Rwar!

hmmm

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:03:14 GMT

I've kind of been putting stuff on the main blog if you so care http://shanem.net/randomness/

you can't actually comment over there though :) I should maybe fix that. I kinda figure most of you see them on FB anyway, perhaps I'm wrong.

Things of our Children's Fathers

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:04:38 GMT

We remember people in various ways, but when they've left us it is their things we have left. These things give us a physical hold on them through time, and through this we can maintain a grasp on our emotional ties too. This is perhaps even more so with our parents. We spend the most pivotal years of our lives with out parents and they ingrain themselves in us ways even lovers can not. Most of these things will be new from parent to child, we don't plan on our children making these connections to something specific, it just happens. The things that do persist from generation to generation become heirlooms, some even forced down through history; the jade statue perched on the corner of the mantel waiting to be set free.

The things children cling on to will be of their own choosing, for reasons we likely will never realize, especially at the time. However we will certainly try to influence them. Give them things we think they'll like, hopefully cherish, and even better if it's something we have an interest in. Heirlooms persist themselves, some as sand worms, through history but what about when we want to pass things down, and what about when those things may not exist when they're old enough to care?

This all comes to me from one of my interests. I'd almost call it a hobby though that seems wrong, a hobby feels like you should necessarily be creating something. I play board games on a somewhat weekly bases. These aren't typical American board games, but derived from Europe and somewhat dominated by Germany. They feature interesting game play, unique physical pieces, and usually nice artistic images. Carcassonne is an decent though perhaps simplistic example. One problem I have though is that most games I'm interested in are already owned by other members of the group I play with, and I don't tend to play with other people, so there is really little reason in me owning any games myself.

This is where we come back to the first bit. I realize however that some of these games I'll still want to play years from now, and some I will distinctly want my children to play; they're kind of like the Montessori of children's games, but furthermore they're so unique to what we usually experience. However, if and when I do ever have kids, some of these may not exist anymore. Games like these have fairly small markets and are to a large degree necessarily physical. While they do exist digitally and mostly online, they loose a lot in it, and there's nothing to say the electronic version will persist even then. The internet is fickle. So what do we do with things like this?

I certainly can't buy everything, but I've decided to actually buy games I think I'll still want to play in 15 years, even if I never punch the pieces from their cardboard holders until then. I'll have to lug them around until then, but I think it's worth it. The first one I'm buying is Thebes, a fun Archeology type game. It's got some interesting game play around how it handles digging over two simulated years, and I think it's probably pretty educational. My kids probably won't remember it, and I hear they tend not to like what you think they will or should, but all you can really do is try right?

I do wonder where else this kind of issue might lie; the niche market that doesn't lend itself well to digitization.

Passive Persistance

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:51:20 GMT

We are all way over booked.   I don't know if it's actually worse now than say twenty years ago or if it's like child kidnapping statistics, just more obvious.   The fact remains though, we have more that we want to do than we can.   To make it worse it seems our minds want to do less than we ourselves want.   We easily let those things which take a bit of work to get into and will benefit us drop off the radar, where those things close to heart will blip away in our consciousness.

Persistence is how we manage to break through these barriers.   We make notes, we schedule time, we sign up for programs, we commit ourselves to making new endeavors break though the inertia of what already exists in our lives.   This is a very macro approach, but it works.   It requires we decide on and commit to one thing, then actively pursue it with regular time and usually money.   But what if we just don't have the energy for that, or the time, or the desire to work this way?

Hold that thought.   It has recently been shown that one's social circle affects them more than we may think.    People with thin or overweight friends have a higher incidence of becoming the same.   I think it's fairly obvious here that if your friends eat out a lot, you likely will too and will gain wait, as well as vice versa, however I think there's a subtler as well a finer point here.   While eating out is a fairly macro aspect of this, consider the part where you instead get more exercise because your friends do active things and they invite you along.   Or even finer, that you start basket weaving because your friends already known how to and not only teach you but have the right materials for you to borrow.    These simple barriers are often the hurdles that keep us from entering new domains, and it is our friends who can easiest let us slip over them.   If your friend asks if you want to weave baskets with them, you know you have that 'in' waiting for you if/when you're ready.   ( I would argue that this is why a lot of successful people are successful.   Networking, social nepotism, being with the right people at the right time.   And sadly, being able to be with the right people at the right time. )

Now back to the first point. If the problem you have is getting into something you know you want to do, then just go find a friend right? It's not that hard to meet people.... hmmmm Ok Perhaps meeting a basket weaver and striking up a conversation that doesn't involve "Teach me to weave baskets!" is not really going to happen.    But there's something to be learned from what would come from that connection. It's the small things that get in our way, and having a friend who can give us a leg up over the hurdles is great, but when we're left to our own devices I think there is still hope on our own.

By collecting small pieces of what we want around us I think we can create a simple path for passive persistence.   By keeping your goal in mind through each and every day we're more likely to achieve our goals.   When your bored we often latch on to those things at the top of our minds or even more so which we don't think will require a lot of work to just start doing.    So if we have a steady influx of familiarity with what we want, we'll more likely let our minds wander to it and want to pursue it in our free time.    What can constitute this?   Pretty much anything I would think.   If appropriate I think podcasts are a great tool.   They auto update and get synced to your music player with everything else, so you always have a little bit of information just waiting for you.   Magazine's can work, or even just setting your home page/portal to an appropriate site, preferably one that is dynamic so there's always something new for your mind to process.

The Writing on the Wall

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:33:43 GMT

I wrote this by hand a while ago when I was still in Dallas, it's the first story I finished in my writing book. There were some inconsistencies and perhaps some slow parts but I was pretty happy with it still.   I tried to smooth out some of those, but this is still very much a Draft 1, I haven't even fully reread it, but it's good enough to share now.

The Writing on the Wall

Alternate titles: Origins.

Line up, then across, now down. A squiggly bowl to cover it, and finally a line across the bottom to connect it all.   Stepping back, he eyed the tiny beginning to his mural.   It was perfect, the beginning, exactly how the cave entrance looked.   It was precise, it was gone.

The world plunged into darkness.   Humid and heavy, the hand placed over his face pulled back and down he went.

"Unh," the interloper grunted.
"Unh, indeed," he thought.

From the ground he was helpless as his older, hairier brother looked closely, dimly at his art.   He sniffed it, he tasted it, he smeared it with his sweaty palm, and let out a delighted sigh.   Elated with himself he began jumping, arms flailing widely, grunts coming at will.   A few more of these and he left the way he came.   He was gone, gone like his picture, with his picture.

Leaning back he surveyed the damage.   Black was smeared on the wall, a nasty rendition of his work.   Sighing, his only thought was that it was good he had not started with the colors.

-----

Dejectedly he went through the stone doorway his brother left through.   In the next room the sun shone in more directly illuminating every crack and crevasse.   The room was empty save his hard headed brother who was currently rubbing his blackened hand on anything he could.   He left a trail all over the room which apparently has started with his own ass where the darkest of the splotches were.   A small grunt escaped his throat and led into a snicker; just a light one though as the tide of fortune could change at any time again.

"Not as good as his brother," he thought to himself.   If being good meant being like that then he'd just have to continue to disappoint his parents.   It was true he wasn't nearly as big as his brother, and even then his arms were still too short to drag on the ground as he walked.   Along with just the slightest smattering of hair on his body was a sight that he was a late bloomer, if he had bloomed at all.

Fortune had again changed, and his brother's behavior was not going to snap him out of it.   It was time to make an escape.   His brother had found a patch of sand along the wall.   Discovering that it removed the black best he was busy rubbing his hand roughly along the ground.    This would be a good enough distraction.

Outside it was a hot glaring day.   The kind that would tan hides quickly, both the animal ones laid out on rocks and those of the ones tending them.   Wiping fresh beads of sweat from his eyes he walked out a little and turned to survey the front of the family cave.   He'd done a pretty good job this morning, at least as good as he could do without making anyone too suspicious.   He knew he'd never be able to do his best work at home and he'd learn to accept it.   His master piece was hidden away where it'd have to stay for a long time.   Someday he hoped he would be able to show everyone else and have them appreciate it, especially his family.   For now he would have work in secret, occasionally leaving decoys for grog so he wouldn't become suspicious and go looking to make trouble.

A trail of sweat poured down his brow and the saltiness strung as it diffused into his eye.   "Right, it's hot," he thought again.   He really wanted to go to his secret hide away and finish the campfire scene he has started the day before, but he knew heat meant that the berries on the outcropping would be dried up a little making them perfect for his needs.   He was almost out of red coloring and today was looking to be a prime time to replenish it.

The first time he tried to use the berries they were nice and fat.   Bitter on the tongue at first, then followed with juicy sweetness.   The juice inevitably ended upon his hands and as he attempted to lick it off all he had managed was to turn more of himself red.   It would last for days, marking him more similar to his brother than he preferred.   However this was all assuaged as the thought dawned on him that he could somehow use this to give more reality to his otherwise black and rock colored drawings.   His first batch was simply horrible.   The ripe plump berries that worked so well in his mouth were the worst to use.   The new found paint did nothing but run down the wall and pool on the ground.   Much like bison dung to hunting, the berry juice was toxic to his art.   It ruined the piece he had labored on.   It ruined the wall, and if you were not careful a splattered bowl of it ruined you for a week.

For an entire day he went around squishing berries and rubbing their insides on rocks.   The perfect berry was one he could squeeze to about half of it's otherwise plump size before it split open and oozed out its red insides.   It was liquid enough to actually impart its color on a rock but it would not run beyond where it was placed.

The next trick was to find a good source of these berries.   It was out the hottest of days that he could explore without fear that grog would suddenly appear and pummel him.   Worse yet, if grog were to find him somewhere that he was especially enjoying, then he would never be able to return.   grog would remember and come back if he were ever looking for a toy to beat on.   After much meandering through the day he suddenly realized his path would take him to the rocky out cropping them women used to dry hides out on.

The out cropping had very little of anything on it when it was first found.   The small bits of vegetation were worthless to any but the animals, so the ancestors took the rocks which were useless to any but them.   Due to this, the smallest rock to be found was unliftable.   They had taken any rock that they were able to carry down to the pebbles which could be used as smoothing stones.   The majority of the heavier stones they had tried to carry back to the village had ultimately been dropped over the edge in hopes of breaking them up.   This also ended up being the source of all the animal pelts they had come upon one random day later.   A whole extended family of deer were taken out while they were sleeping at the base of the cliff.

The outcrop was a weird site.   Years of weathering had been removed by the cavemen in the name of survival.   All that was left was the largest of rocks all perched out on the largest rock of them all.   As he reached the top he saw none of the women, but there were hides laid out in various stages of dehydration.   The women had either recently left or were soon to return.   He had little to fear from the women other than some secluded humiliation.   They liked to touch him and cradle him as if he were somehow still a baby hanging from their back hair.   He knew it was because he was the only one his age who would not yell deep grunts and hit the women.   He felt sorry for them, their children growing up, becoming brutes. He would only tolerate it so much though and did his best to not be present in front of his peers in these situations.   For now though, that was the the least of his fears, anyone who saw him up here was someone who might give him away.

He did his best to cross the open expanse and get to the berries that grew on the edge quickly.   With a sigh he flung himself from the bushes and lopped across the expanse.   His arms were a bit stubby so he was constantly keeping himself from falling head first into the ground.   He caught himself with his knuckles, then flung his legs forward to start the next round of falling.   Lucky for him, his knuckles were as hard as any others, so the whole jerky act caused no pain.

As he arrived at the edge he conducted a quick survey to make sure he was still alone.   Seeing no adversary he went to his task behind a medium sized boulder.   Normally he would have brought one of the bowls made from palm fronds and dried clay to carry the berries back in.   Today he would have to make due with what he could carry.   As he picked with his right hand, and held with his left hand cupped, the berries began to mash into each other.   By the time there were too many to hold onto individually, it was no longer necessary to contain them but instead he only needed to hold on to the gooey mass that had formed. He looked down into his hand, focused on one berry in the middle, traced along its edge overlapping. His mind and eyes could not hold on and both snapped out of focus.    The red overtook his vision, dark and light spots floated around in front of him. Thoughts of the fear the berries used to give the tribe surfaced followed by Mungog the elder following the birds, eating what they ate, and living despite the evil colors.

He was standing up straight, mesmerized by what he held when the women came around the corner.   It was time to check on the hides and turn any that needed it so that they would not harden in the shape of the rocks.   The women had not seen him, but that did not matter.   At the first sound of them he dived straight down catching some of the bushes branches and drawing blood from his forehead.   Had they seen him? It didn't seem like it.   No one came to investigate.   Their grunts were the grunts of ones set to a boring task on a horrid day, not the grunts of one exploring, one hunting a quarry.   Finally pulling himself off the ground into a squatting crouch behind his boulder he crafter a plan to survey the situation.

Enacting his plan, he began by turning towards the rock that was hiding him and rested all his weight on his right foot.    He extended his left foot to just the left edge of the rock and his head to the right.   It was time.   In one deft move he stretched out.   Left foot straight out, toes wiggling so they could be seen and distract anyone who might be there.   His head poking out to spy upon any his toes had tricked.   He stood there for a good minute, toes wiggling, until he saw the back of a head.   At this he snapped his body in so he was covered by the rock.   A quick twist to the left and he took off with a low stature so as to keep hidden.

Back along behind the rocks he lopped along, this time more haggard by his left hand that he held guarded close to himself.   At each boulder he performed a similar stealthy look out for any sudden on lookers.   This time though the hastiness of the situation only allowed for him to quickly wiggle the fingers of his right hand out one side and then quickly poke his head out the other.   At each boulder he performed this dance and at each boulder he was equally alone.   Near the end, his confidence overcame him and he rushed tripping over his own feet.    He fell out from between the two boulders.   His arms stretched out in front of him on the ground, his chin hurt, his eyes followed the glob sailing through the air away from him.   His eyes grew bigger in shock.   He now cared as little about the women as they did of him.   He jumped to his feet and ran after the glob.   It landed on the rock, slowly sliding down the curved edge into oblivion.    Loosing all fear he scooped it up from the edge quick and ran straight from the outcropping.

The glob of berries was oozing between his fingers.   The heat from his hand had loosened up its structure and made its aroma finally noticeable.   His mouth began to water, and he was forced to think of this canvas left empty but his stomach full.

He did his best to control the situation with just the one hand but ultimately he needed the other.   Interlacing his fingers he brought the berries back into harmony.   He stared at the lengths of the fingers on his right hand, they were stained red along with all the hair which would certainly spread the dye despite his best efforts.   He hated to not have a respectable hand to conduct himself with.   The left was a necessary sacrifice, the right was just tragic.

The sudden coolness of the path under his fee distracted him from the disappointment.   He must have been more annoyed than usual by the mess, he thought.   He was much closer to the cave than he realized.

He first discovered the cave during a game of run away from grog.   It was unusual for these games to last longer than a couple feet before grog caught him and began the pummeling.   This time there was an extra amount of terror.   He had started the game by bumping into grog, which made grog drop his dinner into the campfire.   Dinner was grog's favorite thing.   It was terror that let him elude grog's initial lunge, and it was terror that took him in the direction of his eventual refuge.   He had never made it this far away from grog, and had never had to make a plan for evasion.   Hiding seemed the better route.   grog would certainly catch him if he tried to out run him, so he chose the crowdedness of the dark overhanging trees over the cleared path that would eventually lead to the outcropping and further away.   He quickly began to regret his decision.   Burrs that normally mode you only wince, dug in even further as his feet pounded on them.   Dead branches that would otherwise simply crack under foot, now broke into spears from the force of his feet and shot pangs up his legs.   His arms could not avoid the dense trees and created new debris that was quickly picked up by his hairy body.   He was well under the thicker branches which would surely cause more pain if they did not simply known him over.   This would have made the whole endeavor bitterly disappointing when grog found his unconscious body.   Nothing makes a better punching bag than dead weight..

It was after several minutes of these encounters with the forests past and present that he finally came to the end of his fearful running.   He arrived suddenly at the dark entrance of a cave looking like a ferocious jungle monster.   Branches bulked up his body while giving him a dangerous prickly demeanor.   Leaves grew all over his body like feathers on a huge bulking bird.   Any animal present on his arrival would have frozen in fear at the site of him, not knowing if he had seen him or was simply deciding which part would be tastiest.   He however felt miserable.

With his best effort he removed the largest of the branches.   These were only barely attached, and attached more to everything else than him specifically.   The medium sizes pieces began to take hair with them but their weight was noticeably gone.   the smallest pieces were the worst.   They had worked themselves firmly under his hair, as if it were the tendrils of a vine holding tight to its prey.   These would have to wait.

The weight of his journey had preoccupied him when he had first been stopped from his escape.   It was not until he was finally free of his burden that he noticed the hole in the rock.   he surveyed to his left then right.   Both were blocked by a merging of the forest and the rock wall.   Looking back he could see faint hallucination of grog tromping immediately after.   With this inspiration he ducked down and entered what he hoped was not the lair of something worse than grog.

His first impression was that is was dark and that perhaps grog was not so horrible of a brother after all.   His second impression was that he had probably just broken his nose on the wall he just walked into.   This was apparently going to be a very shallow cave.   Finally utilizing his hands he followed the wall to the left until it opened into nothingness.   The darkness had faded slightly into haloed black like that comes from staring at one point in the dark too intensely.   This, however, was every where.   He decided following the path of safety was the best route and rounded about to follow the other side of the wall back in the direction he came from.

He turned around and all he could think to do was to let his jaw drop.   He had some how managed to come upon a completely untouched cave.   From the top of the cave a bolt of sunlight struck the ground with such strength that it resonated to every edge of the room.   Throughout the air a light haze danced around in the dust as if children of the beam.   He scuffled into the room a few steps while his eyes adjusted.   Branches lay scattered around.    Leaves were everywhere.    Their multitude of colors reflected a halo that made everything less real; he could have been dreaming.

It was rare to find a pristine cave.   As it was there was already a pecking order for any cave that became vacated due to death or ostracizing, and here he had a cave at least as large as his families all to himself.

In the debris he noticed a couple of the black rocks he used for his drawings in the beam.   He slowly walked over to the pile and as he reached into the beam he could feel the strength of it pressing his arm down.   It was not as hot as he expected but some additional force gave credence to its power.

He grabbed the rock and went to the closest section of wall.   He raised his hand with every intent of drawing, but nothing was there, his mind was blank.   He looked around, a little in every direction; he could feel the light beam on his back.   The cave was intimidating him; so he bowed to it.   The rock hit the wall and he drew numerous pairs of vertical lines, each with the bottom slightly further apart than the tops, and curved slightly.   Along each he made light wisps with a rounded knot here and there.   Above the trunks a canopy of small swirls and short sticks appeared.   In the middle was an open area where he drew the rounded-edge texture of rock.   At the bottom he placed a low dark opening.

He stepped back to observe what he had just done.   It was nice, one of his better pieces so far.   He stepped back again and to his surprise entered the light beam.   It had changed to a soothing warmth and it pressed down on him slightly less.   A reassuring hand on his shoulders.

It was in this way that he came to find his sanctuary in the woods.   It was here he would spend his days hidden away from grog's hand.   It was here that he hones his skill on the rock walls.    He would wile away for days, and at the end he would wonder how it was he had not covered every section of wall.

The cave was naturally divided into two sections by the main entry way and by a section that was always covered in a light dew at the back.   This part was cooler than the rest, and the light did not quite make it far enough to illuminate it.   It was on the left section that he had done his first piece, his devotional to the cave.   The mural had slowly spread along the wall accumulating pieces of his life as it grew.   The right section contained individual pieces.   One was of him, as he saw himself including a girl onlooker.   Another was of a herd of buffalo grazing, to which he added himself hunting one day after being beat on by grog.   In another he drew some of the children that were usually kind to him.   He embellished a little on their nicer features.   Below them were the nastier cave children, their ugliness was extra apparent.   Amongst these were items of otherwise normality, a deer running through the forest, a tree with fruit ripe for the picking, the sunrising on a hazy morning.   In this fashion he brought life to the ancient cave.

One day he had noticed a piece of his original mural that was lacking detail.   He searched the debris under the light beam but could not find a dark rock to draw with.   Looking up he caught eye of a jagged edge in the dark corner.   He retrieved it and went to work filling in the trees.   A couple scrapes was all it needed, but something unusual happened.   Instead of the dark marks he expected there was green.   Looking at the tip of the rock he saw that moss had grown on it, he loved it.   He went along his forest following his previous marks and brushed them with mossy greenness.   The darkened corner proved to be an endless source of these mossy rocks, and it was quick to replenish the ones he used up.   He used the color sparingly to highlight the occasional item.   He knew it would be to easy to go over board and quickly ruin his hard work.   He moved over the forest scene, surveying and marking the perfect leaves, watching as it bloomed under his hands.

The discovery of the moss's green led him to discover other colors.   Brown would come from bark flakes mixed with water and formed into a paste.   Yellow and blue he found from the soft petals of flowers.   Collecting them was of particular difficulty.   During picking they had to be cupped between his hands so they would not blow away, and taken back to the cave in similar fashion.   Not something easily done with gangly arms such as his.   Orange was found in the clay near the outer edge of the forest.   Red was from the berries on the cliff, the berries he was holding a glob of in his hand.

He came to the cave entrance and easily navigated the low entranced followed by the winding darkness.   He entered the cave and crossed quickly to the darkened corner where he had made a table by dragging a flat rock into the cave and propping it on top of some branches.

On the rock he had mashes of each color, red being the smallest one.   With a plop he fixed the shortage.   He did his best to clean his hand on the cold dark moisture of the back wall.   It would do.   The damp walls were a pleasant feature of the cave.   It allowed him to clean up in this fashion when needed as well the moisture kept the paints from drying out.   He had gone as far as licking it once when he was particularly thirsty.

With his hand clean enough, he picked up one of the frayed brushed he had made by gnawing the ends of a stick.   It usually did not take long until the individual fibers separated into a relatively soft tangle.   This one was stained red on the tip and with a light motion he renewed it's color.   Going over to his mural he found the top of the outcropping and dotted several berries into existence.   He thought it appropriate to give back to what he took from.

He stared through the berries for a second thinking about what he should work on next, when everything went dark.   The darkness was hot, and humid, and heavy.   It pulled him back and only gave back his sight when he was splayed on his back in the sand.   His eyes could see only one thing, a monster before him, grog.

The beast had found him!   There was no way, grog was incapable of quiet.   Even now he was emitting a low huff and shifting sand underneath him violently as he tried to make sense of the wall.   He always stopped at the entrance of of the woods to watch and listen for any one around.   grog was obvious from afar; he could always be heard before seen.

He always checked.
He always checked.
... had he forgotten?

Dammit!

He let out a deep grunt with his anger.   He was sloppy, he deserved this, he might as well have led grog down here on a nice sunrise jaunt. Damn him!   Damn grog!

"Get up," he said to himself.
"Do something," he whispered inside, but he just sat there frozen.

grog also appeared to be at a loss.   He was not quite sure what had happened on the wall.   He could not figure out how so many little colored marks could get on a wall.   He sniffed at it.   The greens were earthy, the blues light, almost not there.   The browns were bitter.   The reds were enticing.   He had sniffed out the berry bushes.   With a lick the newly placed berries disappeared.   A pleasant look on grog's face showed that the berries were good after all.   He could only hope they still proved to be poisonous.   Having taken out the new berries grog applies his tongue to the wall with more force trying to remove the older hardened ones.   He managed to do this poorly, seldom licking the same spot more than once and eventually just pressing his cheek tot he wall and licking sideways.   He must have gotten tires.   This unfortunately brought his gaze in the direction of the table of paint.

grog made it quickly to the table and he immediately went to the fresh glob of red.   Snatching it up he took a quick lick and grunted with glee.   Suddenly self conscious grog looked around and remembered his little brother.   They locked eyes.   He frozen on the floor, grog standing with the mash of berries in his hand.   grog's face turned mean and then sinister.

Without turning his head, grog threw the red berries.   He followed the mass through the air.   Time slowed.   He yelled at himself to move, to get up and do something, be he again could not.   The berries reached their target and landed on his mural at the entrance of the cave and then smeared into the forest.   His heart stopped; he died inside.

grog saw the look on his brother's face and was pleased, but not yet done.   grog ran both his hands along the table, each coming from the sides to meet in the middle.   An unnatural mix of colors formed in his hands.   He brought them back, each with a fistful of paints, and went to the mural.   His right hand relandscaped the outcropping with a mudslide of unnaturally colored mud.   His brother audibly winced behind him.   His left hand brought down a multicolored fire storm on the forest.   His brother was now crying.

The monster had no right to do this.   It was all gone.   There was no way to fix any of it, and even if there was grog knew of the cave now, nothing was safe.   He was surprised to find that he was now on his feet, eyes wet and firsts clenched.   grog's hands were both on the wall, his fingers making small twitches to spread out the destruction.   he ran at grog, his first poised and released into grog's back.   His first hit just as his dreams had hit rock bottom, hard and painfully.   His hand ached and the only response grog gave was to kick backwards with one foot, laying him out on the ground once again.

He was up on his feet quickly, fists clenched even tighter, his nails digging into the palms of his hands.   His anger grew, and then broke.   His eyes let loose a torrent of tears and he felt small again.   grog won, he owned the cave, the pictures.   He did all he could.   He turned and ran out of the cave.

grog had momentarily lost himself in he squishy paints his fingers were moving along the wall.   He was brought back by the renewed crying and subsequent leaving of his brother.   He was not done with his brother yet and left the wall to pursue him.   The brother raced through the woods to the main path, and then along it back towards the family cave.   grog was always just barely behind his brother.   grog could usually easily catch him, but his anger was fuelling him now.   He just wanted to be alone, to be away from grog.   he ran into the house through the main room where his mom was and into his room.   grog was right behind him.   In his room he stopped running only to find grog on top of him.   He dropped to the ground and grog stooped right over him, that same nasty sneer on his lips.   His anger built back up, and with all his might he pushed off the ground and piled into grog's chest.   He was on his feet and grog was knocked back a couple feet, a look of surprise on his face.   Empowered, he started jumping around with his arms flailing high in the air, deep grunts booming from his chest.   He wanted to attack grog while he had the upper hand, but he knew he would never win a fight, so he fought with the only weapon he had.

He grabbed a drawing rock from the ground and began drawing on the wall.   grog's surprise changed from surprise that his brother was showing such levels of aggression to surprise that he was trying to get away with a drawing right in front of him.   grog thought that it would be better to let him finish so he could destroy a completed piece over a partial one.

He drew grog, but not big strong grog.   He drew grog with line thing features.   A squarish body with pointy triangular shoulders.   His arms and legs were sticks.   He drew grog holding a stick and in front he drew a stubby miniature sized buffalo about the same size of grog.   He stopped and enjoyed his effigy of a weak thin grog using all of his might to take down a tiny buffalo.   "Take that," he thought as he walked away.

grog was on him quickly, but to his great surprise grog was not attacking him.   Instead, grog turned him around and pushed him back at the wall.   He looked back confused, and grog pointed at the mocking drawing and clapped his hands together.   He liked it? Had grog's stupidity make it so he could not realize this was a mockery of him? Were his standards so low that he could only appreciate this rudimentary level of art?

He tested his theory by drawing several brothers of the tiny buffalo.   As more appeared, grog began to get more excited at the scene of his heroics.   He added a circle for a sun, and v's for the birds and grog ate it all up.

-----

In the days that passed grog, in his own way, commissions several more pictures.   They were all of , and in some way depicted him as being better than something else.   A couple were of hunting, a few of grog beating his friends at some activity, and one of just grog.   Soon grog's friends found out and cajoled grog to make him do pictures of them, and so he did.   He was depressed with is fate for a while, but soon found pleasure in being able to openly mock those that had always picked on him, right in their own caves.

The Usability of Supply and Use

Sun, 17 May 2009 21:34:28 GMT

Imagine there's a service that allows you to rent DVDs through the mail. It lets you supply a list of movies you are interested in online and is 90% likely to always send you your first selection. Let's call this service NetFlix.

Now Imagine there's a very similar service that let's you rent video games, and that they effectively copied NetFlix's queue system exactly. Let's call this service GameFly.

Now imagine that from a user's stand point, NetFlix's queue is vastly superior to GameFly's, despite working exactly the same. Ok, you can stop imagining, because it's all true.

In both cases when you return an item to the service the queue management is exactly the same. They start at the top of your list and send you the first item they can send to you in a reasonable amount of time. Here's the issue though. NetFlix has a lot more of each item than GameFly does. Here's the subsequent and much more damaging issue in my opinion. The overhead of renting a game is much much more than a DvD. The negative effects of getting a movie you don't want are less than getting a game you do not want.

Renting a Dvd and a game are vastly different user experiences. A Dvd is like speed dating, there's not a ton of investment, you can do a couple at a time in a short period and there's not much consequence of taking interest in a few at once. Games however are like arranged dating. They require a month or so to complete, you can juggle more than one at a time, but you're probably better off not, and they take longer to 'set up' ( read get your game.

NetFlix has the capabilities to have lots of copies of every DvD, coupled with the fact that the a single DvD is out for a short period of time they don't have to have as many copies of any given Dvd to satisfy demand. GameFly though suffers from users needing to keep the media for a month or so. Imagine the case of a hot new movie and game coming out. If there are 1000 users who want it NetFlix can probably get away with only buying 500 copies and satisfying all users in the first week. 500 people get it at the start of the week, watch, return, then the second 500 get it in the second half of the week. GameFly though, SoL, they need 1000 copies to make everyone happy in that first week. Now consider people will want to keep the game longer, so NetFlix can actually get away with saying they're going to take 2 weeks to satisfy everyone so they buy only 250 copies, but GameFly still has to buy 1000 copies.

The usability effect with the Queue here though is that with NetFlix you have a high chance of getting your #1 item and then an even higher chance of getting your #2 item if #1 isn't there. With GameFly the effect is that you are much more likely to go deep within your queue when you are sent a new game.

So here are the usability issues.

We all keep Dvds we aren't really interested in 'right now' in our NetFlix queues, but that's OK because we push the stuff were more generally interested to the top and we know we're likely to get that stuff. With GameFly we really have no idea what we're going to get, it could be anything, so the only real way to ensure you won't get something you don't necessarily want is to REMOVE those other items. This is incredibly bad in my opinion because these are the items that are likely to be on the fringe of our interest. The Queue serves a dual purpose of telling the service what we want, as well remembering things we thought were interesting at a point. It's effectively a Queue and an Interest list at once. With Netflix this works fine, the things you really want stay at the top, the things you think you might want in the future stay at the bottom. This completely fails with GameFly. So GameFly's queue actually causes you to forget about games you otherwise want to remember.

The secondary effect with GameFly's queue is that if you do maintain it as an interest list you then run afoul of the larger overhead of receiving a bad item. With NetFlix if you receive a movie you don't want, you might give it a try, waste 2 hours, or just simply return it. All in all a short investment. With GameFly though, you're likely going to invest many more hours before cutting the experience short. This too is very bad as with the movie you at least get the full experience, here you have basically wasted your time. ( I will mention though that this all is much worse currently in that it can take up to a week to get a new game, such that the investment and money lost are much higher than they necessarily have to be with a faster shipping system ).

The solution to all of this? Game Fly should have a way in their Queue system to delineate between things you want and things you want to remember. Be it separate Queues or a dividing line in the single queue. I think this is a very elegant solution to their problem.

Postscript

I left out a side issue here to keep the above from being more convoluted. There are likely much fewer games a person is interested in than movies, such that if you only keep those games you really want to spend the next month on you are going to have few selections in your queue I think. I wrote Game Fly about this fact, that if you want a single game and you're willing to knowingly wait for it that you have to delete all those other saved items from your queue. This was their response.

"By placing only your top game choices in your GameQ, you will be guaranteeing a shipment of those games. However, GameFly cannot guarantee a timeframe for those shipments and we, therefore, advise against this process [only having the 1 game you want in your queue] as you would miss out on receiving available games and we do not credit for unused service time."

So basically they want you to rent something you may not really want over supplying a way for you to choose how to manage your queue. They did say they'd send on the suggestion though...

Socialist Engineering

Wed, 13 May 2009 06:32:13 GMT

I had the great pleasure of seeing Sunday in the Park with George this weekend.   It's an interesting love story around Georges Seurat as well a story of sticking to your guns and perhaps believing in yourself.   I got pretty decent seats, row J, though the 2nd furthest seat on the left.   The seat was fine, the closeness made up for any divergence from the center, however I ran afoul of that oh so typical issue, I got seated behind a fairly tall guy, and not just that, he too was seated behind someone tall.    What's funny was, before the show when the less ideal situation was known to both of us, he kept complaining about not only the guy in front of him being tall, but also being wide. I found it amusing he found something beyond his own stature to find wrong in the other person.   Though I never really figured out what he meant, the guy was maybe broader shouldered, but you're not trying to look around someone's shoulders to see past them, theaters are set up to mostly look over the head of the person in front of you.

While I eventually did settle down and the orb blocking the center of the stage became more blocked out by my subconscious I couldn't help but think that this was all solvable, so why was it still a problem?

There's no reason ticketing systems can't ask about height and take that into account. They could place tall people in seats where the row behind may be a bit higher than normal, or could place them at the back of sections, where there's extra space between them and the row behind. Theaters could even offer specially configured seats situated so tall people aren't blocking anyone.   Extra seats on the end, for instance. All of this applies equal to short people, though the solution seems more mechanical there -- seat cushions. The wife of the tall guy in front of me even suggested I use one her husband decided not to, I declined so as to not chain the problem even further back.

Stadium seating is the real answer here, but with the arts, historical buildings are part of the flavor and even if they were willing, it'd be quite kitschy.   The 5th Avenue Theater in particular certainly has its spice, decked out in a Chinese style from top to bottom.    So with the performing arts, we're just stuck with the facilities we have, for better or worse.

Imagine we had a great reservation system that allowed people to specify their height and the system tried to organize everyone so it worked out.   Would people use it?

I am inclined to say no.    I think if someone were told they could only sit in certain seats they would not be so keen on the idea, even if they knew it would help someone else out.   No one wants to have their options restricted.   Especially if it's likely to be to worse seats: the back and sides of the theater. Also, what do you do for a tall couple?

An alternate system would have you select sections to sit in, where the seats in each section were more or less the same, and everyone was randomly assigned seats in the section.   In this way tall people aren't being singled out, but the system would optimizing for theoretically everyone's height.   Additionally the ticketing experience would be the same for everyone, you don't know your exact seat until the time of the show.   I think people in general would be really turned off to this too.   It's perhaps a bit too touchy feely? A little too much forced community?   American's tend to be fairly thick skinned as such it seems.

It'd be nice if someone came up with a fair system though, and actually put it into use.   It's not really right that you can pay $80 for a show and possibly not be able to see the show.   This does bring up the philosophy side of things.    Are tall people just mean?

Hardly of course, but there must be real considerations a tall person ends up making through their lives as such.   They certainly know they're likely to block someone's view, so does such a person consider this when they go out?   Is it right of them to just go to a show without making some special consideration for those behind them?    Is it right for them to have to?   Does such a person have a responsibility to somehow make amends or to alleviate the situation, or are they simply given the right to make others experiences less than their own?

I suppose this must be the consideration overweight people make with flights.   No one wants to be forced to have to behave differently from others based on their stature, especially the overweight as it is certainly a sore point they live with.   They especially don't want to have to when it is going to cost a lot more money to buy an additional seat, but obviously We have decided this is ok in some situations, as some airlines require it.   The tall have few personal problems from their height too, and if anything they get a bit from it.   So I guess here is one group double harmed by being physically excessive, where another is not.    I'll say though, being of fairly average height, I'm quite fine with it.

(Coincidently, the fore-most tall person did not return for the second act. Though the shorter part, it was at least a better experience.)

The Face of God?

Mon, 11 May 2009 16:24:58 GMT

What Jesus looked like will never be known, but how it is presented in America is almost certainly pretty off.   Jesus was from the Middle East yet we depict him as fairly Caucasian in almost all cases.   We are certainly not alone, though, there are Black and Hispanic visages in those cultures too.   Given that we know Jesus was not Caucasian though, I find it interesting that He is so often represented as so in our culture.

I can only assume this this is a form of assimilation many cultures have done.   To adopt the one being who is important above all else to their own look.   There are certainly many benefits from this too.   It is easy then to claim God as your own, to apply a territorial ownership to God, to claim him for our country over theirs.   From this then there's even the sub-conscious idea that God is somehow tied to your country, that He is in your neighborhood, town, state more than He is somewhere else.   I see the appeal of this for sure.   As well, if Jesus looks like you then there is less doubt that He is not like you, not a part of you.   I certainly feel a little bit of these things, and I do not even practice.

Despite the good I'm sure ownership gives an individual, I wonder if it doesn't hurt us as a whole.   The main thought I have here is that if Americans worshiped a visage of Jesus that was Middle Eastern, would we still be so bigoted as a country?   Would we have so easily turned on the Arab citizens in and of our country after 9/11 if they looked like the savior we worshiped as a nation?

I don't know that it would have attenuated it completely, but I can't help but believe it would have been better than what we saw.   I can't help but think it might make us all a bit more tolerant, to those elsewhere in the world and to ourselves.

Being from the South I've seen my fair share of deep rooted Southerners being horribly discriminatory whilst being overlooked by their Lord.   This is certainly not the churches fault or influence, but the external culture of those who believe with every cell in their body since they were little, such that they have never had to believe with their minds.   I can't help but believe that they would not be a little different at their cores if the one they worshiped all their lives, the one they hung on their walls, the one they payed homage to on Christmas was different from them.

( Having lived in Boston, Texas and Seattle I also know that this is not a Southern thing, so no harping on the South. )

24 Heroes

Wed, 06 May 2009 03:54:19 GMT

I've watched all of 24 from the beginning to last night.

24 gets vilified a lot, and I won't dispute it here, however it occurred to be a few weeks ago, that 24 does do something positive in the entertainment land scape.

On 24 there so far have been 2 black presidents ( before Obama came on the scene even ), 1 woman president and 1 white male president. Of those 4, the white male was the evil one and the rest have been held in fair praise on the show.

B. Hussein O.

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:52:02 GMT

I was happy to hear on last Tuesday that President Obama was inaugurated with his full name as is tradition.

I was saddened when previously that day there was plausible speculation that he would break with tradition and just use 'H.' If ever there was a way to draw attention to his middle name, that would be it. We may not consciously know it, but I think we all have come to expect the full name of our president to be used during the inauguration, such that in any record of history it would stand out otherwise. It's ironic and short sighted that the goals of those in favor of 'H.' are to not bring attention to the connection with Saddam on this single day in history, when not using it is certain to bring attention to the baseless connection for all of history.

It was President Obama's decision and his alone, and I give him praise for his decision, despite it being an easy one. To fear a name is to give it power. I wonder if 'John' or Christianity fell out of popularity after Lincoln was assassinated.

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:03:31 GMT

If this shows up then I've successfully published this from google docs. Very awesome given LJ's kinda nasty posting/spell check UI.

Here's instructions on setting it up: http://documents.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=37571

Edit: ( from gDocs even ) It looks like the gDoc subject doesn't show up as the entry title for LJ. Ah well, still better to put in the title after the fact than deal with LJs interface I say.

Germany in review

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:46:39 GMT

I've yet to really say anything about my trip to Germany. Most likely because Rachel showed me up pretty nicely out of the gate ;o) She did a great write up that gives a nice day to day view of what we did, starting in Rudesheim. I recommend you check them all out.

The main things I remember about Germany was just how much it felt like I fit. Every city we were in just felt like somewhere I wanted to be from. I loved that you could simply hop on a train and get to anywhere else and that there was a decent hotel within 100 yard of getting off of the train. And also really close to the trains were the hearts of the city where you could just wander around and check things out without having to worry about getting run over by a car. There were the bikes, but that was just awesome.

There are times where I feel like the cities in the States are maybe a bit much for me, just too big, too homogenized, not enough unique areas. Of course you can live there fine, but can you thrive? Germany seems to have so much history that modern times have moved in but not taken over completely. Maybe I'm just a quaint town kinda guy, but I loved the small towns along the Rhine. Small communities that are only 10 minutes apart by train and less than an hour from the closest big city.

I've never really been outside of the US before, but this was certainly a wonderful start, sans the Franfurt airport.
We really weren't expecting the weather to cooperate with us during the trip; however, I don't think we could have asked for anything better. Our trip began with staying in Castles overlooking the Rhine with snow no less, a treat even to the Germans; and ended with us having mastered the Christmas markets and Gluhwein, realizing we could take some very unqiue souveniers back with us in the form of the custom city Gluhwein mugs. I completely plan on drinking from mine in 20 years, perhaps even during a visit with Rachel over some good intentioned mulled wine.

It was a long time after that I didn't expect to step out my front door and be on the brick lined streets, or to be surprised by the snow on the unexpected castles that were never there. Maybe in those 20 years later I can be there all again.

Odds

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:21:27 GMT

1. BioShock is an awesome game and I finished it in like 5 days.

2. If people say they're going to buy you a drink on a flight because they made you move, they should damn well do it.

3. First class is awesome, especially if you're going to just sit on the plane in the snow for an hour.

4. Delta sucks, I knew this, though I guess I needed a reminder, not that it really matters in general since you have little choice airline wise.

5. Day Break was a good series, though I'm thinking maybe it was best off as a short series. Maybe a few more episodes or more notice to the writers it was getting canceled would have been good.

6. I've only managed to shower/get dressed twice this year so far ( see #1, mostly )

7. It snowed another few inches outside my place tonight.

8. Teenagers apparently only want money for gifts these days, and give each other money for gifts.

9. The Federal Reserve sucks. Why can I only make 6 transfers a month out of my savings account? Care to pay the $50 in bounce check fees for me?

10. 'Atleast' should be a word.

11. There's a new super powers movie coming out this year called Push. Stupid name, but I think I like it for the gritty look it has in the preview.

Ends

Christmas Time Has Come!

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:45:50 GMT

American Made, German Bound

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:36:42 GMT

In the continuing line of 'Rachel does research and Shane agrees that's an awesome thing to have'* I today finally bought the luggage for Rachel and my Germany trip. The bag is from a cool company in Montana called Red Oxx, and soon two of them will be the only things accompanying us to Germany. I thought I was going to have to go with something less nice as they were out of stock, but it turns out their making them anew today and should be able to send my pack out tomorrow!

I'm mostly posting this to encourage you to buy American if you can. My back up option was going to be REI, but as a big retailer now they have crappy photos on their site and as it turns out the bag I was eyeing was imported. I have nothing against foreign products, but in our economy and with people loosing their jobs, it's essential we focus on what we produce. You obviously shouldn't buy shoddy products, but much like Red Oxx, there are American companies making really good products.

(* I had tried to get the Mei Voyageur, but they were backed ordered 2 months!)

( The title could also apply to Rachel and me, I suppose. )

One year in Seattle

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:56:00 GMT

A year ago I left a hotel room, a nice one too, in Boise Idaho and made the final leg of my trip to Seattle. The weather is about the same now as it was a year ago, but the time in between has been very different. There are trees everywhere in place of the convenience of anything you want within a 5 minute drive; The temperature tops out in the 90s in the summer, though the winters kinda just hang around. Electricity is cheap and usage is low, though water seems to be expensive.

There's a mystery to the areas around here that is brought upon by the canopy of trees and the lack of access. You can of course drive places but it's hard to really get a handle on everywhere as you could in Texas. I'm not sure this is bad, it just makes it harder to know the area; maybe this is good. I probably want to buy a house in a year or so, so I need to get on top of just figuring out what all there is around here. It's like a scavenger hunt, so fun, I just need to get into gear on it. It is a little disappointing though that the public transit around here is so hard to use. There's a good bus system, but no real good way to plan trips around it. Google Maps is about the best option for specific trips, I'm thankful it's there. But one would hope, I would expect, that there'd be more fixed path options like light rail and subway; sadly no. It's kinda coming at least, so in 20 years there will be a bit of it. At least there will be an option to get to the airport next year, though involves going through the city.

I'm looking forward to the winter and the coming year. There's lots of wonderful entertainment and arts options up here, you can't throw a rock without hitting something new and crazy, and I'm a bit more settled to balance everything and take advantage of it all.

Oh oh oh the sweetest things

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:36:40 GMT

The other night I came across an episode of That 70's Show that I hadn't seen before. It was a musical show and pretty good. One part stuck with me the most though.

I'm pretty sure the first time I ever heard this song was at the end of Starman which I happened to catch the end of on tv when I was pretty young. Starman was a love story, with a sadish ending and the song was vaguely appropriate as love songs can be. It also was just sweet, and I think it spoke to the innocent ideals of my untapped heart. This rendition is also a nice portrayal of the song, maybe more so with the innocence the kids being in it lends. There's a little smoothness to ends of the main lines that gives it just the right emotion.

( Somewhere above I managed to fight off a wild tangent which I give to you here. Starman was a love story, between a man and a star. Well not actually, I guess that's more like Sunshine. Though in Sunshine there were a lot of people in love with the Sun, which I guess would make it Starorgy. There is perhaps a strong chance that movie has been made already. )

Covering Books

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:22:31 GMT

A week or so ago Neal Stephenson gave a talk at work about this new book Anathem. During the talk I kinda zoned out and started to think about typography and visual presentation of books. My subconcious took audio and put it together with literature and came up with the thought of covering literature much like you might cover a song, give a little person twist to someone elses words.

Changing the words themselves would be out, though it has been done in the form of say rap versions of Shakespear. However I'm more interested in the visual aspects. Think of taking an excerpt from your favorite book and then visually redoing it to give it a little life of its own.

The furthest extent I can think of this being done is in House of Leaves, where the book takes on the dementia, paranoia and creepiness of the story through typography alone. Another instance is Griffin and Sabine. The beautiful letters could be just standard type in a regular paper back, but they have a life of their own in the visual presentation they come.

I think this would be really cool to see, the types of ideas people will come up with when they put their artistic ability to the stories they love the most. It also seems like something that could do nicely from a little annual competition to bring out the best works.

Somewhat randomly, I asked Stephenson about the visual aspects of writting citing House of Leaves. He didn't seem to hot on the idea in general, though he did cite one of my favorite physical book copies as an instance where his publishers did something different with Snow Crash. I'm not so sure what was so special about the copy. It was slightly smaller in height and width than a paper back, but it was a hard back, and kind of fit in your hand. The pages were also a tad thinner than usual, so that it was seemingly the perfect depth given the smaller page. Wish I still had my copy.

Absenteeism

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:59:32 GMT

Shane Votes 2004
Originally uploaded by flamesplash.

I received my Absentee ballot the other day and it actually made me feel kinda down. With an election like this years I really want to go to the polls with everyone else and vote in person. It's been said about previous elections, but I think this one really merits the election to vote in. ( You could argue Bush never being electing would have been better though ;o) )

I think I may still go to the polls though, even if no one else ends up being there and it's lickety split. It is good that this is an option for those who don't feel they have the time to vote. But part of me kinda wants election day to be a holiday and to go out with everyone else and vote.

The Freedom to Not Tell You Who I Voted For

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:21:51 GMT

With the election coming up I'm reminded of an Americanism that kind of baffles me. In such a free society, with two very distinct political parties that seem to only be able to hope to garner .1% over the other every four year, why isa vast portion of society so secretive about who they will or did vote for? We live in a society that lives, and tries to die by, the first admendment and equality, yet it's a little crazy that so many people don't want to say who they voted for.

Perhaps it's biased on the ideal and not the actual, but it seems like the strength in this conviction holds strong even today.

Zen and the Art of Video Gaming

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:33:43 GMT

I normally only play video games for a few hours on the weekend. It's not that I relegate them to only the weekends but that they just fit in better there. I like to keep my weekend mornings quiet and laid back. Get up at 10, have some coffee, listen to the humorous weekend NPR shows all while playing some games. This leaves the rest of the week gameless. The problem is I'm not exactly doing anything more useful per sey during that time ( sans working of course :) ).

I often find that the weekday nights seem to slip by despite there being a couple hours between getting home and going to bed. Problem is I find most of that time is spent listening/watching TV and doing not a whole lot on the internet. These effectively brain dead practices make the hours and entire week just whiz by.

I few weeks ago I did a practice in not watching tv ( well ok I made an exception for the Daily Show ), and made the personal realization that TV unchecked will suck your life away, and more so combined with the internet. During that time I read some magazines ( which I almost never get around to ), played with the cat more, listened to some old podcasts, and played some video games.

The thing I realized is that games are a good balance between the mind suckingness of TV and the elevated mental levels of reading/writing and even arithmetic. Games may have you sitting on the couch, but you're engaging with something. You're constantly making decisions, solving little and big puzzles, trying not to die and moving that little controller about. And if you're playing Resident Evil, you're heart is beating away.

This all started with TV and time slipping by. I think the way we measure time is influenced and differentiated by our enjoyment and involvement with our activities. TV is in general enjoyable and not involved. So you think a lot of time has just passed, but it doesn't really feel like it, it ususally feels like it just passed quickly. Where with a good game or book which are mentally involved, you both think and feel like a bit of time has passed. And I think this ratio makes you feel like your time was better spent.

So I think my new policy is going to be that cable is on for only new shows, and the rest should be spent elsewhere, with games being a decent alternative and not only a weekend venture.

This also brings me to my other recent success, I broke out of my reading rut! I tend to get a little attached to my book, maybe a bit like a relationship. I tried to read The Invention of Everything Else many months ago. I mean it's got Tesla in it and I heard about it from America's Librarian! Sadly I just couldn't get in to it. I didn't want to simply ditch it though, I mean it has merit, it's won awards, there's a cute pigeon on the cover, it's me not you! and much like we do with relationship issues, I'd rather ignore it and simply do without than admit my loss and move one. Well that, and I didn't have anything else enticing at hand, another tragic but true relationship ender.

I've broken through this though. My attempts to bridge the gap with Vonnegut failed when my local indie used bookstore only had Slaughterhouse Five, but I was saved when I saw an interesting binding of a Confederacy of Dunces. Wish me luck.

-shane

$300 bottle of screwed.

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:30:10 GMT

My lease is up at the end of October and I've been noticing a steady stream of uHauls about the place. Not a good sign.

Out story really starts a few months ago when The Park at Forbes Creek came out of it's winter cacoon and as if it were a debutant ball showed the world The Resort at Forbes Creek. Perhaps not the world, but they had a grand opening of their new clubhouse, which is pretty nice though not amazing, with a party. The party was finger food and drinks, with a rented magician ( think cards, not bunnies ), and free chair massages by their not-otherwise-cheap by-appointment-only massage therapists. The massages were also just alright. On the way out from this shin dig each attendee got a custom labeled bottle of wine which I've started refering to as my 'we raised your rent $200, enjoy!' bottle of wine. It was pinot grisio and again, alright.

Turn back to present times; I figure I'll try to atleast steel myself for the impending doom of paying a bit more for rent and call the rental office. They of course can't tell me how much my renewal rent will be, that'd be approaching useful. I take a couple stabs at trying to get something resembling a rough number and she tells me my model is currently going for $1410-$1750. I pay $1460 now. When I rented my place I was on the higher end of the spectrum and now I'm almost at the bottom. Thanks to the WayBackMachine I can even see what the rates where Dec of last year; tops out at $1470. Don't worry about the math, I'll do it for you. That's a likely increase of $290 or 20%. @)% FRAKING PERCENT!

So yeah, If I want to stay here I get to fork out an additional $3480, that's almost an entire IRA payment. The funny think is, I took a look at my current lease, and if I don't renew, it automatically goes to monthly with a rent increase of $100 per month. I'm seriously debating just taking that and moving after a month or so when I have time to look. The one small saving grace here is that the lease wasn't a perfect year long, as it'd end right when I was heading to Germany. That would have been kinda shitty, they instead rounded it down to the end of October.

Cardinal Knowledge

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:02:02 GMT

Do you know your numbers? This is what the internet knows of them (via the Google )

0 (zero) is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals.

January 1 is the 1st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.

The official Cascading Style Sheets 2 specification, presented by the World Wide Web Consortium.

CSS style Attribute Syntax Level 3, Working Draft

May 4 is the 124th day of the year (125th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

October 5 is the 278th day of the year (279th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

YouTube - Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 ...

Open source Windows utility for manipulating archives. [7-zip]

8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9.

"The 9" Has Left the Building.

He’s a believer in hands-on experiences, and he recently opened up his home to Channel 10 to chat with us about “all things tech” and to give us a look ...

Learn about and download Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.

12 has an aliquot sum of 16 (133% in abundance).

13 (thirteen) is the natural number after 12 and before 14.

The number following 14;15,is itself a discrete biprime and this is the first such pair of discrete biprimes

May 15 is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

Music video by Karina performing 16 @ War with Jessy Terrero ...

17 Questions Guys Talk Dating Diaries Meet Hot Guys Video [Seventeen.com]

18 (eighteen) is the natural number following 17 and preceding 19.

NewsChannel 19 Weather: Huntsville & The Tennessee Valley

April 20 is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

Directed by Robert Luketic. With Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth. [21]

22 is the sixth discrete biprime and the fourth in the (2.q) family.

This article is about the number 23.

The Emmy and Golden Globe award winning show 24 stars Kiefer Sutherland as Agent Jack Bauer, who heads a field operations unit of the Counter Terrorist Unit ...

It is the smallest square that is also a sum of two squares: 25 = 3² + 4².

May 26 is the 146th day of the year (147th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

Features news, weather, sports, community events, program guide, and recipes. [WKYT 27 Lexington]

April 28 is the 118th day of the year (119th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.

Fox 29

Watch video clips from the 30 Rock TV show on NBC starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski & Tracy Morgan.

I'm almost surprised that more numbers haven't been rebranded and still hold up. It's maybe even surprising that some held up despite attempted branding such as The Number 23. ( Yes I liked it )

The representation of the unbranded numbers is somewhat intersting. A decent number are dates with fairly random months attached. I'm not 100% certain how the results are ranked, but Wikipedia links from an event to the date of that event. So I wonder if this implies those particular days of the year have more interesting events than the other 11.

I'll admit I went to 30 because it came up with 30 Rock :o)

The best ones tell a story.

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:01:10 GMT

I don't know if it's the catchy sound or the fact that Jens Lekman has a Swedish accent, but I only just caught the lyrics to his A Postcard to Nina when I was listening to mix cd with the volume up; and I love it.

The album is catchy in general, I recommend giving it a listen.

Jens Lekman - A Postcard to Nina.

Nina I can be your boyfriend
so you can stay with your girlfriend
Your father is a sweet old man
but it is hard for him to understand
that you wanna love a woman
Nina I can be your boyfriend
if it puts an end to all this nonsens
First time I see you in Berlin
And you don't tell me anyting
Until outside your dad's apartment

Oh God, Jesus Christ
I try to focus on your eyes
we're having dinner with your family now
keep a steady look at your left eyebrow

If it's raised, it means yes,
If it's not it means take a guess
Hey! You! Stop kicking my legs
I'm doing my best
can you pass the eggs

Your father puts on my record
he sais: so tell me how you met her
I get embarrassed and change the subject
and put my hand on some metal object
He laugs and says that's a liedetector

he Takes out the booklet and starts reading
So i heard you're moving out next season
I say: Yeah, New York is nice that time of year
almost as green as it is here
He says: I thought you were moving to Sweden?

Oh God, what have I done?
i came to Berlin to have som fun
then it turned into buffalo 66
on your fathers wall a big crucifix
guess thats why he wont let u go
his catholic heart is big and slow
you know I'll do anything for love
but Nina what were you thinking of?

But Nina I can be your boyfriend
So you can stay with your girlfriend
Your father is mailing me all the time
He says he just wants to say hi
I send back "out of office, auto-replies"

Nina I just want to check in
'cause I think about you every second
So I send you this postcard just to say
Don't let anyone stand in your way
Yours truly, Jens Lekman

Don't let anyone stand in your way
Don't let anyone stand in your way
Don't let anyone stand in your way
Don't let anyone stand in your way

Never Eat Shredded Wheat

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:57:50 GMT

Never Wheat Eat Shredded

North East South West is something I must often rework out in my head, and I've gotten very good at doing it on the fly in no part due to some mnemonics.

Never Eat Shredded Wheat is not the one I usually rely on but it's the one that makes the most sense as it goes in a nice circular motion, so it comes up from time to time. The crazy one I usually use is N E W S, which makes no sense as it requires going down-right, across, then down-right again. In actuality West is the real trouble maker and I think my brain has figured out it's own system even though these phrases go through my head at the same time. What my brain actually tends to do is simply go around the circle clockwise past the known N E S to the spot that isn't filled. So to me West isn't Left, it's 270 degrees to the right; go figure.

Whenever I think about this though it brings up all the other mnemonics I learned in school and still remember. Here they are in no distinct order.

We'll start with the beloved planets one:

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies.

I find it interesting that of all the variations I've heard on this the beginning is usually the same, and it is only the end that changes. And yes kids, there ARE nine planets.

Unit prefixes:

King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk
Kilo Hecta Deca Base Deci Centi Milli

This one is kinda bizarre, but I guess it worked.

One of my favorite is from my Algebra class despite being a trig thing.

Oscar Had A hairy Old Ass

Each letter is a helper for those three lovely trig functions.

Sine = Opposite/Hypotenuse
Cosine = Adjacent/Hypotenuse
Tangent = Opposite/Adjacent

One of the things I love about this one is that when my teacher told the class about it, she couldn't bring herself to actually say it, so she just wrote it up on the board. I like that she felt us mature enough to actually know the little useful joke at school.

The last one I can distinctly remember knowing but can't actually remember is for the taxonomy of all things, you know Genus, Phylum, Species, etc.

So what mnemonics do you fondly remember helping you through school and beyond?

Who Notice / Finale

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:38:59 GMT

So it looks like all us Dr Whooligans (?) will have to wait till 2010 for the next season of Dr. Who, but it should have David Tennant in it. Instead, in 2009 we will get four Specials including the Christmas episode. While I will miss having a season's worth of Who time, I'm hopeful these specials will be better done than the average episode. I would not mind 4 specials like the Library two parter!

(Finale Spoilers)

After seeing the finale I have a few questions. I thought it was pretty cool, for all the newness they added, but it certainly left some questions.

1. What happened with Bad Wolf? Especially given that the deformed Dalek implemented a similar system. It seemed odd to invoke Bad Wolf, as well a parallel plot, and just drop it.

2. Was the 2nd Doctor really necessary? Couldn't Donna have just absorbed it or something? I kinda liked how they resolved the Dr.s's love with Rose, that somehow the immortal Dr. can't love, but I dunno how much that floats aside from keeping the series from jumping the shark.

3. Rachel points out that Donna's situation was foreshadowed in the Agatha Christie memory loss and Left Turn, so maybe she's not actually gone and they have plans for her later? I really hope so, because man that was brutal.

Davis deserves much credit for this foreplanning. The Ood 'drdonna' thing didn't make a ton of sense at the time, but it was there for a reason.