...that she might be a sufficient reason for young Candide

Colin got married

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 02:37:51 GMT

I took some pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8077241@N06/sets/72157601608018130/

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:49:22 GMT

Some friends and I decided to start a writing project which some people reading this might find engaging. It's a set of four (five) fiction blogs. They are located at:

Fiction Blag
Fiction Blig
Fiction Blug
Fiction Blyg

With a sort of extra auxiliary blog at:

Fiction Bleg

The idea is we rotate authors around the four blogs every couple of days. The
point is to write, not to write well, so they may be terrible. But feel free
to follow along!

HiFiDreams

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:09:22 GMT

I'm totally excited to note that we now have hi-fidelity electric sheep in our lobby at work. I had no part in the creation of the sweetness, but I had a hell of a lot to do with jumping the bureaucratic hurdles to get it set up, and it's fricking gorgeous. Spot's loaning it to us for a couple of months. I wish I had the resources to buy one from him for myself. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. But at least for the next chunk of time, I can go spend a few minutes each day staring at it and feeling happy.

Verizon Math

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:20:57 GMT

God. I need to start tape recording my conversations with phone reps. Is that legal? I don't really care if it's ethical, there needs to be more exposition like this of how shockingly stupid people can be. (NOTE: I fully respect there are smart tech support people. I also wish I had recordings of some of the amazingly savvy and on-point conversations I've had with non-morons. But they are certainly diamonds in the rough.)

I say this after reading this blog and then looking at XKCD's contribution. Funny stuff. I nearly wet myself reading that transcript. Oh, man. I have soo been there.

"Does this jacket make me look chubby?"

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 06:06:59 GMT

Some folks have expressed irritation that I posted pictures from Shannon without posting a picture of Shannon.

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:41:31 GMT

Good weekend!

Friday: My employer threw a rather large holiday party. I went and ate and drank and danced. It was sweet.

Saturday: Threw a party for virginwolf and broke in the newly decorated condo. SO much fun. My beautiful girlfriend took some photographs. Did I mention she rocks the camera? Little bit.

Sunday: Took some Mii time to play with my Wii.

Matt cooked us dinner, which was tasty. Went to a housewarming party and ate awesome scones.

Getting killed at a zebra crossing

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:28:06 GMT

So, it turns out that Yahoo has a shuttle that picks up the same place as the one I take in the mornings. But I'm not a real consistent shuttle user, lately, so I was prepared to accept that things had changed a bit.

Shuttle is white? Okay, fine, maybe we ran out of the other ones.

I don't recognize any of these people? Well, he looks familiar, and I think I saw a badge over there. And hell, they're all geeks with laptops out and backpacks on.

Driver doesn't check for ID? Guess this guy's a little more laid back. Good to know in case I forget my badge...

Shoreline exit fading in the rear view mirror? Um excuse me...yeah, you with the...oh, shit...you with the yahoo logo on your backpack...where is this shuttle going? I said, where is this shuttle going?

"Yahoo...?"
"Ah...right then."
"I guess you didn't mean to get on the Yahoo shuttle?"
"Not so much."

After taking an extra leg to Santa Clara, and then a taxi back, you lose a lot of the "fast and cheap" benefit of the whole shuttle plan.

Painting

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 03:44:51 GMT

So, my place is finally getting painted, among other things, and I expect it to be pretty dang awesome by the end of the month. It's already looking really cool. Very exciting. Amusingly, I had forgotten that gleemie suggested I paint my condo the colors from my LJ, and I had not intended to do that, but what's funny is that's actually essentially what I've done, though notably I did not stop there. Not counting the grey for the projector "screen" or varied sheens, I'm using 8 different colors. And my entire kitchen is painted in chalkboard. Not just the color -- it's actually a giant chalkboard. Turns out that's a simple matter of using the right paint.

Also I bought huge couches and comfy easy chairs, and a giant mirror for the hallway. This place is going to be frickin' awesome when it's all finished. And it's going to be 80% of the way there by December. I'll post pictures once things settle down.

In other news, I'm dating somebody for, let's see, six weeks, now? Around there, anyway. So that's awesome. And I've recovered from the knee injury and subsequent sprained ankle finally, so I went for a hike on Sunday and a run this morning, and I'm so very pleased by that.

Scott Draves

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 04:05:55 GMT

This guy is really quite amazing. I'm jealous of his life path. I've decided I want to know more about what goes on inside electric sheep. I'm worried that I don't have near enough math background to follow the actual engine behind fractal flames, but the shit is fully open source so I'm allowed to _try_. The first order of business, I guess, is to convert my home desktop to a linux box. I'm debating the wisdom of that plan, for obvious reasons (windows actually _works_, and I can play _games_ on it) but I think my life will be markedly improved if the fun thing I do when I get home from work is hack on code, and I have two projects, one minor and one major, that would be totally worthwhile to play with, and neither is particuarly work related.

One is rewriting my color scheme randomizer in a more general way using Ruby instead of Python. This will a) teach me ruby b) give me more control over random color schemes, and c) let me finally contribute my favorite (yes, it's trivial, but I love it every single day) coding accomplishment of the last five years to the general public. Hell, if I do it correctly it probably won't even that hard to work it into emacs, but I'll leave that to somebody who cares, because the second project will be:

Learning more about electric sheep and understanding how the system ticks both in terms of the distributed system and in terms of the fractal rendering. I'm better equipped than most people on earth to understand the former, and I figure I can work my way through the latter. Worst case maybe I'll pick up a book or class or three on chaos and fractals. I mean how hard can it be really, right? ::whimper::

Meantime, I'm going to try to talk Draves into coming and giving a talk. Failing that maybe I can stand him a pint some time.

Edit: ::grimace:: Well, plan A was somewhat stymied by Ubuntu's inability to handle displaying X on my hardware configuration. I suppose I'll have to hack at that some time when...well, when I have some time. Not really what I wanted that path to look like, but I'm not exactly shocked. ::sigh::

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:52:21 GMT

Not confirmed yet, but I might have Dr. Love for a roommate soon. Yay! ::claps happily::

Edit: Or not. Rats.

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:45:04 GMT

I have several new favorite things. But first, I want to comment that my friend who sent me the rugs is awesome, and I love them (the person and the rugs). Once it's appropriate, I will post pictures of the newly decorated place. Don't hold your breath, though, as there are weeks of work between here and there.

Anyway, favorite things. First of all, the best screensaver ever. Documentation sucks, but it's the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time that didn't have a heartbeat. I am totally seriously considering increasing the priority of getting a nice large flat panel video display for my living room where at least 50% of the motivation would be to display electric sheep on a larger surface during parties. Alternatively I might get an HD projector and keep one of my walls white. It's just that good. And it's TOTALLY FREE. Note: You'll have to let it run overnight (or two) before it gets cool. Be patient. I seriously thought it was broken for the first 24 hours or so, but I was too busy to 'fix' it, which is good since that would have been misguided.

Second of all, and this is even more geeky, because you have to use linux to care, I am in love with abcde and mpd/mpc. These were recommended to me by evan, and unsurprisingly they are amazing.

abcde is a linux CD-ripping script that weaves together things like cdparanoia to make cd ripping absolutely utterly painless. (Word to the wise: make sure you have DMA enabled with hdparm if applicable. Once I figured this out, ripping took approximately 5% as long. No that's not a typo.)

mpc is the commandline interface to mpd, which means that anywhere, everywhere, in the middle of my thought process hacking through a file, I can rattle off a command like "mpc clear; mpc add Ni<tab>; mpc play" and suddenly I'm listening to The Downward Spiral. And that's a complicated example. I can bind that shit to keystrokes, too, because it's JUST AN INTERFACE. So clean!

earthquake!

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 03:23:51 GMT

This was a comparatively small earthquake, but I did feel it all the way across the bay. I thought "that's odd, it feels like the building is wobbling", and did a quick web search. Sure enough. I'm excited that I felt a (basically harmless) earthquake, but I'm even more excited that I was able to check in real time and learn the exact parameters of the event online. That's just cool.

PS: Thanks, LJ. My mood WAS neutral until I scanned through the list of moods and read "horny". Oh, yeah. Sex. Damnit. Well yeah, now I am.

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:22:27 GMT

I have to apply some pagerank weight to this post from skycrashesdown. It's too fucking awesome not to spread a bit.

Will. You be. My neighbor?

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:21:11 GMT

Get 'em while they're hot!

you see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:40:23 GMT

Past due for an exhibitionist update (and a bid at the I'm Feeling Lucky hit for YAVS*).

After a "break" in which I had an actual weekend at my disposal, I spent a week actually writing code (gasp!) at work for once, which was really quite refreshing. I've also been playing with ubuntu and ion3, and I'm a huge fan of both. </geek>

Then I drove down to Santa Barbara with Mo and Ed to participate in my dear friends' wedding. It was a simply fabulous time. To begin with, it was the first time my whole draw group has been in one room for at least a year or two, and god do I miss that (see also my last post). We were all up on stage, too, as the wedding party was draw group, siblings, siblings spouses, and a couple of close childhood friends. Adam officiated, which worked out nicely since not only was he a kickass officiant, but it brought perfect symmetry to the assembled (okay, the endgeek may have been jumping the gun -- while you're down there, shoes, etc.)

I was feeling pretty much as attractive as I've felt all year, to the nines in a tuxedo, on display front and center, and surrounded by people who like me. There are worse ways to spend an evening, I can tell you that right now. On top of which I wound up having a fantastic time flirting and dancing with the illustrious Amy Rose** (told ya). Frustrated that the evening had to end where it did, but I was driving all the way back to Ventura, and not just for my own benefit. Note to self: the wedding costs what it costs, quit trying to fucking cut corners.

At least I showed up this time. But still, lesson learned.

Came back to my work computer totally asshosed by god only knows what and utterly unusable. Had to reinstall my operating system. There goes Monday. But then I had a really cool evening with S&S and went to sleep totally content. And chased that with getting DSL installed (finally!) so I'm writing from a real honest-to-god internet connection in my own home. No more living-room war-driving for me! Now I just need to figure out how to wire my ethernet through the house.

Oh, speaking of the house, Dr. Love managed to find a plethora of gorgeous turkish rugs and tapestries which will be arriving soon. Then I will choose coordinated paint colors and buy another couch. It's on, yo.

And then I went in to work for two whole hours of actual physical presence (I spent the morning hacking over an ssh tunnel -- blowx0rs), and dashed back to check out Foreign Cinema with virginwolf and chase that with Ti Couz 10, white chocolate Suzette, and port back on my couch. I managed to wake up enough to see her to a taxi (yeah, I'm awesome company on weeknights) and then return to update LJ. And now, see John, see John pass the fuck out.

_{* Yet Another Vanity Search -- Yes, I know where your mind went, and you're dirty. God knows, too. You heard me.}
_{** Photo courtesy of my friend Adrian, who took some sweet shots of the gathering}

LA experience

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:43:51 GMT

Had dinner tonight and got seated next to James van der Beek and his wife. Hopefully I didn't stare too forcefully in the process of trying to figure out why he looked familiar. Note that by "next to", I mean I could have reached over and tapped his wife on the shoulder without getting up. I'd rather have that experience with an actor about whose work I'm actually excited, but at least this is somebody who got to kiss Katie Holmes. That, I admire.

Edit: I should mention, in case somehow they find this post months from now: I'm not 100% sure it was his wife I sat next to. I'm 100% sure it was him, though.

You know you've lived in the city too long when...

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 16:47:10 GMT

...you see the headline Crack Is Found in Shuttle's Foam Insulation and your first thought is "Goddamn, those bastards will hide it anywhere."

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:06:43 GMT

After watching a preview for Leading Ladies in the theater before Truth I picked up copies of Goldfrapp's small library of full releases. Reminds me of Frou Frou in the ease with which I can lose myself in the music instantly. Not particularly deep, but the world just disappears around me. Outstanding.

Got scheduled for an MRI today to look at my knee, but it sounds like I have one (or both) of two problems, one of which will take another two months to heal during which I can bike or swim, but otherwise no lasting problem, and the other of which will _probably_ be the same deal, but might be more problematic/persistent depending on what they see in there. For the moment, time to pick up a new form of exercise. Grr.

Really looking forward to going home to visit family this weekend, but in the meantime, I need to finish this change, so ttfn.

An Inconvenient Truth

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:36:15 GMT

As the credits rolled, I thought to myself "well my resolve is unchanged, but I don't feel as moved as I did when he spoke in person". Then I turned to leave, and I saw a third of the audience sitting dumbstruck. Looks of fear, concern, worry, uncertain purpose. No. It's just that I've already seen this. I knew what was coming. It was as moving, only less shockingly so. See? They feel it, too.

<a href="http://www.climatecrisis.net>Take what action you can.</a>

Wed, 17 May 2006 21:28:37 GMT

A crow just landed on the ledge outside my window and stood watching me with interest for a minute or so before moving off in search of more edible treats. So cool. I love this new office greatly.

Tue, 16 May 2006 23:05:04 GMT

This is pretty cool: A game that teaches you how to Google. It's fun, to boot. I'm curious to know what their motivation was...

Relaxed Saturday

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 01:04:01 GMT

This is how a Saturday is supposed to work. Awesome. I got up this morning and chatted with my roommates over a bagel, then rousted virginwolf for a run along the Presidio cliffs looking out at the Golden Gate and contemplating suicide. Then I ditched her back at her place, and met Serena at her apartment. We walked over to the Castro and had tea at Samovar, which I still love, and then after stopping back at her place we took a trip to Haight-Ashbury to convert some of her used CDs into cash and shop at various random thrift stores. All I bought was a packet of incense, but Sweenah found a great pink dress for five bucks and a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran for three more. We stopped and got coffee a couple times along the way, and had a wonderful time chatting the afternoon away. I finally left her at her apartment again and returned home at 5 PM to get some food and prepare for a couple of house parties this evening. Yay for Saturday!

Tomorrow I brunch with the 'Sted and the MSG, and then we shall see what the day brings. Life is grand.

Woohoo!

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:17:54 GMT

Finally something I can show my mom! I had a small part in making this stuff good, but I'm a large part of the reason it will work for you and 6 billion of your closest friends without just choking on the effort:

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine-translation-live.html

It's far from perfect. But I'm damned proud of it. We drank champagne today, fo shiz.

Amusing Distractions

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 22:01:07 GMT

My friend cygnoir has embarked upon a new mode of public expression.

If you are looking for entertainment, I encourage you to check it out. It's very low-key, but fun.

PWNED!

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 07:20:57 GMT

I am completely jazzed.

It's mine.

Great location.

Sweet ass place:

And no, the furnishings are not mine. I'll try to be as cool as the current owner is. I'll probably fail, but it gives me something to aspire to. Clearly we have similar tastes. He even hung the same IKEA pattern on his walls.