), they find a small nugget of value in reading my rantings/ravings. The reality is harsh, but generally goes thus: nobody cares what I had for lunch, they probably don’t think I’m funny, they aren’t interested in the things I link, and my photographs don’t speak to them. On the contrary, those who have a modicum of interest in what I’m doing here, I welcome you with open arms and an appreciation for every speck of feedback and comments you offer.
The Esquire magazine logotype, by Jim Parkinson Type Design with Roger Black and Ann Pomeroy, is without a doubt the best magazine logotype I can think of right now. So. Great.
It’s starting to stay lighter a little longer!
I want summer so badly I can barely contain myself. I mean, I can’t remember ever having pre-spring fever with this intensity. I day-dream about going outside without a protective covering of down, wool, and leather. Dimly, I remember a time when it was still light at 9pm and the warmth of the day lingered through leisurely dinners on patios. Tennis, running, basketball. Swimming holes, lawn sprinklers, sunburns.
New from the Improv Everywhere crew: three agents took desktop computers and massive CRT tube monitors into Starbucks, then pretended to work on them just as you would with a laptop. I like the lady who “took the joke a step further” by putting the monitor and keyboard in her lap.
Dan, of Dan’s Data (naturally), wrote a really informative article, called The Great Apathetic Revolution. It’s about this ridiculous situation: it is illegal to back-up copies of DVDs, games, etc. that you have legally purchased. Further down the article is a great set of facts describing the internet:
Mykala was nice enough to frame some of my photographs and hang them in her apartment.