Archive for February, 2009
Thanks for all the get-better notes; they really cheered me up. I’m sitting in my aunt’s house today trying to push fluids; it got to the point last night where I decided that I couldn’t take care of myself any more and called for a ride, immodium, acetaminophen, and a non-vomit-covered place to sleep. When my aunt came to pick me up and I staggered into the car, she noted that I’d forgotten my glasses (which are on my face whenever I’m conscious), my pajama pants were inside out, and – the kicker – I hadn’t brought my laptop. I explained that I’d considered it, but that I didn’t feel like wiping regurgitated food off my laptop casing and backpack, which I felt too nauseous to sit upright and use anyway (so as you can see, I’ve somewhat improved since).
Needless to say, it looks like web4dev isn’t happening for me. However, I have hopes that by Friday I can get back to the apartment and clean up the Sudden Onset Sickness mess before Chris gets back. I don’t think my dsickness/dt has ever been this high before.
I can only imagine how far behind I’m getting on work. :) This is my “make sure nothing catches on fire if I don’t respond to stuff” 5min check + sending “no NYC this week” emails time + someone else please run QA on Thursday plea, and then I’m going to turn on a “will read when healthy” email autoresponder. Then I likely won’t be online until I’m significantly better.
Oh, and Erin is wonderful.
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 2 Comments »
Uh… if anyone expects stuff from me / to see me in the next 12 hours, you may not get it. Just a warning. I think I’ve emailed everyone affected, but am posting this in case I missed something.
Immediately before I was supposed to leave the house for NYC, my stomach abruptly decided that emptying itself repeatedly was The Right Thing To Do!!! It brought some friends (like Nausea, Dizziness, and Headaches) along to play. I’m still trying to convince it (via fluids and hot, bland cereal) that other courses of action may be somewhat wiser. I have no idea what the heck is going on; going from bouncing around the room in glee to lying in bed clutching my abdomen in <1hr is somewhat weird, but I don’t feel sufficiently awful enough to panic.
So I’ll probably be in NYC tomorrow if I’m feeling better. I’m going to try to sleep this off now. If I wake up in a few hours and still feel like this, I’ll start worrying and making phone calls, but I’m hoping it was something that I ate*, which would mean I will feel better rather shortly.
*despite not having eaten in over 16 hours. Er… yeah.
I wouldn’t mind revoking my adulthood privileges for a few hours right now if it meant someone would do my laundry and make me noodle soup. Oh well. I have hot cereal. I have warm water. I have the internet. And right now I’m going to try to sleep again.
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 3 Comments »
I’ve been a bit too jealous lately. Sometimes I do get sucked into the trap of thinking that employment == usefulness and that my inability to immediately cite a single full-time employer in response to “what do you do?” translates into “I’m worthless!” And then that makes me upset that other people are doing cool things, because I feel possessive, because I go “well, if I feel useless now, how dare they demonstrate their greater utility?” (Yeah, it’s dumb. Fortunately, it usually doesn’t take me very long to catch this, and logic applied at the right pressure points takes care of it with great rapidity.)
I’d probably do well to remember this.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. — Mark Twain
Yep. I found a page of quotes tonight, and liked a bunch. I mean, juxtaposition of Churchill and Simpson? Yay!
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. — Sir Winston Churchill
Trying is the first step torwards failure. — Homer Simpson
Also,
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. — Mario Andretti
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. — Edward V. Berard
I like work, it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. — Jerome K. Jerome
Right then. Almost bedtime.
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
526 unread emails? Jeez, I’ve slipped. I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow morning before the marketing meeting, then. *cracks knuckles**
*actually, I don’t know how to do that. I’ve tried following instructions from the internet, but my knuckles stubbornly refuse to crack.
*switch!*
I am typing on my normal thinkpad keyboard at the moment, but with dvorak, as a way of easing into using Chris’s Magic Keyboard full time. (Touchstream + Dvorak both was a bit much to get used to both at once.)
After 5 minutes of Dvorak use (and a little cheating and peeking at the keyboard instead of touchtyping everything):
With Dvorak:
your typing rate is : 14 wpm
With Qwerty:
your typing rate is : 118 wpm (not trying to speed up.)
As a happy side effect, I hope to work on my conciseness this week as well.
Today was a wonderful day. Erin and I went around Chinatown and now I am in awe of how light reflects off cake gel icing. Then sleeping on the bus. Then class, then drinks with Mako (who was the class guest this week), and then I returned to my house to find a surprise from Marco that made me molto felice. (See? Shorter posts!)
Now that I’ve gotten more practice with Dvorak typing this post, let’s try that speed test again…
your typing rate is : 21 wpm
Hey, not too bad! 50% speed increase from a single post. The hard part isn’t learning Dvorak so much as it is turning off my Qwerty autopilot. When I’m up to some reasonable speed with Dvorak, like 100wpm, I’ll make myself cold turkey the touchstream (which I’m using as a big mousepad now, so I’ll learn the gestures).
5 things left on my todo list for the night before I sleep.
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 1 Comment »
Tonight was the second time I’ve ever been on twitter. It was for class. Here are some messages from the ensuing pandemonium.
Even better: what happens when a class full of law students collaboratively edit the Bill of Rights for 10 minutes? My favorite edits from all 5 editions are merged in the Revised Bill Of Rights, below.
Amendment 0
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the above.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the above.
Amendment I
No law shall violate the right to the free practice and expression of religion, speech, press, and expression. “No law” is here defined as “absolutely no law,” rather than “some laws, so long they are not really bad.”
Amendment II
A well regulated food fight, being necessary to the security of a lunch room, the right of the people to keep and bear skittles, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No soldier shall at any time be quartered on foreign soil, the military existing only for self-defense.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, cheezeburgers, lolcats, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures of both their tangible property and information contained electronically therein, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(Amendments V-VII weren’t really touched.)
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments (like death by execution) inflicted. No torture, or any tortured definition of torture that John Yoo, David Addington, or anyone within 6 degrees of separation of them can invent. Except if it is needed to stop an imminent nuclear attack. Or if Jack Bauer is involved.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. These rights also are not limited to those explictly stated in this document but include rights embodied by ideals of justice and liberty and lulz.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are preserved in the wiki and reserved to the states respectively, or to the Village People.
Amendment XI
TBA
Man, yall, who killed Amendment XI?
Amendment X.2
Everyone will have the right to define their own concept of existing, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of life.
Amendment XII
Pi is to be defined as 3 in the state of Indiana. Worked so well last time.
Amendment XIII
(was missing.)
Amendment XIV
“Freeze” commands shall be null and void in the lower 48 states. You can still freeze in Alaska. Except when playing Simon Says. Or Freeze tag
Amendment XV
Kill all humans, unless you’re a robot.
Amendment XVI
Your Ad Here!
Monday, February 9th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
If you’re not a Python coder, this may help with the title reference.
From The Perks of Being a Wallflower, via a comment by Ben Burns on Tim’s blog.
“Do you always think this much, Charlie?”
“Is that bad?”
“Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
I’m procrastinating on things I should be doing because I am afraid of them, and hiding out by being meta. Reflection’s good, and when I use it to avoid doing the things I’m reflecting on, I should stop reflecting and go back to doing.
Fortunately, I can set up metacognitive triggers on overmetacognition. (Sometimes they work.) And then, during times like this (for instance, I am currently abusing nested parentheses (see?) and overusing the word “meta,” and blogging about how I’m doing these things instead instead of going to bed, instead of going to bed) I can go “Oh, okay. I’ve just crossed that line. Stop.”
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "mel.py", line 42, in -brain-
TooMuchMetaError: using thought to not participate in life
And swing back towards the other direction.
I’m now tired enough to be unconscious for a few hours. Sleep time.
Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
Two things I can’t handle well but want to be able to deal with gracefully: debates and publicity.
These aren’t things I seek out. They’re not things I anticipate wanting to seek out. Not for their own sake, anyway. However,
- I’m terrified of them.
- I try to confront the things I’m terrified of. (Preferably with a helmet. And a backup plan. And possibly a lightsaber.)
Learning how to handle something well usually means practicing the handling of it, which makes me flinch a little (but not shy away, I hope). I want to be able to handle these things well so that when I choose not to, I know I’m choosing not to deal with it for good reasons, not “because I am afraid I cannot do it.”
As with all hopes, they generally won’t go anywhere unless I do something about it.
- I started looking for people and organizations in the Boston area that work on speech therapy, and contacted a few, just to find out more.
- I’m trying to be more conscious of clearly communicating in person, especially my speech (stuff like oral-nasal resonance and developing the muscle memory I need to pronounce consonants correctly). As a bonus side effect, I get to memorize poetry and amuse fellow passengers on the train. (Ooh. I could memorize poetry in non-English languages as well, and up my language-fu. Oooooh.)
- I’m trying to seek out, create, and not-turn-down opportunities to work on speaking, debating, and being-paid-attention-to. (I find the last one is easiest when I use it as a way to immediately funnel attention to Other People Who Deserve it More. But I need to be able to do a slightly more graceful funnel, and not just kinda shuffle awkwardly around.) The speaking and debating (and presenting, for that matter) have been mostly informal lately, since I’m being either overly wimpy or very gentle with myself, depending on which way you want to look at it. Workin’ on it.
- I’ve considered trying out videoblogging. Um… yes. I’ll think about this more. I think I should do it, and I need something to do it for. (Also, I need to check out the tools Chris wrote about – thanks, Chris!)
Where does this fall on my priorities list? None of it is a concrete project yet, so nowhere, really; it’s a general background awareness thing. That is to say, it’s background noise but growing louder. I’ll keep an eye open for ways I can fold this more concretely into an actual project. I probably have enough to do right now that I shouldn’t start new ones. Yet, anyway. Need to see what else is on my plate now first.
Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
Written the morning before I left for NYC – Thursday night blending into Friday morning.
Many things going on; can’t keep track of them all. Take scheduled dives through conversations as quickly and deeply as you can, ask for help keeping up with the news. The test is whether you can get things done in a way that responds appropriately to what’s going on – and sometimes the appropriate response is not paying attention to what’s going on because the noise will pass and you can catch up later. The question is what point I find my balance at.
This the hard part; despite whatever else is going on and despite what anybody else around me may be doing, what choices do I make to be responsible, to keep my promises, to do the best I can to help the people and the causes that I care about?
And what do I ignore?
Pick a thing and do a thing. It looks like I won’t be sleeping tonight except on the bus to New York.
Pick a thing: Get everything off the floor of my room and into either its rightful place in my room or in some location that isn’t my room.
Do a thing: My room is now a human-habitable place. I am proud!
Pick a thing: Handle the computers strewn about my apartment.
Do a thing: A shelf has been set aside for laptop storage when not in use. Amusing point: the XOs in my testbed have been labeled with small circular EFF stickers, so Sugar Journal entries may contain things like “Fair Use shared a Write document with Free Speech 3 days ago.” Reminds me of the Game Night where our profs played… it might have been Quake? on the big screen in the cafeteria, and chose Honor Code clauses for their handles. “Openness To Change has died. Respect for Others just fragged Patience and Understanding. Do Something bites the dust.”
The muscles behind my shoulder blades have ossified, and I’m trying to stretch them out.
I’ve learned a lot recently by watching how different people handle change and crisis. I’ve decided that I want to learn how to handle crisis well, and that most of that means (1) learning how to fight fires really well, so that I’m not afraid of them, and then (2) learning how to act so that fires don’t happen in the first place. The second is far more important than the first; still, there are times when it is worth it to cultivate an unneeded skill. Sometimes acquiring a skill is a prerequisite for that skill being unneeded.
My archival box contains a few journal entries from when I was 12; my parents made me keep a travel log when we went to visit relatives in Canada. I was not very pleased about this, and half the pages are filled with emphatic complaints about being forced to write a journal (except for one page written in spotty ink markedly different from the rest, which complains about fountain pens). I chuckle with amusement to think about how immature my 22-year-old self will seem to me in another decade. For instance, it’s 3:41am and I’m still cleaning the house.
For that later self – who, after all, is the primary audience of this blog – I’ll note a few things that seem particularly apparent to me today, often not for the first time. No person is perfect; projects and organizations are made of many individual people. Perfection is not a prerequisite for doing good things. Small bits of wire are very difficult to extricate from carpet. Characters in interesting historical stories didn’t know, at the time, that things would work out, or how they would.
6 hours of pre-travel productivity later: I have a brand-spankin’-new room, a clear kitchen, and a growing pile of things to get rid of. I have some website layouts and a business card design. (Thanks for the prod, Sumana!) I caught up with and touched base with several people and projects, wrote the next round of draft proposals for my law school seminar, did my first round of software testing pre-class paperwork, learned the A section of a new Mingus piece, learned the first voice of a guitar duet, and checked – again – to see if FOSDEM folks had picked up business cards. I also wrote a really long and rambly blog post chronicling some of my efforts and thoughts. The most productive time was when I was too busy doing things to write about them, but the writing helped me get there, so I feel vindicated in the time I spent on this. Whee!
Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | No Comments »
There are some things I’ve been uncovering that I really don’t need, but want to see if others can find a good use for it.
- Old hearing aid earpieces. I would actually love to spend some time in the matsci lab playing with these. I have no idea what they’re made of – it’s two materials, a softer one that enters the ear canal and a more brittle one for the remainder that hooks into the crevices of your ear. At the very least I want to get a close-up microscope picture and a flexure test of where the two materials join. (For that matter, if someone can figure out how to hook generic earbuds / a recorder / something into the slim tubes that go from the hearing aids into the earmolds – basically, replace the earmolds with something you can listen/record through – we can have a fun time playing with figuring out exactly what the little bugger amplifies, and/or you can hear what I mean by “there are more sounds, but they sound awful.”)
- Two pairs of old eyeglasses. Where can I find a Lions Club drop-box for them or something? They’re fantastic, just out of prescription.
- A nifty valve that I wanted to share with others who apprecate elegant mechanical and materials design (though perhaps not ease-of-manufacture). I cut it from a box of water we finished in Tasmania. Yes, I carried a valve in my backpack across 6 cities in 2 continents for 2 weeks just because I wanted to show it to people. It’s not a big deal. I just thought it was… cool.
- A Cubase AI4 CD (unused) which came with my keyboard. It’s Windows/Mac only, so it’s a paperweight to me, but someone else might enjoy having a legal copy of audio software I’ve never heard of before.
That’s all I have right now.
Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 1 Comment »
Old post. Airport. No internet. Never finished. Finishing and posting now. Finding that, when it gives me solo downtime, traveling is very, very good for making me focus. Sentence fragments.
If I’m to be a road warrior, I’d better learn how to book flights – and how to pack. I currently pack based on the time-honored “what can I wash in the sink?” methodology. My gap year packing scheme was optimized for
living in a different place and climate (Philippines –> Shanghai in the dead of winter == differentness) every month or two, and even that was fairly minimalistic while half consisting of things my parents wanted me to pack. This is rapid-fire travel to one climate at a time. I think the secret probably lies somewhere in eigensets of small, minimalistic things.
This is Boston when I left it.
As soon as the plane landed, I started shedding layers of clothing. By the time I leapt off the train around 10:15am, I’d gotten down to socks-in-sneakers, thermals-under-jeans, long-sleeved-shirt + jacket, and was greeted by… warmness.
I spent the morning and afternoon roaming southwards back toward the airport by way of Hyde Park. There were small children running through green parks. Fountains with turtles and bulls belching forth great streams of water. Shirtless runners sprinting down the street in sunglasses. Random conversations with friendly strangers I happened to sit down next to while eating, sketching, taking a picture, or waiting for a train. Al fresco dining with soda that isn’t saturated with high-fructose corn syrup. Tomato (real tomatoes, not mealy pale red blobs that try to pass themselves off as food in suburban supermarkets) and cheese sandwiches with salty ham that doesn’t taste primarily of preservatives.
I’m currently in the airport waiting for my flight to Hobart, and I’ve switched clothing styles completely – light pants, sandals, and an OVPC shirt (I don’t need these “sock” things anymore). Pia and Jeff are absolutely wonderful and have saved me a room in their house – which is also the location of an Obama inauguration celebration tonight. I find this odd, going to Australia for a party to celebrate a new US President. Also kind of cool.
I’m still in disbelief that I’ll actually get to meet them. I’m still somewhat in disbelief that I am here. I’m still in disbelief at where I’ve gone and who I’ve met and what I’ve done in these last few years, and sometimes wonder if I’ll wake up and find out that it’s all been a dream – but no, it gets more and more real and natural each day. (At the same time, I never want to forget how strange and wonderful all this feels, and how weird and terrifying it is to grow into this kind of person, because I’ll need to remember that for when I teach someday, and have students who are afraid.)
Nearly boarding time to Hobart – onwards to adventure!
Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | Didn't fit anywhere else | 1 Comment »
