Flutterby™! From 2002-12-01 to 2002-12-31

Ogg Vorbis playback on the palm is now a reality. One more reason to be comfortable switching over, although I am still using gifs so I might be using MP3s for a while yet.

[ related topics: Music ]

Yes I forced myself to listen to the Blackberry Theme Song for my lack of posting recently but I thought I'd share the dread. BTW it's mp3 not Ogg.

[ related topics: Humor Music punishment link ]

It's kinda like watching COPs with bad video and less censoring. Taser Demo Video have me laughing(PCP guy with pants around ankles) and feeling sad. With the new Partriot act passed a taser could be coming to a living room near you. scuse me ....gotta get the door.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Enforcement Clothing ]

Another graphical search engine but it's kinda fun. It says something about how we take in information.

[ related topics: Graphic Design Machinery Cool Technology ]

We had to get above 7,000ft to find it but we found snow and made a "snow princess" and managed to find our selves alone for many hours. This helped us relax before the 27!! relatives showed up and did all the things they do. I think I need another vacation...There was lot's of drinking and a remote controlled fart machine. what's your best thanksgiving moment?

[ related topics: Photography Todd Gemmell ]

Although in a way,I like the idea of a Tattooing Robot, but I wish the art were human created/inspired and not the abstract stuff. On the other side, tattooing and other body mods are one of those 'human karma' things that I should be done by another human.

[ related topics: Robotics Current Events Art & Culture ]

I've been completely un-impressed withthe mass news media and have been looking for 'raw' news feeds. A good example why: Each side tells a different story: Islamic Republic News Agency has this story and CNN has: a slightly different version. It's all a matter of perspective.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media ]

the whole article is really about: a nutcase that admitted online to killing a police officer, but the part I found the most interesting is the bootnote:

" A few days before the 2000 election I was called by a telephone pollster who wanted to know if I felt "crime in my area" was rising or falling. I thought it was getting worse, I said. My neighborhood of San Francisco back then, like much of America, is a safe and beautiful place to be. No, I said as he delved into specifics: I don't feel I'm going to be robbed, or mugged. But crime is stratospheric: we were just entering the power crisis that we suspected, and now know was rigged by Enron and which cost California billions of dollars, and the Microsoft antitrust case was lurching closer to its guilty-but-acquitted verdict. A few of the victims of Microsoft's business practices were "in my area", as the pollster requested. But he didn't have a tick-box on his form for my answers, and we concluded the conversation in a state of mutual exasperation. "

It points out that the real crime spree is corporate..

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft Bay Area moron Law Law Enforcement California Culture ]

A long time ago, Dan was looking for these super erector set extruded aluminum things. One of the vendors we had contacted in looking for these was Thor Labs whose catalog makes Edmund Scientific look like the toy catalog it really is. Thor specialized in industrial grade expensive opto-mechanical/laser/electronic stuff.. and their "Christmas Catalog" is an inch thick of techno-wonderment.. What will Santa bring me from Thor Labs? Maybe a piezo controlled XYZ flexure system (controls laser beams)..

[ related topics: Cool Technology ]

It's lunch, I've just had three tofu dumpling like thingies, a smoked fish, some lightly sauteed greens, and a bit of broth. And damn they were yummy. Spiced just right.

After a busted generator kept us on the ground for 3 hours at SFO, got into Hong Kong at after 1:00AM local time, checked into the hotel at about 3:00AM, successfully reading signs out of the window of the bus to get off at the right place. The good bit? Everything is very clearly labeled.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Travel Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

United Airlines mechanics are going to force United into Chapter 11 which will suck for a great many people that do business with United. Somehow Southwest seems to turn a tiddy profit and be very well run. Labor has gotten too powerful in some ares(dock workers come to mind) but to provider a counter example the Strippers at the Lusty Lady seem to need a a stronger voice. Oh and if you still think the United mechanics are underpaid you should know they are being fined for fixing planes with duct tape eeeesh...

[ related topics: Aviation Current Events Work, productivity and environment ]

I'm staying at the Panda Hotel. The penchant for "cutesy" isn't just a Japanese thing, the safety posters in the MTR are Power Puff Girls based. The other thing that strikes me, though, is that that earnestness we associate with first generation asian immigrants isn't just an immigrant thing, in bilingual Hong Kong I walked past a shop labeled "Very Good Tailor" last night.

Food is kick-ass, and dirt cheap. I love walking down the streent and buying a wonton here, a steamed bun there, eating as I meander. "Pick the fresh seafood you want cooked" is quite common, fish, squid, shrimp and octopus in 5 gallon plastic buckets, plucked from the water and cooked on demand are all over. Sanitation probably isn't up to contemporary American standards, lots of open food by the street, guys rolling out huge amounts of dough right by the sidewalk, but it tastes so good I really don't care.

Went down to the market at Temple Street last night, blocks long bazaar flea-market sort of thing. Amazingly small wireless cameras, the voyeur thing must be really hopping over here; the porn I saw seems to have genitals fuzzed out; lots of cheap textiles and cheap electronics, some of it of decent quality. Less knock-off jewelry than I expected.

Overall, I'm having a blast, both personally and in business. Today I go talk to the Hong Kong office of a fashion line you know to video a fitting and critique session, and to discuss information flow with their IT department.

[ related topics: Photography Sexual Culture Dan's Life Food Travel Fashion Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

Ready to trade in that old pumpkin-colored Gremlin? Maybe you need to consider the Maybach Model 62; at ~US$442,000 a pop, sure to become the last word in sheer motive ostentation. A division of Daimler/Chrysler, Maybach cars were produced in small numbers before WW2 by the same people who made the diesel engines for the Zeppelin Hindenburg. Besides such luxuries as standard champaign flute holders and a passenger compartment that would hold a Morris Mini, it boasts a V12 engine that cruises effortlessly at 155MPH. The Emperor of Japan is buying one, to match the pink one his father bought before the war.

[ related topics: Web development Music Content Management History Machinery ]

These guys night be on to something. Form a social group that goes out and helps various causes. Instead of joining just one group, form a cadre of people that like hanging out in a social sense and rotate your sevice around to various causes. Quite often I like the cause but not always the people running the show.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Community ]

Robo Babe Heather "Camera girl" just sent an email of her latest web work which documents the life cycle of Camp Artica or Arm pit caca as they sometimes get the sign wrong.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Machinery Fabrication ]

For the inner terrorist demolision expert in you. We have Implosion World for that burning yen to see things blow up,down,direction of choice

[ related topics: Business Content Management Antidepressants ]

Build a Tivo from the Extreme Tech site.

Maybe not for everyone but I Like it. Ack it seems there is problem with the link and you can only read the first page now. It's pretty good stuff epecially if you travel on Bart as this person seems to capture the moment quite well.

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Net Culture ]

On Friday I took the tram to the top of the peak. On the north side of the bay I'd noticed that there were still lots of undeveloped slopes, when I asked if the mountains were stable enough to build on I was told "if the government would let us, we'd find a way".

I chalked that up to arrogance 'til I rode the tram, and discovered that on the south side there were skyscrapers built on some pretty amazing slopes. Then it really did get too steep.

Had dinner at a small restaurant at the top, worst meal I had in Hong Kong. Not actively bad, just not mind-blowingly good.

Saw this sign in the entrance to the restroom at the airport. Words to live by.

Saturday morning I watched the sun rise from the Hong Kong airport, got on the plane, and arrived at SFO slightly earlier on Saturday. Had to actively start using English again.

Great trip, but it's damned good to be home. Observations and more pictures dribbled out over the next few. Need to stitch some panoramas together, too. Alas, there's only so much interesting picture taking at night, but I got a few shots worth sharing.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Dan's Life Food Travel Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

Apologies for the outage, in my sleep deprived state last night I realized a computer was screaming at me, so I typed "su - -c poweroff", had to type the password several times... into the wrong window.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Flutterby Meta ]

Last night I needed to stay up 'til 8 or 9, but didn't have the brain power to do anything, so we rented the silliest thing we could find at the video store: Men With Brooms. Given the state I was in I can't really make any recommendations, but I'll try. Every breakthrough sport needs its featuring movie. Inline skating had Airborne. Skydiving had Point Break. Men With Brooms is curling's breakthrough movie. It was less farcical than I expected, the curling bits were played straight up, and this didn't mesh seamlessly with some of the more bizarre aspects of the story. But I do appreciate curling a lot more now.

[ related topics: Movies ]

Peter Merholz has some pictures from Hong Kong from the last few days. The first has a daytime shot of one of the bizarre buildings, The second has some shots from the markets.

[ related topics: Photography Hong Kong ]

A somewhat blurry shot, as I was standing on a rocking boat, and the subject is a rocking boat. This is one of the Star Ferries that cross back and forth between Tsim Sha Tsui and the central district of Hong Kong. They've been doing this for a hundred years, and I can believe the boats are that old, they putt-putt-putt and pitch in the waves of the harbor in a way that really doesn't inspire confidence. Not only that, but in the busy strait there's all sorts of other traffic, high speed ferries and what not, zipping back and forth. It's amazing that they don't sink one or two of these a night.

Price wise, this ferry ride goes for HK$2.20, and except for a pastry that cost me HK$3.50 this was the only time I had to deal with units of less than a HK$. I paid 7.2 HK$ to US$ at SFO, over there I saw rates as low as 7.8 HK$ to US$.

[ related topics: Photography Boats Machinery Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

Fundamentalists losing favor with public:

Researchers from the Barna survey asked respondents how they felt about evangelicals, born-again Christians, ministers, and other groups of people in society. According to the survey, evangelicals came in tenth out of eleven, narrowly beating out prostitutes.

Now granted, this was an American Family Association funded survey, but what's the matter with prostitutes?

[ related topics: Religion Sexual Culture Sociology Current Events ]

The lit up Christmas Boat Parade, fireworks, and the smell coming from the boats on the river (herbal) make for a great Christmas event that I think should be renamed and re-themed to Burning Santa.

[ related topics: Burning Man Photography Pyrotechnics Boats Machinery ]

Okay, backing off from Hong Kong, for Thanksgiving week Charlene and I went down to the Santa Cruz mountains to spend a couple of days hanging out at Felton Crest Inn. What makes the inn isn't the surrounding redwoods, the monstrously heavy comforter and mountains of pillows (removed for this shot), the champagne and fresh fruit in the room, or even the breakfast; it's that Hanna Peters, the owner and proprietor, is so gracious. We had a wonderful three days hanging out there, including a fun evening hanging out in her living room helping her decorate her redwood Christmas tree clipped from beside her driveway. For future reference, young redwoods are kinda scrawny and spindly and don't make good Christmas trees, but we had fun.

On Friday we went down to Santa Cruz, played for a little while on the boardwalk (and I've gotta be frank here: Disney's California Adventure is better), and then ended up at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory, up near Natural Bridges State Park(where only one bridge remains...). Had a lot of fun, they've got some really good exhibits, a bunch of interesting creatures, and a staff that really enjoys the subject. Next time we'll sign up for the guided tour. And they've got a skeleton of an 87 foot long whale outside that's an amazing sight.

On Saturday we headed out to Roaring Camp Railroad where we rode behind one of their two Shay locomotives. The Shay is an interesting beast because it's a geared steam locomotive, with a side-mounted three cylinder engine. A gorgeous example of 100 year old machinery. But it also took a lot of skill to run, good engineers learned to play with the throttle coming into curves to let the driveshafts slide, so that they didn't jump the tracks when the trucks couldn't turn, and steel on steel does not give great traction. It too three tries for them to pull us up one particularly steep grade.

Friday night we ate at Ciao! Bella!!, a good italian bistro, with a twist. When you read "ciao, bella" think of a wolf-whistle; to "voulez vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" overdriving the sound system, the owner and waitresses swung off poles and ground on stage in between courses. Fun, although they didn't quite connect with their audience that night, it could have been a little more compelling. Do not go unless you're comfortable with being mooned at least once during your meal. Saturday day we had lunch at the Cowboy Cafe in Felton, and were pleasantly surprised. Real greens, good food. And that evening we at at the Tyrolean Inn, which was decent, although we both thought Ciao! Bella!! had better food.

Thursday we went to the Winchester Mystery House, I'll give a separate accounting of that later.

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Food California Culture Machinery Trains ]

San Francisco may ban the Segway Human Transporter. It would be an interesting precendent, and would hurt Segway and then I'd never get one to play with. Baawaa!

[ related topics: Bay Area California Culture Segway/Ginger/IT ]

I'd asked about GPS stuff a while back, and recently got the serial cable that lets me download data. So I've now got some interesting scribbles on my computer, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them. In the "these memes always break all at once" department, Jerry Halstead has started carrying one around and is coming up with some interesting Rorschach tests. For those of you interested in diddling with this on your own, I had "out of the box" success with GPS::Garmin.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Maps and Mapping ]

First off, apologies for the quality, I shot these all with the S100 point-n-shoot without much exposure modification, and shots like these really need super high quality glass, a monster heavy tripod, and a lot of exposure tweaking. Anyway...

As you can see from the different lighting in the photos I used to construct this panoramic view of the Hong Kong skyline from Victoria Peak, there are some amazingly complex lighting systems on the buildings of Hong Kong. Note the building on the left which has the small purple top in the composite picture, but in the two pictures which have the image in it you can see one has a blue pattern down the side. And the one just right of the middle has a green zigzag in the final panorama, but an orange pattern in the middle raw shot.

Even without the fancy lighting, Hong Kong buildings take risks. I think this view is looking up inside the Bank of Hong Kong, which I believe was designed by Norman Foster. Note the willingness to take extreme risks in high contrast lighting.

When I was being given directions to the tram up the peak, those giving me instructions searched their wallets for a bit to drag out currencty. Rather than having presidents or monarchs, the banknotes all have images of banks on them, and my instructions went "Go to the building on this bill, then turn towards the building on this one...". Good that a city knows where its leadership really comes from.

The I.M. Pei designed Bank of China building contrasts nicely with Government House. I've got a few more pictures of Government House and a couple more of the Bank of China, none of which capture just how starkly they contrast with the local buildings, and yet manage to be completely in character.

Meanwhile, across the strait to the north, the Hong Kong Culture Center has no windows. Somehow, though, it didn't seem all that bad or out of place. Just south of it is an elevated walkway along the waterfront down to the aforementioned Star Ferry from which I took a panorama looking south into Hong Kong. Again, the the source images show some of the lighting differences (and also some of the special lights up for the season).

But the whole city isn't built this way, up in Tsuen Wan, where I stayed (much closer to the garment district) the buildings are much more functional. And obviously lived in, complete with clothing drying on the balconies. And even on high rises, the scaffolding was lashed together bamboo.

[ related topics: Photography Sociology Artificial Intelligence Hong Kong Architecture Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

The rainy season has started here in California. The ferry was crowded this morning, so I took a risk and sat outside, and though the bay was fairly calm and I stayed dry I wondered about the big ships eastbound out of the Bay. Especially having seen some pictures that an acquaintance who does maritime insurance inspections has shown me. This morning's Chronicle has a little article about WNI Oceanroutes which does deep ocean weatherforecasting and route suggestions for ships.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Machinery Cool Technology ]

Deceptively Packaged linked to an entry in the Dave Barry Gift Guide that mentions Funeral Depot, which has themed coffins including a World Trade Center one, a package themed coffin labeled "Return to Sender", one of the Golf themed caskets called "Fairway to Heaven".

(The topic picker chose "Douglas Adams". I've ignored it.)

[ related topics: Humor Art & Culture ]

Via /., Some folks at the University of Bremen have come up with the Matrix Public Network - a peer-to-peer [audio] file-sharing network for reporting and listening to news, with a built-in, user-defined trust factor for the news you retrieve. They're billing it as the future of news reporting and consuming.

Intersting stuff. I may have to play around with this.

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Journalism and Media File-sharing protocols Cool Technology Education ]

Some more Hong Kong signage examples, to follow up on those instructions for using the tap. The pedestrian crossings that aren't on bridges over the roads all have instructions on the street about where to expect traffic from.

I thought I had a handle on the "exit" glyph (and knew what the two characters that sometimes occur after it mean, the one for "mouth" because I recognize it, the one for "stream" by elimination), until I saw this one at the Hong Kong airport. It was early in the morning, so it took me a few moments to realize that I wasn't seeing yet another character there.

Speaking of pedestrian crossings, there isn't much attention paid to handicapped accessibility, for instance the wheelchair entrance to the MTR involves a treaded platform vehicle which an attendant drives up the stairs (which I didn't get a picture of), but the overhead walks all have long looping ramps. Sometimes the extra distance over just having stairs is annoying.

[ related topics: Photography Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

Dave Winer proposes Weblogs in Meatspace a conference for webloggers. Putting aside for the moment the "what more do webloggers have to say to each other?" question, I'm interested in finding some conferences that allow for real interaction. Going with Todd and Eric to the O'Reilly Open Source conference back in 2000 lead to a few interesting things, and I've been thinking about next spring's Emerging Technologies Conference, but I think I'd get more out of something structured less like a traditional conference.

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs Dave Winer Todd Gemmell Coyote Grits ]

Debra has an entry titled The Potency of Pornography about the differences between S&M pornography and descriptions of real torture. Well worth a read.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture ]

Ages ago you may remember that Todd and I posted a note from Steve about his trials and travails in South Africa that was quickly pulled down because Steve felt that some things he'd said might come back. Well, this time we prevailed upon Steve to live more publicly. He's in Tunisia right now, his new weblog is at Uxolo.net, and he'd love some feedback and interaction. Go. Interact.

[ related topics: Weblogs Todd Gemmell Coyote Grits ]

Oh yeah, read the latest Terry Pratchett on the plane over: Night Watch. I'd remarked before that with Thief of Time he might have taken the universe too far, but the introduction of occasional time travel into the Discworld universe works perfectly. In Night Watch he explores the history of Vimes, the nature of police work, and the difference between the government, "the people", and committed individuals, and comes up with another great satire that's a joy to read. Recommended.

[ related topics: Humor Books Law Enforcement Terry Pratchett ]

On the flight back from Hong Kong I tried to start The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. In the first third, Steven Pinker lays out the best attacks against the notion that intelligence can be genetic I've ever seen. It's not what he claims to do, but after the umpteenth strawman or flawed example I just tired of it. A few Pinker books back, a friend commented that I should probably read one, but only needed to read one. This evening I'm going to take that friend to task.

I'm not sure it's worth going back and finding the exact passages, but I became disillusioned after he claimed that some particular object-subject-verb combination was unthinkable, when I'd just discussed with my hosts an extremely similar construction occurring in Cantonese. Then this morning I was reading B. R. Myers' A Readers Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose(an abridged version was published in The Atlantic last year) and saw him quote (albeit in the context of a strong rebuke) another example of such a construction.

I believe in Pinker's basic assertion, that elements of intelligence are genetic, but I don't think I'm going to subject myself to the rest of his pretentious and flawed arguments for the matter, and I'm not sure it's even worth going back to accurately critique what I've already read.

[ related topics: Books Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality moron ]

As I just mentioned, I read B.R. Myers' A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose on the ferry this morning. I'd first run across Myers' article in the Atlantic, but only recently seen the larger book form. Every few years someone attacks what currently passes for literature, often with good reason, so it would be easy to dismiss this as yet another cyclical rant. But Myers lays out a good argument that the literary establishment has fallen prey to something I see in the society at large: A sort of everyman elitism which says "if I can't understand it, it must be brilliant". This is what leads to things like Alan Sokal's hijinx with postmodern criticism (in Flutterby back in 1998), and the recent hoaxing in modern physics (Flutterby, last month).

What's even more telling is how clearly the rebuttals to Myers, at least some of the ones he chooses to recount, prove that irony is really dead.

[ related topics: Books moron ]

/. linked to a press release from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announcing the Universal Ad Package proposing ads in sizes of "160X600 IMU, 300X250 IMU, 180X150 IMU and the 728X90 IMU." Much like the overseas tourist who believes that the local will understand better if the question is repeated in the tourist's language, only louder, it's clear that the IAB doesn't "get it". For a given article, I probably see a whole lot more ads in print publications than online, and in print publications those ads stick with me better because they interfere less with the article, and are generally better targeted.

No matter how many times or how loudly you offer me online gambling, vacations in Las Vegas, or yet another IBM "e-business" initiative (does "business at the speed of e" mean doing deals at a rave?) I really don't care. Give me subtle informative messages in the same tone as the articles I'm reading and I'll thank you for the ads, rather than cursing them.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

David Steinberg on Sex Work for Couples: Three is Not Always a Crowd.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Coyote Grits Work, productivity and environment ]

Scotch Night last night was at Kells to see the Richter Scales perform. Good a capella show, worth the late night out.

[ related topics: Richter Scales ]

Once again I find myself wondering if companies understand customers. I'm searching for some motion control solutions. I want to be able to rotate a 50-100 lb load, probably no faster than 8 RPM or so, and stop it at 30° or 45° increments. We're moving to motion control over a straight motor, with an indexing pin and a cut disk for location control because we want faster rotation to each steps, and the "pin out, motor on, wait for pin to spring back in" control we have now jerks the load too much on start and stop to go any faster. So I Google on various options, and find lots of people willing to sell me the components, usually listed by part number or product line, and a few folks willing to break it down to extremely accurate (but way overpowered for my needs) numbers, like Kollmorgen, but it'd be really nice to go to a page and see "If you want to do applications like X, then look at this product line". It's a complaint I've made before, and we're even willing to pay some conslutting fees to have someone fix this for us, but if you're trying to sell something to me then your product line names mean nothing to me; let's start with applications.

[ related topics: Web development User Interface moron ]

No more, I promise. This one is blurrier than I'd hoped for, but I'm a long haired hippy type, and trim fit police with their pant legs tucked into their socks, ie: efficient looking, scare me. So I casually took the picture as I wandered by. This is what a police car looks like over there. Enough said?

And this one too is a bad shot, the reason I took it is that I couldn't figure out what the hell the creature in the bag to the lower right is. I'm sure it's a shrimp. I sleep at night by telling myself that.

[ related topics: Photography Law Enforcement Automobiles Hong Kong Dan's December 2002 Hong Kong Trip ]

At lunch today, I saw that the front page of SF Weekly had a teaser for this week's "Dog Bites" column that reads:

So GQ magazine says S.F. women can't put together an outfit? Dog Bites will just see to that.

Of course the article is the usual shallow Marina chicks saying "I do too shop at Neiman", but my real question was: Since when has GQ's target market included anyone interested in women?

[ related topics: Bay Area moron Fashion ]

We only ranked 25th this year. We were 22nd last year.

Alright, y'all, get out there and rape, maim, and kill.....

[ related topics: Chattanooga ]

Spam of the day:

Subject: Wish you had lager Breasts?__________________________________vcy503u emCMQCJwphtf

Yeah, it beats milk, but I'm not sure the increased B-vitamins are worth the tradeoff from the calcium.

[ related topics: Health Spam moron ]

Most of you have probably already seen this little piece about voting and the current political climate in the U.S. It's worth a look.

[ related topics: Politics moron ]

I just read a review of Libranet, which is apparently a commercial distro - based on Debian and attempting to make installation and configuration a bit easier for those of us who may be reasonably comfortable with Linux, but aren't really hardcore about tweaking and configuring everything with sed.

Up until now, I've been hungrily eyeballing Lycoris for my next [desktop] machine (which must wait until I can afford a new machine). But I like the fact that Libranet comes with more in the way of applications and server stuff (even though this will primarily be a desktop machine).

I know some here have expressed a preference for Debian. Does anybody have an opinion on Libranet?

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

I was thinking over a discussion I had earlier with some fellow classmates, regarding their teenage children. "Hire a teenager while they still know everything" is a popular sentiment. But thinking back to my own teen years, I'd have to say that this perception could also apply in the reverse - from the teen's perspective of the parents' attitude. I didn't realize this back when I was still at home, but after noting (to myself) that I felt the venting parents were guilty of exactly the attitude they were accusing their children of, it occurred to me that my parents spewed the same "We know [everything]. You don't." message.

As I get older, I'm increasingly aware of how full of it grown-ups are.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Child-Freedom ]

Yesterday evening went to Revels. Fun, but they didn't seem to catch the audience until the second act. Ate at a great Peruvian place over in Oakland that I have to find again and eat at, Jeanne was driving. Today's about getting the tree up and getting my Dad's American Flyer S-gauge model trains running around the tree. Man, setting up those big 1:64 trains, with the steel rails that are always dirty and so throw lots of sparks, brings back some memories. The big steam engine is the first thing running, I don't know if I dare see if the smoke generator still works...

[ related topics: Music Dan's Life Food Bay Area Trains ]

It's not elegant, but the AVI's look interesting. Of course, they also sell flying saucers and anti-gravity machines, or at least the plans for them. It belongs on the playa, but needs brakes.

[ related topics: Aviation ]

How many years have the residents of California known that there'll be a rainy season every winter? Yet the first storm of the season always causes infrastructure failures, and we had two big ones, back to back. Even without working around the storms, we had a full weekend. On Saturday, when we were setting up and trimming the tree, the power went out. Unwilling to be dragged off schedule, we pulled the generator out of the shed and fired it up so that we could power the lights while we arranged them. For some reason that strikes me as just wrong, but...

Well, at least we offered the generator to the neighbors while we were out at Revels so that they could watch a movie.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area ]

The storms of weekend weren't just rain and wind blowing in from the Pacific. Yesterday afternoon Margaret "Peg" Galloway Lyke, my grandmother, died. I hadn't talked to her in a very long time, she'd had a stroke a while ago and I kept thinking I'd get to New York to see her, but she got to her journey before I got to mine.

Charlene asked me about her, and I talked about my experiences and memories of her, and in that I realized that most of what I remember is being around her. Not doing anything specific, just what it was like to be and do things in the space she kept. Which is strange, because I've got lots of "doing" memories with the other three grandparents. And she was a very "doing" person.

[ related topics: Dan's Life ]

I haven't had a chance to read it all the way through, but I find this Chronicle article about FBI agent Jeff Rinek's experience of murderer Cary Stayner fascinating.

Warning: it starts out as a look at Rinek's career, but gets pretty graphic.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement ]

Mary Anne Mohanraj is selling some CDs of spoken word that might appeal to some of you.

[ related topics: Erotic Writing ]

Mark alerted me to his entry pointing to XMLHack: Microsoft Office embraces XML. As I've commented in at least one recent thread (and probably a gazillion others), I agree with Shawn McGrath's opinions on XML in Microsoft Office (via Dave):

I want to believe, I really do but I'm not falling for the "It's in XML so its completely open ya know" mullarky and neither should you. Office is as open as my ability to round-trip office XML through my own XML systems losslessly having modified them in some way. To do that I need full disclosore of the semantics of the markup. I get that from a combination of machine readable schemata and narrative text. A bag'o'tags don't mean diddly squat on their own.

[ related topics: Content Management Dave Winer Microsoft ]

Over at Backup Brain, Tom has a quick overview of possible 2004 Democratic presidential candidates now that Gore is out of the race.

[ related topics: Politics Current Events ]

Yay: Elcomsoft acquitted on charges of violating the DMCA.

[ related topics: Current Events Civil Liberties Net Culture Copyright/Trademark ]

I've seen some of the Bodyscapes images on various blogs, but haven't had the chance to browse yet. But I had to link to Debra's account of discovering this work.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic ]

It's hard to tell from the headline or the article, Military seeks to restrict wireless, Wi-Fi could block U.S. radar, but I think they're complaining about 802.11a. But the real issue here is that low power consumer electronics could jam military radar. Is the fix really to ban the electronics?

[ related topics: Politics Wireless moron ]

More Like This comes through again with a link to: Thirdway, a magazine which bills itself as "the modern world through Christian eyes", interviews Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, which comprises Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, and who has been described as "the anti C.S. Lewis".

[ related topics: Religion Books History ]

On my recent trip to Hong Kong I was reminded of how good it is to be an American. I mean, in a total Lee Greenwood with Nashville twang "Proud To Be an American" way, with it so obvious that so many people in these remarkably different cultures wanted to live where I did. Then on the flight back from Tokyo to San Francisco I sat next to a man from the Netherlands who's settled in California who praised the U.S., especially foreign policy, up one side and down the other. "You came to Europe, you did the job that needed to be done, you went home. That's not Imperialism." Now I actually think that our reconstruction in Germany went far beyond that, but let's just say that despite my disputes with the Bush administration, and despite my perpetual cynicism, I think really highly of the United States.

So with that flush of patriotism in mind, I want to rekindle some controversies by encouraging y'all to go read one of the best arguments against gun control I've ever read, with some great pull-quotes:

And why is it that of all we produce and all we exult, the only things that seem to have caught on in Europe are McDonald's and Baywatch? That says much more about you than it does about us, and none of it good, I'm afraid.

Via Curmudgeonly Skeptical

[ related topics: Politics Travel Guns McDonald's ]

Teatro Zinzanni started out slowly. It felt a little kitschy, a little too much like schtick, and then...

In that small tent, with most of the action taking place in a space that's little more than an aisle between tables, they put on some of the most amazing displays of physical prowess I've seen.

One highlight that you're not likely to experience: At one point the juggler asked for someone from the audience who could juggle. Charlene volunteered me, even though I haven't really thrown for a long time, and I think that someone at my level was roughly what he was looking for. However, a huge group on the side started chanting a name and this older well dressed and coiffed man, "silver" would be a good description, stepped out with the usual "member of the audience caught on stage" manner took the balls and started with the standard three pattern. Then he transitioned into a waterfall and a couple of bounces, went low, did a few other things which showed he had tossed recently. And a lot.

At first I figured that this was some senior partner at a large law firm with a cool hobby, but as the moves progressed I realized I was looking at something else. Turns out the large group was the local Cirque du Soleil troupe out for the evening. Watching the young talent lead the old master through the routine, which both handled with wonderful aplomb, was a blast.

The food was, alas, so-so, the pasta was somewhat lifeless and underinspired, so although the accompanying greens were oversalted go for the steak.

If you added, say, a meal at Millenium to a ticket in the theater district you'd end up with a better meal and cheaper overall evening. This is not inexpensive. But it was a distinctly entertaining evening, and still recommended despite that reservation.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Bay Area Theater & Plays ]

Jeanne scored Charlene and me two tickets to Teatro Zinzanni last night, so I put on some classier shoes and pants than I usually do when I headed off to work. On the way down 7^th street I had two distinct people make bizarre hand motions to me and, in whispered tones, try to make some sort of transaction. I've never been drawn into a drug conversation on that street before, and I've heard plenty of "well, I'm going to go get stoned" marijuana conversation at regular volumes there, so this was actually quite shocking.

Taken for a drug dealer. It's not so bad, I could've been mistaken for a politician; I fully expected that once I donned the jacket and tie later I'd be offered a city services contract, or maybe the deal to build the next high speed ferry (but that's another rant).

[ related topics: Drugs Politics Dan's Life Bay Area moron Shoes Clothing ]

Showing once more the wisdom of buying the Extended Warranty, CNN reports that a signal from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft has been picked up by a NASA deepspace dish in Spain. Although no telemetry was received, the probe is still transmitting, some 30 years after launch, from a distance of some 7.5 billion miles. Pioneer 10, carrying the famous message plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, still has some 2 million years to go before it reaches the Aldebaran star system. Watch this space for frequent updates.

[ related topics: Cool Science Space & Astronomy Nudity ]

Borklog linked to this NASA picture of the car with the commentary "God's way of saying dude, you need a new car." Not much to add to that.

[ related topics: Humor Space & Astronomy Automobiles ]

The swells coming in off the Pacific this morning were big, although the captain was on top of things with the throttle and we never got that "airborne crashing" feeling, the ferry did its share of pitching and heaving, and even docked in San Francisco the gangplanks were doing a lot of sliding around. Which says to me that the storm coming in this evening will probably be the equal of what we got last weekend. Even with no snow or ice, there were traffic lights still out on Tuesday, which made me wonder about how PG&E stacked up against other electricity suppliers; I grew up out in the woods in upstate in New York, and I only remember one or two outages as long as ones that seem routine in Marin. Today The Chronicle confirms: Yes, we do get more blackouts / Outages also last longer than elsewhere, study finds.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area ]

Dan over at Lake Effect seems to have hit a bit of a money spot. Given that you're probably not dropping bucks on the guys at the mall with the handbells because of their cowardice on human rights, and certain other high profile charities seem to have excessive carrying costs (stolen from Weird Ass Shit), if your holiday cheer this season extends as far as tossing a few bucks toward wayward webloggers he might be worth adding to your list.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Just to show that I'm not always horribly biased and one-sided: Mark has pulled together a few reports that Uganda's abstinence based sex education is working.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Education ]

Salon also has a holiday guide to shopping for lingerie, including the very reasonable advice to "Avoid Victoria's Secret like the devil himself will swallow your soul if you so much as set foot in the place." No great revelations, but a few good lines:

In less than ten minutes, we were approached by four different saleswomen, all with the inevitable, intrusive "Do you need any help?" After the last one, I told my wife that the next person who asked me that question was going to be greeted with the sight of me holding two panties aloft and asking, "Which one of these will get me harder?" Being a sensible girl, she got me the hell out of there.

[ related topics: Humor Erotic Sexual Culture Salon magazine ]

I need to build a good database structure for an "on this day" sort of feature. Salon points out that Lady Chatterly's Lover was banned December 20^th, 1929.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Flutterby Meta Salon magazine ]

Yesterday I mentioned that the ferry ride was pretty rough. This morning I missed the high speed ferry and ended up on the Sonoma, one of the lower speed ferries. The regulars were all abuzz with war stories of yesterday's trek, apparently one of the windows on the lower deck, just above the water line, got busted out and "it was like a disaster movie". People got completely drenched, there was a big scramble by the crew. The crossing of that area in front of the Golden Gate was very slow today.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Bay Area ]

There have been diamond ads up in the Muni/BART stations for a few months which say things like: "Reduce the entire English language to three syllables: 'I Love You'", "Just add 'King Daddy Studmuffin' to your existing pet name". I've been casually thinking it'd be fun to go all Billboard Liberation Front on them, making reference to funding civil wars and all of the other evils that the "The Diamond Trading Company"/DeBeers monopoly have caused, the false value and lack of resale market: "Just add 'Genocidal Colonialist Oppressor' to your existing pet name", "Reduce the Entire English language to three syllables: 'What a Dupe'", and so forth. Then up comes "Whack! Pow! Woosh! Kablam! In a tender loving sort of way", and I realize that irony is completely dead.

[ related topics: Politics Political Correctness Diamonds ]

Romanian Gymnasts banned for performing nude. Ummm... This seems like it might warrant further research. Anyone out there read enough Japanese to order the DVDs from K-Netwk? ("he asked, with only a hint of a leer")

[ related topics: Erotic Current Events Sports ]

In email, Diane mentioned World Sousveillance Day. Looks like a good way to get your camera smashed by overzealous security, but the "how can I participate?" section offers some hints and suggestions.

[ related topics: Photography Privacy ]

One of the things in San Francisco that I keep meaning to do but haven't, then lost my chance to do, is possible again: Musee Mechanique reopens.

[ related topics: Bay Area Cool Technology ]

Its Sunday AM before Christmas, its 60 degrees sunny and the deck at the Stone Cup Roasting Company overlooking Coolidge park has a solid WiFi link.My zaurus loves it. Chattaboogie has come a long way.

[ related topics: Chattanooga ]

Dear Santa, Please add one, or both of the new Barbie's to my Christmas list. My GI Joe's (forget wimpy Ken) need a visit from "Lingerie Barbie". --meuon-- I wonder what their target demographic is.. forget 'Business Barbie' or the talking faux paux from years ago that said 'math is hard'. This one cuts right to the core.. sex. Washington Post Story

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Invention and Design Marketing Toys ]

Jerry Kindall had a link to Stripmine.org:

Dedicated to the preservation and restoration of large pieces of strip mining equipment.

I remember driving over in the Smokies in North Carolina one time, going by a mine, and having to pull over and gawk at the scale of a dragline. Many of these pictures capture that sense of scale.

And while we're on cool tech, The Jer Zone had a link to Unreal Aircraft.

[ related topics: Photography Aviation Machinery Cool Technology ]

I've stayed out of the Trent Lott thing because it seems to me that he was just another Southern Republican saying the sorts of things a Southern Republican would be expected to say. Of course now the hollow attempts at apologies are grating on me. I tip my hat to Mike Rothstein over at FactoVision who wrote:

I'm sure this is reading too much into it, but is Trent Lott blaming liberal Jews for creating a furor over his comments to bring him down? (sixth paragraph)

And Harley Sorenson says that what Lott's really sorry about is that he got caught.

[ related topics: Religion Politics ]

Metafilter had a link to Buy a flight manual, get a grand jury subpoena and a link to Coffee, Tea, or should we feel your pregnant wife's breasts?, which served as a good reminder to me to renew my commitments to the ACLU, the EFF, the CBLDF, The Nature Conservancy and Planned Parenthood. Consider this your Christmas gift.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Free Speech Nature and environment Aviation Civil Liberties Net Culture ]

Despite my whining about the amount I've spent on donations to worthy causes, I've done a little more shopping, including one moderately big extravagant gift to myself (which, not coincidentally, makes a gift of what it replaces). But I got to thinking about some of the smiles I've seen this holiday season, and I want to note that in all of our neighborhoods, no matter how poor or rich, there are kids starved for adult attention and parents who are run ragged. If you can let a toddler play with a toy and not be on them saying "don't break it", that's a gift. If you can help a kid build something, just a little guidance with the soldering iron or the glue, that's a gift. Heck, if you can give patient counseling on homework, that's a gift too.

This works for adults, too. Guaranteed there's someone one or two friends removed from you who could use a little encouragement in some skill you've got, a little coaching on some project, even just a fresh perspective. Spending money's fine, spending time makes the community that much cooler.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Dan's Life Community ]

Here's wishing a happy Winter season to all at Flutterby :-)

Sorry folks, multiple power outages Christmas Day rebooted Flutterby.. Several hours of running on generator.. and it has not even snowed or iced yet! Figured Dan would restart Postgres later.. but I finally decided to do it, as he must be on vacation or off-planet somewhere. Merry Christmas!

[ related topics: Open Source Coyote Grits Space & Astronomy Sports ]

"Red eye reduction" sucks, because you end up with your eyes closed, looking like a dork. But a Hello Kitty vibrator's enough to put a serious smile on anyone's face.

[ related topics: Photography Erotic Dan's Life ]

Sigh. Well, compact flourescents seemed like a good idea, We had most of the house switched over to them, and then... with the advent of the rainy season it's been dark again, and we've discovered that not only was our failure rate higher than with incandescents, of the compact flourescents that are still working most are quite dim. Charlene complained, and I finally put an incandescent next to a fairly new (a few month old) compact flourescent of supposedly the same light output and the difference was amazing. We're back to incandescent bulbs until the technology matures a bit more.

[ related topics: Dan's Life Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment ]

Rueters story about a 1.62 million dollar eBay purchase for the town of Bridgeville - a 'fixer upper'..

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Currency ]

If you're into that sort of thing, David V Rodriguez has what looks like most of a book on building a web-based CMS online: Content Management Design.

[ related topics: Web development Content Management ]

In light of our discussion of religion, he New York Times has The Origins of Religion, from a Distinctly Darwinian View. Natalie Angier talks with David Sloan Wilson about Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. I include it mainly for completeness, I don't think there are any new ideas there that Flutterby readers haven't already been exposed to.

[ related topics: Religion ]

Went to Marin Shakespeare's "Cinderella" Panto last night. It fell fairly flat, which is a shame because I think they had two actors, Nikolai Lokteff as Dandini and John Ficarra as Buttons, who could have carried the production had the script been more refined and the direction been a little tighter. There were a few good lines ("faster than Eminem through the Castro"), but a lot of the laughter was forced. The author was Nigel Ellacot of It's Behind You, with a few Marin county specific references thrown in for giggles.

[ related topics: Bay Area Theater & Plays ]

Holiday blues got you down, and you feel like shuffling off this mortal coil? Snuffing it for the Holidays offers useful hints for that holiday suicide, lest you spend your last like the writer Robert Ervin Howard, lingering on for 8 hours with a gunshot wound.

[ related topics: moron Writing Guns ]

Via Daze Reader, rapper Li'l Kim appears on front of Oneworld magazine in a burka and lingerie. "Rap Music Mogul Disrespects Muslims with Magazine Cover" whines Ali Asadullah of Islam Online. Damn, I might have to give up my boycott of RIAA member record labels in order to support this woman. The Oneworld website has the current cover, that one, up, but doesn't seem to have a good way to link to archival versions.

[ related topics: Music Sexual Culture ]

Charlene and I are going to be in New York City for a short time in January, arriving the 10^th, I'm leaving on the 18^th (Charlene's visit is shorter). We want to hit the museum of sex, and I'd like to get down to the village to check out the magazine wall at Tower, and obviously there's the Met, but anyone else got must-see things? Love to see some cool fringe theater, for instance.

Enough interest out there to maybe do an evening of folks at a restaurant?

[ related topics: Dan's Life Art & Culture ]

I'm reading this month's Funny Times, and the Planet Proctor column, apparently volume 20, 2002 quotes Mitch Ratcliffe as saying:

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

So various organizations are proposing fingerprint sensing trigger locks for handguns. Oxford Microdevices even advertises that their A336 Video Digital Signal Processor Chip is perfect for the task. We're on a roll, now how do we integrate tequila into this device?

[ related topics: Quotes Humor moron Guns ]

Yesterday's hike was up Cataract Creek. We couldn't get further than the falls because the creek was too high to safely cross, but Phil and Dave brought cameras and spent a while waiting for the perfect light, so it was a nice morning out. It was great to have the sunny day in amongst all the storms, we're supposed to get another one coming in today, and we're thinking it'd be cool to do the SF Vampire Tour on New Year's Eve, but I'm guessing that'll get rained out. The night before I'd been helping my neighbor set up some drainage, and got caught in the face by a rose bush (warning, graphic).

This morning as I walked past the California Street cable car turnaround they were replacing a grip. It's amazing how 19th century those things still are.

[ related topics: Photography Dan's Life Nature and environment Bay Area Automobiles ]

Over at Weird Ass Shit, the rev reports that his niece made Weekly World News. As to the veracity of the report (that she's renting out her husband at $50/hour), in another forum he reports that "she ... didn't realize until she saw the article that she was actually from Quebec".

[ related topics: Humor ]

On our recent trip to Santa Cruz we went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk. The year before, we'd gone to Disney's California Adventure, and I was struck with just how much better a "boardwalk" that was; that the original paled in the face of the cliché ridden fake copy. With that in mind I offer Umberto Eco's Casablanca, or, The Clichés Are Having a Ball, on why Casablanca is such a revered film.

[ related topics: Movies Writing California Culture Travel ]

tom asks: Have you ever thought of how Santa Claus is the perfect story for introducing atheism to kids?

[ related topics: Religion Children and growing up ]

For years, I've wanted a simple computer program to create non-vocal mindless background music. My MadPlayer came today, and.. for the bucks.. it rocks. It breaks things into 6 'tracks' and lets you play with them.. It's also a good FM radio. Plays MP3's.. plays MIDI.. Plays samples.. and Karaoke files (Bad Lyrics in Japanese). It'll even distort voice/audio input.. or sample it and store it. It's a cool toy..

[ related topics: Music Software Engineering ]