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May. 19th, 2012
09:15 pm - Term limits etc.
Sort of spurred by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
jpmassar's post about a term limit thing on the CA ballot and also my mom conversationally reminding me that one of my middle/high school teachers who was married to Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and how one of their sons is now a Representative (in the same district that Sarbanes père represented before becoming a Senator) which had me thinking about politics, hereditary power, and the sorts of advantages that come from having that sort of head start in life, and the golden rule (the other one).
Wacky idea: besides some form of term limits, what if we said a person is ineligible for [A] if any relation [B] occupies or has held office [C], where [A] and [C] are possibly-distinct lists of public office (whether elected or appointed) and [B] is something like no parent/uncle/aunt/grandparent/great-aunt/g
I have a feeling this would fix a lot of what's wrong with politics. Probably not a workable scheme though.
09:02 pm - Stigler's Law
A while back I ran across Stigler's Law on Wikipedia:
Naturally, there is also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ex
Did You Know:
(insert joke here)
[...]
Fresnel Lens,was first discovered by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.
[...]
Hubble's law was derived by Georges Lemaître two years before Edwin Hubble.
[...]
Killing form: invented by Élie Cartan
Sadly this was not nearly as exciting as it initially sounded. It's a mathematical construct named after Wilhelm Killing and has something to do with Lie groups.
[...]
Newton's first and second laws of mechanics were known and proposed in separate ways by Galileo, Hooke and Huygens before Newton did in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton only owns the discovery of the third one.
The Oort cloud around the solar system was first postulated by Ernst Öpik in 1932 and independently introduced by Jan Oort in 1960.
Pascal's triangle: named after and discovered by Pascal, but identified several times before him independently.
[...]
Pythagorean theorem, named after the mathematician Pythagoras, although it was known before him to Babylonian mathematicians (although it is not known if the Babylonians possessed a proof of the result; yet it is not known either, whether Pythagoras proved the result).
Salmonella, named after Daniel Elmer Salmon, but discovered by Theobald Smith.
I didn't even realize Salmonella was named after a person.
04:01 am - I won!
I won the Nebula! Wow. Very tired now.
(Wow. That was unexpected.)
01:14 am - Basic photo-processing in Lightroom.
In another discussion, gunga_galunga asked: "So what do you generally do for processing? Do you use photoshop or lightroom or something else? And what kind of changes do you make?" I thought the processing of a portrait I took of alecaustin yesterday would be nicely illustrative of the simple version of my process, so I'm going to make a post of it. I use Lightroom for simple edits, which serves for the vast majority of my photos.
( long, many example photos )
May. 18th, 2012
10:19 pm - Birth date density
Heh:
Would be interesting to see a redo of the above graph but restricted to outdoor activities.
Speaking of which, I was quite surprised to learn a few weeks ago that a co-worker who is always up on the latest Internet memes etc. had never heard of this song. I pointed him at the above video. The great thing about it is, he listened to it with headphones on, and naturally I could tell when he got to the chorus.
Heh, there's a video of the song with ASL interpretation
10:05 pm - I can't imagine this is a good idea
I mean, I have no idea scientifically of the chance of a disaster; my reservation would be, isn't Italy where a bunch of scientists got sued for failing to predict earthquakes? (Google says yes.)
Supervolcano Drilling Plan Gets Go-Ahead
12:11 pm - This is just to say....
....that there's going to be an Annual Booksale when I get back from WisCon, as there are giant boxes of books all over my house again.
You have been forewarned!
Also, I will be doing an r/Fantasy (that's Reddit) Ask Me Anything on June 5th. Questions may be posted all day in the appropriate thread, and I will answer them in the evening.
Because y'all don't get enough of a chance to listen to me babble...
08:29 am - Annular eclipse Sunday evening (US)
Visibility path for the annular version passes north of LV and Sacramento and includes Reno.
non-nerd version:
http://stardate.org/nightsky/eclipses/m
nerd version:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/ASE
(latter site is a bit slow, perhaps /. effect)
05:44 am - Random tidbits.
Projects continue to come along, though slower than I would like. Learning how to work effectively is still the biggest thing going on here, but I'm making progress.
Photographically the first two weeks of May have been my most productive year since 2008. You haven't seen a lot of those photos because I'm saving them for a sale next week, but it's going to be fun.
I'm starting to think about what songs I need to have in shape for Fourth Street, so if anybody has anything they specifically want, this would be a good time to say so.
I'm putting some design and architecture thoughts at Nefarious Designs, and a side effect is that there will be teasers of future projects there. This one is intended to be irregular, so hopefully not posting there won't stress me out like neglecting Trochaic Footbridge has been. I need to get back to that Right Soon Now, and get ahead.
The previous post seems to have accomplished something - looks like 2+2 is going to be adding a photography forum. It's magic.
The Minnesota Zoo will be closing their dolphin exhibit and sending the two remaining dolphins to other zoos. Not before time, I think; something bad has clearly been going on here to lose so many so fast, and without being able to identify it, they can't fix it. As much as having them here has been good for zoo attendees, I'm glad they're doing the right thing for the dolphins.
Cultural milestone this week - a local sports star announced a same-sex engagement... and nobody cared. As far as I can tell there's been no media notice at all.
I'll leave you with last week's LOL WUT moment:
May. 17th, 2012
06:51 pm - Subway systems tend towards the same structure
[...]
'The apparent convergence towards a unique network shape in the temporal limit suggests the existence of dominant, universal mechanisms governing the evolution of these structures.'"
06:41 pm - This is awesome.
Nine-Year-Old Stands Up to Westboro Baptist Church with One-Boy Counter-Protest
With just a pencil and small notebook in hand, Josef took on the bigots with a succinct yet poignant proclamation: "God Hates No One."
Gawker, indirectly via omgblog. Story link includes photo.
06:37 pm - Google autocompletion WTFOTD
I had a link I wanted to post in the comments thread of Terrence's blog, but couldn't remember the exact permutation of his blog name, and figured I'd just Google it. I thought it would be a fun one to type slowly and see how fast Google comes up with Terrence Chan.
"terrence
Adding "terrence c" results in:
- terrence cody
- terrence chan
- terrence chan od
- terrence carson
Since one of the frequent autocomplete memes is to see well-known people's names followed by "gay" (presumably because so many people are nosy), I wondered "WTF, are there that many people who want to know if Terrence has a drug problem?"
But it turns out to be Terrence Chan, eye doctor.
Previously in this mental space: robert alomar mccain punch (plus assorted autocomplete artifacts from my google tag)
03:17 pm - i'd be drawn and quartered if i could keep you in my bed
Look what the Book Elves left on my porch today!
You can get yours here.
Also, some other good news today, which I will share when I can.
happy01:14 pm - your brain works a lot faster than mine.
Anything else I had to say about the Criminal Minds season finale is subsumed in ZOMG Reid knitted it himself!
He makes a pretty good Four.
Also, I'm glad they did the Emily thing the way they did the Emily thing; it's good to see Will but he should have known better; I'm pretty sure that UNSUB plan fails on usual the Evil Mastermind overclever subroutine of relying on a coincidence they could not have known about in advance; I bet that's Kevin's cousin; Penelope needs a Stern Talking To of the variety she just gave Morgan a few weeks back; I'm still the only person in this fandom who likes Strauss, but dammit I still like Strauss; and FASTER JJ KILL KILL!
Discussion in comments of parallels between JJ in Hit/Run and Hotch in 100 is open for business.
mostly quite pleased, really12:20 pm - don't you wish there were another picture of che guevara?
The following contains discussion of fitness, health, and weight issues. If that is triggery for you, please page down now!
Ob. Disclaimer: I absolutely support anyone's right to live in their body as they choose, at any size they find comfortable. This is entirely about me, and my efforts to reclaim my health and strength after half a decade of abusing and neglecting my poor body.
Well, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that, based on the brand and cut, must date back to 1987 or so.
They're Chic, size 14 tall, and in high school they would have been baggy on me. Now, they fit loosely except for the waist, which is a bit snug--but then, that happened when I was sixteen, too, though the jeans were size 11 then. This is because eighties jeans were cut to fit absolutely nobody except a young Brooke Shields. They do, however, still make my ass look fantastic, a characteristic generally not shared by modern lower-rise jeans, which make nobody's ass look good. Not mine, not yours. Possibly Jessica Simpson's.
But they do let one bend at the middle without pinching one's ribcage on the waistband, which I suppose is a win.
I guess that means I am officially back in my high school clothes, generously speaking. As I also have a black bat-winged sheath dress from Chico's that I loved in high school, and have been hanging on to for sentimental reasons. I might dust it off for an eighties party later this year. If only I had some slouchy elf boots.
I suspect I will save the jeans for eighties nights at goth clubs. I think I still have one pair of slouchy socks hoarded away somewhere... ;-)
This is all prelude to saying that I'm hovering somewhere around 187, and have been for about a month now with the usual ups and downs--but I'm obviously building muscle, because I seem to be shrinking. At one point a month or so ago I noticed I had obliques, there under the slack middle-aged tummy. This week, I noticed the top set of ab muscles. Also, my thighs are no longer getting in my way during most of yoga--that stopped after
scott_lynch and I walked somewhere around 40 miles in three days of NYC. I can do Hero's Pose and Lightning Pose without cheating now, and my body doesn't actually interfere with my ability to do a lunge anymore.It's still getting in the way of twists, and my biceps interfere with Eagle Pose, but that's not new. I'm a solid girl.
I can also wear most of my beloved old corp-goth work clothes again, justifying my hoarding tendencies. Two suits are a bit tight, but they were always on the skinny end of the rack. I had to move the buttons back on a green suit I love, that I had expanded a bit when I was gaining weight. It's a size 12.
I am facing the surprising possibility of shrinking out of my wardrobe again. In any case, look for a much better-dressed Bear at conventions this summer, since I love these clothes and don't have a dayjob to wear them to anymore.
Curiously, I'm about 17 pounds heavier than the last time I fit in these clothes, which tells us about the power of rock-climbing. Muscle is heavy!
My current weight goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 pounds. Which should make the same size, roughly, as when I was in high school and weighed 150-ish. I was on track and field then, and at my most muscular before now, but I'm pretty sure my upper body now dwarfs what I had then. (Shoulders! They're awesome!) Also, um. Boobs. Some cup sizes have come to roost since then. Ahem.
So I'm less than thirty pounds from my goal, which is very pleasant. My body is behaving as it should; everything physical is so much easier than it was in 2004, when I couldn't walk a half-mile without agonizing pain (now I can run five 12-minute miles back to back); and I'm enjoying the reduction in back and joint pain and the ability to sleep comfortably on my side or back again without feeling like my own belly is crushing me.
I seem to be part of a coterie of SFF writers and fans on the "get healthy the old-fashioned way; move more and eat less crap" bandwagon, which pleases me. (personally, I have been following the efforts of Scalzi, Doctorow, Lynch, Sykes, Downum, Silverstein, Connolly, Buckell, and I'm sure a few others whose names are eluding me because it's time for lunch.) It pleases me because I'd like to see a lot of these people around for a damned long time.
I'm also noticing changes in appetite, which tell me my body is adapting to its new lower caloric demands. Two whole pieces of fruit is too much to eat with lunch now; I am contented with half of each (plus some protein and vegetables and brown carbs, of course). (I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, about ten servings most days; I've finally figured out how to reach my RDA minimum of potassium, and it goes like this: a cup of fortified cereal in the morning (Special K protein plus, since I can't find Total Protein around here anymore), half an orange, a small banana, eight ounces of green coconut water, and half a sweet potato. Some strawberries or mango don't hurt either, or some beans.))
For those who are curious about how I did it (my doctor was, and she laughed out loud when I said, "Counting calories, restricting sweets and saturated fat, and getting off my ass!" She then replied, "So doing all the boring shit we tell people to do, huh?"), here's my plan, fondly called The Discipline:
It's a refined version of the Hacker Diet, which relies on good old thermodynamics to make things happen. I'm keeping my caloric intake around 1700-1900 calories a day, exercising for about an hour a day on average, drinking lots of water and not too much caffeine, avoiding refined carbs (mostly: I get 100-200 calories of "treat" a day, which could be a glass of wine or a beer, or a brownie, or... PRO TIP: Guinness is lower in calories than most "lite" beers, and tastes a fuckload better. Now you know.), eating roughly twice as many vegetables as the FDA suggests, and trying to keep my protein intake around 20% and my fat intake around 25%--and also trying to keep my protein intake above 100g a day without too much reliance on red meat, or meat at all. (I do use protein supplements--whey and soy, mostly.) I eat a lot of high-protein dairy (skyr!) and I try to limit myself to 100-200 calories a day from refined sugar, which is roughly 20-40 grams. Or, well, half a can of non-diet Coke.
Managing sodium intake is a killer. But I'm working on it.
Sleeping eight hours a night also pisses me off, but it seems to be necessary. I got six last night, and noticed the difference on my run this morning--I kept having to walk up hills I normally cruise up in second or third gear.
I also exercise six days a week--usually two days of climbing (with a little yoga); three days of running; one day of yoga. I also try to get in some vigorous outdoor time when possible--kayaking, hiking, walking the dog. Walking to the store. Picking up my jump rope for five minutes on an otherwise sedentary day.
As I said, one of the most successful weeks of the Discipline recently was when Scott and I were on Manhattan, eating every goddamned thing in sight. But we also made a point of walking two-thirds the length of the island at least once (Riverside to Chinatown, with side trips), and we walked as much as time permitted, otherwise. I know it sounds like my fitness routine is crushing, and seven or eight years ago, it would have crushed me. (Hell, I had the pleasant experience recently of putting in a Rodney Yee video that, in 2006, I could do maybe fifteen minutes of, and having the full hour workout be only just pleasantly challenging.)
But remember, when I started out, I weighed 285-290 pounds and could not walk a half mile. One good habit builds on another, it turns out--and I find myself drinking more green and herbal tea because black tea doesn't taste good after the first mug, and I find myself not hungry for seconds unless the food is exceptionally good, and even then not always. There's not actually a lot of privation; I just want more of what's healthy for me.
It's okay if I have a measured ounce of cheese on my beans and rice, instead of as much as I can fit in the bowl. It still tastes just as good! Better, since it's as easy to afford small quantities of really delicious food as it is large quantities of sort of icky food. And far more satisfying.
Who knew?
Which is so different from all my old pathological ways of dealing with food and drink that it's a little croggling.
Most of this, of course, is just basic health maintenance stuff, and not too hard once you get the hang of it. And it's not like I don't give myself days off: I will in fact have two or three drinks on a night out, for example. I'm fully planning on onion rings after archery tonight when I get dinner with the Thursday Night Shooters.
Just... not too damned often. And budget for it.
It's not the extremes that set one's level of health; it's the baseline.
relaxed10:55 am - Off to the Nebulas
My stuff is packed (puts comb in pocket) and in an hour or so I'm taking the train southwards. I'm going to DC for the Nebulas. I'll see some of you there, or around DC -- in addition to the Nebulas I have plans for museums, a tea party, and a playreading. I'm looking forward to it.
04:32 am - Not you guys, obviously.
Been a long time since I tilt-posted on 2+2, thought I'd copy it here.
I don't think I sufficiently appreciated the well-developed form and rules of strategy critiques when I was here regularly. I've been looking for a photo critique group, and they're downright awful. Not only are the vast majority of photographers completely uninterested in talking about photographs, but the ones who are are some of the worst critiquers I've ever seen. They're vague, personifying, parochial, stagnant, egotistical, and more condescending than TheHip41. Not to mention clueless - I actually had two people today tell me that I should go back and retake a photo of an active construction site.
If 2+2 were a photo forum, 75% of the traffic would be in Software and Computer Technical Help, and 24.9% would be NVG. There would be a pittance left over for the strategy forums, but every thread would be required to have six guys talking amongst themselves about how great poker was before the internet, five guys demanding results before they'll say anything, four guys who think you're playing Omaha, three guys who think it's impossible to make money playing poker, two guys telling you to have AK next time, and one guy who tells you what he would do if it was against the players at his table, but only on the flop, because he doesn't understand that anything is happening on later streets.
So first I want to recognize that the amount of actual constructive strategy discussion here is exceptional, even if it sometimes seems to be drowned in the other stuff. And second I want to say that 2+2 needs to add a photography forum, not for 2+2's benefit so much as for the world's. There are skills here that are absent out there.
Thank you for letting me vent.
The photo referenced:
May. 16th, 2012
05:31 pm - Oops.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/lam
06:14 pm - half angel. half eagle. one eye on the world.
The first volume of Shadow Unit is now available as a proper paper book with a gorgeous Kyle Cassidy cover.
It will be available through Amazon within a week, and will slowly filter its way through the rest of the online distribution system.
And of course, Shadow Unit in its entirety is available for free online, and as a modestly priced ebook through the usual sources.
The story began in 2007, and will end in 2013. It's not too late to discover one of the coolest collaborative serials in the genre internets!
chipper12:52 pm - a few parenting rules
We're interviewing nannies (again, sigh) and have had a number of interesting conversations about our parenting philosophy. Here are a set of rules we have for interacting with the kids that I gather are rather unusual... in fact, frequently outlandish.
- Try never to lie. If they ask a question and they aren't ready to hear the answer, just tell them that. This doesn't mean you have to go into every gruesome detail, it's fine to couch your answer at the level you think they'll understand and that you have time for, but they're smarter than you probably think.
This does extend to things like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. We've told them those stories with the attempt to treat them just like any other fictional story. When Jackson point blank asked if Santa was real, I told him, "No, but it's a fun story and fun to pretend."
There's a common pattern with kids to tell them things that are untrue but scary as a joke, like "Be careful not to slip down the drain!" Don't do that. Kids have trouble distinguishing fake warnings from real ones.
However, saying untrue things as a joke is fine in the right context. "Elephant toes" is a fine answer to a question about what's for dinner. (As long as it's not true.) People say untrue things all the time, and taking the time to evaluate whether an adult is telling the truth is a useful skill. But until the kids are good at it, the untruths should be completely implausible, then can get more plausible as they get more on to you. Fun game, actually.
The most difficult time for this one is when they want something that you don't want to give them. Like if mommy is downstairs and I'm doing bedtime, it's very tempting to claim that Katy is busy doing sometime important that can't be interrupted rather than just admitting she needs a break, or it's my turn to answer the late night call. - Remember that every interaction is a repeated game, and your goal is not to win this one iteration, but to win the series. So if a child is crying because she wants something, even though it feels like a win to give in now (she stops crying which is better for everyone, you haven't really given up much), it's disastrous in the repeated game because she learns that you can get what you want by crying.
The flipside of that is that you have to let them get what they want in other ways. If you say no and they have good reasons why you should give in, or even an attempt at good reasons, sometimes you have to give in. You want them to be thinking critically and trying to persuade you.
Here's an example. Katy put down a couple of dollars on the counter, which Jackson took, leading to the following conversation:
Katy: Jackson, please leave those there.
Jackson: But this one is mine.
Katy: No it's not, I just put it there.
Jackson: It looks just like the one I got last week!
Katy: It's not the same one, I just put it there like 30 seconds ago!
Jackson: But money is spongeable.
Katy: ...
Katy: Ok, you can have it.
Because money being fungible is a great reason, even if it's not completely persuasive in this particular instance, and "spongeable" is awesome. If he'd started crying, the answer would have been a much more solid, no-more-negotiation "no." - Almost never bluff. This is related to the first two points, but is really more like the second. If you threaten a consequence and don't follow through, they'll figure that out really quickly. Which leads to the following rule: be very careful with threats. If you make them, carry them out; if you don't want to carry out the threat, don't make it.
Sometimes we violate that. The most common case is when the kid is obviously bluffing. So when we're leaving somewhere and Lucile declares she isn't coming, I raise by telling her goodbye and starting to walk away. So far she's folded every time. Note: I wouldn't do that if it upset her, she gets that I'm not really going to leave her. - Praise. This is hard to explain, or maybe I just need to find a better way, but we're pretty particular in how we praise our kids. We try to use process praise ("I like the way you made up a story about all the parts of your drawing"), some amount of results praise ("That block tower is amazing! It's so tall!"), and virtually zero person praise ("You're a good artist/architect.")
This is because process praise is motivating and helpful, and person praise is demotivating. Here's an article on the praise research, or you could go look at it yourself.
Also try to avoid general praise ("nice job") in favor of specifics, though in practice that's sometimes pretty hard.
The uncontroversial flipside is that criticism works the same way. Process criticism ("Your elbow is too low when you swing, raise it up higher") is good, limited amounts of results criticism is ok ("I've seen you do better, let's try it again"), person criticism is right out ("You're a bad baseball player"). - Answer questions with as much detail as they want. I've had conversations with the kids about civil rights, affirmative action, religion, communism versus capitalism, consequences for breaking laws, race, sexuality, and so on. Not because I've set out to teach them that stuff, but because they ask lots of questions and I try to answer them. Kids are mostly concerned with concrete, day-to-day stuff -- but some of the best interactions come when they are in the right questioning mood, and you definitely want to take advantage of it.
You have to be age appropriate -- when talking about where babies come from, I don't talk about penises in vaginas -- but they can handle a lot more than most adults give them credit for.
It's amazing to me how often we get strange looks or pushback from other parents about these. People thought we were ax murderers for not teaching our kids that Santa is real, and of course we were all brought up in a time chock full of person praise -- kids then and now are told all the time that they're smart, beautiful, and good at everything they do.
11:02 am - DBA QOTD
I don't know enough about NoSQL vs. SQL to have an informed opinion, but this comment made me lol:
"Schemas, dumbass, are one of the things that makes MySQL faster than your arbitrary document store disaster."via this /. item about two companies' experiences switching from CouchDB to MySQL and vice versa.
May. 15th, 2012
04:54 pm - our prayers are always answered. that miracles can happen.
I just had one of those labor-saving strokes of genius that I need to share with the world. Which is to say, the easiest method ever in the history of popovers.
Here is my basic popover recipe:
2 tablespoons solid fat (butter or animal fat (duck fat, mmm) or solid shortening)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (250 ml) whole milk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup (140 g) all purpose or white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
This tactic assumes you own a wand blender and a wide-mouthed quart Mason jar and a microwave. If not, just make the popovers the way you normally would--or if you are missing the wand blender but have a normal blender, you can melt the butter in a different container and use the normal blender.
About an hour or two before dinner, take your Mason jar. Put the butter/whatever in it. Put it in the microwave and melt it. (If you are making Yorkshire pud and are waiting for the roast to be finished before you add the fat, skip this step for now, and stir the fat in before you bake the popovers.)
Add the milk, eggs, salt, and sugar to the butter in the Mason jar (or blender)(or just put them in the blender if you are adding the fat later). Do not put the eggs directly into the hot butter before diluting it with the milk. Otherwise you will have scrambled eggs, which are nice, but not popovers.
Whiz them all up with the wand blender.
Add the flour and the wheat gluten.
Whiz that too, until you have a nice smooth batter.
Let the batter sit on the counter until dinner is nearly ready. If you are roasting something at 400 degrees, you're good; otherwise preheat your oven to 400 (F). (200 C)
Liberally grease 9 cups of a 12-cup muffin tin, or if you are making Yorkshire pud, drizzle a little of the fat from the roast into the bottom of the cups. If you have one of the giant-sized six muffin muffin tins, then you will have bigger popovers and they need to bake a little longer.
Using silicon cups for this results in popovers without stumps or a lot of loft, as they just levitate themselves out of the super-slick cups entirely. They still taste good!
If you are using fat from the roast you're making, add it now and stir it in.
Divide the popover batter between the nine greased cups. You can just pour it from the blender or the Mason Jar.
Stick in oven. Do not peek! If you open the door before they are set, they won't rise properly.
Bake for 35 minutes or until deep mahogany brown.
Pull pan from oven. Tilt popovers in cups, or remove them to a rack or basket. Pierce each one with a bamboo skewer. (careful of the steam!) The purpose of these two procedures is to (a) prevent them from getting soggy and (b) prevent them from collapsing.
Eat.
However you meant to eat them. Do not plan on leftovers.
Wash your one. dirty. dish. Oh, and the wand blender, sure. And the muffin tin. But that was inevitable.
ETA: Nota Bene
For even more loft in your popovers, preheat the muffin tin with the grease in it in the 400-degree oven for a few minutes before pouring the batter in. This is a bit tricky, though, and can be skipped.
i'm a fucking genius12:26 pm - Musicals
While reading EW over lunch, I read about the surprise musical revival of Newsies, which had already surpassed the famously awful movie that spawned it (I never saw it myself) in box office receipts in less than four weeks.
I then read the sidebar highlighting other upcoming movie-to-musical features, including Honeymoon in Vegas with Tony Danza taking on Nic Cage's role, and couldn't help thinking of the thingcaptaino read somewhere about Treat Williams being a poor man's Kurt Russell.06:07 pm - Privilege for beginners
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/s
A friend of mine posted this on G+ and it was good enough that I wanted to share it. It is a really nice geek friendly way of trying to get the concept of privilege across without provoking the rabid cheetah on steroids response.
It does have failings - for some reason it does mention race, gender and sexuality, but doesn't mention class - and it is very geek centric, but I thought it was definitely worth passing around.
08:13 am - Caught in the act: ionization
I didn't 100% understand all the QM stuff, but this is pretty damned cool just for the "10 attoseconds" part.
04:53 am - I know there are some of you out there...
If you're a fan of both ursulav and Fourth Street, it may be useful to go and agree with me here.
(And if you've neglected to be aware of ursulav, you've got a lot of cool stuff ahead of you.)
May. 14th, 2012
03:28 pm - Holy fucking shit
More mind-blowingly phenomenal solar photography from Thierry Legault, via Phil Plait. Includes the silhouette of the fledgling Chinese space station, plus a sunspot ~7x the size of the earth.
10:52 am - life used to be so hard
invaderxan offers a beautiful artist's impression of sunset on Venus. With bonus rising evening star--Earth and its Moon, in this case.
curiousMay. 13th, 2012
11:02 pm - Violent Republicans?
Mitt Romney supporters, Ron Paul partisans brawl at Oklahoma GOP conventionclutch_c vs. schmengie, go!
09:46 pm - Recruiting
I'm recruiting. For work, not the other thing. Although sure, why not.
Anyway, here's a recent craigslist posting. As you can see, it's oriented towards front-end-y web UI sorts of things. I work on the back-end team (cough) and we have open reqs too but I don't know if we have a link to an actual posting. The qualifications are vaguely similar, minus the emphasis on web UI stuff and with in-depth understanding of layer 2/3 networking and wireless stuff being a plus.
It's a full-time position in Sunnyvale. So if you're looking, or know someone who is, let me know :-)
08:57 pm - but now there's evidence she's alive.
So I'm finally catching up on the last three episodes of Criminal Minds. And damn, I really like "The Company."
pleased01:00 pm - In conclusion, humans are a poor Layer 1 implementation
Researcher runs IP network over xylophones
In a typical setup, the computer will send a message packet to the microcontroller in the ACSII format, which the microcontroller converts into hexadecimal code. The Arduino is attached to a series of series of LED's. Each LED corresponds to a hexadecimal character, as well as a key on a xylophone.
[...]
From this project, Geiger has gained a newfound appreciation of the seven layer OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model for computer communications. With OSI, each layer is encapsulated from the others, allowing new technologies to replace older ones without disrupting the system as a whole. In this exercise, humans operated layer 1, the physical layer, where the bits are physically moved from one system to another. To the two computers communicating, however, it made no difference that people were conveying the bits back and forth with their xylophones. "With a properly configured network interface and operating system, an application does not know -- and does not need to know -- the logistics of what is known as the physical layer," Geiger's paper stated.
See also: http://evwhore.livejournal.com/tag/pige
12:39 pm - Didn't think I'd get to use this icon so soon
I just created this userpic yesterday, and last night's Weekend Update featured a "Really!?!" about the Time magazine cover that was pretty good.
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