Powdered Non Sequitur Man

The scene: we’ve just cored and smooshed a lot of strawberries, and Fawn is stirring in the pectin to make freezer jam.

Her: It’s such a beautiful color. It’s much prettier than the cooked jam.
Me: Yeah, that stuff gets a little bit lighter pink.
Her: Not this deep red.
Me: Like the blood of your enemies!
Her: What? No! It’s not even blood-colored!
Me: Well, no.
Her: Why did you say that?
Me: Because it sounded Klingon.
Her: Why are we sounding Klingon when we’re making jam?
Me: Exactly.

…it’s still weird to IM someone sitting one desk away.

Despite my having slept for at least 15 of the last 24 hours, and despite F feeling even more sick than me, we got up off the couch and went to the Aladdin Theater for tonight’s Peter Murphy show. Peter, however, must have had the same thing we have, because the show, it was canceled.

Still, we got our money back and got to see some pretty outfits, so the evening wasn’t a total loss.

[One] thing that made yesterday teh aw3som3: tiggrrl and the_misha taught their adorable two-year-old to say “OH NOES!”

Some Berkeley students built a computer vision system to play Rock Band.

Give me my violas NOW, or I’ll prosecute you!

Because there’s nothing worse than trying to get on the Internet without enough spee.

Clay Shirky is a really interesting writer, if you happen to find analysis of the intersection between software and sociology interesting. His new book “Here Comes Everybody” looks quite interesting (being too cheap to buy the hardback, I’ve got it on hold at the library).

Here’s a bit from a blog post he wrote recently:

Imagine a technology that, from its inception, threatens to throw intellectual society into chaos, a technology that radically democratizes both production and consumption of media while creating countless new forms of expression. Now imagine that while some of the new material produced is of lasting value, most is evanescent at best, and that the resulting flood of material weakens traditional institutions, eroding their special place in society by making the functions they provide seem irrelevant to young people.

Imagine, in other words, that this technology creates a stark choice between preserving the current state of society vs. embracing the new, even given the destruction of of traditional values and institutions. Which side would you be on?

I don’t have to ask, because if you are reading a Penguin blog, you have already identified yourself as one of the revolutionaries, an embracer of the most intellectually radical technology the world has ever seen: the printing press.

Read the rest here.

A coworker of mine back at Wolfram & HartHellerEhrman had a wonderful spoof of Goofus and Gallant on his wall. I was remembering it recently, and naturally, it’s on the Web. Enjoy: Looking Forward: Goofus and Gallant.

According to the Cost of War counter, we are currently spending $3,951 per second to… uh… wait, what are we doing in Iraq this week? Oh, yeah. JACK SHIT, that’s what.

Check my math if you like. The site lists a figure of $341.4 million per day. There are (24 hrs/day * 60 mins/hr * 60 secs/min) = 86,400 seconds in a day. $341,400,000/day divided by 86,400 secs/day = $3,951.39/second.

(Amusingly, the JavaScript required to display the money counter is taking about 25-30% of one of my CPUs.)

I was prompted to look this up by an 8th-grader on the bus this morning who was telling his buddy about an imprisoned illegal immigrant whose health care was costing the county $25,000 a month. I wish I’d had this number handy half an hour ago; in the time it would have taken me to repeat it, we’d have racked up $25k and then some.

“Coming up on All Things Considered, a review of the new Nine Inch Nails album.”

I did indeed scan the ultrasound pics, but I totally spaced on blogging them. For those of you who haven’t already seen them, here they are.

So GTD is pretty nifty, and OmniFocus is a really nice tool for doing GTD. I bought it while it was still in beta, and like it muchly… but I haven’t really been using it.

One of the basic problems I’ve had is that the best time for me to Get Things Done is when my sweetie is using the computer. Keeping a digital to-do list makes it rather difficult to know which Ts to GD when I’m not at the keyboard. I’m absolutely awful with paper, so this has effectively meant that I have no system. But a month ago, I bought an iPod Touch, and realized that if I could export my to-do lists into an email account, I could access them wherever I happened to be (assuming I happened to have wifi access, which these days is almost all the time).

So, in spare moments here and there, I’ve been hacking on a Ruby script to do just that. I’ve just gotten it into a usable-enough state that I felt comfortable publishing it, so here it is: OmniFocus2IMAP. And, for the amusement value, it’s licensed under the WTFPL.

Me: I’d like to return this, please. [I hand over the box and the receipt.]

Fred Meyer Customer Service Unit: Is there anything wrong with it?

Me: Well, that depends on your perspective.

FMCSG: [He looks up from his cursory inspection of the box to make eye contact.]

Me: As a stereo, it’s great. However, I have a degree in Computer Science, and I was unable to get the alarm to work.

FMCSG: …So would you say ‘manufacturer defect’ or ‘crappy programming’?

Me: Bad user interface design.

FMCSG: Oh, okay. So we don’t have to write it off; we can sell it again to some other… [he stops short of saying "sucker."]

Me: Yeah. Maybe someone with a master’s degree.

This morning I did something I’ve never done before: I went to a 20-week prenatal ultrasound scan. Wow. Just, wow.

The upshot: yes, we know Kermit’s [probable] sex. No, we aren’t going to tell you. More importantly, all the major bits appear to be present and accounted for — despite a brief moment of thinking, “that picture looks kind of like a Dalek.” There will be no Daleks today. Unless you click here.

(And, yes, I’ll scan and post the pictures soon.)

Damn, this looks like fun.

An amusing email exchange, with names changed to protect the innocent (and the abducted):

[...] I’m going to talk with [Y] and see what he thinks of your proposal (as soon as I can find him, I think he was carried off by wild meercats).
-[X]

A better testimonial for “Meercats-B-Gone!” spray I have not heard…
-Sam

That’s the problem, they’re gone and they took [Y] with them!
-[X]

It seems I may not even be able to stay away from school for a year. Next term, one of my favourite* professors will be teaching the one course I really wish I’d been able to take, but didn’t.

* (Yes, I spelled that right. He’s a Brit, after all…)

“Folks, you have to be back when the break is finished. This is… not acceptable.”

–Spoken over the PA system by one of the staffers in the jury duty room, upon discovering that two jurors were not present 14 minutes after the end of break.

Now, off the top of your head: Out of the ~150 people here today, who are the ones who need chastising? That’s right, boys and girls — the two people who can’t hear you. *sigh*

I was amused by the New York Public Library’s acronym, and came up with the following slogan. Something tells me it won’t be a hit with their staff:

NYPL — sucking at the teat of knowledge since 1911!

Oh, and I’m keeping track of stuff to check out in NYC on Google Maps. You can follow along here if you’re curious.