roy.nerdy.net
Ten days ago a thread was posted on reddit called "What short YouTube video (30 seconds or less) makes you laugh uncontrollably every time you watch it?". While the three listed by the submitter are fantastic, there are a few gems to be found in the comments too. Here are my top five:
5. Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog
4. Heinz Automato 2
3. Streaker Fail
2. Greatest putt-putt shot of all time
1. 20th Century Fox Flute Edition
And a couple more that shouldn't be ignored:
JESUS CHRIST IN RICHMOND PARK (Fenton)
Monkey!
5. Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog
4. Heinz Automato 2
3. Streaker Fail
2. Greatest putt-putt shot of all time
1. 20th Century Fox Flute Edition
And a couple more that shouldn't be ignored:
JESUS CHRIST IN RICHMOND PARK (Fenton)
Monkey!
On parking and the issue of efficiency vs. equal access
Saturday Jan 14th 2012 11:02 am2 weeks ago
Bo-ring. Definitely, a snoozer.
Save for this headline: The case for the $6 parking meter
And a terrific opening paragraph by Globe correspondent Leon Neyfakh:
"The search for a parking space on the streets of downtown Boston can warp a person’s world. Fire hydrants become symbols of thwarted hope. Other drivers become bitter enemies. Signs assume the properties of Talmudic texts, calling out for interpretation and bedeviling us with their complexity. As we drive in circles, sweating and honking hopelessly, our eyes dart around and the clock ticks. Happiness is the sight of red taillights coming on as someone prepares to leave; temptation is a taunting yellow placard offering garage space for $15 an hour. In dense, urban areas like Boston, as many as 30 percent of cars on the street are cruising for parking at any given time."
Ok, you got me. But how are you going to justify a $6 meter? Are you nuts?
"What if it didn’t have to be this way? What if finding a spot became as routine a procedure as turning a key, or putting on pants in the morning? According to a growing number of urban planners, transportation experts, and economists, that fantastical scenario is within reach. While the rest of us compete with each other for nonexistent spaces like fishermen around a puddle, they envision a city in which every block contains at least one free parking spot at all times. They believe that with a bit of simple social engineering, the act of parking can be transformed."
Like most proposals to address seemingly mundane problems, the issues quickly complicate as Neyfakh captures in the remainder of his article. It's one worth reading, I think, because the issues that emerge around the traditionally uninteresting issue of parking are similar in some ways to those that emerge around larger and more fraught subjects.
As Neyfakh concludes, the demand-based "model of street parking is part of a broader conversation about the trade-off between efficiency and equal access — and about what aspects of our lives should be treated as commodities as opposed to inalienable civic resources."
And to think, I got reeled into all of this heavy stuff on a Saturday morning because of a lively introductory paragraph. Well done.
Save for this headline: The case for the $6 parking meter
And a terrific opening paragraph by Globe correspondent Leon Neyfakh:
"The search for a parking space on the streets of downtown Boston can warp a person’s world. Fire hydrants become symbols of thwarted hope. Other drivers become bitter enemies. Signs assume the properties of Talmudic texts, calling out for interpretation and bedeviling us with their complexity. As we drive in circles, sweating and honking hopelessly, our eyes dart around and the clock ticks. Happiness is the sight of red taillights coming on as someone prepares to leave; temptation is a taunting yellow placard offering garage space for $15 an hour. In dense, urban areas like Boston, as many as 30 percent of cars on the street are cruising for parking at any given time."
Ok, you got me. But how are you going to justify a $6 meter? Are you nuts?
"What if it didn’t have to be this way? What if finding a spot became as routine a procedure as turning a key, or putting on pants in the morning? According to a growing number of urban planners, transportation experts, and economists, that fantastical scenario is within reach. While the rest of us compete with each other for nonexistent spaces like fishermen around a puddle, they envision a city in which every block contains at least one free parking spot at all times. They believe that with a bit of simple social engineering, the act of parking can be transformed."
Like most proposals to address seemingly mundane problems, the issues quickly complicate as Neyfakh captures in the remainder of his article. It's one worth reading, I think, because the issues that emerge around the traditionally uninteresting issue of parking are similar in some ways to those that emerge around larger and more fraught subjects.
As Neyfakh concludes, the demand-based "model of street parking is part of a broader conversation about the trade-off between efficiency and equal access — and about what aspects of our lives should be treated as commodities as opposed to inalienable civic resources."
And to think, I got reeled into all of this heavy stuff on a Saturday morning because of a lively introductory paragraph. Well done.
Blended Learning Follow Up: Introducing "Delancey Place"
Wednesday Jan 11th 2012 12:16 pm2 weeks ago
At delanceyplace.com you can sign up for a daily email that tags itself: "eclectic little excerpts delivered to your email every day."
The folks at delanceyplace and I were on the same wavelength last night. I woke this morning to find the following relevant little excerpt delivered to my email this morning:
the importance of forgetting
In today's excerpt - total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence. The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book or lecture - because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding and for emotional health:
"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.
"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need - and often struggle - to forget. "Human memory is pretty good," says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of Stanford Univer- sity. "The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind."
"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape your personality."
author: Ingrid Wickelgren
title: Trying to Forget
publisher: Scientific American Mind
date: January/February 2012
pages: 33-38
The folks at delanceyplace and I were on the same wavelength last night. I woke this morning to find the following relevant little excerpt delivered to my email this morning:
the importance of forgetting
In today's excerpt - total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence. The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book or lecture - because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding and for emotional health:
"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.
"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need - and often struggle - to forget. "Human memory is pretty good," says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of Stanford Univer- sity. "The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind."
"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious. The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape your personality."
author: Ingrid Wickelgren
title: Trying to Forget
publisher: Scientific American Mind
date: January/February 2012
pages: 33-38
How do we learn? How do we remember things? These are big, important questions. The hypotheses that have guided educators’ teaching strategies and methods in and outside the classroom, especially in grades K - 12, have had profound impact on all of us.
If you’re currently in the business of education, either as a teacher or as a student, you probably think about how individuals (including yourself) learn all the time. Cheap and fast video production technology, server capacity, and bandwidth has allowed for incredible innovations in self-directed tutorial-style learning through sites such as www.khanacademy.org and www.codeacademy.com. Incorporation of these online technologies into “traditional” classroom settings is referred to as “blended” learning and is picking up momentum in schools across the country, especially in the instruction of math and science.
KhanAcademy features over 2,700 videos in a range of subject disciplines, many of which are accompanied by practice exercises. If you’ve got a laptop and internet access you can make yourself an account, start watching tutorials, complete exercises, and keep detailed track of your progress across subjects. Listen to the benevolent geek, Sal Khan. Chart your progress. Learn stuff you never dreamed of.
CodeAcademy is designed around a similar interactive, self-directed module, to allow you to learn javascript. While KhanAcademy tutorials maintain the kernal of the traditional teacher/student relationship—Sal Khan’s voice emanates from your computer’s speakers while his mouse draws numbers and symbols on a black background on your screen; he is ethereal but clearly the teacher to your student—the CodeAcademy modules dispense fully with that human touch. As in some "play within a play," you respond to the commands that issue from the “edit box” on your screen, playing your role in the script that some coder behind a curtain devised months ago, at a computer terminal...somewhere. In CodeAcademy, when you produce correct bits of code that perform as expected, green words of praise encourage you, and when your coding is wrong, red words flag error and incomplete understanding. Somewhat cryptic hints are available, should you ever get really stuck, but there is no Sal signing off with a friendly and optimistic, “See you next time,” on completion of an exercise. It’s lonelier than KhanAcademy, but I’ve learned more about coding in an hour there, interacting with the Coder Behind the Curtain’s handiwork, than I have referring to an inanimate book. We’ll never meet, but I know he’s lurking somewhere.
Overall, really cool stuff.
* * *
But sometimes my concern is more fundamental. Just trying to get by in our information soaked, multi-platform, post-industrial culture/workplace, it can be enough to focus on one crucial short term objective: How to remember.
Post-its. Calendars. Programmed email reminders. Date books. Napkins. Siri.
Some writers suggest that these technologies are indeed changing how we use our brains. People are now more likely to remember where in a complex digital filing system they have saved a document / email / file / digital task reminder than the what that file actually contained. See article.
Aside from the post-its, these techniques may be fine for appointments and bill paying, etc., but they don’t do much for the problem of remembering that tidbit of information, that concept, that trick to get around the bug in the software you use at the office only often enough to forget that trick.
Today a web developer friend emailed me with a question about Photoshop. She uses the program very infrequently and, per a recent very tangential conversation, she mentioned that she would commit my answer to memory so she’d only have to ask me once.
The question:
“Is it possible to make a layer bigger? Or do i have to remake the layer?”
The answer:
“The layer would not change size, but generally you can scale the contents of a layer up or down. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff to the contents of the layer using the Transform Palette.”
Transform Palette. How unmemorable an answer is that? If you use Photoshop once every three weeks that one might very well slip through the cracks. There must be a better delivery system than black, sans-serif text on a white background in the context of an email.
Enter: ZooNotes. It’s now in Beta.
If you’re currently in the business of education, either as a teacher or as a student, you probably think about how individuals (including yourself) learn all the time. Cheap and fast video production technology, server capacity, and bandwidth has allowed for incredible innovations in self-directed tutorial-style learning through sites such as www.khanacademy.org and www.codeacademy.com. Incorporation of these online technologies into “traditional” classroom settings is referred to as “blended” learning and is picking up momentum in schools across the country, especially in the instruction of math and science.
KhanAcademy features over 2,700 videos in a range of subject disciplines, many of which are accompanied by practice exercises. If you’ve got a laptop and internet access you can make yourself an account, start watching tutorials, complete exercises, and keep detailed track of your progress across subjects. Listen to the benevolent geek, Sal Khan. Chart your progress. Learn stuff you never dreamed of.
CodeAcademy is designed around a similar interactive, self-directed module, to allow you to learn javascript. While KhanAcademy tutorials maintain the kernal of the traditional teacher/student relationship—Sal Khan’s voice emanates from your computer’s speakers while his mouse draws numbers and symbols on a black background on your screen; he is ethereal but clearly the teacher to your student—the CodeAcademy modules dispense fully with that human touch. As in some "play within a play," you respond to the commands that issue from the “edit box” on your screen, playing your role in the script that some coder behind a curtain devised months ago, at a computer terminal...somewhere. In CodeAcademy, when you produce correct bits of code that perform as expected, green words of praise encourage you, and when your coding is wrong, red words flag error and incomplete understanding. Somewhat cryptic hints are available, should you ever get really stuck, but there is no Sal signing off with a friendly and optimistic, “See you next time,” on completion of an exercise. It’s lonelier than KhanAcademy, but I’ve learned more about coding in an hour there, interacting with the Coder Behind the Curtain’s handiwork, than I have referring to an inanimate book. We’ll never meet, but I know he’s lurking somewhere.
Overall, really cool stuff.
* * *
But sometimes my concern is more fundamental. Just trying to get by in our information soaked, multi-platform, post-industrial culture/workplace, it can be enough to focus on one crucial short term objective: How to remember.
Post-its. Calendars. Programmed email reminders. Date books. Napkins. Siri.
Some writers suggest that these technologies are indeed changing how we use our brains. People are now more likely to remember where in a complex digital filing system they have saved a document / email / file / digital task reminder than the what that file actually contained. See article.
Aside from the post-its, these techniques may be fine for appointments and bill paying, etc., but they don’t do much for the problem of remembering that tidbit of information, that concept, that trick to get around the bug in the software you use at the office only often enough to forget that trick.
Today a web developer friend emailed me with a question about Photoshop. She uses the program very infrequently and, per a recent very tangential conversation, she mentioned that she would commit my answer to memory so she’d only have to ask me once.
The question:
“Is it possible to make a layer bigger? Or do i have to remake the layer?”
The answer:
“The layer would not change size, but generally you can scale the contents of a layer up or down. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff to the contents of the layer using the Transform Palette.”
Transform Palette. How unmemorable an answer is that? If you use Photoshop once every three weeks that one might very well slip through the cracks. There must be a better delivery system than black, sans-serif text on a white background in the context of an email.
Enter: ZooNotes. It’s now in Beta.
I found this passage remarkable for the setting and circumstances, the quiet lyricism of the writer's reflections, and his modest background.
From 'A sad, Fearful, Raging Year'
Camp Wood, near Munfordville, Ky., Dec. 31, 1861
Near a half-ruined railroad bridge along the Green River, a fresh Union Army recruit stood on lonely sentry duty as the year 1861 passed into history. Pvt. Lyman Widney, a 19-year-old farmer’s son, wrote in his diary:
December 31, 1861.
Being detailed on guard duty today, it was my lot to stand
solitary and alone at my post when the old year died.
Watching its dying hours from ten to twelve, my mind
reverted to the watch meetings of previous years.
All was so quiet in the camp before me and in the
deep shadows of the towering hills behind me that life
and animation seemed to be ebbing away with the old year,
leaving me alone with my gun to guard the camp of the dead;
and as the lengthened moments of the eleventh hour gave
place to the twelfth and last, I was almost tempted to commit
a breach of discipline and discharge my musket to warn my
comrades that the old year was about to slip away unobserved
and a new year of untried, undiscoverable dangers, victories
and peace, or defeats and death, was spreading its wings
of light or darkness, who could tell, to envelop us all.
From 'A sad, Fearful, Raging Year'
Camp Wood, near Munfordville, Ky., Dec. 31, 1861
Near a half-ruined railroad bridge along the Green River, a fresh Union Army recruit stood on lonely sentry duty as the year 1861 passed into history. Pvt. Lyman Widney, a 19-year-old farmer’s son, wrote in his diary:
December 31, 1861.
Being detailed on guard duty today, it was my lot to stand
solitary and alone at my post when the old year died.
Watching its dying hours from ten to twelve, my mind
reverted to the watch meetings of previous years.
All was so quiet in the camp before me and in the
deep shadows of the towering hills behind me that life
and animation seemed to be ebbing away with the old year,
leaving me alone with my gun to guard the camp of the dead;
and as the lengthened moments of the eleventh hour gave
place to the twelfth and last, I was almost tempted to commit
a breach of discipline and discharge my musket to warn my
comrades that the old year was about to slip away unobserved
and a new year of untried, undiscoverable dangers, victories
and peace, or defeats and death, was spreading its wings
of light or darkness, who could tell, to envelop us all.
2011 has been a bit of a slog for me. Maybe it’s been a slog for you too.
The past couple weeks haven’t changed anything fundamentally, but even despite some setbacks, I’m feeling a little bit better. More determined, less resigned. More grateful, less angry. More confident that something just might give a little bit in the coming months and when it does, I’m going to be more primed than ever to go for it.
To explain this, I’d like to direct your attention to the infographic below. The data points charted are completely subjective—no measurements or survey responses were used to make this chart. (I’ve left pre-DAT 2011 off the chart. Those were some frustrating weeks. Where is full time employment? Where is el Jefe? Best just to skip ahead.)
It’s pretty clear and pretty simple—friends and family, great food, trading gifts under $5. Encouragement. A few, “That was me last year.” Some reminiscing. That’s it. Revels = Yahoo!! Swap = Spinal Tap. Sarah Finch = Scrumptious Giggler. Cheer and laughter and celebration.
Right now we’re in the dip between the heights reached December 22nd through 26th and those ahead from New Years Eve to New Years Day (see the orange dots). It’s the ridge line at year’s end aptly called the Lull of Contemplation. (Okay, I just made that up, but it fits.) I know others, like myself, are catching their breaths on this stretch, taking time to think about recent changes or milestones and looking toward the coming year—aspirations, opportunities, options—as well as necessary negotiations of reality’s strictures. I hesitate to consider what my view would have looked like without the lift from all the positive activity (see the red "bloom of cheer" above) of the 2011 holiday season.
So, thanks to everyone for all the travelling and organizing and just being around the last couple weeks, which dramatically improved the trajectory of my personal end-of-2011 infographic. I hope these weeks improved your infographics as well.
Here’s to bright spots and good luck to all of us in 2012.
The past couple weeks haven’t changed anything fundamentally, but even despite some setbacks, I’m feeling a little bit better. More determined, less resigned. More grateful, less angry. More confident that something just might give a little bit in the coming months and when it does, I’m going to be more primed than ever to go for it.
To explain this, I’d like to direct your attention to the infographic below. The data points charted are completely subjective—no measurements or survey responses were used to make this chart. (I’ve left pre-DAT 2011 off the chart. Those were some frustrating weeks. Where is full time employment? Where is el Jefe? Best just to skip ahead.)
It’s pretty clear and pretty simple—friends and family, great food, trading gifts under $5. Encouragement. A few, “That was me last year.” Some reminiscing. That’s it. Revels = Yahoo!! Swap = Spinal Tap. Sarah Finch = Scrumptious Giggler. Cheer and laughter and celebration.
Right now we’re in the dip between the heights reached December 22nd through 26th and those ahead from New Years Eve to New Years Day (see the orange dots). It’s the ridge line at year’s end aptly called the Lull of Contemplation. (Okay, I just made that up, but it fits.) I know others, like myself, are catching their breaths on this stretch, taking time to think about recent changes or milestones and looking toward the coming year—aspirations, opportunities, options—as well as necessary negotiations of reality’s strictures. I hesitate to consider what my view would have looked like without the lift from all the positive activity (see the red "bloom of cheer" above) of the 2011 holiday season.
So, thanks to everyone for all the travelling and organizing and just being around the last couple weeks, which dramatically improved the trajectory of my personal end-of-2011 infographic. I hope these weeks improved your infographics as well.
Here’s to bright spots and good luck to all of us in 2012.
My morning started hours ago when, backlit by a gently emerging dawn, a kitten attacked my face. Having eaten, he was ready to play and wanted company. Five and a half month old kittens aren't really into the idea of "no."
So I got up, threw on the sweats, put on some coffee, then put him in his harness (pattern: digital camo) and brought him outside. While a maniac in the apartment, the Great Outdoors (read: small, fenced urban yard) humbles Bandito. On a Saturday morning at 7:30am I enjoy this humbled state. He gallops the long length of yard a few times, reveling in kittenhood, then settles in under the cover of a rhododendron near the sidewalk to watch the people and creatures on the sidewalk.
This morning, with me on my stoop with coffee and magazine and him in his vegetated hideout, we were treated to the peck peckings of a woodpecker searching for grubs in the birch branch that overhangs the sidewalk. It was a beautiful bird -- there was some red at his temples and he had a punk rock spray of feathers on his head -- and I could tell that Bandito was beside himself with curiosity.
The bird was very determined and clearly feeling good about his prospects on that branch because he stayed for at least 15 minutes. Ordinarily, the unrelenting sound of beak on wood would not be my ideal Saturday morning chill out sound track, but it transfixed psychokitty, and that was good.
Then I thought of Snooki. What would Snooki think of Reality TeleKitten? I don't really care, but I'm strangely curious. I have only the vaguest notion of who she is and what she does on TV, which I think may include fighting or flirting with The Situation, and yet there she was. Her unexpected presence in my pleasantly pedestrian Saturday morning reality was wrong. Bandito, git her.
So I got up, threw on the sweats, put on some coffee, then put him in his harness (pattern: digital camo) and brought him outside. While a maniac in the apartment, the Great Outdoors (read: small, fenced urban yard) humbles Bandito. On a Saturday morning at 7:30am I enjoy this humbled state. He gallops the long length of yard a few times, reveling in kittenhood, then settles in under the cover of a rhododendron near the sidewalk to watch the people and creatures on the sidewalk.
This morning, with me on my stoop with coffee and magazine and him in his vegetated hideout, we were treated to the peck peckings of a woodpecker searching for grubs in the birch branch that overhangs the sidewalk. It was a beautiful bird -- there was some red at his temples and he had a punk rock spray of feathers on his head -- and I could tell that Bandito was beside himself with curiosity.
The bird was very determined and clearly feeling good about his prospects on that branch because he stayed for at least 15 minutes. Ordinarily, the unrelenting sound of beak on wood would not be my ideal Saturday morning chill out sound track, but it transfixed psychokitty, and that was good.
Then I thought of Snooki. What would Snooki think of Reality TeleKitten? I don't really care, but I'm strangely curious. I have only the vaguest notion of who she is and what she does on TV, which I think may include fighting or flirting with The Situation, and yet there she was. Her unexpected presence in my pleasantly pedestrian Saturday morning reality was wrong. Bandito, git her.
There is a discussion going on over at reddit which started when someone asked "Hey Reddit, What's your Wifi named?"
There are some pretty good responses, such as "hide_yo_kids_hide_yo_wifi", "ITHertzWANIP" and "Routar the Mighty". The owner of Routar the Mighty goes on to say, "My printer is Printar the Wise, and my computer is Computar the Swift. My iPhone is Greg."
Right now there are very few interesting wifi names in this neighborhood, and I thought that at one point there were some good ones, and that I might even have immortalized them in a top five, but upon further review this list from two years ago seems somewhat tame.
There are some pretty good responses, such as "hide_yo_kids_hide_yo_wifi", "ITHertzWANIP" and "Routar the Mighty". The owner of Routar the Mighty goes on to say, "My printer is Printar the Wise, and my computer is Computar the Swift. My iPhone is Greg."
Right now there are very few interesting wifi names in this neighborhood, and I thought that at one point there were some good ones, and that I might even have immortalized them in a top five, but upon further review this list from two years ago seems somewhat tame.
I had a strange dream the other night. In the dream, I sneezed and out of my nose came a piece of gingerbread. I found in my hands a right triangle shaped piece of delicious looking and amazing smelling gingerbread. It looked like one half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut diagonally, about two inches high, but made from perfectly cooked gingerbread. I just stood there looking at it, smelling how awesome it smelled, trying to decide whether or not to eat it. It looked amazing, but it did just come out of my sinuses. I went back and forth over and over again trying to figure out whether or not to eat it, and I have no memory of how that ended up, but I could really go for some non-nasal gingerbread right now.
Bryan!
(from: brysi.com)
Bowler, that's a great post you wrote there, thanks for describing that day in such vivid detail. It's nice to be able to experience it vicariously.
DAT 2012 is going to be a great.
DAT 2012 is going to be a great.
Memory is a notoriously fickle and unreliable partner. Perhaps the most positive thing you can say about it, from the standpoint of predictability, is that it can be reliably lazy.
For instance, last Tuesday as I thought about the Thanksgiving weekend gauntlet ahead, I couldn't help but skip past the actual Day of the Turkeys to the annual Day After Thanksgiving Giant Christmas Tree Adventure at Jan Harrison's house. It's the kind of tradition that as a kid, made me want to be old, because you can only have longstanding and reliable traditions if you've been around a good long time. But despite the inevitable variations that differentiate the event from year to year, my mind has developed its own crude, but in some ways very accurate symbology of the Day After Thanksgiving (DAT) that tend to overwhelm the memories from the actual events.
So on Tuesday as I thought ahead to DAT2011, the following symbols flooded my mindspace.
First, the ultimate objective-- the tree and the most amazing characteristic of its placement in the house:
Second, there are the incredible leftovers and the turkey soup into which you can pile them--gravy, rolls, beans, and all -- to create a compact amalgam of delicious Thanksgiving fare.
Together, these images distill into the following label, which in my mind is illuminated in a gloaming gradient that captures all of West Newbury's agrarian-steeped, picturesque awesomeness. (I write that in a well lit, well heated modern room.)
(On reflection, the absence of people from any of these symbols is mildly troubling, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Other images flashed through my mind in anticipation of DAT2011, but they were peripheral to those shown above. Then I looked at actual photos from DAT2010, and suddenly the day and its events returned to me in a frenzied cascade of internal footage and images. How could I have possibly been unable to remember that DAT2010 was truly epic?
The day was epic for a host of reasons, including but not limited to:
- The size of the party that looked for trees and the number and quality of stragglers who joined the party back at the house,
- The number of trees considered and ultimately rejected,
- The sheer size of the selected tree,
- The number of tractors required to pull the tree to the parking lot (2),
- The number of people required to sit on the front of the first small tractor to serve as a counterweight before the tractor's wagon simply broke (1, Jim Anderson),
- The number of mice found to be living in the tree (2) and the distance they traveled in their newly mobile home before finally abandoning it for new digs (they travelled at least 200 yards while the tree was being dragged by the second, larger tractor),
- The duration and drama of the effort to hoist the tree onto the roof of Doug's white van,
- The number of times the author found herself truly shocked at the highly questionable strategies being used to wrangle the tree to the top of the van (a combination of tug-of-warring by guys stationed atop the vehicle and the hoisting of the stump end by the tractor bucket from below) and the reality that she was actually a legitimate voice of reason in suggesting that these proceedings stop immediately for the safety of party members,
- The damage to the van and the sight of the tree's diameter actually equalling if not surpassing the height of the van when it was finally secured to its roof,
- The length of the tree that had to be cut from each end to actually get it into the house,
- The efforts to get it into the house (the author was tending to leftovers at this point and is therefore not a reliable eye witness),
- The number of party members required to engage in another tug of war battle with the tree, pulling on rope tied to its trunk, to get it through the living room door (approx. 8, with others pushing from the other side),
- The size of the tree when standing up in the living room,
And finally, knowledge that, a few days after DAT2010, when the branches had time to settle and the tree had acclimated to its new home, Jan was dissatisfied with some of the gaps in the branch "wall" and actually drilled holes into the trunk to surgically add branches, which she then secured with wood glue,
- Oh yeah, and all of this was followed by cranium,
- And later in the evening one party member who had been nuzzling with the horse at the farm ended up suffering from a severe allergic reaction to the face.
In my estimation, all of that is absolutely epic.
And yet, when I first thought of DAT, this was the image that popped into my mind. It's an even further pared down short hand of an annual event that should really never have been symbolized in the first place.
DAT2011 was not the epic and precarious event that was DAT2010, but some of its elements were unprecedented and it certainly upheld the tradition gallantly.
The tree we picked was enormous and we didn't even arrive with a vehicle that could have carried the tree on a wing and a prayer. When the farm operators said they couldn't help us because their pickup had no brakes, Jan headed down to the local grocery and offered the first person she saw with a truck $40 to haul the tree from the farm to her front yard. She hadn't been gone 15 minutes when she pulled in with Matt behind her, a 20 year old kid who attends Mass Maritime, whose dad is a cop, and who grew up in West Newbury (as Nick found out during his ride in the cab). Nick, by the way, was there in tight, dark Euro-cut jeans, with a dress shirt under an iro-chic holiday sweater and walnut colored wingtips, upholding the tradition founded by Nathan and his friends that everyone look like they just stepped out of a J.Crew (or in this case, J.Creu) catalog. Roy and Vanessa both called in from abroad.
Back at the house there was much wrangling, strained voices, and gasps as the tree was ushered into the house on its side and then maneuvered upright, where it was spun bit by bit until its best side was revealed, as determined by Jan. There was turkey soup, leftovers covering every kitchen surface, and gloaming through the windows.
As Lindsay phrased it during the Tree Prayer (where seven people could barely link their arms around the tree's circumference because it was that enormous):
"I'm thankful for all the people who come on this day, and those who can't but want to, those who have come in the past, and those who call in because they wish they were here."
That's really more of a paraphrase, and I think she was both cleverer and more earnest in her original statement, but it captures the spirit of the Day After Thanksgiving Giant Christmas Tree Adventure. DAT is simply about people coming together for a common purpose one particular day each year, and if hilarity ensues because a 15 foot tree has been cut down and there's no apparent way to move it, well, all the better.
For instance, last Tuesday as I thought about the Thanksgiving weekend gauntlet ahead, I couldn't help but skip past the actual Day of the Turkeys to the annual Day After Thanksgiving Giant Christmas Tree Adventure at Jan Harrison's house. It's the kind of tradition that as a kid, made me want to be old, because you can only have longstanding and reliable traditions if you've been around a good long time. But despite the inevitable variations that differentiate the event from year to year, my mind has developed its own crude, but in some ways very accurate symbology of the Day After Thanksgiving (DAT) that tend to overwhelm the memories from the actual events.
So on Tuesday as I thought ahead to DAT2011, the following symbols flooded my mindspace.
First, the ultimate objective-- the tree and the most amazing characteristic of its placement in the house:
Second, there are the incredible leftovers and the turkey soup into which you can pile them--gravy, rolls, beans, and all -- to create a compact amalgam of delicious Thanksgiving fare.
Together, these images distill into the following label, which in my mind is illuminated in a gloaming gradient that captures all of West Newbury's agrarian-steeped, picturesque awesomeness. (I write that in a well lit, well heated modern room.)
(On reflection, the absence of people from any of these symbols is mildly troubling, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Other images flashed through my mind in anticipation of DAT2011, but they were peripheral to those shown above. Then I looked at actual photos from DAT2010, and suddenly the day and its events returned to me in a frenzied cascade of internal footage and images. How could I have possibly been unable to remember that DAT2010 was truly epic?
The day was epic for a host of reasons, including but not limited to:
- The size of the party that looked for trees and the number and quality of stragglers who joined the party back at the house,
- The number of trees considered and ultimately rejected,
- The sheer size of the selected tree,
- The number of tractors required to pull the tree to the parking lot (2),
- The number of people required to sit on the front of the first small tractor to serve as a counterweight before the tractor's wagon simply broke (1, Jim Anderson),
- The number of mice found to be living in the tree (2) and the distance they traveled in their newly mobile home before finally abandoning it for new digs (they travelled at least 200 yards while the tree was being dragged by the second, larger tractor),
- The duration and drama of the effort to hoist the tree onto the roof of Doug's white van,
- The number of times the author found herself truly shocked at the highly questionable strategies being used to wrangle the tree to the top of the van (a combination of tug-of-warring by guys stationed atop the vehicle and the hoisting of the stump end by the tractor bucket from below) and the reality that she was actually a legitimate voice of reason in suggesting that these proceedings stop immediately for the safety of party members,
- The damage to the van and the sight of the tree's diameter actually equalling if not surpassing the height of the van when it was finally secured to its roof,
- The length of the tree that had to be cut from each end to actually get it into the house,
- The efforts to get it into the house (the author was tending to leftovers at this point and is therefore not a reliable eye witness),
- The number of party members required to engage in another tug of war battle with the tree, pulling on rope tied to its trunk, to get it through the living room door (approx. 8, with others pushing from the other side),
- The size of the tree when standing up in the living room,
And finally, knowledge that, a few days after DAT2010, when the branches had time to settle and the tree had acclimated to its new home, Jan was dissatisfied with some of the gaps in the branch "wall" and actually drilled holes into the trunk to surgically add branches, which she then secured with wood glue,
- Oh yeah, and all of this was followed by cranium,
- And later in the evening one party member who had been nuzzling with the horse at the farm ended up suffering from a severe allergic reaction to the face.
In my estimation, all of that is absolutely epic.
And yet, when I first thought of DAT, this was the image that popped into my mind. It's an even further pared down short hand of an annual event that should really never have been symbolized in the first place.
DAT2011 was not the epic and precarious event that was DAT2010, but some of its elements were unprecedented and it certainly upheld the tradition gallantly.
The tree we picked was enormous and we didn't even arrive with a vehicle that could have carried the tree on a wing and a prayer. When the farm operators said they couldn't help us because their pickup had no brakes, Jan headed down to the local grocery and offered the first person she saw with a truck $40 to haul the tree from the farm to her front yard. She hadn't been gone 15 minutes when she pulled in with Matt behind her, a 20 year old kid who attends Mass Maritime, whose dad is a cop, and who grew up in West Newbury (as Nick found out during his ride in the cab). Nick, by the way, was there in tight, dark Euro-cut jeans, with a dress shirt under an iro-chic holiday sweater and walnut colored wingtips, upholding the tradition founded by Nathan and his friends that everyone look like they just stepped out of a J.Crew (or in this case, J.Creu) catalog. Roy and Vanessa both called in from abroad.
Back at the house there was much wrangling, strained voices, and gasps as the tree was ushered into the house on its side and then maneuvered upright, where it was spun bit by bit until its best side was revealed, as determined by Jan. There was turkey soup, leftovers covering every kitchen surface, and gloaming through the windows.
As Lindsay phrased it during the Tree Prayer (where seven people could barely link their arms around the tree's circumference because it was that enormous):
"I'm thankful for all the people who come on this day, and those who can't but want to, those who have come in the past, and those who call in because they wish they were here."
That's really more of a paraphrase, and I think she was both cleverer and more earnest in her original statement, but it captures the spirit of the Day After Thanksgiving Giant Christmas Tree Adventure. DAT is simply about people coming together for a common purpose one particular day each year, and if hilarity ensues because a 15 foot tree has been cut down and there's no apparent way to move it, well, all the better.
The yankee swap is quickly approaching, and to celebrate, here are time lapse videos of the photobooths at the previous two swaps:
2009:
2010:
2009:
2010:
Go to this page on the BBC and check out the time lapse movie they shot of a little column of cold water freezing downward, it's nuts:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15835014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15835014
I actually had lunch at Ashkara on the second day (when it was pouring out) in Tel Aviv as I was walking around the neighborhood, leaving me with 3 each at Abu Hassan and Ashkara, and one at Said...
ummm. Can you bring some back for Christmas?
ummm. Can you bring some back for Christmas?
I cannot adequately describe how good it smells in here
Wednesday Nov 23rd 2011 9:13 am2 months ago
Caroline prepared an apple pie for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and then had to run out for a little bit, leaving me to put that bad boy in the oven and check on it from time to time. Now that it looks done-ish, I've taken it out and I've put it on a chair to cool next to a huge open window Yogi Bear style.
Because of the way air moves through this apartment, there is a steady breeze blowing air into this room, bringing with it the unbelievable smell of an apple pie fresh out of the oven cooling. It's amazing. And it keeps getting better. When I started writing this I already thought it smelled great in here, and now it's even better.
It's frustrating that there's no way to capture this. I can take a picture (I have taken several), but that won't convey this experience. Words might come sort of close, but it's not the same. Still, if that's the only thing wrong, then things are going pretty well.
Anyway, it's awesome in here right now. Thanksgiving is the best.
Because of the way air moves through this apartment, there is a steady breeze blowing air into this room, bringing with it the unbelievable smell of an apple pie fresh out of the oven cooling. It's amazing. And it keeps getting better. When I started writing this I already thought it smelled great in here, and now it's even better.
It's frustrating that there's no way to capture this. I can take a picture (I have taken several), but that won't convey this experience. Words might come sort of close, but it's not the same. Still, if that's the only thing wrong, then things are going pretty well.
Anyway, it's awesome in here right now. Thanksgiving is the best.
Dan came out to Tel Aviv to visit this past week, and despite the fact that it rained for the first seven of his eight days here, I think he had a pretty good time. Between a trip to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Masada, The Bahai Gardens, Akko and various museums around the city, we kept him pretty busy.
High on his list of things to do here was to sample the local hummus. I don't think I've ever had as much hummus as when Dan was here to visit. Over an eight day period we had 24 meals, 6 of which were hummus (and I had a hummus meal by myself at work also). The chart below shows a record of hummus meals over the past month.
That's 1 Hummus Said in Akko, 2 Hummus Ashkaras in Tel Aviv, and 3 Abu Hassans in Jaffa. Not bad.
High on his list of things to do here was to sample the local hummus. I don't think I've ever had as much hummus as when Dan was here to visit. Over an eight day period we had 24 meals, 6 of which were hummus (and I had a hummus meal by myself at work also). The chart below shows a record of hummus meals over the past month.
That's 1 Hummus Said in Akko, 2 Hummus Ashkaras in Tel Aviv, and 3 Abu Hassans in Jaffa. Not bad.
I love the way the baby looks at the camera.
I also imagine that she is going to be hearing that song for a long time.
I also imagine that she is going to be hearing that song for a long time.
...are on their way from Seagate!
As a follow up to my Ode to a Hard Drive post, I'm happy to report that yesterday I received a call from a Seagate rep apologizing for my drive's failure and notifying me that they would be sending a replacement drive. The data's still gone, but who can argue with a new drive?!
Their contact was in response to a letter I sent to the Senior VP of Customer Advocacy of the "I am writing because I thought you would want to know..." variety. Polite, informative, asking for nothing, simply offering information...and they listened.
I'll admit, I did lay it on a little thick at the end, but everything I wrote was true: "Everyone I've spoken with about this who is far more knowledgeable about computer hardware than myself has been really surprised that this has happened, and assured me that the odds are low that it would happen again if I purchase another Seagate drive (which I plan to do)."
So, if some product really fails on you, contact them and go right to the top. It can't hurt. And as a newly minted diehard Seagate fan, I have discovered my price: a portable hard drive. (Maybe $100.)
As a follow up to my Ode to a Hard Drive post, I'm happy to report that yesterday I received a call from a Seagate rep apologizing for my drive's failure and notifying me that they would be sending a replacement drive. The data's still gone, but who can argue with a new drive?!
Their contact was in response to a letter I sent to the Senior VP of Customer Advocacy of the "I am writing because I thought you would want to know..." variety. Polite, informative, asking for nothing, simply offering information...and they listened.
I'll admit, I did lay it on a little thick at the end, but everything I wrote was true: "Everyone I've spoken with about this who is far more knowledgeable about computer hardware than myself has been really surprised that this has happened, and assured me that the odds are low that it would happen again if I purchase another Seagate drive (which I plan to do)."
So, if some product really fails on you, contact them and go right to the top. It can't hurt. And as a newly minted diehard Seagate fan, I have discovered my price: a portable hard drive. (Maybe $100.)
There are lots of ones in the date today. It wouldn't be nerdy net without some comment on the interesting numerical properties of the date today. These properties are so interesting that CNN is writing about them.
Random Picture
Random Top Five
5
Sweat to the Future
4
G(ee)! R(est) I(n) P(eace), Sweat
3
Crap Carp
2
Ass Cleats Foot
1
Fun Guys and Fungi
Recent Pictures
Links
FischbowlMike Fischer
garycotti.netGary Cotti
nerdy.netNerdy
the fadeoutsThe Fadeouts
Moving In PicturesGary Cotti & Nick Lund-Ulrich
jayrowe.comJason Rowe
chip.nerdy.netChip Means
conor.nerdy.netConor Kelley
little green frogDale F. Court
seven on the lineEugene Yum
jasongordon.comJason Gordon
christopherwu.comChris Wu
jimbomania.comJim Susinno
is nothing sacred?Neil Williams
arunArun Nagarajan
jcrimJay Crim
Crux PhotoNate Young
eric.schenfeld.orgEric Schenfeld
mixgrillesLots of people
tmanderachi.comTom Manderachi
helfet.comAdam Helfet
n3mesis.comn3mesis design
I like Weasels in my pantsAdam Helfet
anderAlex Rich
DigikaiAugust Kaiser
Understanding Simple EmotionAmanda Weber
mollyventer.comMolly Venter
Cherry Farm CreameryCherry Farm Creamery
Sun 'N Air Golf CenterSun N' Air
briancullinan.comBrian Cullinan
danglenn.comDan Glenn
car47.comAdam Helfet
Xplozion (click on videos)Gary Cotti and Liam
robustrix.comRobustrix Corp Inc Ltd LLC
jokeaerts.comJoke Aerts
kovax.orgPeter Kovax
all blogs have silly namesChris Devers
AfterUVMAngela, Brielle, Caroline, Erin et al.
freebertbrown.comBert Brown
None of this is my fault.Gary Cotti
AIDS LifeCycle - GaryGary Cotti
Maine-Ghana Youth NetworkMaine-Ghana Youth Network
beetrockMarina Smelyanskaya
alex.nerdy.netAlex Rich
toast47Nick Fisher
cameraphonetographyGary Cotti
jennaransom.comJenna Ransom
magicrobots.comAdam HH
caroline flickrCaroline McCoy
Charlie Sheen's BrotherCulla, Jason, Roy, Sam
Believe in the Greatest City that Reads in AmericaHenry Mowry Cook
Any Day NowJay McEntee
Can You Fix My Computer?Fixy McFixalot
lolsamkthnkbai
elscorchoNiv Shah
my theory on time travelNiv Shah
Valley LifeLisa Kanner and Mike Wiseman
Red AbbottChip, Joe, Robbie
To Be A High Powered ExecutiveMike Lassins et al.
Righteous drÜbermenschMcDrewbie
Wan's Thai FoodMama Fischer
Catatonic MarathonChip Means
the ravings of a lunaticNiv Shah
Three CoastsFisch, Niv, Roy
Greyshield MusicChip Means, Lucy Moore & Mark Boccard
Thrifty SistyAnna & Caroline
30 songs in 30 daysAdam Rich
Gastric LightningChip Means
kateplusadamKate and Adam
Tiny KitchenCaroline McCoy
Something Something LifeAlex Rich
roy.nerdy.net2