Panicky search for a cat-friendly apartment in Santa Barbara turned up some amusing things, like an "apartment" that's very clearly a garage with a rug on the floor (sheesh!) and ... a "Hobbit House". I am very sad that the hobbit house is $5000/month and not in the right area to bike to work, but .. text and pictures saved for posterity/amusement:

(view full entry for contents)

Hooray for eccentric house design. If only we could warp time and space to get this fountain nearby...

Morse code spells out every letter in a communication. (view full entry for contents)

Second attempt at eating Med. Grill failed - again arrived when it was closing. It worked out ok though - ate at Aladdin's instead with some new company after forcing myself not to be shy. I still must have some sleek soon.

Much moreso than Columbus, I think I will miss Pittsburgh - apart from the cold, it's a wonderful town (even if takes some time and boldness to see the good parts), and if I ever find myself back here to start a family, I would not be disappointed. Boston and various parts of Europe are other possibilities. I doubt I'm settling down for good in Santa Barbara, but we'll see - if I decide to go to grad school or manage to establish a "life partner" relationship with someone are the most likely things that will next change my course in life. I think Squirrel Hill will hold a special place in my heart either way.

Starting to wrap up things here: saying goodbyes to people and places. (view full entry for contents)

Moving preparations: (view full entry for contents)

I need someone willing to assume my lease in Pittsburgh. $500/month (does not include utilities), 1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 kitchen, one bathroom, lower floor of a house with only a shared entryway, laundry in the basement with lots of storage down there, parking in back. Outside lighting is good, the windows are fairly large. It's right by the intersection of Bartlett and Murdoch, a reasonably short walk to campus or to the 61 buslines and a very quick walk to Schenley Park. Anyone interested? Beginning date is fairly flexible.

Another quizlike thing soon....

To be philosophically alone: easy to feel lost, lonely, even if one has a reasonably solid compass of one's own. Idea of community: some parts of community guard a set of posts that define a group, notion of heresy/wrong path allows notion of right path. Sometimes ingroup/outgroup needed - no "fellowship of people who eat food" as part of how we define ourselvess. (view full entry for contents)

In other news: (view full entry for contents)

A bit more on that front, how long should we expect movies, as-is, to keep existing? I suspect that the software to produce hollywood special effects will eventually be in everyone's hands, and that indie films will destroy Hollywood as an institution (perhaps Lars Von Trier's efforts will be seen as "culturally futuristic"-but-retro by then). With the right enabling technologies (Youtube, Apple, possibly Amazon will be the first generation companies in-the-centre of this), creativity and storytelling will presumably be the core of what films are about.

Slight update on the moving thing: (view full entry for contents)

Amusement: Title reminds me of webrings, a one-time meta-organisational fad on the Web. I think at the time my webpage was part of both the OS/2 and the general operating systems webpage.

Thoughts drawn back to a quote from the opening of the last episode of the Britcom "Spaced" - "They say that the family of the 21st century is made up of friends, not relatives". (view full entry for contents)

I really like how SqHill has both large social circles and a neighbourhood feeling that they fit together into. The ability to walk around to get everywhere one needs is vital to that, I think (I recently had a discussion with someone whether cars or tv are worse for modern society - I went with tv, but the case for cars is not a weak one). The feeling is a bit stronger here than anywhere else I've lived - I'm not sure how easy it is for students-away-from-home to broadly participate in these things in most cities (Columbus had the "art scene", but I never felt part of a neighbourhood - did any such neighbourhoods have what we have here, or is that something not all places have?).. I wonder, if that is in fact missing from a lot of areas of the US, what would it take to bring it about? Presumably suburbs, cars-as-necessity, and tv are part of the problem. I belive people who "need to drive" to go anywhere, regularly watch TV for a few hours every day, and live in the suburbs are less likely to be interesting people or to participate in culture. What can be done?

Most people I know are of the relatively stationary type in arrangements, but a few are the sort that can talk about spending a few months in place X, a few months and Y, staying in Z for a bit, and then going to N. I've had a certain amount of jealousy/admiration for those who can manage that very mobile life, (view full entry for contents)

Today there was Sleek, and it was insanely good. It is, unfortunately, not a food that seems to be particularly well-known by the internet, so I shall describe it. Spinach, black-eyed peas, the light taste (but no texture - maybe ground in?) of onions, cracked wheat, all sauteed, with some lemons to squeeze over it. It apparently hails from Lebanon, and there are, of course, other ways to make it - here is a different one. I hopefully will try Kassab's sleek sometime before I go - while they're not conveniently located for me anymore (no more free bus pass), I should stop by the Beehive again anyhow and I've loved everything else I've eaten at Kassab's.

I sometimes wonder if middle easterners had some people following the same vegetarian traditions that Indians have - Israeli/Arab restaurants seem just as good as Indian ones at having a wide variety of non-meat dishes to order. It is, of course, possible that "variety restaurants" in big cities in the US always have vegetarian dishes because the same demographic that eats a lot of foreign food (drawing mainly from liberal educated city-folk, I would guess) captures almost all vegetarians in the US (apart, of course, from American Hindus, who may or may not be liberal or educated in the same way - incidentally, Pittsburgh's Hindu temple was the first in the United States).

Just a dream: (view full entry for contents)

I have boxes, but still no place to live in SB nor anyone to take my current place. Hopefully one or both of these will resolve soon. In yet another "nooooooo! Why must this happen when I'm leaving?" moment (surprising numbers of these), the Rocky Horror Picture Show now seems to finally have a regular cast and place here. Damnit. It is seriously not fair for Pgh to keep suggesting all these things when it is theoretically too late to stay but not actually so. Job offers at CMU that actually sound kinda good, new friendships(?), revival of rocky, sudden interest in figuring out and going to grad school, people I might've hung out with more had they lived nearer moving really nearby, Grr. I don't know whether to be more mad at the world for providing the situations or myself for being pulled so neatly towards ugly unsure limbos whenever I try to make changes in my life.

Decided, based on a lot of separate reasons, not to take that job in SB, and to reopen myself to considering jobs at CMU. Partly this was economic (good rule of thumb is that you should make 30% more outside of academia in exchange for losing out on university benefits/lifestyle, and with both this and the different costs of living in CA means that while the offer was for more, it was for less than I should be making), partly because I'm near my surviving set of grandparents here, and partly because, now that I'm seriously thinking about grad school, academia seems to be the right place to be. I still will likely move out there if the awesome job at UCSB ends up happening (I am willing to live on little money if I am in academia), but for now, getting back into CMU sounds like a good idea. I applied for a job called "Reverse Engineer" that, as described, sounds more like it should be called "Hacker" - a lot of greyhat stuff that's the kind of work I often dreamed of when I was a kid. I'll keep applying at UCSB too, and maybe I should consider applying at UTAustin too. I think enough different reasons have come together here that this decision feels like the right one. I dunno if I'll ever settle in Pittsburgh, and I will leave sometime in the meantime, but only for the right reasons when it meets the right goals.

Soon there will be a return to your usually-scheduled offhand thoughts about politics, philosophy, and the like.

Sometimes I like to imagine my cats are deadly beasts, and I try to figure out how to escape the apartment (or, alternatively, make it under the covers to wait until they fall asleep) without being eaten. Alas, when I make a dash for either, they tend to figure it out and chase me like mad demons. Perhaps this is the sort of thing that often goes on in cat brains....

An interesting issue brought up in British politics - Gordon Brown was criticised for suggesting creation of human-"animal" hybrids (admixes) to harvest cells from. As I understand, the background of the issue is this: It is legally and/or morally unacceptable in Britain to create humans that would fill that role. Instead, the nucleus of a human cell is deposited into a cell from another animal that has its nucleus removed, and that makes a viable cell that is allowed to grow for harvesting. Unless I am misunderstanding something, admixes don't really serve a purpose: (view full entry for contents)

In other news, I am a complete flake and can't in fact come to solid conclusions about anything. Thinking about fitting neatly back into a life not much unlike the one I wrapped up at the end of January now scares the hell out of me. Talking more with the company I turned down on salary bits is very tempting. Damnit! Complete and utter flake. Maybe I really do need a change of pace, and maybe that really is more important. How can I reasonably plan my life when what I want to do can swing around like this?

Perspective on gay marriage (likely not far from standard US secular liberal perspective), which I may have given several times before, but is again in the news: (view full entry for contents)

Feeling a bit better again about not moving - (view full entry for contents)I hope I can use this to lay to rest this vacillation. On the upside, I got the first feeler from CMU about the greyhat "hacker" position, which sounds pretty awesome. If that ends up happening, it'll probably be the most CS-ish job I've had - I just need to make sure CERT doesn't have a dress code (I don't do dress codes).

Unrelated, I am increasingly convinced that Wikileaks is one of the most important sites on the internet for advancing societal openness. It is, like some other worthy sites, an unfortunate magnet for lawsuits, perhaps because it's inherently uncareful about disclosure of everything it comes across. I hold that its level of openness is a worthwhile goal though, and that the "new reality" that some judges have grumbled about is one worth forcing on all societies and legal systems Wikileaks can affect.

Rhea stood, (view full entry for contents)

Possibly interesting:

• I'm not sure if it should be illegal to continue as-is, but it's probably a good thing that the US Treasury might be pushed to make money distinguishable by touch. Given how much money is in circulation, it may be a long time before any actual changes would become common enough to really help the blind out though.
• I am frightened by both the photos and the ideas of Libertarian hopefuls for the LP Presidential nomination. People with different aesthetics and/or politics may, of course, feel differently.
• It seems very unfortunate to me that the Public Order Act of the UK (see section five) is broad enough to bar a lot of public discourse, both because such discourse (and criticism/mockery) is something which may cover pertinent social issues/be part of the normal competition of ideas, and because barring it goes against traditions of autonomy in speech that are important for happiness. In this case, the application is a kid who called the Church of Scientology a cult and faces a trial over that. I understand that Europeans have different political traditions, including in some nations a greater tendency to protect "sensibilities", prevent growth of extremism, and similar. In some circumstances I feel that more European approaches to steering and protecting society are warranted, but I feel they are misapplied here, first because the Church of Scientology (like Falun Gong) is in fact a dangerous cult that should be both labeled as such and supressed, and second because barring a strong argument otherwise I hold that legal traditions on public criticism/mockery/expression should be very permissive. Some types of expression, particularly those tied to groups with a theocratic or racist agenda, may be stifled given a sufficiently strong argument (the banning of the swastika in many contexts may make sense in Germany or Russia given the existence of violent subgroups that intimidate and use violence against foreigners, and prosecution of groups like the Ku Klux Klan may make sense here), and I hold that mostly-but-not-entirely-free speech is better than either completely free speech or heavily restricted speech. Britain's Public Order Act is too restricted, I feel.