From arms to stilts - frozen limbs slumber and become alien tools..

I've mentioned mjd's Advocacy before - a fantastic game for geeks trying to be clever (without irritations like trying to figure out rules ;P). While walking yesterday to visit some friends, that idea hooked up with a past amusement - (view full entry for contents)

JasonM is thinking of moving to CA as well, which would rock if I end up nearby. I am still waiting for more Unixy jobs to open up at UCSB though, and while I wait my days are full of reading, walks in the park, DOFUS, and occasionally playing on the Wii. I'm having a good time programming for and playing with the OLPC as well - the quirks in the environment are things I've largely figured out, and I've found a number of things that should be done better. I still need to figure out to whom I should be sending patches for various things though. I've still been seeing very little of people I know in Pgh...

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On the way to grab food today, I walked by an old woman doing yardwork, chopping logs while an outdoor fireplace/grill burned them. The scent of wood reminds me of boy scouts, but also reminded me that different woods have different burning smells, many of them quite pleasant. It would be interesting to imagine pairing wood smells with food (akin to wine pairing) - I imagine there is enough interaction between those smells and the food to make such a thing worthwhile, although actually doing this would best be done either in homes (where wine pairing is easy because limited food is available at a given meal) or in restaurants that have a separate fireplace for each table. This part is a challenge.

Recently rewatched Ghostbusters - (view full entry for contents)

If you could change 5 things in the Unix tradition, having the changes being standard across most unices today and as integrated as other design aspects, what would they be? Every so often I return to this question.. My ideas: (view full entry for contents)

Sometimes I'm a bit weirded out/curious about the border between the nutrient regulation stuff going on in my body (and other "primal" bits) and the higher thought parts. I had a nice veggie sandwich at Bruegger's, combined with Mango Juice, and after some tea, I swung through Giant Eagle, and Naked Juice (a healthy blended-fruit beverage) wasn't calling to me like it normally was, presumably because those systems calculated that I have adequate supplies of fruit-derived vitamins/other nutrients. Right now that interface is at the level of food cravings - weird to think about how that is so different than a lot of the other parts of thought (although tiredness and the like are similar).. could someone learn to "read" that system on a higher level and "query" their body about its current nutritional needs? It'd be amusing to be able to summon up a bar chart or something like that into one's vision, but that may be putting the bar a bit high. I suppose diabetics have a limited aided ability to do that with their blood test devices... It seems like there's actually a surprisingly long border between these realms of thought - almost uncomfortably long if one chooses to identify tightly enough with higher-order thought.

(view full entry for contents)Generalisability of this to real life: an interesting question - we can recognise that some but not all types of pleasures in life have an "achievement element" to them. Some people describe their job this way (more often those involved in white collar jobs, I imagine). (view full entry for contents)

Today: Fixed a stupid bug with my blog software. I forgot to set a default for a boolean field in the database, and so various tests on its truth and not being false gave inconsistent results. This makes the Atom stream actually get all the entries now. I discovered this while testing changes that make the Atom feed is compliant (I hope) with 1.0 of the spec. I have a suspicion that the RSS feed is broken (will test/fix some other time). Do people still use RSS anywhere?

If any usually-out-of-town-people are in town for carnival and want to grab lunch/dinner/tea, please let me know. Likewise with people who are always here that don't see me very often.

Categorical imperative: Kant's cousin idea to the golden rule - can serve as a means towards virtue (both in defining what virtue means to us and in keeping it central enough to us that we can effectively strive for it). Anticategorical imperative: Likewise. How so?(view full entry for contents)

It smells like someone has planted a Ginkgo tree somewhere nearby. Airing out the apartment is decidedly less pleasant now. Sometimes I am bothered that my indian neighbours produce such excellent smelling food (my cooking ability is only so-so), although I suppose I'd rather be hungry than nauseated.

Just for laughs (or maybe not, I'm not sure), I put my resumé on monster.com, and a few hours later I got a call from someone who was trying to get me to switch my 403b funds into a 401k his company managed. He lied more than a bit - I'm glad I know enough about investment to see through that stuff. I'm bothered that our economy probably has a large number of people and companies that make their living preying on people who are either undereducated or not paying attention. It's funny how people complain about lawyers more than these folk - practice of law deserves a more nuanced approach while marketing is much more broadly a field that hurts society.

It interests me how much difference there is in observance of Pesach - I knew before that Haggadot (making a go at the pluralisation - possibly wrong) vary widely in theme and content, and have been to a few Seders of various types, but apparently there are other areas of difference I had not heard of too.

A long time ago, I took karate. (view full entry for contents)

People before and after they move in with their significant other: significant difference in their home(view full entry for contents)

The album "Fundamental" by the Pet Shop Boys has some really nice tunes on it. Also, I imagine I'd be having a fun time travelling around the country/world right now if I knew I'd get a job shorly after I get back and didn't feel I have to save money so much. There are many places I'd love to go see that this would be a good time for.. Hmm.

Strange similarity recently struck me - my strong preference for working with Unix in a job is similar to my strong preference in dating gals who are atheist/agnostic - I remember my parents always criticising the latter as "closing doors" - the former is also true, and for very similar reasons. (view full entry for contents)

My craving for Fondue has reached epic levels. Hopefully I will either have success at cooking some or find a restaurant that makes a good one soon. "Welsh Rarebit" would be a suitable cousin.

I used to love the show, but somehow the intro to Peewee's Playhouse is now terrifying.

On the upside(?), Cyndi Lauper and Whoopi Goldberg are still hot in an 80s kind of way.