Stuff from May, 2012
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on May, 2012.
Bookcases
Someday, I hope to have a place with a bookcase like this:
However, I’d be fine if I had these cool suspended bookcases like this:
This is the archive of tumbledry happenings that occurred on May, 2012.
Recently, I realized that the problem with Facebook is that you can’t actually discuss the problems with Facebook on Facebook. By “can’t”, I mean the discourse has dropped to the lowest common denominator (Cf. “eternal September”). So, in a place where everyone is showing selected pieces of their lives to give an aura of grandeur, carefree frivolity, success, beauty, ease… there’s no time for subtlety, considered introspection, gentle humor. The problem, set in terms of one of my typically strained metaphors: if you’re staring at neon signs all day and then someone shows you a watercolor, it’s going to be boring.
Inspired by our uneaten bunch of bananas, which must be eaten quickly while ripe, I’m proud to announce my invention: Banana Days. Right now, it’s “Banana Days 2012”, which will last until May 4th. I’ve decided Banana Days will be annual, beginning on the first of May, ending the first Friday after. Some years, Banana Days will be poorly named, and will only be one day in length. Festive activities will be banana-based.
It is with a sense of numb relief that I mark the completion of dental school in this space. My final check-out meeting was this morning, graduation is this Friday. I started four years ago, on a hot August day. I lived elsewhere then. Mykala and I weren’t married. I had no idea what I was in for. It’s no understatement to say I was a different person.
Someday, I hope to have a place with a bookcase like this:
However, I’d be fine if I had these cool suspended bookcases like this:
“George, you’re sitting on my application for licensure in the state of Minnesota.”
“Meow.”
“What if it gets wrinkled?”
“Meow.”
“Ok, fine.”
Dr. Baisden and Dr. Rohrer were our elected “hooders” — those who place the hood over your head, signifying your degree.
I set the camera settings wrong, so this picture has been heavily sharpened. I’ve heard that the new sharpener in Photoshop is unbelievably awesome and shown in this demo called “Image Deblurring”. I’ll use something like that in the future.
“So what exactly hurts?” Mykala asked, trying to get at the root of my non-specific complaints.
“Well, the joints in my hands and feet feel really sore… like from a virus.”
I took 400mg ibuprofen, which got me through yesterday evening’s delicious and exciting visits to Marvel and Masu — then, around 8:30pm, I called Nils to confirm our Big Bike Ride™ to Stillwater tomorrow. After that, bad things began to happen.
Please note the occlusal “amalgam” on the “A” and gold crown on the “S”.
Two years ago, Mykala and I ate a life alteringly great watermelon. The darn thing made you ask questions like “What is truth?” and “Have I known beauty until now?” Ever since, we’ve been on a watermelon quest. Today, we have matched that previously awe-inspiring watermelon: we just had a (part of a gigantic) “Little Bear” brand seedless watermelon (#4032). I didn’t ask any big life questions, but did ask where it was from. Target. Hmm.
This is a panoramic picture stitched from ten photographs, all depicting Millenium Park in Chicago on the evening of May 27, 2012. Mykala and I walked down from our hotel through the muggy air to sit on the pristine grass and listen to some great music. The night was perfect: the setting sun, the still air, little ones running around on the grass, couples eating picnic dinners on foot-high tables. I’m told the performers were the “Northwestern University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus” — and they were great. The material, however, was not good. Very dissonant, difficult material about 9/11, former president Bush, etc. Not exactly what you expect to hear for symphony music in a park. The piece was Richard Blackford’s oratorio Not in Our Time. I would not recommend it. I would recommend Millenium Park.
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus is an important article, mostly because of this clear, sad fact:
So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project—every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in—that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.
And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.
“Your 1920x1080 TV takes a 1920x1080 signal, chops the edges off it and then stretches the rest to fit the screen because of decisions made in the 1930s.”
— Matthew Garrett
“120Hz and 240Hz TVs have the potential to show you each 24p frame for exactly 1/24th of a second, perfectly replicating The Way Movies Look, and that’s great. The problem is, it’s hard to make them do that, because of awful motion-smoothing settings that are On by default.”
— Stu Maschwitz
“‘Can I choose?’, Beatrix asks. She’s still confused. She thinks this is like home where one can choose from a selection of things to watch. A well organized list of suggestions and options with clear box cover shots of all of her favorites. I have to explain again that it does not work that way on television. That we have to watch whatever is on and, if there is nothing you want to watch that is on then you just have to turn it off. Which we do.”
— Patrick Rhone
“You know those [unskippable] FBI warning messages that appear at the beginning of DVDs and Blu-ray discs? They’re getting an upgrade—and they’re multiplying.
The US government yesterday rolled out not one but two copyright notices, one to “warn” and one to “educate.” Six major movie studios will begin using the new notices this week.”
— Nate Anderson
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent [television],” he said. “[Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
— (Inspired by) Ed Colligan